Animal Liberation Ontario – ALO

We used to sport the name Animal Liberation Ontario – ALO, along with a wicked logo. True story.

But now we’re called ELK!
So why the name change?

Well we have recently moved to the west coast and so we saw this as a great opportunity to re-brand ourselves according to the lessons we learned in our first year of existence. Specifically, we still operate as a space for promoting liberation for all species (obviously!), but we wished to drop the word ‘ontario’ from the name. We recognized that provincial and national borders are straight-up colonial violence, and that we are perpetuating their charade of legitimacy when we continue to use the names of settler governments who stole land to displace and murder the original human and nonhuman inhabitants.

Borders are nothing but lines on maps drawn by men with guns, calling themselves governments. Borders reinforce the notion that land (and animals) are property to be owned and divided among their possessors (for more on how the division of the world into states policed by armies hurts both human and non-human animals, see The Turtle Talk by pattrice jones). Borders reinforce the notion that some people can be considered as “illegal” for existing in that space (for more on some amazing work being done about this issue, check out No One Is Illegal).

So because we at ELK believe that we also reinforce the violence of borders when we continue to use the lingo of the colonizing settlers, we opted to abandon the name ALO.

Fuck colonialism.
Fuck nationalism.
Fuck borders.

Love,
ELK