We Can Make a Difference

“To change the world, my friend Sancho, isn’t madness nor utopia. It’s justice.” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

“I want to collapse the distance between humanity and the natural world; I want to introduce and reinforce the idea that all life is entangled and connected and enmeshed,” says writer Talia Lakshmi Kolluri.

“We must speak not only of great devastation,” poet Ilya Kaminsky writes in Deaf Republic.

“Every inch of ground on this earth has seen unfathomable suffering. There is no inch of earth not soaked in suffering, but there is also no inch of earth which is not soaked in joy and beauty and radiance.” Jane Hirshfield

Vision: Humans regard animals as sentient and unique beings who possess their own capabilities and live free from human exploitation

We are in a pivotal moment with respect to species outside of our own, with an extraordinary opportunity to create a profound kinship with those whom our fates are tied, with whom we share a spirit of consciousness. Over the last three years, more than 30 countries have formally recognized other animals including gorillas, lobsters, crows, and octopuses as sentient beings. Aren’t they all sentient?

Arukah Animal International envisions a world where we don’t differentiate between all who live, all who breathe, where we transcend all borders, to be the equal of all living beings, in our astonishing variety and diversity, that we are in fact all a part of a natural evolution of life forms.

We are in fact not a thing apart.

Arukah Animal International sees other-than-human animals as creators of their own lives, as subjects, to thrive, to live, in all their richness and complexity, their individual and insistently singular and purposeful selves in all their marvel, flooding us with wonder.