Thank you @Marine-Lercier! 🙏🏽
@yesonip28
Ballot initiative campaign to extend anti-cruelty laws to farmed and wild animals
https://www.yesonip28.org/$0 in pending offers
Initiative Petition 28, titled People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions (PEACE) Act is a ballot initiative filed for the 2026 Oregon general election. For those hearing about IP28 for the first time, this ballot initiative would remove many of the current exemptions from Oregon’s animal cruelty laws against animal abuse, animal neglect, and animal sexual assault. These statutes prohibit the intentional injury or killing of an animal (abuse), the withholding of care from an animal or the injurious tethering of an animal (neglect), and the sexual contact of an animal’s mouth, anus, or genitals (sexual assault), but many animals are not currently protected under these laws due to the numerous exemptions included.
By removing exemptions from these laws, animals that were not previously protected from abuse, neglect, and sexual assault would finally receive legal protections. As one might realize, this would impact many industries that currently involve animals. Animals on farms, research labs, exhibitions, and in the wild, would no longer be allowed to be intentionally injured or killed (abused), nor would they be allowed to be forcibly impregnated (sexually assaulted). Animals in transport trucks, or in the industries already mentioned, could no longer be deprived of adequate food, water, and shelter (neglected) either. Importantly, all veterinary practices and the use of self-defense would remain exempt from these statutes.
IP28 prohibits any activity—other than self-defense and veterinary practices—that intentionally injures, kills, or sexually violates an animal, many of which are currently legal because they are exempt from our animal cruelty laws. The reason we are seeking to prohibit these activities is not to be punitive towards anyone currently involved with the injuring, killing, or breeding of animals, but rather to be protective of the needs of the animals and to codify their right to life and bodily autonomy in law. There are many alternative ways that all of us can meet our needs without relying on the abuse, neglect, and sexual assault of animals—and we hope that this campaign helps push us towards that more peaceful future.
In order to help support the transition to alternatives that do not rely on injuring and killing animals, IP28 also establishes a Humane Transition Fund to provide grants helping with food assistance, replacement of lost income, job retraining, and aid in conservation and rewilding efforts. The Humane Transition Fund will be administered by a council consisting of representatives from the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Office of Tribal Affairs, Oregon Department of Human Services, among other community members who would be impacted by the implementation of IP28. For a full list of those who would be recruited for the oversight council, see Section 13 of IP28.
We here at the Yes On IP28 campaign want to help everybody meet their needs. We are fortunate to exist in a time when there are ample resources to make sure everyone’s needs are being met without compromise. This includes the needs of the animals to be free from unnecessary human-caused suffering, as well as the needs of Oregon citizens to thrive.
Projects
Comments
Yes On IP28
3 months ago
Thank you @adhulesh! We're grateful for your support of the campaign and for all the work you are putting into the Del Mar ballot to ban retail pet sales & San Diego rodeo ban!
Yes On IP28
3 months ago
Thank you @Tomohaire! We appreciate the support and agree that I think it can help attract others to the cause. :)
Yes On IP28
3 months ago
Thank you both @Arepo! We do feel excited seeing the show of support :)
To address the funding use question, since we began petitioning for our current election cycle in early July of this year, 88.1% of the $40k spent has been for Wages & Taxes for paid petitioners. Our second-highest expense has been 4.8% covering Hiring (like job posts, required background checks, and a one-off training event). The third-highest is Printing (1.8%), then Payroll Fees (1.6%), and after that it is a bunch of smaller items (e.g. Postage, Vendor Fees, Software, Website Hosting).
Our cost-per-signature (we pay hourly, but still estimate what it roughly costs per signature) is $1.69/sig which is far lower than other campaigns in Oregon we have talked to. We've been able to be so cost-effective thanks to volunteers both helping with administrative work as well as volunteer petitioners supplementing our signature collection (and of course to our petitioners maintaining signature rates close to 15 signatures/hr.). This has allowed us to still pay at $25/hr., which is just above the MIT Living Wage for Oregon, while maintaining a strong cost-per-signature.
Yes On IP28
3 months ago
Hi @Lucie, I am grateful for your question and the opportunity to share more about our theory of change.
The confidence we have in our initiative's ability to accelerate the animal liberation movement largely comes from two historical precedents that inspire the campaign, which we briefly touched on above but would benefit from going into in more depth.
The Women's Suffrage Movement used as a strategy the ballot initiative process to win the right to vote. Importantly, they forced the vote despite the low chances of initially passing. In Oregon in particular, it took six successive ballot initiatives before it finally passed, and in the first instance only received 28% of the Yes vote. Despite this result they again put it to the ballot in 1900, 1906, 1908, 1910, and finally won in 1912. Nationally, between 1867 and 1920, 54 ballot measures for Women's suffrage were on the ballot, yet only 15 of those were passed. Those statewide initiatives were a core political activity during the movement, just as we hope initiatives like ours become a core political activity of the animal liberation movement. Women's suffrage initiatives forced regional and national conversations about suffrage, and also normalized the desire for suffrage among women themselves, many of whom were not initially supportive of suffrage. In a somewhat parallel way, we hope our initiative not only will generate conversations about animal rights (in an expressly political and systemic way rather than one tied predominantly to consumption habits) but will normalize asking for immediate liberation among animal rights advocates.
As for the Abolitionist Movement, we see parallels between how our initiative calls for the immediate liberation of animals and how the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) called for the immediate abolition of slavery. The approach of the AASS was controversial at the time because it conflicted with the gradual and compensated emancipation being advocated for by the American Colonization Society. The AASS was widely considered to be an influential contributor towards emancipation, as were their individual members who advocated for immediate emancipation. In our current movement for animal liberation, we see some examples of organizations advocating for gradual and compensated liberation, but we don't see organizations—at least not with expressly political tactics—advocating for immediate legal liberation. Speaking personally, I feel quite confident that asking for immediate liberation is more effective because it is both more authentic with respect to asking for the world we want, and is more consistent with respect to the suffering we claim is being caused by animal exploitation. (If witnessing the actions of others is a means of acquiring perceptual information and determining our own views, I worry that seeing others asking for gradual change implies to us that the suffering is not that great, whereas if others witness advocates asking for the immediate end to exploitation, others will start to view the suffering with similar seriousness and urgency.) Aside from my own preference, however, if someone at least accepts the view that a diversity of tactics is beneficial, then this deficit (having more gradualists approaches than immediate approaches) would be a cause for concern.
We are aware our initiative is unlikely to pass in 2026, but like the suffragettes we believe the act of being on the ballot itself will help the movement. Once we do finally pass, we also realize this does not prohibit animals from being killed in other states. Yet just like many of the first northern states to abolish slavery had a far smaller enslaved population than in the southern states, those free states contributed to the conditions necessary for national emancipation.