Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Hosler. Animal Rights Activist, Nonprofit Cofounder, Small Business Owner, and Mother who has organized Animal Rights Marches, lead and organized activist training, and community events, and is also known in her community as Mamma Duck. Ask her when you meet her!
Rachel was brought up in Florida with one grandfather an avid hunter, and her other grandfather being the owner of a butcher shop where she spent many summers as a young person helping her grandma make the deli salads, cooking bacon for the employees as a treat and seeing animal bodies hanging in a walk-in cooler as normal.
When she was in middle school, her family moved from Florida to South Carolina where vegetables weren’t served without lard, and every food that could be fried was done so. In high school, she spent a year in the FFA (Future Farmers of America), where slaughtering chickens and attending cattle auctions was normal. This triggered her first experience going vegetarian but living in the south and with her family, it was difficult with the pressures from both family and friends where she started only eating ‘good quality meat’. While also rescued every stray animal she came across, including a puppy she found on the railroad tracks walking home from school that she brought home, cleaned maggot out of her toes, and cared for her nursing her back to health.
In high school and always being different Rachel found her home in the LGBTQ+ community and after graduation spent 5 years traveling across the South Eastern US living in a VW Bus and RV with her girlfriend and several rescue animals, including her potbelly pig Mini Pearle.
In 1998 she moved from South Carolina to San Diego, California where she worked for a Macrobiotic, Vegan & Raw food mail order company where she was educated on different diets, lifestyles, and views. She learned more about the origins and different quality of foods and the falsehoods in the food industries that we are indoctrinated into thinking are normal, i.e., the “Got Milk” campaigns.
In 2003 Rachel gave birth to her pride and joy, her son Joaquin. Joaquin is her best friend, and she gives him credit for ‘saving her life. Joaquin has grown to be an amazing, loving, and kind young man and an incredible artist. However, with all of this knowledge about systemic oppression in the food system, it wasn’t until she heard a speech from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau in 2011 that she made the connection between animal exploitation and our food system. In 2016 she started seeing animal rights activism yet was very intimidated by it; however, in 2017, she jumped in and started learning more about activism when she met Kind Heart Coalition Cofounder Melanie Bazzel while organizing outreach events. Rachel has now been a passionate activist and leader in the San Diego Animal Rights Activist community with several organizations like Direct Action Everywhere, The Save Movement, Peta, and Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade. Rachel currently resides with her son Joaquin, Khaleesi an American Staffordshire Terrier, Leeloo who is a beautiful rabbit who was rescued 2 years ago along with 6 others from a rabbit slaughter facility, and possibly the most famous resident is Yolanda who Rachel rescued from a trash can while investigating the conditions of an egg facility. A very common practice in animal agriculture is to toss individuals into the trash when they appear to be injured or not doing well.
Every morning Yolanda comes into her room and joins her in bed asking her to wake up and rub her beak or she preens and goes back to sleep until Rachel is awake. She is a reminder every day that billions of others just like her are suffering every moment of every day trapped inside a small cage or in a large building we call ‘free range, these giant enclosed warehouses are just giant cages of exploitation. Having seen the inside of the ‘food system’ known as animal agriculture it is a driving force behind Rachels’s activism and bringing the truth of what is hidden from folks out into the public eye. “If folks keep turning their heads to the suffering of the human and nonhuman animals in these facilities then this system of exploitation and oppression will never end. We must no longer stay silent, we must rise up, stand up, speak out, vote, lockdown, disrupt, and whistle blow and most importantly get active and unite to end this mass system oppression and liberate all earthlings.” Rachel says.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As in any organization, group or movement, there are human struggles. We may not all have the same personality, vision, or commitment time. This leads to criticism, misunderstanding, and infighting. These are times we need to recognize each other as having human struggles and differences and communicate these as nonviolently and compassionately as possible, A lot of folks in the Animal Liberation movement are extremely passionate, like me. It’s upsetting and frustrating when folks disregard our fight against the oppression of nonhuman animals and say ‘they don’t care and they are going to eat ‘what’ they want. As an advocate for animals, it is not ‘what’ people eat, it is ‘who’ they are exploiting for their flesh (meat), secretions (milk), ovulation cycles (eggs), Skin (leather), fur, scales, or any other body part of another earthling. We get criticized for not ‘fighting for human rights when in fact, we are on many fronts. You do not see slaughterhouses and industrial farms except in areas with immigrants, formerly incarcerated, refugees, and low-income folks. Animal Rights are a social justice issue.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
When I am not working for nonhuman animals in my free time, I have a mobile dog grooming business, and I work with nonhuman animals. I have been grooming dogs professionally for over 20 years. It is a physically demanding job and requires a lot of attention, care, and communication with the animal friends I am working with. I treat each animal as the individual they are and limit the amount of stress to the best of my abilities. Working with another species that I cannot verbally communicate with helps with my empathy for the folks working in animal exploitive industries, ie factory farms, and slaughterhouses. For example, if I am grooming a dog, I have sharp instruments that I must use around a moving, wiggling body that does not understand what I am doing, and I make time to work with them so as not to injure them and cause the least amount of stress to them or myself. It can be very frustrating unable to communicate verbally. I can only imagine if my job required instruments not to cut hair but to cut a throat and that animal fearing for their life and having to do that 8+ hours a day and having a quota of how many animal bodies to dismember in a work day. The stress and pressure of constantly fighting someone who is fighting for their life is not a job anyone should have to do.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Melanie and I started Kind Heart Coalition in 2018 with the goal of fighting for animal liberation through kind-hearted activism, activism, and education. We host monthly volunteer days at local vegan animal sanctuaries (yes there are nonvegan animal rescues, to me, it is weird that you would serve cooked animal bodies in the same space that you are rescuing animal friends). We have held outreach events, hosted art shows, watch parties for documentaries, and host 2 big annual potlucks, July 4 and Thank Living.
We also host an annual campout in the late summer. Kind Heart Coalition presents the second annual Kind Hearted Campout, September 2nd – 5th, 2022, at Harrison Serenity Ranch, located on Palomar Mountain, 55 miles north of San Diego. The Kind Hearted Campout is California’s first and only all-vegan camping festival, with a diverse and powerful itinerary of music, discussions, activism workshops, games, art activities, yoga classes, and dance parties. The Campout is a family and dog-friendly event. “Last year’s Campout provided an invaluable opportunity to grow individually as activists and together as a community. Based on the overwhelming response we received last year, we have increased the camper capacity and event duration this year,” says Kind Heart Coalition co-founder Rachel. “Inclusiveness is our greatest priority. By keeping the registration costs low and partnering with sponsors and donors, we’re able to ensure that no one is excluded.” Kind Heart Coalition is a San Diego-based grassroots social enterprise aiming to unite compassionate, kind hearts and minds through education on animal rights through anti-specialist messaging.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kindheartcoalition.org/
- Instagram: @kindheartcoalition
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kindheartcoalition/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoJyFsNQsW98WvibpAlWfNw
