The abolitionist approach is doing "nothing?"

Will my fellow animal rights advocates over on the “interim welfare” side of the fence please stop claiming that abolitionism means “doing nothing?”

Please?

If this is your claim, you’re either misrepresenting, or misunderstanding, the abolitionist approach. It’s hardly “do nothing.” If what I’m doing is nothing, this is a hell of a lot of work for that “nothing.” 
 
An abolitionist position says, “support things that actually eliminate - not meaninglessly ‘regulate’ - animal use, suffering and consumption.”

Right now, that means PRIMARILY educating people about veganism, advocating it as the moral baseline of the animal rights movement (you can’t rationally claim to support animal rights and eat cheese pizza), and - this is the kicker -rebutting the exaggerated claims of the animal welfare movement with facts, and a rigorous critical response that makes a clear, and unequivocal case that animal use is the fundamental problem, instead of animal treatment.

Welfarism has had the better part of two centuries to lead to the reduction and elimination of animal consumption, as welfare-to-rights AR folks claim they’re doing. These folks are good, well-intentioned people, but they’re misguided. They aren’t looking at the facts.

Animal welfare as a means of achieving animal RIGHTS is a dead end.

So long as the animal welfare movement keeps sending the mixed message that some animals (the “kindly treated” ones) are acceptable to eat, wear, or in other ways use for human ends, the animal rights movement MUST be willing to present a clear case that this is a flawed approach; it’s morally flawed, and it’s practically flawed.

There’s no empirical evidence - none at all - that animal welfarism has accomplished anything but the most minor reductions in animal suffering. It has not eliminated animal use in any way at all. 
 
We MUST attack this on both fronts - vegan education and outreach, and countering the welfare movement’s false claims of “victory for animals” - in the near term before we can *ever* hope of accomplishing the larger goal in the long term: a systematic reappraisal of the moral and legal status of animals as nonhuman rights holders instead of human chattel property.

This is not “doing nothing,” by a long shot.