By Pamelyn Ferdin
I sat down with Charlotte Laws, world-renowned activist, cable news pundit, bestselling author, and star of Netflix’s The Most Hated Man on the Internet. She has two, new animal rights books. Kirkus Reviews endorses them with its highly-coveted “stars.”
Omniocracy: A Government that Represents All Living Beings (Stroud House Publishing, October 2025) argues that animals will remain in chains until they are recognized within the political system. Laws advocates moving from a (human-centric) democracy to an omniocracy. She asks, “How would women feel living under a man-ocracy? Could African Americans expect equality under a White-ocracy? Would gays accept rule by a straight-ocracy?” Laws urges an end to speciesism (the arrogant bias favoring the human race) and asks that we embrace all living beings as equals.
Laws’s second book, Elevator People, (July 2025) is a humorous, dystopian, time travel novel about animal rights and environmentalism. This eco-thriller forces you to rethink your values. You will never look at life, compassion, or the planet in the same way again.
I asked Dr. Laws about her new books and animal advocacy.
Q: Omniocracy is about creating a political system in which nonhumans are represented. I understand you were in politics. Did you make an effort to help animals?
A: Absolutely. I ran for a seat on the Greater Valley Glen Council in the early 2000s. This is a local political body in Southern California. I was already an animal advocate who endorsed “omniocracy.” I invented this term in the 1990s while obtaining my doctorate at USC.
During my political campaign, I ran on the platform that I would represent all living beings in my district—not just the humans who are the elite. Miraculously, I prevailed and served eight years on that council until termed out. I was able to help nonhumans on numerous measures, and I started a political organization called the Directors of Animal Welfare (DAW), which was endorsed by the city of Los Angeles. The idea behind DAW was to give nonhumans an official representative in every area of Southern California, thus providing them with political representation.
During that time, I was appointed by the mayor of Los Angeles to be a city commissioner on the 912 Commission. One of our tasks was to decide who qualified as a stakeholder in Los Angeles. We had to come up with an official definition. Due to my presence on the commission, I was able to make sure nonhumans were included (or, more accurately, not excluded) in that definition.
After our wording was passed by the City Council, all animals, in effect, became constituents. Los Angeles had become perhaps the first place in the world that entitled nonhumans to governmental representation—at least on paper or in theory. Admittedly, practice is tough under a democratic system.
Q: In Omniocracy, you go into great detail about the pain an animal rights activist faces on a daily basis. I have never seen this included in a book. Why did you decide to incorporate this point of view?
A: Many thinkers and activists have argued that the world is a concentration camp from the perspective of animals. For example, Issac Bashevis Singer (a Jewish-American Nobel Prize winner) says that “all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”
In Omniocracy I explain that the world is also a hellhole, slaughterhouse, and never-ending Auschwitz from the perspective of many (if not most) dedicated animal activists—whether they publicly admit it or not.
Offensive images and speciesist language slam into the animal rights activist every day. It is like being sandwiched between two Mack trucks. It is inescapable. The brutal images and words are depicted on billboards and in TV commercials (even those pitching non-animal products such as insurance and vacation packages). They are prevalent in movies and newspaper articles, on plates in restaurants, in grocery stores, in social media posts, and in conversations at the park. Every group imaginable—Democrats, Republicans, capitalists, socialists, and even most environmental groups—seems to be complicit.
Society expects the animal activist to keep a stiff upper lip. She is supposed to suffer in silence. She is expected to tolerate images of corpses and verbal grenades—despite the fact that it seems like every other “offended group” is catered to in today’s woke society. Special groups get “safe zones.” Statues are removed. The names of schools are changed. Some of Dr. Seuss’s books have been discontinued due to problematic content. The list goes on. But the animal activist enjoys no such consideration. She is implicitly told, “Those groups matter, but you and the nonhuman victims can go to hell!”
Q: You are the recipient of the Los Angeles Animal Humanitarian Award, and you were a lecturer at the FBI Academy in Quantico, teaching animal rights philosophy to police chiefs and law enforcement managers from around the world. This is impressive, but I’d like to back up a little and know how you become an animal advocate. Did your parents teach you to love animals?
A: Quite the contrary. I was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and my adoptive parents ate meat, went fishing and hunting, and owned cattle as a sideline investment. They believed whoever died with the most stuff won. They adhered to an “old money” mindset (country club parties, fancy cars) and were obsessed with making sure I became a respectable Atlanta debutante. To them animal rights and veganism were kooky; they were hobbies for weirdos and hippies.
My adoptive mom was chronically depressed. When I was thirteen, she advised, “Don’t buy a mink coat until you are old, or you won’t have anything to look forward to in life.” It is ironic that I became an animal advocate.
Three years later, Mom committed suicide. She had two fur coats when she died.
Not long after, my adopted brother was killed in a car accident, and my (abusive) adoptive dad said to me, “You’re the bad one. He was the good one. You’re the one who should have died. Not him.”
Luckily, nature outweighs nurture. I tracked down my birth family and am convinced I was born with an innate compassion for animals.
Q: Tell me about that innate compassion. When did it first reveal itself?
A: When I was a child, my adoptive family was vacationing at our lake house. I rose late one morning and wandered down to the dock where I found my parents and brother fishing.
I asked in a genuinely curious way, “Why are you murdering fish?”
Mom replied, “Why don’t you join us?” I shook my head and left.
I felt empathy for the fish, and the word “murder” seemed appropriate.
Although I ate meat at that time and had never heard of vegetarianism or veganism, this was the first time I’d witnessed the actual killing of another creature. I had an immediate distaste for the idea.
Q: Did that cause you to stop eating meat?
A: No. I continued to eat meat. I never really thought about the issue until my early 20s when I was waiting for a friend to join me for breakfast at the Circus Circus hotel in Las Vegas. I’d bought Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation, without much thought, and I started reading it that morning. I learned about speciesism—the arrogant belief in human superiority, a bias that leads to the exploitation of other creatures.
I was mortified! I was upset with myself! I’d always prided myself on being anti-prejudice, yet I’d been oppressing animals by eating them, wearing their skins, and never giving thought to their suffering and death! I’d been a speciesist! To make a long story short, I had no meat for breakfast and never ate meat again.
Q: You mention the word ‘speciesism,” yet you sometimes call it “racism” in your book. Why?
A: I periodically call it racism because the phrase “human race” is bantered about so frequently. If humans are a race, as some people apparently like to think, I figure I can tag the arrogant bias against nonhuman animals as “racism.”
Words are powerful and perception is, or often becomes, reality. The word speciesism is confusing to the masses; they tend to be unclear of the definition. Racism, however, is a trigger. It is viewed as unacceptable, even heinous, in today’s society and equated with other politically incorrect “isms,” such as sexism and anti-Semitism.
Q: In your novel Elevator People there are a few scenes that some readers call “triggering.” You write about people being tortured and eaten. What do you say to those readers who are offended by these scenes?
A: It is interesting that they are offended by these scenes yet have no problem with the scene in the first chapter in which chicken and steak (dead animals) are served at a gala. This makes my point. Animals are invisible, off the radar. Their abuse is business as usual. The so-called triggering scenes in the book depict what animals endure everyday… except in Elevator People I show the violence happening to people instead of other creatures. My goal is to educate about the cruelty to animals and motivate people to change their behavior. The book is meant to encourage soul-searching. It is designed to make readers examine their values and lives.
Thank you for joining me today, Dr. Laws. I wish you luck. Let’s hope your books can change some minds.
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Pamelyn Ferdin was a world-famous child and teen actress. She has starred in over 200 television shows and films and was the voice of Lucy in Peanuts specials. She became an animal rights activist / protester in 1992 and has been vegan for over 35 years. You can reach her on Facebook at “Pamelyn Ferdin” or through her web site pamelynferdin.com
Article appears on Medium