Kara Williams and Robert Grillo on CAN TV

Free from Harm founder and director Robert Grillo and new Free from Harm board member and animal rescuer Kara Williams were guests on Commissioner Frank Avila Speaks television show on January 2nd! Commissioner Avila’s show on cable station CAN TV has been running for 15 years straight, covering a wide range of environmental and sustainability issues and reaches a 13-million viewing audience. His wife Sherry helps produce the show. Avila is an expert in water management and Commissioner for the City of Chicago’s Water Reclamation District since 2002 and he’s been vegan for 14 years. CAN TV is a Chicago television network that provides a platform for local voices to be heard.

Avila interviewed Grillo and Williams for 27 minutes on a wide range of topics. The segment begins with how Grillo launched and developed Free from Harm in 2009 as a website only and formed a nonprofit a few years later. Today Free from Harm attracted a couple of million visitors to its website in 2019 and has reached several million through its social media platforms.

The discussion then moved to the Slaughter Free Chicago campaign. Grillo explains the symbolic and cultural significance of ending slaughte in the city that once promoted itself as the slaughter capital of the world. The Chicago Union Stockyards was one of the city’s main tourist attractions, seeing more than half of a million visitors over the years. Frank shares his experience as a child being taken on a field trip from his school to visit the Stockyards, and Grillo explains how all of this was the industry’s attempt to normalize its systematic exploitation and killing of millions of animals in the eyes of the public. 

The interview ends with Williams and Grillo explaining how people can get involved in activism with Free from Harm and Slaughter Free Chicago both online and through actions they are organizing in Chicago and other cities such as Milwaukee and New York City that have also established a Slaughter Free Cities chapter.