I think one important thing for people to learn about is the ways humanitarianism & veganism intersect. I'll post some info here and anyone else is also free to share any facts, articles, videos, etc. they find relevant. This is also a place for people to post their reactions to & feelings on these topics.

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John Oliver on the Treatment of Chicken Farmers (video)

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The Toxic Price of Leather (video)

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Human rights violations in the meat packing industry
Human Rights Watch issued a report claiming that the meat packing industry’s conditions are so bad they violate human rights. Jobs in beef, pork, and poultry plants are extremely dangerous, with workers getting asphyxiated by fumes, developing cumulative stress disorders, blindness, having their legs cut off or their hands completely crushed by machines, and then coerced into not accepting compensation payments to deal with their injuries. These industries frequently find ways around workers’ rights to organize, and also exploit immigrant workers, purposely choosing to hire many immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, in order to get away with inferior treatment. Meat packing is statistically one of the most dangerous factory jobs in America, with at least 1 in 7 poultry workers injuries on the job, and overall meat industry work risking a 1 in 10 chance of injury, many of those being extremely serious injuries as mentioned above. For all that, the workers still earn 30 percent less than the average wage for U.S. manufacturing jobs. Slaughterhouse workers struggle to live above poverty level, are in continuous pain, experience common sexual harassment if they are women, and often suffer from serious negative psychological effects from continually seeing the killing and dismembering of animals who clearly display fear and pain. A former kill floor manager gave the following account: “The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll… . Pigs down on the kill floor have come up and nuzzled me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them—beat them to death with a pipe.
Sources: 1, 2, 3

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Spy Drones Expose Smithfield Foods Factory Farms (video)
Thousands of pig farms in North Carolina spray football field size pools of untreated animal waste (urine and feces) into the air, which then rains down upon neighboring communities and contaminates their water supply. Homes and schools are affected, and it has serious health impacts as well as negative impacts on people’s lives and mental wellbeing. “You think it’s raining,” Elsie Herring, a woman who lives near a pig farm said. These lagoons of manure also leak and spill into rivers, farms, and highways. ”It looks like something—like a green slime, something you might expect in a movie like the ‘Creature From the Black Lagoon’ or something,” said one local exposed to the pollution.
Quote source: CBS News

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Poverty & world hunger's connection to animal agriculture: inefficiency & land-grabbing
Because animals raised for animal agriculture inevitably depend upon a continual supply of food to grow, there is a very inefficient usage of grain in the industry, resulting in most of our grain going to feed these animals, and many more resources going toward a much smaller overall amount of calories and nutrients. This in itself is a major energy issue, as well as a human rights issue. It is becoming increasingly difficult throughout the world to grow sufficient crops to feed our rising population. In fact, if everyone ate the way U.S. citizens did, we could only support 2.5 billion people on earth, because so much water and grain would be put towards the making of animal products. Yet if everyone ate the way Indian citizens did, with a diet very low in animal product intake, especially meat, we could grow enough crops to support 10 billion people. We would be using less water and less grain for more food. One calorie of pork production requires 3 calories of grain input, and 1 calorie of beef requires 10 calories of grain input.
Another related concern is the act of land-grabbing by large animal product companies and corporations, which means taking advantage of locals in countries around the world, buying up all their arable land, kicking people off their land, or underpaying them in exchange for using their own land for animal product production. In countries where many people struggle for food, valuable land, water, and grain resources are going towards meat and dairy production, and then usually shipped overseas for other people to consume, while people in the countries of production continue to struggle. Little land is even left for the growth of crops for local consumption, or for the growth of other industries throughout the country due to its high land, resource, and labor demands. Because of this, our present levels of meat and other animal product consumption in wealthy industrialized countries are directly linked to starvation in poorer countries of the world. This massive usage of foreign land—nearly 80% of the world’s arable land going towards the production of meat—not only adversely impacts local economies and the health of both nearby residents and overall citizens, but also impacts the local ecosystems in these places.
Sources: 1, 2, 3.