SuperWeed

At the recent AR2008 conference, I was lucky to have the opportunity to spend lots of time, on panels and at our adjoining exhibit tables, with my pal lauren Ornelas of the Food Empowerment Project. A long time animal rights activist, lauren conducted harrowing investigations of factory farms during her tenure with Viva!USA. Now she’s off on another grim voyage of investigation as part of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition team that will be researching the effects of e-waste in New Dehli and Hong Kong. The SVTC team will be documenting the trip on their new blog.

I intend to follow their progress and I hope you will too. As you probably know, computers contain all sorts of toxic materials. Their dumping and dismemberment has conveniently been “outsourced” to places where people living in poverty can be paid low wages to expose themselves to hazardous wastes and where those living nearby haven’t the political power to effectively protest the pollution of their environment. We’ve all got an obligation to expose ourselves to the truth about that.

So, I’m off to the annual Animal Rights National Conference and, unlike last year, I’m not even going to try to blog while I’m there. Maybe I’ll post an on-the-spot report but probably not.

Instead here are three documents I’ll be distributing while there:

All Out to the Grocery Stores and Gas Stations!
Strategic Action for Animals in the Context of the Food-Feed-Fuel Crisis
pdf

In Defense of Actual Animals
Moving Past the Welfare-Abolition Impasse
pdf

Strategic Analysis of Animal Welfare Legislation
A Guide for the Perplexed
pdf

Feel free to comment but know that I won’t be able to engage in dialogue until after the conference.

And, here’s a sneak peak at the new Eastern Shore Sanctuary poster we’ll be taking to the conference:

Sweet, eh? The child in the picture is Imani, who I have known since before he was born and who kindly consented for this snapshot, taken when he and his mother (a board member at the sanctuary) spent a few days at the sanctuary last summer. The chick grew up to be a giant-sized “broiler” rooster, who is luckily still with us — despite the tendency of birds of his size to suffer heat stroke or heart attacks in the summer — but is already starting to show the signs of premature aging common to chickens of his kind who are lucky enough to live longer than a year. The accelerated growth that allows “growers” to send birds to slaughter at only six or eight weeks of age persists throughout life: These birds reach sexual maturity a couple of months earlier than normal and start to look positively elderly at about 18 months. Sad. Don’t eat them.

I wrote about the DiY grief zine for anarchists and other anarchists, “The Worst,” before but now that I’ve had the chance to read it in it’s entirety (thanks, Kathleen!), let me share a quote with you:

The norms enforced by the ruling elite of our society ensure that time and effort are structured by competition for resources, rather than by our own automous quests for fulfillment. Amidst this competition, human differences in race, gender, sexuality, and class are transformed into tolls of control and oppression with respect to grief and loss. In order to survive, we end up internalizing and reproducing these dynamics of control, which becomes evident as we make inquiries into structural racism, socially codified sexism and violent heteronormativity, violence against the earth and its resources, the enforcement of borders and nation-states, and many other facets of mainstream society that are simply taken for granted as permanent.

This is a society in which everyday death is normalized, and yet we are met with extreme repression from the state if we challenge these conditions. It is assumed that functioning members of this society will react quietly to trauma in ways that ensure the perpetuation of the values of the system. Because grieving outside of this framework represents a challenge to the commodity-based system, it is pathologized and delegitimized. This is an insidious form of social control that hs detrimental effects on our mental health and on our ability to connect with and work through loss. Our internalization of grief containment is a threat to our own survival.

Whoa! Talk about bringing it all together!

That reminds me of this passage from the remarkable essay “Explosion” (originally published in Ethics & the Environment and now reprinted in The Nature of Home ) by ecofeminist Greta Gaard (who was responsible for my recent watershed moment in Minneapolis, drawing me to that city and taking me to that event):

You believe you are alone. You are afraid. You need to control this fear, this aloneness, this terrifying separation. You see the power of water and you want power. Power will give you control. You build dams and concrete channels and ditches, believing that by doing this you will control the power of water, the fertility of water, the fear of your separation. But water is patient. There are laws that govern the way of water, the ways of energy and power, the ways of land. There are consequences. Water bears no grudge, extracts no retribution. Your own actions, skillful or unskillful, determine the outcome. Your own relationship to water will poison you or save you. You decide.

You believe blocking the flow of water gives you power.

You believe blocking the flow of feeling gives you power.

You believe harnessing the animals, fencing off the land gives you power. And for awhile, these strategies work.

But there are consequences. That which is diverted, divided, suppressed, always returns with greater force, and when it returns, no one can control it. No one.

That’s so seriously true that it gives me faith in hard times. Gaia’s stronger than all the guns and governments combined and surely will survive us, even if she has to shake off our silly species in the process. In the meantime, we struggle to right the relations among people, earth, and animals, being much more effective (and less exhausted) if we do so in synchrony with nature (including our own animal emotions).

Yesterday, I rode my bicycle to the river as part of the physical, spiritual, and emotional process of coming to terms with the transmutation of the energy of a beloved companion. When I reached the river, very near where it empties into the bay, I was very hot and could smell the sea. I wanted more than anything at that moment to jump into the river, swim around, and then ride home recklessly dripping wet, letting the sunshine and velocity dry me. And I could have done that on that rural road, even though women usually aren’t safe in wet t-shirts in public, except for one problem: Pollution. I’ve read too many stories of antibiotic resistant skin infections and flash-eating bacteria picked up by those who ignored the warnings to stay out of this particular water. So I stood, sweating, wondering over and worrying about the fishes who occasionally broke the surface, feeling grateful that the usual fishermen weren’t there to catch them, and contemplating the fate of children who eat fish who have swum in such water. And then I rode home.

Speaking of both grief and state repression, I’ve been kinda quiet lately because I’ve been getting myself and the sanctuary exhibit ready for the upcoming AR2008 conference, at which I’ll be speaking about dealing with grief and about state repression of activism, among other topics. If you’re new to this blog, you might be interested in some of my previous conference presentations on related topics, which you can find here (nurturing activism), here (animal cognition), and here (the nature of social change, plus links to more).

Wow, going unplugged for a few days was really relaxing. You ought to try it sometime.

Before returning to our regularly scheduled programming, let me tell you some things I experienced in Minneapolis. I did two events for activists while there, a workshop on stress and grief and a reading of Aftershock focused on planning for high-risk events such as the upcoming demonstrations against the Republican National Convention in twin city St. Paul. Both events left me feeling hopeful and grateful. A couple of days later, I witnessed a remarkable community event that left me feeling even more hopeful and grateful.

The grief and despair workshop was organized by the Animal Rights Coalition which, rather than keeping it to themselves and other animal advocates, went out of their way to advertise it widely to activists of all kinds. And so it was that only about half of the people crowded into a vegan storefront were animal advocates, the remainder including environmentalists, legal advocates for activists, community organizers, and other sundry leftists. That made it all the more touching to me when, practicing empathy, activists were saying “me too” across the circle to those who had shared details of their own struggles with the significant stress and grief associated with trying to make a difference as damaged animals on a damaged planet. I was also touched when a social justice activist said that he was glad people were speaking up for dogs at the pound just as he speaks up for homeless people and when an animal advocate said that she was so grateful to know that social justice activists are working on the problems that she cares so much about but doesn’t have time to also address because nobody has time to work on everything.

The reading and discussion — held at the collectively operated Arise! anarchist bookstore — was attended mostly by people involved in organizing for the upcoming RNC protests but a few animal advocates rounded out the crowd and I was glad to see that. Upon arrival, I could barely contain my excitement at the wonderfulness of the bookstore itself and was almost overcome with glee when they showed me that they had set up chairs in a weedy vacant lot outside the back door for the event. So it was that, surrounded by the weedy evidence of the power of nature to persist even within cities, I and a group of mostly quite young activists talked about the intersections among personal, community, and ecosystemic trauma before getting down to the business of detailing strategies for keeping oneself and one’s comrades as healthy as possible in the context of high-risk activism. In the course of that discussion, I was heartened to learn of the care with which the NorthStar Health Collective is preparing to offer care to activists who come to St. Paul for the demonstrations.

At both events, one or more participants said that a particular piece of information was useful to them, so let me go ahead and share that here. Rather than trying to recreate how I said it at the events, why don’t I just quote from Aftershock:

[Psychologist Carl] Rogers identified three things that every helping relationship must offer: empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard. Empathy is recognition and understanding of the other person’s feelings. Genuineness is being real in the fullest sense of the word. Unconditional positive regard is caring with no strings attached. These three things, offered steadily and consistently, are often enough to effect healing. Even when more is needed, these three things must be present for any relationship to serve as a sanctuary.

Let me expand: Empathy is feeling with another person — really trying to put yourself in their shoes (or the lack thereof) — rather than feeling for them. Genuineness means being honest, present, and who you purport to be. Unconditional positive regard means valuing somebody for who they are, not who you wish they would be or what they can do for you. Together, these three things have been proved to have a healing effect. They may not always be all that somebody needs but they are the baseline that we all ought to be offering each other every day. And — please note! — this doesn’t mean that we always agree or never confront one another about anything. Genuineness might mean saying something that somebody doesn’t want to hear — like “I’ve noticed you’ve been getting drunk every night ever since that open rescue” or “I disagree with you about that strategy.” Empathy and unconditional positive regard help you say such things in ways that lead toward personal or political growth rather than towards conflict and stasis.

Of course I couldn’t spend five days in a city without checking out at least one community event. Lucky for me, my local tour guide knew that the street festival celebrating water and blessing a new drinking fountain in conjunction with the city and state’s sesquicentennial would be something beyond the wildest dreams of a pagan from anywhere outside of the watery city of Minneapolis.

The festival, organized by In the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theatre (HOBT), spanned a couple of city blocks with a stage and a series of interactive exhibits designed to teach community members of all ages not just why and how to respect and preserve water but also to realize that we, who are mostly water and are always drinking it in and excreting it out, are part of the watershed. Meanwhile, on stage were a series of skits, songs, and speeches culminating in perhaps the most remarkable ceremony I’ve ever witnessed.

Free public drinking fountains are, of course, essential if we want to wean people from those wasteful and destructive plastic bottles. Minneapolis is in the process of installing a series of new public fountains designed by artists. Besides helping to spark that project, HOBT repaired and decorated the drinking fountain within its own building, which is home to numerous community activities. The opening of the revitalized fountain, from which everyone was invited to drink, was the purpose of a ceremony that brought activists, musicians, artists, civic leaders, and community members together in shared appreciation of the water that sustains and flows through all of us.

The ceremony began with some chanting, drumming, and dancing in the midst of which oversized animals — two birds that looked a bit like cranes and two mammals that looked a bit like deer, all an otherworldly white — suddenly appeared within the crowd. The “birds” stretched their wings and their necks before retreating inside the building to stand on either side of the fountain. The “deer,” which must have been people on stilts, walked through the crowd nodding benevolently at everyone before standing on either side of the door to the building, beckoning people to enter. Inside the building, a multiracial Gamelan ensemble played music that sounded like a trickling brook as the people wound around to take their turn drinking from a fountain decorated with spiraling tile in the most beautiful blue. After drinking, people could and did use water-based paint in various shades of blue to make small flags of appreciation to hang from the spider-web of strings that criss-crossed the room.

Doesn’t sound so powerful, now that I type it out. Let me share with you what I wrote in my journal the next morning:

“Yesterday, at the wildly pagan blessing of the drinking fountain in downtown Minneapolis, I was so deeply moved by the ritual that I burst into tears, the water on my face affirming that I am water too.

“Why? Why did it so deeply touch me? First, I think of the archaic symbology: The giant deer with their antlers of branches nodding, nodding, nodding; the oversized white water birds bobbing, bobbing, bobbing; the spiral circling endlessly. The last time I was so deeply moved by such symbols was when I saw them etched into the walls of a cathedral in Lucca and felt the devotion of pagans — so often mysterious by necessity — echoing across the centuries. And there I was to collect the message, a vegan lesbian feminist in 21st century Italy, reading the coded devotion to mother earth left behind by the pagan builders working on a cathedral erected (perhaps by force, perhaps on a site sacred to Gaia, and what about the mules who hauled all of those blocks of marble?) in the process of state formation.

“But here in Minneapolis, which draws its name from sacred waters, it was different. Here, in an overt subversion (or submersion) of state celebration, the pagan elements were at the forefront and regular people were participating with enthusiasm in a public ritual that reconnected them to the underground wells within themselves as well as with the waters of the world.”

And that was my trip to Minneapolis, or at least the public parts thereof. Now it’s back to the sanctuary, back to writing and strategic thinking, for me. I’d really like some comments on the “Now’s the Time” post from a few days before I left, as I’ll be revising that for a handout to distribute at the upcoming AR2008 conference in DC.

If previous election years are any guide, there’s gonna be a whole lot of high-risk activism going on in coming months. So, in preparation for my upcoming reading at Arise! bookstore in the twin cities, I’ve prepared a little four-page guide with tips for individuals and organizations drawn from my book, Aftershock. You can download the pdf here.

Often, it can be hard to see the connections among issues and even harder to figure out how to take action in a way that takes those connections into account. But sometimes the stars align and we are suddenly able to see a certain intersection much more clearly and act much more decisively. That’s what’s happening right now. The current acute food crisis in the context of the ongoing climate change emergency illuminates a shared source of human, animal, and biospheric distress while at the same time offering opportunities for effective collective action. If we — and I mean “we” pretty diversely — seize the day, we could actually have a chance of substantially reducing human hunger, animal suffering, and global warming all at the same time.

The crux of the current acute crisis is the food-feed-fuel conflict, in which different purposes compete for finite agricultural resources such as corn and land. The food-feed conflict also figures prominently in the chronic food crisis, which holds millions in hunger even in years when no climatic or economic anomalies disrupt food production and distribution. The “feed” side of the conflict also helps to drive escalating climate change which in turn drives up demand for biofuel, exacerbating the food-fuel conflict.

Confused? Have a look at this handy chart:

Let’s break it down:

Biofuels like ethanol use plants like corn in lieu of fossil fuels. Sounds good until you realize that demand for biofuel drives up corn prices and leads to food scarcity both by pulling corn out of the food chain and by motivating farmers to grow corn for biofuel instead of growing wheat, soy, or other edible crops. Thus biofuels lead rather directly to a worsening of the world food crisis, as we have seen in recent days with food riots rocking places as far flung as Egypt, Haiti, and Bangladesh and the World Food Program reporting “the most aggressive pattern of global increases perhaps ever recorded” in the number of people requiring food aid.

Why were so many people hungry to begin with? One reason is the inherent inefficiency of feeding plants to animals and then eating the animals (or their products) rather than eating plants directly. Farmers grow more than enough food to feed everybody many more than the number of calories needed to survive. But in this world of globalized for-profit food production, countries where children are starving export grain and soy to feed the calves and chickens who will be slaughtered and made into unhealthy snacks for affluent adults in wealthy countries.

This is the food-feed conflict. The majority of the world’s corn, for example, is used as feed rather than food, with many pounds of feed needed to produce just one pound of meat. Much of the land now used to grow massive quantities of animal feed by means of vast monocultural acres of genetically modified crops would be more efficiently and ecologically used to grow diverse, locally-adapted plant crops for direct human consumption. So, meat-milk-egg production wastes both food and arable land. (Go here for more details, including plenty of back-up facts.)

It doesn’t stop there. As recently reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, animal agriculture generates more greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector of the economy — including transport. Animal agriculture also involves lots of transport for all of the hauling of feed and animals and body parts from place to place and thus uses lots of fuel. Thus, animal agriculture significantly contributes to the demand for biofuels which, in turn, drives up food prices.

And still it doesn’t stop! Not included in my handy chart of current crises is the emerging worldwide water crisis. There, too, the first-world appetite for animal flesh places everybody else on the planet at risk. Animal agriculture uses more water than all other human purposes combined and is the number one cause of water pollution.

What do we do? Seize the day.

The only upside of the ethanol-fueled upsurge in food prices is that this also represents a significant surge in feed prices. This has two implications that ought to hearten any animal advocate.

Here’s another chart:

Feed is the highest cost of meat-milk-egg production. Producers have two choices in response to the significantly higher costs they are facing: (1) raise prices and face the possibility of reduced demand leading to lower profits; (2) keep prices the same, accepted a reduced rate of profit. Either way, return on investment goes down. That means now is a particularly good time to use any and all nonviolent means to further drive down profits by either reducing demand (e.g. by means of vegan education) or further raising costs of production (e.g. by means of costly welfare or environmental regulations or other, more direct, methods).

Speaking of vegan education, higher meat-milk-egg prices make consumers more likely to want to listen to the whys and — especially — hows of reducing or eliminating consumption of those items. So, all out to the grocery stores, now, with recipes, facts about milk and breast cancer, pictures of battery cages, and anything else that might make consumers already balking at high prices even less likely to reach for the non-vegan items. Handouts touting the cost-efficiency of vegan eating would be especially handy right about now.

And let’s quit arguing about animal welfare regulations that, whatever else they do or don’t do, surely will increase production costs, thus making the exploitation of animals a less profitable endeavor. We don’t have time for any more mean-spirited attacks on each other: It’s time to seize the day in a multifaceted, strategic way.

There’s more that those of us working at the international level need to do to seize opportunities to fight the spread of factory farming and promote sustainable cultivation of locally-adapted, culturally-appropriate food crops worldwide but this post is already over long so I’ll save that for another — but still soon — day.

And let me send you out with a tune. You can go over to LastFM to listen to Charlie “Bird” Parker’s Now’s the Time.

Call for Proposals

What do queer liberation and animal liberation have to do with each other? How does the construction of homosexuality as both “unnatural” and “bestial” hurt both people and animals? How are speciesism and heterosexism interrelated and how do they fit into the matrix of race-sex-class oppression? Why have both homosexuality and veganism been dismissed as “white things” beside the point of real liberation struggles? What are we going to do about homophobia among straight-edge vegans? About those dreadful gay rodeos? Should we be arguing for pleather or against sexual practices that mimic the subjugation of animals? What’s so sexy about whips, chains, and choke collars anyway? What do hip hop “video vixens” and activist “vegan vixens” have in common beyond the performance of animality for the heterosexual male gaze? How does vivisection hurt people with AIDS? Why, within the USA, are both the queer and animal liberation movements less diverse than they should be but portrayed as more white than they are? Why do queer activists in Uganda but animal activists in the USA bear the brunt of police suppression in their respective countries? Are they similarly subversive of “cultural” practices that turn out to be critical to the maintenance of state power? What keeps many gay men in the animal liberation movement from coming out? Why are so many lesbian potlucks vegetarian and what does this mean in the era of FBI infiltration of the vegan potluck?

Kim Stallwood is a writer and independent scholar living in East Sussex, England. He is the former executive director of PETA (1987-1992); former editor-in-chief of Animal’s Agenda magazine (1993-2002); former co-executive director (2002-2007) and current European Director of the Animals and Society Institute. He is the editor of two anthologies, Speaking Out for Animals and A Primer on Animal Rights, as well as a contributor to several other anthologies. Kim blogs at Grumpy Vegan and can be reached at kim (at) grumpyvegan.com