Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Seriously: Go. Read.

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Did you read what I sent you off to read yesterday? Hurry up. I just reread some essays that were absolutely fundamental in shaping my eco/anarcha-feminist sensibility and it turns out they’re online now too! Links to follow as soon as I finish rewriting the chapter for which I reread those essays.

Rights for “Nature” in Ecuador

Sunday, August 10th, 2008
Gotta give it up for Ecuador… Remember back in 2000, when farmers and activists blocked the port of Guayaquil, preventing ships laden with biotech soya from docking? Yeah, I think the people will support this new constitutional provision, making Ecuador the first country to codify rights for ecosystems.
clipped from climateandcapitalism.com
On July 7, the 130-member Ecuador Constitutional Assembly, elected countrywide to rewrite the country’s Constitution, voted to approve articles that recognize rights for nature and ecosystems.

“If adopted in the final constitution by the people, Ecuador would become the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights,” says Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

The following clauses will be included in the constitution that will be submitted to a countrywide vote, to be held 45 days after Assembly finishes its work later this month.


Chapter: Rights for Nature

Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms.

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Against “Spiritual Vivisection”

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
Another remarkable rant from thefreeslave… click the link to check out the whole essay.
clipped from afrospear.wordpress.com

Was the first dehumanizing act of “mankind” to reduce animals to “things”, to set them beneath us, to claim that they are soul-less, emotionless tools granted by God - to provide us with their labor, their hides, their flesh?

Does that act run in a straight line to the domestication of women, to the enslavement of people of color, to the African and Jewish Holocausts (“Eternal Treblinka“), to all of the organized brutality man heaps upon man, woman, child and planet? Could it be that the seeds of global oppression, the idea of a hierarchical order that has the divine right to call the shots for the planet, sprouted once man claimed himself separate from and better than animals while claiming dominion over them?

This is not territory that I envisioned trodding. I’m the last nigga that believed in giving animals an even break if I gave any thought to animals at all. But today, at this moment, I see the unity of oppressions.

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Tune in Tomorrow

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

On Thursday, 17 July at 11 Central (12 Eastern), I’ll be reading from and talking about Aftershock on the WriteOn! radio show on KFAI Minneapolis-St.Paul. Locals can tune in at 90.3 (Minneapolis) or 106.7 (St. Paul); others can listen online.

Don’t Let Publishers Perish

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Charles Patterson’s powerful and important book, Eternal Treblinka, was rejected by 83 (!) publishers before Lantern Books agreed to take the risk of publishing a relentlessly researched account of the shared roots of human and animal exploitation named after Isaac Bashevis Singer’s observation that “for animals it is an eternal Treblinka.” (Treblinka was a Nazi death camp.)

In Eternal Treblinka, which you really should read if you haven’t yet, Patterson surveys the deep history of animal exploitation before going on to explore the specific question of how “our treatment of animals” helped to set the stage for the Holocaust. This is not some simplistic “It’s just like the Holocaust!” or “It’s just like slavery!” argument but, rather, an intellectually nuanced and carefully expressed inquiry into the origins of one of the most horrific episodes in human history. In my view, Patterson’s book, along with Alice Miller’s work on German patterns of child rearing/abuse, provides essential context within which to ask, “How did this happen? How might we stop it happening again?”

Now in its third printing, Eternal Treblinka has been translated and published in Israel, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Poland, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Serbia, with translated publication in Spain and Latin America underway and Russian, Slovenian, and Arabic translations on the way. So, let’s give it up for Lantern Books, which got the ball rolling by picking up the book in the first place. Lantern was also Wangari Maathai’s first U.S. publisher, printing her book about the Green Belt Movement long before that movement made her the first African woman and first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Lantern also published Aftershock and, while I don’t dare put my book into the category of those two, the same principle of publishing something because it needs to be said, regardless of the bottom line, was at work. The book was actually publisher Martin Rowe’s idea, launched after he read an article I wrote and thought that it might be expanded into a book that would be substantially helpful for social change activists. Thus anybody who has found the book helpful needs to thank Martin, not me.

I mention all of this both because I’ll be speaking with Charles Patterson, which is always a delight to do, at the upcoming AR2008 conference and also because Martin Rowe just posted a piece on the Lantern blog reminding us all that, while not technically a non-profit, they don’t make any money and do need help to keep going. One way to help out Lantern while also helping your local community (or a fellow activist) is to buy one of their books for a local library, IndyMedia center, or political prisoner.

Meet Me in Minneapolis

Monday, July 14th, 2008

On Thursday, 24 July — that’s next week! — I’ll be at Arise! bookstore in Minneapolis, reading from Aftershock and talking about ways that activists and organizations can prepare themselves for potentially stressful actions, such as the demonstrations that will surely attend the upcoming nominating convention in next-door St. Paul. The event will begin at 7 p.m. Visit the store’s website for details and directions.

Also in Minneapolis, I’ll be doing a stress and grief workshop for activists, date and place TBA. If you’ll be in that city that week and might like to attend, just drop me a line and I’ll make sure you get the details when they’re available.

Bush Regime Freezes Solar Energy

Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Seriously? Seriously?!?
clipped from www.nytimes.com
Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.
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