Successful Activism!

I feel so alive right now!

I just got out of our film screening of Fowl Play and never have I felt more grounded and committed to my ideals! Everything just clicked -- it's such a great film (I had seen it before) and people responded positively to it! Not only did the people there respond positively to it, but there was a really good turnout! So many people are reevaluating their diets, they were all talking to the speaker afterward, and I'm just so thrilled to have been able to screen the film, to have organized a successful event. This is really giving me motivation for my future as an activist. Maybe this is the event that will give me force for the rest of the semester.
Oh, Dylan, you'd be so proud of me.

Thesis Mantra!

“Thus, rendering gender and masculinity visible offers a challenge to existing power relations and their continuing reiteration.”

– Beasley, Men & Masculinities (2008)

YES!

Eulogy

"Dylan Ravenfox was an incredible soul. I had the honor of living and working with Dylan at Farm Sanctuary during the summer of 2009. We became great friends right from the start and he taught me so many life lessons over the course of a few months, over so many dishes of red quinoa stir fries, over bowls of the local vegan ice cream, over nutritional yeast popcorn.

When I arrived at Farm Sanctuary as an admittedly disillusioned activist, Dylan gave me so much hope for the future. If people were as committed to changing the world as he was, maybe we could make a difference after all. His work in the Education Department had him giving tours of the farm to newcomers, and even when my housemate and I unsuspectingly snuck onto a tour to try to divert him from his task -- as pesky friends often enjoy doing -- we couldn’t do it. In spite of our best comical intentions, when he opened his mouth, the calm and sincere voice was not an employee reciting a tour by rote; here was as man who deeply believed in the words he was saying and saw Farm Sanctuary as a means of resisting structures of oppression. It was only at the end of the tour that I realized we hadn’t just gotten a tour of the farm; we had gotten a glimpse of Dylan in his element. Dylan’s drive to bring justice to the lives of animals was a flame that never burned out.

But he was more than an activist; at the very core, he was an artist. He was a skilled writer and anyone who knew Dylan knows that art just poured out of him. He carried his passion for art, for pottery, for language, for critical thought with him to every activist endeavor I saw him undertake. He reminded me how much art and social justice can overlap in beautiful ways and how we can sustain each other through art.

And though he’s gone, I know that flame is still burning, for he has passed it on to so many others. I miss him so much, but I know he will be with me forever, always inspiring me, pushing me forward, teaching me to be a better person and a more passionate voice for the animals."

Delivered Sunday October 3rd, 2010 at Haverford College.

le bon chemin

Left foot. Right foot.

Jonathan Soud just died of leukemia last Saturday. I didn't know him, but I know his father who taught at my high school, and he had a huge impact on my social networks at home. Leukemia is usually treatable in children. My mom said she diagnosed him, and he was going to be fine.

Left foot. Right foot.
My friend had liver pains yesterday, couldn't move her neck at all.
Left foot. Right foot.
My other friend suddenly threw her back out in rehearsal today and had severe pain. "I'm fine! I'm fine" she said, crying, trying to stand up.
Left foot. Right foot.
My friend's mom has been in the hospital for two weeks and they don't know what's wrong with her.
Left foot. Right foot.
I'm tired. So damn tired.
I can't write Dylan's eulogy. I just can't. The words. I just. Don't know what to say. I have to. But I know it's not going to be what I want to say. If he were alive, I don't know what I'd say to him.

Left foot. Right foot.
Fuck these feet. When does the bullshit end?

BirdWings by Rumi

Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
if it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
The two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as bird wings.

Eat Rice, Have Faith in Women

Poring over Carol J. Adams' The Sexual Politics of Meat, she reminds us of a beautifully moving poem entitled "Eat rice have faith in women" by Fran Winant. I'm posting it here:

eat rice have faith in women
what I don’t know now
I can still learn
if I am alone now
I will be with them later
if I am weak now
I can become strong
slowly slowly
if I learn I can teach others
if others learn first
I must believe
they will come back and teach me
they will not go away
to the country with their knowledge
and send me a letter sometime
we must study all our lives
women coming from women going to women
trying to do all we can with words
then trying to work with tools
or with our bodies
trying to stand the time it takes
reading books when there are no teachers
or they are too far away
teaching ourselves
imagining others struggling
I must believe we will be together
and build enough concern
so when I have to fight alone
there will be sisters who
would help if they knew
sisters who will come
to support me later

women demanding loyalty
each with our needs
our whole lives torn by
the old society
never given the love or work
or strength or safety or information
we could use
never helped by the institutions
that imprison us
so when we need medical care
we are butchered
when we need police
we are insulted ignored
when we need parents

we find robots
trained to keep us in our places
when we need work we are told
to become part of
the system that destroys us
when we need friends
other women tell us
I have to be selfish
you will have to forgive me
but there is only so much time
energy money concern
to go around
I have to think of myself
because who else will...
I have to save things for myself
because I am not sure you could save me
if our places were reversed
because I suspect
you won’t even be around
to save me when I need you
I am alone on the streets
at 5 in the morning
I am alone cooking my rice

I see you getting knowledge
and having friends I don’t have
I see you already stronger than me
and I don’t see you coming back
to help me
I imagine myself getting old
I imagine I will have to go away
when I am too old to fight my way
down the streets
my friends getting younger and younger
women my age hidden in corners
in the establishment
or curled up with a few friends
isolated at home
or in the madhouse
getting their last shot of
motivation to compete
or grinding out position papers
in the movement
like old commies
waiting to be swept away
by the revolution
or in a hospital
dying of complications
nurse or nun
lesbian in clean clothes
reach out a hand to me
scientists have found
touching is necessary
and the drive to speak our needs
is basic as breath
but there isn’t time
none of my needs has been met
and although I am often comfortable
this situation is painful

slowly we begin
giving back what was taken away
our right to the control of our bodies
knowledge of how to fight and build
food that nourishes
medicine that heals
songs that remind us of ourselves
and make us want to keep on with
what matters to us
lets come out again
joining women coming out
for the first time
knowing this love makes
a good difference in us
affirming a continuing life with women
we must be lovers doctors soldiers
artists mechanics farmers
all our lives
waves of women
trembling with love and anger

singing we must rage
kissing, turn and
break the old society
without becoming the names it praises
the minds it pays

eat rice have faith in women
what I don’t know now
I can still learn
slowly slowly
if I learn I can teach others
if others learn first
I must believe
they will come back and teach me

Copyright: Fran Winant, reprinted in the Lesbian Reader, an Amazon Quarterly anthology

Eating Animals

I just finished Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals (albeit much later than I'd hoped to read it) and I cannot stop thinking about kind of cultural "storytelling" that surrounds meat consumption, particularly in the U.S. What kind of new stories can we tell around otherwise tradition-ladden holidays? What kind of cultural rewriting allows us to sustain our connection to heritage? Or do we even need to sustain that kind of tradition? Should our new-found ethics take the precedent over tradition and remind us of the newness of this new kind of ethical tradition we are forging? As a vegan, I love holding the cultural paintbrush right in my grip, and know that culture is a flexible and malleable thing. But reading Foer's book reminds me so much of the positive role that culture and tradition play for so many people.

Unlike many seemingly die-hard vegans and vegetarians (I often fall victim to this), Foer examines the importance of digging deep into the reality of things and then living one's life according to one's values -- something which I respect wholeheartedly. Framing the entire story through the need to choose what kind of life he should create for his son (more specifically, whether his son should eat meat or not), Foer does in-depth research on factory farms, family farms, and activist to pull the veil off of a world that is all too frequently forgotten.

What makes Foer's book so unique is that his story is one of paradox, of seemingly philosophical contradictions-- at the core, a nuanced understanding of how ethics and meat consumption can manifest in this country. As an accomplished writer, he dances through his sentences and hybridizes his space as both a quasi-narrative and quasi-non-fiction scientific literature, using no footnotes for his text chock full of statistics, but leaving all citations arranged by chapter at the end of the book for his readers.

To order a copy, visit Amazon.

Cruelty-Free Cooking! From ChooseVeg

Baking Substitutes for One Egg

1 tsp. Baking Soda + 1 Tbls Vinegar (household vinegar or apple cider)

1 Tbls. Ground Flax seeds + 3 Tbls water

• Let sit until mixture becomes gelatinous.
• Great way to get your Omega-3 Fatty Acids
• Note that this adds slight nutty flavor to recipe

¼ cup Silken Tofu

• not the tofu from coolers, which are less creamy
• adds moistness & denseness

¼ cup soy yogurt

• adds moistness & denseness

½ banana, mashed well

• note that this does add a banana flavor to your dish

¼ cup unsweetened Applesauce

• adds moisture

Ener-G Egg Replacer (potato starch & tapioca flour)

• can be found in most health food store
• Mix 1.5 tsp Ener-G + 1 Tbls water

For more information, visit ChooseVegBlog.com

Cartoon Source: http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/v/vegan.asp

Easy Vegan Pancakes (Lauren's Subversive Pancakes)

Ingredients You Should be Needing:

2 cup subversive flour (all-purpose should do. Go crazy with quinoa flour. Or whole wheat.)

2 cup subversive milk (any kind of vegan milk will do)

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

2 Tbls oil (canola will do)

1/2 tsp cinnamon

pinch of ground nutmeg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp almond extract

1/4 tsp salt

2 large bananas (mashed well)

handful of chopped pecans or walnuts

An extra banana for topping (optional)

Directions To Make This Baby Happen:

Mash bananas with a fork. Mix wet ingredients and sugar into a smaller bowl. Mix together dry ingredients (except sugar) in a large bowl. Pour wet into dry and mix ingredients. Fold in the walnuts or pecans. Bake with love on a non-stick skillet. Cut up any remaining bananas in your kitchen into tiny bits to top your pancakes. Drizzle in syrup. Ba-bam.

An Era of Loss

I've been denying it, but now it just seems too unreal. Everyone is dying.

My good friend's father died this semester.
My sister nearly died in a car accident this March.
My grandfather died of Alzheimers this April.
My friend Dylan committed suicide this August.
The day before his mother's birthday.
I learned that an old high school classmate killed himself last year.
A girl at my high school died of a mysterious brain inflammation last week.
A teacher's son from my high school is suffering from his second bout of leukemia.
My close friend just had a miscarriage today, after 4 months.

When everything is fleeting, what can we cling to? Maybe to making subversive pancakes, to flowers growing out of the cracks, to meaningful sidewalk art, to a stranger's smile, but fuck. There's so much loss. It hurts.

Canvas By Dylan Ravenfox

An old girlfriend would always write on my skin,
in blue or black ink. We both knew she was destined
to be a tattoo artist, though she never would admit it.
Little yin-yangs, tulips, messages like why
are you so nervous, or decisive, or spontaneous.
I let her write a poem down my spine
with a sharp black ball point,
and never found out what it said. It used to tickle
so much that she would get mad at me
for ruining the shapes. I got used to it though,
when the skin art became our ritual of afterplay,
and we kept a pen on the table beside the bed.
When she drew a stick figure angel
in between two little clouds on my thigh,
I took the pen from her and scribbled
“Don’t fake orgasms”
on her rib cage.
Eventually we broke up
because the ink was soaking in and poisoning
the whims, revealing that we didn’t really love
each other. Years later I walked into her tattoo
parlor, on a side street in Chicago.
She smiled to see that I had tracked her down,
but put a finger to my lips. She sat me down
without a word and began stabbing my forearm
with her little machine. When she was done
there was an intricate human heart, that
you could almost see beating,
colorless and real. It hurt more than I’d expected.
“Don’t worry about the girls,” she said,
“Anyone who can’t understand that
doesn’t deserve you.

From "We Are What We See" http://www.thisispush.com/read/excerpt_whereweare.htm

ShoutOut

This is a shout out to animal rights activists, who see so much pain around them, but are forced to bite their tongues in seemingly banal social settings, who are ‘not offended by the sight of meat’ when prompted -- the raw flesh of another living being, the scent almost carrying the image of slaughterhouse slashing down upon their genetically mutated bodies. But oh no, we don’t mind. We’re mainstreaming the movement, after all.

We lost a vegan voice in the movement last week: Dylan Ravenfox was an eloquent and intelligent voice for the animals. He reminded me how much we, too, are animals and how important it is to recognize our own animality. He reminded me of the importance of language and the intricacy of its structure to understanding the world we live in. The interconnectedness of social movements, and above all, the importance of art in social movements. With his loss, I feel compelled to tell you that we need to step it up a notch. He was a force to be reckoned with, and he’s gone.

Knowing that he was someone who struggled with depression for much of his life, I want to shout out to you animal advocates. The sadness that lingers behind the corners for us is real, and if you need a helping hand, I’d be happy to support you. As activists in a damaged world, we need to help each other along the path to healthiness. To healing. So that we can change this world of which we are so critical.

I feel much joy as an activist—I see the change in the world that I’m trying to create. Even though social change is slow, I see it, I see us making a difference, and it’s beautiful, invigorating, and always rejuvenating. I just wanted to take a moment to examine the shadow of this brightness – that depression is a real and serious illness and that you, me, we all must take it very seriously. Even if you’re just stumbling upon this blog, feel free to email me if you need anything at all. Sometimes having a little extra support is all we need.

Love,

Lauren

laolaughlin@vassar.edu

For radical people, they think in surprisingly binaristic terms.

(Yes I just created the word, but binary deserves a goddamn adjective.)

I'm at the Animal Rights 2010 Conference which is mad orgasmic but also challenging blur of all the best animal rights activists ever. I'm surrounded by activist 'celebrities' who really inspire me, so many who just really know what they're talking about. This includes

• Dennis Kucinich (vegan presidential candidate)
• Peter Young (ex-prisoner for freeing mink)
• Gene Baur (founder of Farm Sanctuary)
• Erica Meier (executive director of Compassion over Killing)
• Nathan Runkle (exec. director of Mercy for Animals)
• David Benzaquen (staff and previous fellow intern at Farm Sanctuary)
• Matt Rice (previous fellow at Farm Sanctuary and currently Campaigns Director at MFA) George Eisman (vegan nutritionist)
• Josh Hooten (founder of Herbivore)
• Will Potter (author of GreenIsTheNewRed.com)
• Jon Camp (founder of Vegan Outreach)
• the entire staff of COK, naturally, and all the random people I've bumped into.

Back to the title of this post:

I can not get over how goddamn divided the animal rights movement can be. I know, i know, this is old news, but seriously, there normally aren't that many of us all in a room so we don't have to address these problems.

What is the problem, you may ask? Well, here I go:

Like all other social movements, the animal rights movement is full of individuals who believe in different tactics to achieve their own defined goal of success for animals. This generally falls into two camps:

1. Animal Welfarists
2. Abolitionists

Welfarists are stereotypically the puppy-lover activists who only argue for bigger cages for slaughter animals (though many of these activists are often vegan, too.) Abolitionists do not believe in any kind of legislation that engages with, and thereby legitimizes the meat, dairy, and egg industries and only advocate for pro-veg*n education or in extreme cases, animal liberation. This has become a seriously contentious topic, because abolitionists believe that welfarists are actually hindering their own abolitionist efforts -- They argue that if legislation is passed that bans cages for layer hens, more people will feel better about buying eggs, and will actually increase their purchases of eggs--Welfarists often believe that abolitionists come on too strongly -- the most radical of abolitionists refusing to talk about anything but animal cruelty as a reason to go vegan -- which turns people off to veg*nism in the first place.

These two poles have been created, and I scratch my head. This is supposed to be one of the more radical conferences, and these people make me want to eschew away from the identity of a radical-progressive! The politics of animal rights is a continuum and organizations and people can occupy multiple points on that line when they have multiple campaigns. Must I always bring up the word spectrum? It is not an either-or question, nor should we all agree. The palpable tension and hostility between these two main camps is really frustrating, but I guess inevitable.

Gah. If anyone has ideas or suggestions as to how to navigate the strange political waters of social movements, don't hesitate to throw stuff out there. I'm all ears. I'm really passionate, but it's difficult to deal with sometimes. (It also makes me feel very wary about analyzing the role of gender in the animal rights movement for my thesis, because that will only serve to divide the movement.)

Fancy New Blog Design

Because Blogger is still free.

Diane di Prima

Stumbled upon some delicious Beat poetry. Not my words, di Prima's. Enjoy.

From her Revolutionary Letters:

#29

beware of those

who say we are the beautiful losers

who stand in their long hair and wait to be punished

who weep on beaches for our isolation

we are not alone: we have brothers in all the hills

we have sisters in the jungles and in the ozarks

we even have brothers on the frozen tundra

they sit by their fires, they sing, they gather arms,

they multiply: they will reclaim the earth

nowhere we can go but they are waiting for us

no exile where we will not hear welcome home

'goodmorning brother, let me work with you

goodmorning sister, let me

fight by your side'

This One's for You, Col.

Alright, so apparently more people read my blog than I think.

So it's time for an update.

The House (not Haus):

Intergenerational living is rad, difficult, but rewarding. The chore system is way different from Ferry's and it's really annoying/difficult. Essentially, you have to do way more work because there are messy kids who don't do any of the chores and adults who have to clean up after them. Plus we do our own yardwork, trash, maintenance, etc. It's a completely independent house, unlike Ferry. I don't like the amount of work, or the fact that it's a first-come first-served signup.

There have been a number of days where I've just wanted to climb into my room on the top floor and never come out. Sometimes the workday is really damn long, and I have a tendency to have depressive and anxiety episodes, which really doesn't help much. Over the past couple years, I've been hovering in this strange struggle between introvertedness/isolation and extrovertedness. I consider myself to be a nurturing person, and am genuinely interested in the wellbeing of all the people with whom I cross paths, so cooperative living seems to make sense, even though I do have those down times when I have a tendency to isolate. Fortunately, my housemates often support me when I'm feeling weird or shitty, which is awesome. I feel connected here to a lot of my housemates (there are varying levels of commitment, like any cooperative), and have become good friends with some of them. It's nice to come home to a cooked dinner, and great people. Coop: 1. Mainstream Society: 0.

The Job:

Working as an outreach intern has its boring times, where I'm sitting at the computer, editing vegetarian restaurant guides for hours, but I get to leaflet, and write weekly letters to the editor, organize future events, and do generally rad stuff. I've gotten pretty good and leafleting and really feel like I'm finally coming into my activist skin after my 3rd year post-enlightenment. (Thanks, Tom(?)). Working in a vegan haven like that seems feel pretty basic to me and my mental well-being. Trying to figure out whether I'd want to do non-profit work post graduation (probably will.)

Strokes of Luck:

There have been so many strange serendipitous events accumulating over the past couple months that I'm questioning my hesitation around spirituality/my usual athiesm. It was a hard semester, what with my sister's near-fatal car accident and my grandfather's death, but the goodness in life is beginning to thaw me back into reality. This is probably way too personal for a public blog, but whatever, we're all going to die anyway and I have nothing to hide from anyone.

Examples:

-finding a great guitar half off in a random mall in New Jersey that I had never been to before and will probably never go to again the day after I decide I seriously want to learn the acoustic guitar

- finding an intentional community less than a mile away from my job

- finding a housing scholarship through my hometown (of all places!) to pay for that housing

- finding an internship semi last minute with an organization I really support after everyone else was like 'fuck you'

- Dumpstering skills! 'nuff said.

- Randomly running into a fellow Vassar activist at the Capital Pride Festival (where I was tabling for COK), and finding out that she's doing an animal rights internship this summer! She was only in the DC office for a week, and I managed to grab a vegan meal with her.

-opening the Takoma Voice paper for the first time ever on an otherwise banal metro ride and seeing that Amy Goodman would be speaking that day two miles away. After serious disbelief and confirmation calls, I went and bought a $10 ticket to hear her speak. When she signed my book, I mentioned Vassar and she mentioned Joe Nevins. I drooled. I love her.

- Randomly meeting the supposed founder of the organization I work for, and finding out that he used to go to Vassar and take class with Bill Hoynes (Bill told me about this guy who "dropped out his freshman year for animal rights") What are the fucking odds I would meet this exact guy? Small world

- Randomly making an amazing Swedish vegan progressive friend in a vegan bakery in DC who I talked to for many hours about politics, culture, and language-- who was only in DC for 2 days. (Life is fleeting but beautiful.)

- running into an awesome floormate/previous classmate from Vassar on the metro (who was only coming into town for the weekend)

- being able to attend 2 amazing animal rights conferences in D.C. later this month / having free housing because I'm already here, bitches.

What the fuck. So much interconnectedness. So much awesomeness. When I look at it all like this, it makes the banal shit seem actually bearable. Everything is fleeting, but there's so much beauty, too. Count your blessings, folks. It's not cliché, it's how we survive.

Alright, this was a sufficiently personal post. Hope you enjoyed crawling inside of my mind. Make sure you shut the door on your way out.

UNEP Report

The new United Nations Environmental Programme released a report on June 2nd, 2010 that calls for a shift towards plant-based diets in an effort to curb carbon emissions of the meat industry.

The following is a direct quotation from the site on its proposal :

[…] the priorities for achieving transformational change are:-

• Agricultural goods, particularly products from animals, which are fed more than half of all world crops. Agricultural production accounts for 70% of the global freshwater consumption and 38% of the total land use. Food production accounts for 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and 60% of the phosphorus and nitrogen pollution and 30% of toxic pollution in Europe;

• Users of fossil fuels, especially electrical utilities and other energy-intensive industries, residential heating, and transportation. Fossil-fuel production and consumption dominate as the world's leading cause of environmental degradation. Extraction from alternative fossil fuel sources, such as tar sands, poses potentially even heavier environmental consequences."

• Materials, especially plastics, iron, steel, and aluminium, use of which is growing, not least in the unsaturated emerging economies; and the energy requirements for which are rising because of declining grades of ore as they get used up.

'Agricultural Goods' gets FIRST MENTION. This is another huge success for vegetarian and vegan activists everywhere.

Here’s even an FAO report from 2006 that I just stumbled upon that illuminates the damages of animal agriculture.

The amount of administrative support for vegetarianism on at least a sustainability angle is enormous, and that’s pretty awesome. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the awesomeness of this.

Moment over. Let’s go kick some ass.

I live in the best place in the world...

When I first moved in, everything was so uncomfortably new, like a was an invader in some strange way, in spite of everyone saying that they wanted "short term guests" to feel just as welcome. All the kitchen drawers were foreign, the pots didn't make sense there, I couldn't figure out what anything in the fridge was so I just didn't eat. I didn't unpack my things because I didn't feel at home. I felt like a store-bought plant just taken out of its pot and dumped onto the lawn, my roots hesitating to unravel as my soil crumbles around me, because I was so unaccustomed to this earth beneath me.

I've only been here a little over a week, and I've realized co-ops are my home. Naturally, not all co-ops fit my needs, but I've learned in a short time that living cooperatively sustains me best. Individualized society numbs me, turns me cold against myself and my own creativity, whereas being in constant interaction with others allows me to be constantly creating. We can learn so much from each other, but when we're constantly taught to be in competition by the larger capitalist society, collaborating seems cause a bit more hesitation. Naturally, living cooperatively doesn't have to happen in the form of a co-op or commune, but it can often help.

At first I thought this specific house would be a little too 'ooshy gooshy' for me, a little too overly emotional, and well hey, i guess sometimes it can be a little bit. But at the same time, I feel an explicit connectedness with everyone in the house because everyone has explicitly said that they care deeply about each other. This house is an actual support network, and everyone works through their issues with everyone else -- often around good dumpstered food (tonight, potatoes, eggplant and polenta!) Yes, the word "share" is a buzzword of sorts, but I guess there are worse things in the world. For instance, not caring about the people you live with.

But one thing I can say is that I've moved into a completely foreign town, and using my housemates, I feel like this is could be my home already, like I could have lived in this town for several months already. I'm even considering moving here after graduation. Can't say that about too many places, now can you?

Of course it's not perfect. There is conflict and complexity to the house, especially this one in all of its non-conventionality, but it's so much better than so many other alternatives. I feel so oddly privileged that I happened to stumble upon this place and email them, in hopes that they might want a 2-month guest. And that it happens to be less than a mile away from my work. Seems oddly divine, though I'm not religious in the slightest way. It's going to be bizarre and painful to leave, but ay, it will show me the importance of growing the roots of a nomad. (I really like that line. One of my housemates said it in a meeting, and it still resonates with me very deeply. I feel like I'm constantly struggling to find a sense of community in a life that requires frequent moving around, and I'm trying to figure out what that means.)

More soon.

New Co-op Living

I just moved into a new co-op in DC, kind of blindly assuming that all co-ops are pretty much the same, and knowing only tidbits about this new space I was about to inhabit. I've been here for less than a day now and it's already been a challenge in so many ways... There are six kids, one of whom is mentally challenged. I awoke this morning at 7am to screaming children and slamming doors. . . I'm not sure how to address that. Some of the people seem standoffish, but then again so do I. Some of the people are really gentle and centered, though, and I think I will pretty much depend hugely upon them for the first few weeks.

The common spaces are huge and the dumpstered food is plentiful! The house is beautiful and my room is massive, though un-air-conditioned. The age range of house members is wide, and I'm definitely one of the younger ones, the kids and dogs excluded, which is weird since I'm 21. There is no uniform dietary intake -- that is to say, not everyone is vegan or even vegetarian, though I believe house dinners are all vegan (we'll see). In spite of all the awesomeness, though, I feel very unsettled, constantly on edge, not really knowing where I'm going just yet, but I'm sensing that I'm going to learn a great deal from this time here. Much more than I'd be learning from living in a single room in some craigslist apartment anyway... This is a difficult summer for me in a number of ways, so hopefully I'll come out of this experience with some tools to better understand the world.

Silver Lining: I bought a guitar in new jersey and I believe this will punctuate my summer. I'm going to be one of them self-taught guitar players, because I don't have the patience or money for guitar lessons. Woot.

Animal [Rights] Dissertations

An actual fucking list of ALL ANIMAL-RELATED DISSERTATIONS RECENTLY WRITTEN! Beautiful. Too bad I don't have access to most of them, but it's still very helpful and frankly kind of moving to see the huge body of literature that is growing around animal issues.

Animal Rights in Academia

Very interesting dissertation on the 5 most prominent animal rights organizations in the U.S. and the ways in which they frame their campaigns/goals. Written in 2008 by Carrie P. Freeman.

(Marilyn Frye comes to mind again)

Sympathy, by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

I KNOW what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals —
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting —
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings —
I know why the caged bird sings!

"Interruption" by Brenna Sahatjian

I've just stumbled upon a gem! I've listened to the Climate Composition that Evan Greer gave out when he came to play here but I guess i kept missing the last track entitled "Interruption" by Brenna Sahatjian. I know what you're thinking. Obscure song references are boring and self-indulgent. But seriously, the minor melody and bittersweet voice of the singer really makes this an interesting song, i think, and if you're a person hiding in the shadows of oppression and trying to forge your way into something better then maybe you'd get a kick out of this too. It's always great to realize that you're not alone in your resistance, that we're all in this punky goodness together.

The last four lines -- which are much more meaningful when properly contextualized in the entire song -- are as follows:

Excuse me I was talking or living or dreaming or just being
too bright for the gray malaise of these modern days
To each interruption we'd answer with eruptions
of the lava that bubbles underneath the mundane.

She writes/sings about how we all resist the mundane through our daydreams, but how interruptions bring us back to our banal monotony, keep luring us into our cages. But there's lava bubbling up under that mundane, so it's okay. We can make it through the gray malaise :)

Sooooo good. I'm so grateful for music, for words, for poetry, for communication. And oh god this unread blog is turning into a stereotypical quasi-journalish radical space. Woe is me.

love yo'self

Snatched from a good vegan friend's blog whose been through some tough times. Here's to you, Nicole.

Exploitation and Resistance: The Story of Tilikum

Exploitation and Resistance: The Story of Tilikum

Cooperative Living : Rant / Prose of Epic Proportions

There's something so fulfilling about eating the food that your haus-mates make you,

Knowing that they're busy busy people who could have spent those few hours differently,

Writing a paper, reading for a class, calling their families,

People who might know a thing or two about cooking but who are really still just kids,

who are fuckups just like you sometimes,

who are tired, stressed,

who are confused, lost,

but who are really beautiful,

really really beautiful,

just by the virtue of wanting to be in a community,

putting time aside to nurture others, and thereby themselves.

It makes it all taste so good.

The burnt broccoli bits or the oily plaintain chunks are so tasty, so personal, make the dish unique,

every meal is somehow epic,

somehow conquering... and empowering.

Deeply connecting us with the ways that we nourish ourselves.

so unlike the usual practice of buying and selling prepared foods,

buying from cooks who don't see you, don't know you, but who want to earn an extra dollar,

or even unlike baking alone,

baking alone, for yourself,

for you and your tupperwares,

for the week? for the freezer? who knows.

cook in small quantities or it'll all go to waste!

No no, not here.

Every day is a baking party here,

A ravenous feast, a sustainable space of composting, of quinoa, of beans soaking, of Moments.

A space where food vanishes into invisible tummies and libations are poured to the Haus Gods. (But not really.)

Where the pizza is made with the help of 4 others, where granola greets you in the morning... just because.

Just because its a community.

Everything is OK. Too much flour? salt? You usually can't even taste it.

It's all OK.

Alles wird gut.

Tout sera bien.

There's something so fulfilling about cooperative living, I don't think I'll ever be able to leave it.

Interview with Jasmin Singer

Kiss Me, I'm Vegan! interview with the activist extraordinaire Jasmin Singer. She's an AMAZING activist and a great interview. Check it out here!

Green Your Grounds

I switched to a French Press recently, and I'm a serious fan, besides the fact that my coffee is coming out oddly strong. Maybe I need to work on my proportions. Or maybe my coffee just became magical overnight. I'm going to stick with the latter possibility. I like to think that my Don's Local Coffee Beans uses magic as a secret ingredient over its evil archnemesis Maxwell House.

Anyway, while Coffee is still a neocolonial cash crop that you should probs just avoid, I know myself, and right now in my life as a busy student, I am a happier person with large quantities of caffeine in my body. Maybe you share this feeling. When I drink coffee now, I'm going to use a more environmentally-friendly alternative to the drip-coffee machines:

The French Press!

No coffee filters required (for you daily coffee drinkers, visualize how much extra waste this makes! even if you are composting!), no hot plate using energy to keep the coffee warm, just the initial heating of water in your hot-water heater, hot-water spigot, or handy-dandy microwave.

Price range $20-$30.

A good link on this.

Challenging Hierarchies in Education

I love it when professors go by their first names,

When classes are in circles,

when i learn just as much from the guy

sitting next to me as the professor on the roster.

when professors fumble for acceptance like a schoolkid,

It begins to radically examine the way we go about learning and what it means to truly learn,

It breaks down the distance that we build up between students and professors,

It almost makes up for every hierarchical jab my French professors made when they tutoied me (but s/he required the respect to be vousvoied)

It takes away the pretentious air of learning that people are so fond of

it allows us a space to recognize that some have more wisdom than others,

but there's still room for equality

It makes me welcome to learning, and not just learning in an academic space in a specific set of four walls --

but anywhere anytime in my life.

And this is pretty fucking great.

Sure, my school is still hierarchical in many ways, but it makes my day so much brighter to see the little glimmers --the cracks of resistance.

*pic from here. No copyright infringement intended!

Pamela Anderson's Commercial of Milky Madness: Is it Really PETA material?

Pamela Anderson was one of the first, and perhaps most annoying, animal rights celebrities to grace the world with her presence. Although most of her work seems to have been with PETA, her fame led her to work with a number of vegan advocacy organizations (therefore necessarily being against the production of milk.)* Pamela Anderson has never technically claimed to be a vegan but she was the Honorary Director of PETA for a while in 2007 and it should be noted that PETA is an explicitly vegan NGO.

Oddly enough, Pamela Anderson was recently pictured in a now banned Australian commerical for the internet company Crazy Domains. She plays the object of a businessman's sexual fantasy as she is sprayed with milk or cream in a golden bikini. SuperVegan notes that she blatantly uses Milk and Sex to sell a product completely unrelated to either of these things.

Personally as a feminist, a vegan, and as a human being, I cannot stand Pamela Anderson. There's just something about her that makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Something that makes me cling to the nearest copy of Carol Adam's The Sexual Politics of Meat. I somehow sense that I'm not alone here.

But let's be nice and get back on subject: Naturally organizations don't have complete control over what their spokespersons do, but most would probably hope that their spokespersons would avoid directly contradicting their basic mission statement. Sure, money may be tight for Pammie Pam because people are done watching her porn films, but really Pamela? Where are your principles? You make me mad about PETA, even though they make really cute stickers and created the amazing, famous I Can't Believe It's Vegan website which rocked my world in early vegan days. In just a couple eloquent words: Umm.... what?

*Often for reasons including: milk is destined for calves, milk can only be produced with cows are pregnant therefore requiring yearly re-impregnation of cows-- but calves are taken away at birth, cows are slaughtered once production rate begins to decline, the milk industry is the reason the veal industry is in business, etc.

Personal Revolutions

There's this strange conception that activism occurs only outside of the self, that the ultimate goal is the changing of others. But something I think is so undeniably radical is the idea that revolutions can occur within the self. We are constantly changing beings in an unstable world and we gain something from every new process, progress, change and revolution that occurs within ourselves. Let's stop marginalizing our own personal growth, because we're better people when we're not mindless drones moving about our lives with a narrow perception of what it is to exist.

(One of the many awesome Crimethinc posters)

Haus

I just moved into a vegetarian co-op on campus and it's a strange and beautiful journey already. There are a number of factors pulling and tearing at the way I frame it. This is how most people respond when I mention the co-op :

"Oh where's that again "
"I've never actually been INSIDE ..."
"What?"
"Aren't you guys all like vegans or something? Do you run around naked?"

It's this strange place so ridiculously CENTRAL on-campus but so socially removed that no one dares venture inside.

It is a square building of many bikes, of rags, of hairy bathrooms, of let-it-mellow yellow, of baked goods, of Haus Decisions, of theoretical, of cheap and good food made with love, of creation, of tension of growth, of stickers of hall posters, of beans, of lentils, of Crimethinc signs, of dirty things in clean places, of smiles and 3 am kitchen porn, of song-singing and couch-lounging, of very little academic work and so much interaction, of re-usable yoghurt containers, of eggs and things of disgust, of vegan idealism, of camaraderie, of apple scones in the morning with your name on it, of hall parties, of tensions, of growth, of change, of many things... in the last 4 days.

I'm so thrilled to be a part of it, and so thrilled to watch myself grow in it..

MTRBlows

Radical Mountain Top Removal Action:

http://www.climategroundzero.org/

Beautiful and simple, tree-sitting is a non-violent form of protest which aims to fight the systematic destruction of natural resources for energy and profit. Awesome.

Vegan Conversion Machine

Veg*ns and activists of all sorts and varieties can get so riled up, after all, and want to change the world that they lose sight of the very beauty of their own relationships... We're not vegan conversion machines.

That said, I'm not going to stop handing out flyers and tabling and getting shit done. Shifting to a plant-based diet is helpful to our society in so many ways. Not to mention that it allows us to see the connections behind all the products we have been so blindly led to consume... But to side with certain PETA-activists who argue that every possible interaction should be one that shows veganism in a certain light can be crippling. After all, aren't vegans and vegetarians animals, too? Shouldn't we provide ourselves with some due 'animal justice' in a hustling, bustling world of alienation?

Just a reminder to bring some balance into our lives. Personal revolutions are equally important.