Luxembourg: Marche contre la FOURRURE

(see official website here)

This weekend I trekked out to Luxembourg (4h drive from Paris) for a march & tabling event against the fur industry with the organization I've been working with : Fourrure Torture. Because the AR movement and activism in general is not as developed in Luxembourg as it is in a super-urban setting like Paris (according to the people I spoke with there), I think it made quite an impact even if it was smaller than most of the events I've attended before.

There were about 8 organizations tabling, and there was vegan food up for sale, thanks to an organization from Luxembourg called SAVE ANIMALS:

Deets for the Eats:

1euro for a bowl of vegan pasta and 2 euros for a large plate. Basic white-flour noodles with carrot and cucumber bits and a creamy vegan sauce. Preserved in monster tupper-ware-ish boxes. I can't imagine that costing too terribly much, and think I'm going to look into doing that for another event.

Another thing to remember! Activists need to eat, no matter what, so why not bring your vegan catering to non-vegan events? That's a form of activism in itself and shows people that vegan food is not only edible but damn tasty!

However what was super about these guys were that they were environmentally friendly and they bought actually dishes and silverware so as to avoid buying disposable plates and dishes. Really smart idea, and they just added a deposit fee so that people don't forget to bring back the dishes. They went to their home in Luxembourg and washed them allll around 6pm and then served us dinner at the bar/café at 8pm (where I did not take photos, sorry). Dinner was a pumpkin soup of heaven with super-oily, therefore delicious home-made croutons and parsley garnish.

Requirements: Crockpot + silverware + dishes and they were ready to get the vegan party started.

Signs from a German Org:

Above: "Fur Trade is Death Trade / Boycott the Murder of Furbearers"

Right: "Don't say you didn't know about it!"

There was one German AR org who REALLY had their shit together : TierFreunde (which means Friends of the Animals). I was quite impressed. Check it out:

They were playing Earthlings from the TV screen in the back of their car!

(English is one of the languages they speak, in addition to French, German, & Luxembourgeois.)

TierFreunde had

• an official-looking banner
• traps with [fake] stuffed animals
• orange umbrellas and tables to match their theme
• professional looking signs (see 2nd photo)
• an old van that they converted to an AR-Mobile!
• Lots of Pictures

**super idea for stands, if you have a tent: clothes line/string + clothespins + pictures = more visuals for your table!

Here were the rest of the orgs:

Fourrure Torture (FR) (DE)

Animal Justice (LUX) Bite Back (Dutch)

------------------------ Bite Back -------------------------

Regarding the image of the halloween mask + fur coat: not a bad display, I must say . I think the best part was when these giggly 13-yo/14yo girls walked by and wanted to take a picture with it. They walked up to it to take a picture and then were like "Oh! This is AGAINST fur?" I'm pretty sure that made my day. I couldn't believe that a halloween mask had the ability to be ambiguous.

Some Snapshots of The Protest

I don't think there were any welfarist groups present (which was kind of nice... as much fun as it is to hear people hypocritically chatting about how horrendous it is that cat and dog fur is secretly used in fur coats.) There was a slight tension, as always, between the more radical and non-radical groups. For instance, when there was chanting "One Struggle, One Fight! Animal Liberation, Human Rights!" or "ALF! ALF!" my friend and I looked at each other and kind of scratched our heads.

Unfortunately, the Animal Rights Movement is not one struggle and I don't think it ever can be. There are and will continue to be moments when we can work together for the most part, but of we all had the same ideas, we would only be one organization with multiple subgroups. Also, we see these kinds of divides in pretty much every social justice movement ever (ex: women's rights, civil rights, etc.) If you ask me, it's somewhat problematic to go through the streets chanting things about the ALF because the ALF is technically an illegal organization. I'm making no comments whatsoever about my own support or non-support for the ALF, but there is something to be said for allowing moments for non-radical AR groups to do their thing.

Albino

This German hiphop artist was kind of amazing -- really eloquent lyrics that tie speciesm to other methods of oppression such as sexism, capitalism... all with some ass-kicking beats. I would definitely go see this guy perform. If you can understand German, *please* check out some of his lyrics here or the music here.

SOCIAL ACTIVISM GUIDE

I stumbled upon this and I HIGHLY recommend you take like 30 seconds and look at this. Because it's a good summary of info if you didn't already know this.

<<Find the guide here>>

EDIT: Another sweet guide is HERE.

- Highlights

• gives specific demo events
• how to be involved with the media
• publicity tips
• lots of other random stuff.

Granted, it also covers a number of campaigning efforts that I'm not AS fond of, but it's worth your time. I'm pasting the bits I found particularly useful, but i'm saying right now it's not my work. it is coming from the site linked above.

"Use the Media: Basic Tips for Working with the Media

• Develop and maintain a "press list" (which consists of the reporter's name, title, address, phone number, email, fax number, deadlines). Be sure to include: wire service (Independent Media, United Press International, Reuters), local and regional newspapers/magazines, local "zines," local TV news and talk shows, local cable stations, special interest publications (ethnic, college, high-school, religious, punk, trade, professional).
• Meet with reporters, DJs, talk show hosts, and editors personally--develop the relationship and establish rapport. See where their interests lie. Follow-up with phone calls to give them story ideas or to give them an update on your program.
• Read reporters' stories. Give them feedback--make them aware you are reading, watching, and listening to them. By reading their stories you will know whom to contact for your media outreach.
• Be prepared to give reporters facts, accurate information, quotes, historical background information, and if possible an "exclusive," meaning they are the reporter breaking the news.
• Return reporters' calls as soon as possible.
• Use all the "free" resources the media offers, such as the calendar column, letters to the editor, Op-Ed articles, and Public Service Announcements

Creative Action

In today's busy world, how do you get people to stop and take notice? Creative action can be a great way to get attention and help to educate others about an issue.

Tips:

• Focus your creative action on a specific target and message.
• Creative actions do not have to be theatrical; you can make a banner, billboard, or anything visual.
• Research history--the civil rights movement (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), non-violent actions (Gandhi), apartheid (South Africa)--to learn more about direct action techniques already taken, including challenges and successes.

Here are some examples:

100 Chairs

To demonstrate the growing wealth divide in the U.S., line up 100 chairs in a high-traffic place on campus. Ten people spread out over 70 chairs (lying down, stretching out) while 90 people have to fit on the remaining 30 chairs. This shows that 10 percent have 70 percent of the wealth, while all the rest (90 percent) have only 30 percent of the wealth. You can modify this using 10 chairs and 10 people or use this concept to demonstrate other statistics.

Source: United for a Fair Economy

Human Bar Graph

One hundred students line up to represent the president's salary, while one person represents a janitor's salary. A sign or spokesperson explains what is represented. Source: United for a Fair Economy: The Campus Living Wage Campaign

Interactive Theatre

Create a short (5 minute) skit on some issue (for example, hunger, homelessness, racism, sexism). Make the skit controversial. Go through the whole skit once for your audience. Then repeat the skit, allowing the people in the audience to say "stop" at any point. The person stopping the skit then replaces a character they choose and changes the play. Hold a discussion at the end.

Guerrilla Theatre

Create a dramatization that highlights your issue. For example, when Georgetown University students were protesting sweatshop labor in the production of campus wear, they staged a fashion show in a high-traffic area of campus. Students donned clothes with the university logo, and as they strutted down the walkway, the emcee talked about the sub-standard wages paid to workers who assembled the clothes. Guerrilla Theatre was used in the 1980s to dramatize death squad abductions in Central America. Students would stage an "abduction" in the cafeteria; this creative action engaged many students to join in Central American solidarity work.

Invisible Theatre

Create a situation that will draw on-lookers into a discussion about an important issue. Example: Two people go into a clothing store where sweatshop labor is being used to manufacture the clothes. The cell phone of one person rings. "Hello. Yeah, I'm here shopping at the (Name of Store). What? You're kidding! They use sweatshop labor to produce their clothes? Hey (to other person, in a loud voice so that others can hear), did you know that (Name of Store) uses sweatshop labor to make their clothes?" Draw the other shoppers and staff people into a discussion on living wages as a human right (see Global Exchange, globalexchange.org, for current campaigns on living wages and other issues).

Demonstrating Inadequate Shelter

Build shantytown housing on campus to demonstrate how people not earning a decent wage are forced to live in many countries. Sleep out in your quad to demonstrate homelessness in the U.S.

Cyber Activism

Rallying a Large Group of People for an Event (Virtual Organizing)

As the November 1999 Seattle WTO and the April 2000 IMF/World Bank protests showed, the Internet can be an extremely powerful organizing tool.

Tips:

• Create a web page to go with your event. Make your emails short and direct people to a hyperlink to the web for more details. Make sure your page is always up to date.
• Find a service provider that will allow people to easily subscribe to your listserv (try groups.yahoo.com orgroups.msn.com)

Op-Ed Pieces

Op-Ed Pieces are a highly effective way of expressing your opinion in the newspaper. Op-Eds are opinion pieces that appear opposite editorial pages. They are persuasive, well thought-out, well-written, short in length (usually about 800 words) but longer than a letter to the editor, and authored by a high-profile person or someone who has experience with the issue. The published op-ed should be timely, and present a strong, well-informed position, supported by facts.

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor represent your perspective in the local newspaper and can be a counter argument for articles that you do not agree with. They also:

• reach a large audience;
• are monitored by elected officials and other decision-makers; and
• create an impression of widespread support for or against an issue.

Press Releases

A press release is a full and succinct account of your story/event, usually one or two pages, and should be written as a news article. Press releases help editors write an article. In fact, some small community newspapers will actually print your press release "as is."

• The first paragraph is the lead. It is one to three sentences long and answers "who, what, when, where, why, and how?" The lead must grab the editor's attention.
• The second paragraph is the bridge. It provides the source and a transition for the more detailed information.
• The third paragraph is the body. The information given in the lead is explained in detail in the body. Add quotations, facts not included in the lead, and general information on the organization.
• Add a photograph to grab attention.
• Follow-up with a phone call and/or personal visit-it may increase their interest in the story.

Bruges/Brussels

So I went to Bruges / Brussels last weekend...

saw crazy awesome wall art

... saw some all-around beautiful stuff

saw some outrageous propaganda (Chocolate Museum of Bruges)

... and some bizarre images...

such as this one...

and a dead rabbit.

(Purpose? To demonstrate what 20 cocoa beans was worth hundreds of years ago.

Why? Because people don't know what a dead fucking rabbit looks like.

I'm going to write these people a series of letters until this body is removed from the Musée de Chocolat in Bruges )

... and a taste of oppression.

I did, however, see a lot of beautiful things in spite of all the exploitation/oppression... more photos of which are soon to come, after i repose myself a bit.

FLORIDA VEG VEST: October 24 2009 - Orlando

VegFest! For info click here.

PVs and Veganism as a Religion?

LESSON OF THE DAY:

Everyone is a potential vegan. I mean EVERYONE.

Everyone is a possible vegan. OK, yes, I think it was somewhere in a how-to activism guide or something that in terms of efficiency, you shouldn't cater to really old people or guys who seem to really love preparing their meat. But I honestly think veganism spreads in all and any directions, even if there are venues that are more likely to latch on to vegetarianism/veganism. Alright, don't try to convert folks on their deathbeds, because that's just not nice (come on, are we that desperate?), nor is it efficient for the movement. But otherwise, have at it. (EX: Health food stores, fitness centers, nutrition centers, pet stores(eesh), pet-related things, other social justice movements, universities, children-centers, etc. are great places to start)

Veganism isn't necessarily like a religion (although it can become religion-esque for a lot of people). I think that defining Veganism as a religion is very problematic because it takes the objectivity and the ultimate reality out of the matter. (this is not a critique of traditional religion. Though I am not religious, I am not about to defame any of them). However, it is largely agreed that religion is a perspective. Although each group views their god or gods as the proper god, we have had to come to terms with the fact that we all live on the same planet and that therefore this must be something about interpretation. On the contrary, it is not as if veganism and vegetarianism is opposed by a number of strong unified groups of meat-eaters that ritualistically worship their meat. No, no, what we see with the veg/AR movement is a spectrum

Omni-->Flexitarian-->Pescetarian-->Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian-->VEGAN

To say that veganism and vegetarianism is a religion is to shut your eyes to reality. While on the one hand i am not hesitant to hide my own animality -- to show that I have urges and instincts and other things which we try to conceal from ourselves as a 'supreme' species, I think that we have no need to gnaw on other animals to sustain ourselves. Our societies and civilizations have become so developed (in the traditional sense of the word) that killing other animals is completely superfluous and frankly inefficient for society, environment, etc. Because it is unnecessary to sustain ourselves via animal products, it is cruel to use them. (I personally don't believe in using animals for any means, so...)

Point of the story: Veganism is not a religion.

(I wish i had the motivation for mindless schoolwork that i do for vegan activism.)

The politics of animal rights.

It seems that the animal rights movement is like a human body suffering from a flu.

Every organization is like an organ, theoretically and ultimately working together for the same cause but in the mean time doing all kinds of crazy shit to spite one another. In this flu-ish haze that is animal rights, organizations have a hard time working together on immediate things, and often keep each other from moving forward.

There needs to be some kind of Tylenol for the animal rights movement (non-animal-tested Tylenol, then)

- organizations have to be able to coexist. Public displays of hatred are unacceptable. Don't have to be buddy-buddy, or anything. In fact, it is much better to have several different organizations and groups because they all cater to different people and accomplish different things. But some basic manners need to be observed.

- organizations need better online social networking

- veg*n organizations need to recognize that their methods may vary from audience to audience

- everyone in the AR Movement has a different place on the grand spectrum of other social movements : if an individual refuses to normalize themselves for the cause, who are we to normalize them/force them to blend?

- Other things which will come up when I am less sleepy

en fait (in reality), what we need to realize is that no single activist is more successful than a group of activists. That said, we MUST educate ourselves adequately (and beyond) if we want an effective movement. We need people from all over -- politics studies, lit, sociology, photo, graphic design, media/journalism, etc. As much as we need people who are going to go hand-in-hand in the movement, we need people who know their shit.

And we NEED more people to study the veg*n movement as a whole. Absolutely. In the U.S. and abroad, to see how things are going, what methods and approaches are effective, and how we can recognize the optimism which the movement surely merits.

Look at civil rights and women's rights movements, for instance, and the similarities are undeniable. Seemingly radical at the time, women have the right to vote in many countries in the world... and soon that will be ANIMAL RIGHTS! Woo! I can't wait.

Things to Think About TODAY:

• How can I make the most impact on the movement RIGHT NOW?
• Do I have the right personal attitude for this (Am I sustaining myself)?
• Do I know enough about the things I believe in? (Can I learn more to help the cause?)
• Have I honed in and developed on any natural skills that I have[that can be useful for the movement]?
• Do i have an adequate vegan support network? (If not, how can I go about expanding my vegan friend network and resource network?
• Have I figured out what my own personal most effective medium of convincing people is?
• Most importantly: ... when is the last time I baked vegan cupcakes?

Translating for Animal Rights Orgs

I've discovered a new way to be helpful in the Animal Rights Movement -- translating! Since English is kind of a hegemony, it's helpful to be able to translate things back and forth. However, it is dawning on me just how hard it is to capture all the subtleties of the language, and how easy it can be to just transform a piece that was once moderate French into slightly liberal English. Which changes a lot ! Moral of the story - i have a lot of respect for people who do this professionally.

ADA Paper 2009

In case you missed this ADA document published this year, please check it out here.

"Position of the American Dietetic Association: Vegetarian Diets"

It is the position of the American Di-

etetic Association that appropriately

planned vegetarian diets, including

total vegetarian or vegan diets, are

healthful, nutritionally adequate, and

may provide health benefits in the

prevention and treatment of certain

diseases. Well-planned vegetarian di-

ets are appropriate for individuals

during all stages of the life cycle, in-

cluding pregnancy, lactation, infancy,

childhood, and adolescence, and for

athletes. A vegetarian diet is defined

as one that does not include meat (in-

cluding fowl) or seafood, or products

containing those foods

Please note that vegetarianism and veganism has been officially approved for ALL STAGES OF LIFE, including infancy, pregnancy, and lactation. Vegan babies, here we come!

Camera Broken

So, my camera broke, meaning my blog will probably once again return to a rambly mess of random tidbits about the day.

Yesterday: Tabled at the Place de la Sorbonne for World Farm Animal Day with an organization called Fourrure Torture, who I guess will be my organization while I'm in France, since I've already tabled with them twice, and they do events almost every week. Which is good for me. Also, I've already had the opportunity to speak English and German with people - some of which successfully donated money!

(TBC)