Archive for year 2010

With the new year just a few days away (well, one version of the new year, anyway), I have begun feeling reflective about the year that just passed and what to make of the one looming on the horizon.  I don’t typically make new year’s resolutions — not because I don’t stick to them, but because I’d like to think that I’m improving and growing and resolving with every day that passes, not just all at once on January 1st — but I do like to spend the quiet, usually-snowy morning of New Year’s Day in meditation or in front of a pad of paper, brainstorming about how to make the most out of the 365 days ahead.  I’ve dedicated my life to making a more vegan world, but I think this year will demand some reflection on what the word “vegan” means to me and how it manifests in my life.  Miranda once said it best: veganism, to me, is like a line in the sand, where after conquering one hurdle (giving up animal products, examining my privilege, figuring what kind of activism suits me best) I can feel free to push that line a little bit further, demanding that my veganism encompass more things beyond that initial “good enough” (subsequently giving up products that are harmful to the environment or the people producing them, irrespective of their ingredients lists; devising new forms of activism that don’t look like other offerings and being brave enough to try them out).

Does the term “vegan” actually fit what I am doing anymore, given that the mainstream definition of veganism is a more comfortable label for a package of veggie burgers than it is for all-encompassing, anti-oppression activism?  Has the word “vegan” become too muddied by versions of veganism that, when not explicitly fatphobic, transphobic, ableist, racist, classist, or sexist, aren’t doing much to  challenge these oppressions either?

It’s tough sometimes to know where to go from here.  I’m plagued by anxiety about not doing enough or not doing the right thing, especially when sometimes only the folks in this collective seem to be on the same page as me.  When most other animal welfare corporations are peddling veganism as a weight-loss solution or a springboard for an entirely new capitalist market and customer base, it can feel really lonely out here.  I’ve certainly stumbled a few times along the way, and reflecting on years spent working for organizations that don’t align themselves with my values can be painful and disheartening.  But I think this year my resolution will be two-fold: keep on working, even when it feels sad and lonely, and don’t be afraid of change (including not feeling bad about having to change if something isn’t working anymore).

Steve and I were talking recently about how much we enjoy writing (and, in his case, filmmaking) and how our activism often takes these forms.  While perhaps this isn’t the splashiest or most dramatic way to make a difference, it is, at least for me, incredibly cathartic and productive and often necessary.  One of my favorite writers, Derrick Jensen, often states that to create revolution — and, subsequently, when revolution has occurred — we will need people with all sorts of talents, hopefully including writing (and filmmaking, and nursing, and communication, and cooking, and all those skills that no one necessarily thinks of as “activist,” but which we possess and which are important in their own right).  I worry sometimes that the time I spend writing in this blog, or writing articles for books or websites, is time taken away from “real activism;” but in the new year, I hope to eradicate those thoughts from my brain.

This is just one example, but I hope it encourages people to reflect upon their lives and see that there are myriad ways to make a difference — activism and true anti-oppression veganism are not only “doing,” but “being”.  When the world is falling down around us (see also: non-human animal abuse and exploitation, human animal abuse and exploitation, earthquakes and floods, policing and immigration, WikiLeaks, rape apologism, poverty, food deserts, revocation of welfare and education funding, hate crimes, high-fructose corn syrup, etc! etc! etc!) it’s all I can do sometimes to keep from falling right down with it.

We live in an incredibly imperfect world, and despite all my wishing upon a star, utopia isn’t just going to settle over the current blueprints overnight.  Every little bit helps, whether a particular action is actually making tangible change for animals or is simply helping me to feel like I can go for another day/week/month/year/lifetime.  All roads lead to revolution.

Through the magic of technology, I have my email set up to send me daily alerts when the word “vegan” appears in news or blog headlines.  (I also have one set up for “LGBT” and one set up for “roller derby,” which tells you a lot about me as a person, I think.)  Usually, this results in some great recipes, some funny reviews, a post or two from me over at SuperVegan (which makes me feel important), and finally, the occasional op-ed about how someone could never stop eating animals (sigh).  But recently, this gem popped into my inbox, and I think I had to physically move my laptop out of the way so I could pound my head against the desk.  While it’s no surprise to me that PETA hates women (and people of color, and gender non-conforming people, and, well, animals) I was just flabbergasted that even they would get behind the wedding-industrial complex to encourage women to lose weight, have surgery, and spend a million dollars on their wedding days.  For PETA, even that seems egregious.  But I guess I should learn to not be surprised.

A little background info: After reading “Against Equality” and working with the Alternatives to Marriage Project, I’ve become more disillusioned than ever with the institution of marriage and, of course, the wedding-industrial complex.  On a very basic level, yes, it is an atrocity that the relationships of some people are recognized and validated by the U.S. government, while others (based on gender or gender presentation) are not.  Married people in the United States receive over 1,000 different state and federal benefits that are not available to people federally designated as “single,” including tax breaks, immigration, health care, adoption, and many others.  Understandably, the LGBT community has demanded that those privileges be extended to its members in long-term committed relationships and has poured millions of dollars into campaigning for federal recognition of gay marriage.  But is this the right goal?  While our children are beating bullied and killed, our parents and peers are being denied jobs and health care and housing, and the United Nations is declaring that gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals around the world are not worth protecting by law — we’re worried most about whether or not we can get a ring on our fingers and assimilate into an institution that kind of hates us?

For women, marriage (and “the big day”) has created unnecessary pressure and expectations.  Society portrays relationships and marriage as the ultimate end-goal for women: girls are taught to prepare for their weddings from an early age, single women are ridiculed, and divorcees are considered failures.  There are so few examples of unmarried women (or women not angling for marriage) in the media that a test exists for movies and television shows to determine whether you can expect to see the female characters talking about more than just men and relationships.  We are expected to do just about anything to get a man and raise a family: lose weight, have plastic surgery, downplay our intelligence and opinions, shave our legs, act demure, play hard-to-get, write poems and songs and pine pine pine.  I want a world in which everyone is free to make hir own choices about love and relationships, whether that means you are celibate, single, in a committed relationship with one person, in a committed relationship with many people, or sleeping with the entire state of New York.

So, back to PETA.  PETA recently sponsored a contest in which the woman who lost the most weight before her wedding — by adopting a vegan diet — would receive a $6,000 eco-friendly wedding gown, provided by PETA and designer Linda Loudermilk.  I don’t even know where to begin to parse out this trainwreck.  Weddings are a full-blown industry here in the United States, with people routinely spending thousands of dollars to have the best dresses, flowers, food, entertainment, and venue for their wedding days.  The narrative that this is the most important day of a woman’s life leads her to do things like crash dieting, plastic surgery (there is a TV show called “Bridalplasty,” for fuck’s sake), going into debt, marrying someone for the sake of getting that wedding day before “it’s too late,” etc.  The fact that PETA would play right into the hands of the wedding-industrial complex with a bridal weight loss contest makes me just see red.  In addition, treating veganism as a weight loss method ignores all of the analysis of power and privilege that goes along with choosing an animal-free diet.  It also makes invisible all of those people who are currently eating a vegan diet and who have not experienced drastic weight loss (or who have experienced weight gain) or found veganism to be a panacea for all that ails them.  As someone who celebrates diversity (and not just as a buzzword) and wants to ensure that everyone’s experiences are valued, a contest in which the implicit demand is that everyone be skinny does not jive with my worldview.  My vision of vegan utopia has neither exclusionary politics, like the sort that accompany marriage and weddings, nor crash diets.  Shame on PETA for buying into both.

So, when L.O.V.E. was first hatched, the project that most excited me was the Vegan Buddies Project.  The idea was that we could connect activists in similar geographic regions and start forming these groups who would take L.O.V.E.’s anti-speciesist, anti-exploitation message and spread it in the ways that were most appropriate for their communities.  It felt like a great way to make friends and make change all in one fell swoop.

Sadly, our scope was a little too broad, and it was nearly impossible to find groups of three people who lived in the same region and were willing to connect as vegan buddies.  L.O.V.E. is, admittedly, a small effort at the moment: with all of the collective members busy with their own lives and projects, and an intentionally non-existent operating budget, we’re not expanding dramatically anytime soon.  Thus, the Vegan Buddies project never really got off the ground.

Enter Vegan Buddies 2.0: The Vegan Pen Pals Project.  This second incarnation of our previous efforts negates the necessity of participants living within a certain number of miles of one another, which creates for us endless possibilities.  Vegan Buddies from South Africa can now be paired with folks in Ireland; pen pals in New York can easily and effectively write letters to their pen pal in Hawaii or Russia.  We’re really excited about the possibilities and hope you’ll join us in our efforts to make connections, expand our outreach, and start new friendships around the world.

So, what are you waiting for?  Check out the program guidelines and then sign yourself up to be a Vegan Pen Pal.  We expect that the first letters will start rolling after January 1.  As always, leave comments here or contact us with any questions you may have.

Holidays can be a trying time for a vegan.  With both Thanksgiving and the winter holidays often built upon a shared meal, if you choose to spend your time with folks who do not follow a vegetarian diet, the prospect of facing animal bodies as the centerpiece of the table can be a really challenging and horrifying one.  Nearly 40 million turkeys are slaughtered annually in the United States for Thanksgiving alone; the thought of that massacre is enough to make any bite of food enjoyed on that day, vegan or otherwise, hard to swallow.

There are additional challenges for vegans and social justice advocates at holidays as well.  Native Americans and folks in solidarity with those communities may not associate the American Thanksgiving holiday with love and sharing and harvest but instead rightfully acknowledge Thanksgiving as a reminder that Native populations were wiped out by those Pilgrims whose “kind gesture” of sharing and community is now at the center of this holiday.  Additionally, members of the LGBT community whose identities are not accepted by their family members — whether completely disowned by those families or just made to feel uncomfortable in their presence — may be isolated and lonely.  Holiday cheer?  Not so much.

Several years ago, I made the decision to no longer celebrate either Thanksgiving or Christmas, despite those being traditional holidays within my family and community.  I find the notion of eating at a table full of dead animals anything but peaceful or joyful, and even though a vegan Thanksgiving dinner may be free of animal products, it still aligns itself with that deceptive, oppressive holiday.  Living in a large metropolitan area, it’s not difficult to find myriad vegan Thanksgiving celebrations happening around town, but as the years have gone by, I find myself less and less interested in participating in that holiday in any of its incarnations.  In fact, my personal tradition for the last three years of Thanksgiving days has been to take a three-hour walk with my canine friend, Miles.

I like the idea of a harvest celebration — especially since foods traditionally grown in the fall, like pumpkins, apples, and squash are some of my favorites — but if I were to have a shared vegan meal with my friends and family, I’d probably choose not to have it anywhere near Thanksgiving Day or Columbus Day or any holiday whose history has been altered by those in power to erase the experiences of those without (see also: most of American History as taught in schools).  I’ve said it before, but it merits repeating: my idea of a vegan world is not a vegan version of the one that currently exists.  I’m envisioning many more changes to the landscape than just replacing animal flesh with tofu.  I want the end of oppression, the elimination of hierarchies, and a world in which people work together to support their families, communities, and selves.  Thanksgiving as it stands doesn’t really fit that mold.

As always, I’m not prescribing that this is a solution for everyone.  There’s a lot of value in spending time with family and influencing non-vegetarians to enjoy vegan meals; truthfully, I don’t have the fortitude for it.  I just want to emphasize that there’s value in creating new traditions, even if they are challenging.  Even if they do not resemble old traditions at all.  Even if it garners you some strange looks and angry emails from friends and family.  Indeed, changing traditions — reshaping them to reflect the values that mean the most to you — is the only thing that will bring about a vegan world.

I recently picked up a new activity in my life that has thrown me headfirst into a large group of people who are not vegan or socially justice-minded.  Until this point, I’d been incredibly selective about the people with whom I associate: most of the friends I’ve made in my town have come to me through activism, so they have naturally been vegan-minded.  I have a relatively small family, and they all live several hundred miles away or more, so I can choose to see them only when I’m confident that there won’t be a dead animal involved.  Basically, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to endure chatter about how delicious animals are or hear a barrage of words that I consider to be insensitive or disrespectful.

I’ve talked before about how important it is, as an activist, to do things that make you happy.  Life doesn’t always have to be gloomy, and frankly, it’s really challenging to a person’s heart and mind to always be thinking/working/living anti-oppression work.  There’s a reason people burn out, and I’m trying desperately not to hit my limit.  This particular activity in which I’m participating is recreation for me; it has no repercussions for my work or my activism or my desire to make the world a better place.  It’s just fun.

… except that I wince whenever someone says something completely intolerant in conversation.  And at events, it’s not uncommon to have animal body parts by the hundreds being served as food.  There’s no discussion about privilege and little awareness of social justice issues.  And I’m feeling like a fish out of water.

I recognize that not everyone is in the same place as me in their thinking (or non-thinking) about these issues.  And it has been very isolating at times to try to self-select down to a social circle comprised only of those folks who “get it,” so I’m actively working to not do that anymore.   I am trying to look at some of these cringe-worthy instances as opportunities to educate, but I also don’t want to turn an activity that I am doing for fun into a constant struggle.  I’m probably not going to be able to turn everyone on to an understanding of these issues, and though I am happy to live by example, I’m feeling a lot of internal struggle when I am in these surroundings.

Basically, I don’t know what to do, short of walking away.  And I’m not happy considering that option.  Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this?  Any advice or suggestions for me or other LOVE members who may be experiencing something similar?

There was a really incredible article in make/shift magazine’s spring 2010 issue about male domination of social justice movements and how the replication of those patriarchal power structures have both directly and indirectly helped the state to topple some of the most influential organizations working toward a just world.  I discovered this article via the INCITE! blog and would love to share it with LOVE readers and collective members and, well, every activist on the planet.

The article can be accessed here: http://inciteblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-make-great-informants-how-gender-violence-on-the-left-enables-state-violence-in-radical-movements/

I think the INCITE! blog and its commenters have dissected and discussed much of the same things I would choose to mention, but I just want to emphasize how incredibly relevant and important I find this analysis to be.  My time as an activist has been plagued with struggles against male domination and the oppression of female-identified activists, ostensibly from people who are billing themselves as allies: whether it’s an individual vegan activist who is abusive toward other female activists and partners or an entire organization that has allied itself with this culture’s hatred of women.

I do love this passage, though:

“Maybe if organizers made collective accountability around gender violence a central part of our practices we could neutralize people who are working on behalf of the state to undermine our struggles. I’m not talking about witch hunts; I’m talking about organizing in such a way that we nip a potential [informant] in the bud before he can hurt more people. Informants are hard to spot, but my guess is that where there is smoke there is fire, and someone who creates chaos wherever he goes is either an informant or an irresponsible, unaccountable time bomb who can be unintentionally as effective at undermining social-justice organizing as an informant. Ultimately they both do the work of the state and need to be held accountable.”

It seems so important to get activists and activist organizations to stop thinking of misogyny and abuse of women as something that will resolve itself once we solve the “real” problems.  And for as long as male activists are exploitative of female activists, they are just as bad as the animal abusers, racists, homophobes, and the state against which we are all struggling, together.

I have been dreading writing this post.  Each time I sit down to work on it, I get really anxious and worried: I don’t want to come across as attacking people who are otherwise doing good work, I don’t want to pretend that I am a perfect consumer (an oxymoron in itself!), and I definitely don’t want to alienate the four people on the planet who still actually listen to what I have to say.  But every time I subsequently close the browser window and don’t get the thoughts out of my head, I feel a different, worse kind of anxiety: the knowledge that well-meaning, vegan-identified people are spending their money on products that are incredibly harmful to animals and the planet — the exact reasons that we, as vegans, have stopped buying animal-based goods.

“Orangutans are literally dying for cookies.” So begins a report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, published in 2008 and chronicling the myriad ways in which palm oil is troubling.  When this and another similar report were released, Michael Brune of the Rainforest Action Network wrote a really concise and informative article on the Huffington Post about the problems with palm oil: deforestation, loss of habitat for rainforest animals (both human and non-human), climate change.  But even before that, as an apprentice at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute way back in 2006, I had heard about the loss of Orangutan habitat due to the production of palm oil.  If you want to help primates, my teachers there said, don’t buy palm oil.  Having been so educated and moved by the lives of the chimpanzees at the institute, I knew this was something that I’d try my best to avoid.

But once I left the safe confines of CHCI, my promise to avoid palm oil was virtually forgotten.  Truthfully, it seemed a bigger challenge to me than avoiding meat, dairy, leather, and the ilk: nearly 50 percent of consumer goods contain some sort of palm oil, no doubt many of them considered “vegan.”  Furthermore, I wasn’t prepared for the teeming masses of Earth Balance-lovin’ vegans unwittingly singing the praises of this problematic product.  It seems like nearly every magazine, recipe, and restaurant trying to sell me something vegan is celebrating palm oil.  Who am I to rain on everyone’s parade?

I decided recently to go outside of my comfort zone yet again and remove Earth Balance and palm oil from my diet to the best of my ability (possibly spurred by a re-reading of the book “Next of Kin”).  Just as I used to say that I couldn’t give up dairy because I liked the taste too much, I have to get over my unwillingness to give up a delicious but palm oil-laden vegan treat.  But now I have also had to deal with these squiggly feelings of not knowing how to address my concerns with fellow animal advocates.  I don’t want to be the vegan police, and I certainly don’t want to be prescribing a solution that is too utopian to be feasible for the average person to attain.

So what is the solution?  As usual, I’m not sure.  Most of the vegan restaurants and bakeries I’ve encountered have been huge proponents of Earth Balance and other palm oil-based margarine products because it closely replicates cow’s milk butter when used in recipes, especially baked goods.  When I made the decision to stop buying Earth Balance, it meant a serious change in the types of foods I cooked at home: no more toast with “butter” for breakfast, fewer cupcakes and pastries made from scratch, etc.  And I’m still struggling to not order these things when I go to restaurants: I’m a sucker for a cupcake, and it isn’t until after I’ve eaten that I worry about the ingredients I may have just consumed, “vegan” though they may have been.  It’s a difficult change and no doubt one that people are reluctant to make.

I acknowledge that calling out Earth Balance and palm oil for its harmful impact on humans, animals, and the planet is unfair; palm oil is just one of hundreds of problematic “vegan” foods we consume.  If we’re going to eliminate palm oil from our diets, shouldn’t we also be evaluating coffee?  Chocolate?  Tropical fruits?  At what point do we say that we’re “vegan enough,” since in today’s global economy, it’s a huge challenge to find a food or a product in general that doesn’t harm someone somewhere?  I completely agree.  Again, I’m in no position to tell others what to do, since I, too, am guilty of making these bad choices — just last night I bought mango juice, which probably traveled thousands of miles to get to me after having been grown by people making significantly less than a living wage.  I’d like to think, however, that if we allow ourselves to dialog about these issues — and not just assume that if something doesn’t list an animal product on the label that it’s “cruelty-free” — then maybe those choices will give us as much pause as the choice to purchase meat or dairy once did.  Maybe then we can push ourselves even further beyond what we thought we could do and create a world that is even more peaceful, respectful, and just than we imagined possible.

As an activist, I think that breaking down the barriers between groups of people — while still recognizing and respecting individual differences — is a key component to achieving equality and ending oppression.  When we stop thinking of beings who are different from us as the “other,” it becomes more difficult to treat them as “less than.”  I think recognizing that animals have an interest in being alive, not having their children taken away, not being beaten, etc. is the first step in making the choice to not use their bodies for our own purposes.  Similarly, acknowledging that people who have differently-abled bodies or different gender presentation or different ethnicities or insert myriad-other-ways-in-which-people-are-different here still have an interest in health, happiness, safety, bodily integrity, and choice is a first step to creating a world without oppression.

However, I’ve noticed lately that even within social justice activism there’s a pervasive “us vs. them” mentality that can totally undermine that vision of a peaceful world.  Believing that the western world, for example, is infinitely more forward-thinking than less-industrialized nations is one harmful way in which this occurs; even within the context of the United States, thinking that large cities are more progressive and subsequently dismissing the behavior of other cities and states as “backwards” is dangerous as well.  Activists are guilty of this all the time, and I think it creates unnecessary borders and divisions between potential allies.

Doris Lin wrote about this in a January 2010 article concerning animal activists’ propensity to blame an entire culture or an entire country for animal cruelty occurring within its borders.  She writes, “I’ve noticed in various social justice movements that it’s easy to demonize disempowered groups or groups that are considered ‘other.’  Whether the cause is human rights, environmental protection or animal rights, it’s always easy to get some people to agree with you by reinforcing their prejudices against ‘those people’ or ‘these people.’”  This mentality not only unfairly labels an entire culture or country as “backwards” or “barbaric,” but it also dismisses the efforts of progressive, anti-oppression activists within those countries’ borders, as if there’s nothing there worth saving.  Interestingly enough, we rarely see western cultures being described as “barbaric,” despite the fact that plenty of mind-boggling oppression happens right here on U.S. soil.  It’s only those people who are “other” who seem to warrant that label; it’s only appropriate to write off a whole country when our targets are different enough from ourselves to no longer remind us of our own abhorrent behavior.

It’s not just animal activism, either.  After atrocious immigration legislation was passed in Arizona, calls to boycott the entire state started peppering my news feed.  Have we forgotten that plenty of other U.S. states have criminalized, arrested, and deported people of color or immigrant citizens before, during, and after the passage of Arizona’s legislation?  (See this heartbreaking article from North Carolina.)  I reported some really vicious rules for intersex citizens in Australia, and someone commented that Australia is particularly “effed up” when it comes to governmental approaches to sexuality.  Have we forgotten that here in the United States, LGBT folks do not have access to marriage or that gender non-conforming individuals do not have federal protections for housing, employment, or the privilege to safely use a public bathroom?  Female genital mutilation is currently being funded and celebrated at an ivy league institution in the United States.  Transgender individuals are harassed, beaten, and killed in cities as “progressive” as New York and Seattle on a daily basis.  The examples go on and on and on and never fail to discourage me.  We (New Yorkers, Americans, vegans) have to stop thinking that we’re somehow better than other people, other cities, other countries.

It’s not fair to blame an entire population for the oppressive words or actions of a few individuals, especially when nearly every population on the planet is, in some way, committing similarly oppressive acts. And so much work needs to be done in our own backyards that it seems to make sense to focus there before we go pointing fingers at other communities.  This is why LOVE focuses so strongly on community-based activism and a holistic understanding of veganism and anti-oppression.  In my experience, it’s not effective to launch a campaign in a city or drop a hundred leaflets on a street corner and then blow out of town.  We have to listen to each other, respect differences, and work together to eliminate oppression.