Archive for June, 2010

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.

Recently, members of the LOVE collective have been batting around the idea of adding some “Veganism 101″-type posts  to our blog, in the interest of sharing some of our experience and advice with fellow collective members and blog readers.  Everyone who has made the choice to adopt a vegetarian diet or who views the world through an anti-oppression lens has hit some stumbling blocks along the way — often in the form of fielding questions from friends and family, feeling some discomfort over making new choices, or trying to figure out the right way to express concern, criticism, or excitement about things happening in the world.  One of the reasons we created the Vegan Blog was to share these experiences with each other and learn from them; building this community, both virtual and physical, was one of my main goals, at least, in founding LOVE.

However, I’m struggling a bit with the idea of posting some set of rules or guidelines for other vegans to follow in their own lives.  My experiences are my own, and the way I handle a situation may be radically different from the way that someone else would choose to do so.  I’m certainly no expert on anything, and I don’t like the implicit authority that comes from being the author of the post.  I’ve wanted to write something in here for weeks, but I’ve been floundering, having only my own experiences to draw upon and certainly not feeling qualified to tell others how to live their lives.

Other writings on this site have talked about speaking your truth, and as I was gawking at my blank computer screen, I realized that this might be exactly what we have to offer.  Instead of worrying about having all the right answers or overstepping my bounds in directing others in how to live, it might be most useful — and most cathartic — for me to just write about experiences I have had as an anti-oppression vegan activist and solicit feedback from the rest of the collective (and other readers) about how to handle these situations.  I hope that the other LOVE blog writers will contribute similar stories; we can create our own version of “Veganism 101″ that will hopefully be more inclusive, more truthful, and more relevant.

I want to talk a little bit about my experiences with combating despair.  Sometimes, as activists and compassionate people, the weight of the world’s problems can really suck the life out of us.  With a greater understanding of the forces that keep humans and animals oppressed comes a heavy sadness that can immobilize us.  The media seems to be a never-ending parade of oil spills and abuse of dairy cows, violence and war; even worse is when around us in in the flesh is apathy, sexist jokes, animals on plates, and “allies” who don’t understand us at all.  It’s enough to make a person want to hide under the covers and never come out.

So, what’s a vegan to do?

Personally, I’m working really hard on a few different approaches to this gut-wrenching feeling.  First and foremost, I’m acknowledging that I spend a LOT of time thinking about and writing about and living anti-oppression; most of the people I meet are not going to have given these issues as much consideration as I have, and I can’t expect them to be on the same wavelength as me.  It took a lot of time and reading and talking these things through to get to the understanding I have today, and tempting though it may be to throw a fit each time someone falls short on his analysis of power and privilege, it’s not fair or productive to do so.  What’s more, the general mission behind LOVE is to build and strengthen our communities; when we focus on that goal and proliferate the ideas of anti-oppression activism beyond the relatively small group of people who currently devote themselves to these issues, there will be fewer people causing me such anguish.

Terrible things are happening in the world, to people and animals.  Every time I write a letter to someone in prison or meet an animal who is obviously traumatized by her experience on a farm or in an abusive home, I worry that I’m not going to be able to handle the next atrocity that comes down the pike.  Sadly, I sometimes feel like my horror or disgust or despair wouldn’t be understood by anyone around me; or worse, when I try to express these feelings to friends and partners, I end up debating or justifying myself instead of getting the support that I needed.

How do we maintain hope when there seem to be so few people hoping right there with us?

I’m trying to live more by example than continuously and aggressively shoving these ideas down the throats of everyone I meet.  The latter approach seems to be just exhausting for everybody involved and no doubt contributes to that weighted-down feeling that seems to run my life from time to time.  LOVE is currently working on a new video and an updated version of our vegan brochure that will hopefully facilitate the conversation about veganism and anti-oppression beyond what we’re able to do in our day-to-day lives.  In short, my goals are to not alienate people and not lose myself in the fog of sadness that sometimes rolls in with the sunrise.  The bigger this community becomes, the more allies we will have in fighting that despair, and the less alone we will feel.

If anyone has any similar experiences or wants to discuss any of these ideas further, please feel free to share in the comments.  I’d really like to hear how you find the strength to keep fighting so that I can draw upon it in some of those difficult moments.