How I learned to L.O.V.E.

… or how I came to be writing this blog post, launching a new activist network, and barely containing my excitement.

Hey, everyone.  My name is Jenna, and I am an anti-oppression activist currently calling a variety of cities on the east coast of the United States “home.”  I’ve been vegan for about seven years now and am looking forward to a long, vibrant life full of cruelty-free meals and unrelenting activism.  It wasn’t until recently, however, that the feminist within burst forth from my chest like one of those aliens in that terrible movie and put together all of the pieces about how animal oppression and human oppression are so unmistakably intertwined.  I’ve been volunteering in low-income schools and community health centers for years and years, but I never realized that my work there was also fighting the same oppressive, patriarchical powers who also conspire to keep our furry and feathered friends in a cycle of suffering and oppression from birth until death.  I raged against the notion of prisons and massive Times Square billboards of nearly-naked, stick thin white women, never realizing how completely parallel that rage was with the other rage I saved for animal agriculture.  When the various facets of my discontent finally came to a head, I suddenly found myself incredibly alone and monumentally frustrated with the state of animal activism in the world today.

After spending several years volunteering and working for various animal advocacy groups around the country — including Compassionate Consumers, Vegan Outreach, and the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute — I came to realize that there can and should be more to veganism than calling for “cage-free” eggs, an end to factory farming, and an upswing in the number of women willing to wear pasties and a lettuce-shaped skirt in the name of “animal liberation.”  Vegans — and indeed all people who dare to call themselves social justice activists — should be demanding an end to the oppression of animals, women, people of color, disabled people, queer people, and anyone else who exists on this planet without the silver spoon of heterosexual, upper-class, white male-dom.  If it sounds like a tall order, believe me: it is.  But it’s essential if we ever want to throw off this mantle of power that currently keeps us all from living the lives that we deserve.

Thankfully, I stumbled upon some kindred spirits just as I was at the end of my rope, and we all decided to pool our resources into this amazing organization: Living Opposed to Violence and Exploitation.  Because, really, there’s more to life than fighting wars against one another, eating the flesh of sentient beings, Black Friday, living for the weekend, hating our bodies, and perpetually wishing for something better.