In the last post, Nadia questioned why some white male vegans harp on their suffering, as vegans, when actually, veganism & animal rights rightfully center the animals.

In response, Dave Warwak (the teacher canned recently for forceful advocacy of veganism to students in his junior high school art class) left this comment, saying in part:

How about we prioritize our time and energy by bashing factory farming instead of bashing our own kind for speaking out against injustice? I am all for pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps and part of that is speaking out. Many silent vegans struggle with oppression - we all feel it, but to ponder about “why white guys feel discriminated against” does the animals a great disservice in these extremely urgent times when we could be focusing our energies on real good.

The essence of this comment is that those of us concerned with anything else rather than the suffering of non-human animals are divisive, are weakening the vegan cause, are traitors. And we should just stop complaining & hew to the vegan party line.

It sounds remarkably like white feminists castigating women of color for calling out the racism of mainstream US feminism.

Instead of critiquing white male privilege within vegan circles, let’s go do some “real good,” right? Because heaven knows opposing racism & sexism, especially if we — gasp — critique other vegans, is a time-waster, a distraction from the REAL issues.

We’re being asked to identify as vegans over any other aspect of our identities & our lives. Again, the parallels with the feminist movement are just astounding. Women of color get punished for speaking up about racism in feminism. Vegans of color questioning whitecentric vegans also are penalized for such heretic thoughts. Color me surprised (pun intentional).

Do (white, male) vegans see themselves as my ally automatically when they learn that I, too, am vegan? Do they assume we’re on the same side? (Is it even a conscious thought?) Such vegans divide the world into two parts: people who are vegan, & thus allies, & those who are not vegan.

Some of us don’t have the luxury of seeing things that simply. Some of us will never, ever have the privilege of ignoring, if we want to, the rest of who we are in favor of focusing solely on our diets. Why? Oh yeah, because the world won’t let us. Because being who we are — completely aside from veganism — can be very dangerous sometimes. Some of us are getting raped or fired for being gay or pulled over for Driving While Black or losing our homes due to gentrification or being harassed on the street or getting deported or being tortured or having the franchise taken away from us or struggling to get health care or…

Oh yeah, & how about how race & class affect who has access to affordable vegan food (among, you know, the many ways discussed on this blog that these issues intersect with veg*n ones)? Oh, wait, I’m being divisive again, aren’t I?

Warwak also says, “Veganism is for all animals. ‘All animals’ includes humans.” Yes. Then why should vegans pretend that the only oppression that matters is non-human?

The very idea that one should ignore the impact of markers such as class, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc. is completely repugnant. Clearly this viewpoint is steeped in deep, unthinking privilege. It is no secret that a lot of people of color, for instance, are put off animal rights issues because of racism & colonialism in the movement. Women are put off when they see veganism used to encourage women to hate their bodies.

None of these critical issues are going to go away. They are all interconnected. To claim to be able to pull one strand, one lone form of oppression, away from the whole tangle, & to hold it up as the One Thing Worth Fighting For? Naive at best, & damned offensive & dangerous at worst.

And stifling dissent, as Warwak would have us do, is the mark of a cult. That’s no movement I want to be part of, & people who think that way are not my allies.

earlier today i was speaking with a friend about how, for some vegans, (particularly white, male) veganism becomes their struggle; it is the way they are oppressed. it is the cross they must bare and they may believe that they experience discrimination based on their vegan identity. but veganism is not a liberation movement for vegans: it’s about animal liberation. what causes these vegans to center themselves?

I’ve recently discovered that Abolitionist Online has published a lot of articles about AR work being done around the world. Here are just a few:

• Mexico & Animal Rights
• The Dog Markets of Korea (& another article here)
• Turkish Stray Dogs
• Abolishing the Practice of Dancing Bears in India
• SOULVEG: Indigenous man opens vegan catering business in Melbourne
• Queer Rights Animal Rights (interview with queer AR activist in Spain)
• Beirut For The Ethical Treatment of Animals: The Interview

Happy reading.

Elaine Vigneault has an interesting series on Anti-Racist Vegan Activism. There’s a reading list, & so far parts one, two, & three.

So everyone has been talking lately about Hezbollah Tofu. When I first heard about it I did a double-take at the name, which is apparently a reference to one of Anthony Bourdain’s comments about vegans, in which he compares them to Hezbollah. In this post, it’s stated that the name is deliberately meant to offend. Linked is this post from a Jewish food blog, in which it’s discussed whether or not the name is offensive. I am going to go digging around to see, but has anyone seen any comments on the name from an Arab perspective?

so say you’re going to a work related conference, dealing with human and sex trafficking. And say that there is an award ceremony at big city zoo being planned. Do you politely decline the awards ceremony or do you voice your concern over having such an event at a place of animal cruelty and how you are opposed to animals living in captivity. Is it too much to ask for a leap of consciousness with human rights activists? I would also like to say that I am first a human rights activists, an immigrant rights activist, a domestic violence survivor activist, an alternative media maker, a radical* parent, living a nonviolent life. But when one mentions all these in addition to believing in animal rights, people think I’m off the rocker. Why is it also hard to conceive the notion of hierarchical privilege and violence that comes with eating an animal to activists already working on violence against men, women and children?

-I changed the title of this post from “musings on activists” to “umbrella activists”

*If radical means to you equal rights, human rights, mujer centered, non gendered parenting, alternative media promoter, domestic violence survivor and activist-then I guess you can say I’m a “radical” parent.

In the comments of Noemi’s post here about veganism & white privilege, reader Hortencia mentioned her experiences in Mexico, where folks told her that they were vegan because they couldn’t afford meat.

Today, via The Animals Voice*, I came across this article about veg*nism in Russia, which says the following:

With the largest part of the population living in the countryside until 1917, the Russian cuisine is based on the cooking of peasants. Syrnikov notes that meat was a rare ingredient in rural meals. “Peasants would eat meat only on holidays. It was hard to get, hard to store, and also there was a lot of fasting to do. They would cook it to store and eat very little of it.”

I realize generally Russians tend to the whiteness. But obviously race/ethnicity, nationality, class, immigrant status, etc. all intersect with each other. I just wanted to point out another instance where someone is talking about veg*nism not as a sign of privilege, but as a result of lack of privilege.

I admit I clicked on the link because the article is called “Mastering Russian Veggies,” & I thought it might be some gross exoticization/fetish-y/stereotype-y thing.

On a related note, I just got the most recent issue of Vegetarian Journal (which, despite the name, is vegan as far as I can tell). There’s an article on African cuisines, & while I was guarded reading it, I thought it did a fair job of not exotifying. No mystical African spices or anything.

* Shouldn’t it be “Animals’ Voice” with an apostrophe? Yes, yes, I know: I’m a smitty (for those of you who remember that term from the heyday of Sassy).

A post on the Animal Person blog drew my attention to the launching of Animal Rights Africa. No time for an in-depth perusal right now, but I would like to know more about the separate groups that merged to form ARA — who started them, who was in them, etc. The “About Us” pages on the site don’t seem particularly informative in that regard.

Also, Dr. Steve Best was the keynote speaker for the ARA launch event. Completely aside from how I may feel about him as an animal rights activist, my first reaction was to wonder why they needed to fly in some American dude. Surely there are African animal rights activists that would be interesting & relevant speakers?

Frazier is a perky senior beagle mix that needs a new home.

According to the Pasadena Humane Society, Frazier is a sweetheart who loves attention, especially being brushed (as you can see in that photo). He gets along well with other dogs & knows some basic commands. The shelter has a Senior for Senior program, which means the adoption fee would be waived for adopters over 60 years old.

Adult animals, especially senior ones, often are overlooked by people fixated on kittens & puppies. But they need homes too, & there are many benefits to adopting an adult companion animal — their personalities are more evident than with baby animals, for one, which means fewer surprises. I speak as someone who’s adopted 3 adult cats, & who hopes to give homes to many more adult animals over my lifetime. When we adopted our cats, we chose ones that the rescue groups said were affectionate & sweet, & yes, that’s just what we got!

If you know anyone who could give Frazier a good home, please get them in touch with the Pasadena Humane Society through the links above.

And as always, I’m stealing Elaine Vigneault’s idea; her succinctly stated reasons for doing this are:

1. To remind my readers of all the companion animals who need homes
2. To highlight the personhood/personality of animals
3. To give link love to animal rescue organizations
4. To lighten my blog’s mood a bit with adorable animal pictures

Via Breeze Harper of the Sistah Vegan Project: an essay called “Deep & Shallow Vegetarianism” by Dr. Michael W. Fox. I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s an interesting read.

Also, I recently came across this old article from Satya: “Racism and the Animal Rights Movement”.

I recently read Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights (by Bob Torres of Vegan Freak fame). It’s a good read, & I recommend it. What I want to share is a snippet he quotes from Gail Eisnitz’s Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (a book I haven’t read). It’s from an interview with Ed Van Winkle, a man who’s worked in many slaughterhouses. Here he talks about what it’s like killing pigs all day as a “sticker”:

“You may look a hog in the eye that’s walking around down in the blood pit with you and think, God, that really isn’t a bad-looking animal. You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up and nuzzled me like a puppy. Two minutes later, I had to kill them — beat them to death with a pipe. I can’t care.

“When I worked upstairs taking hogs’ guts out, I could cop an attitude that I was working on a production line, helping to feed people. But down in the stick pit I wasn’t feeding people. I was killing things. My attitude was, it’s only an animal. Kill it.

“Sometimes I looked at people that way, too,” he said. “I’ve had ideas of hanging my foreman upside down on the line and sticking him. I remember going into the office and telling the personnel man that I have no problem pulling the trigger on a person — if you get in my face I’ll blow you away.

“Every sticker I know carries a gun, and every one of them would shoot you. Most stickers I know have been arrested for assault. A lot of them have problems with alcohol. They have to drink, they have no other way of dealing with killing live, kicking animals all day long. If you stop and think about it, you’re killing several thousand beings a day.” [emphasis mine]

Who works in slaughterhouses? Who bears the mental toll of this kind of work? Predominantly lower-income people of color. In addition to the horrible emotional strain of having to kill for a living, such work is also incredibly dangerous (& needless to say, filled with labor law violations). Human Rights Watch issued a relevant report in 2005: Blood, Sweat and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants.

Yet another reason to avoid eating meat (”humanely” slaughtered meat is not an improvement for the animal being killed, of course, & thus not a solution either).