A commitment to a great cause is a solid foundation to build our inner lives upon, and also one virtually guaranteed to bring turbulence into the course of our lives. This is an experimental diary. If things go well, it'll help myself and others on a parallel course. See you at veganplace.wordpress.com
First things first. I can’t accept the making, possession, or use of guns by any human ape. The whole point of a gun is that a body gets shot. I am committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes, grievances, and grief. Not threats, not retribution, not stalking, not killing.
That clear, I also believe people who maximize value for shareholders at major insurance companies are implicated in deaths and financial calamities that embitter and shorten people’s lives. Some people avoid lucrative jobs like the job Brian Thompson had, a job that relies on cold, algorithmically achieved profits as measures of success while cancer patients are denied coverage in response to those algorithms.
What are the heads of insurance corporations paid to do? To put their soulless software to work, so they don’t have to pull away critical care with their own bare hands. Then, to brandish their earnings on Wall Street.
While we’re on the subject, do you know that the US Climate Vegan Exchange-Traded Fund (VEGN ETF) keeps UnitedHealth Group among its top 10 investment holdings? Those holdings help keep an insurance corporation’s capital high. How does that help anyone promote vegan values?
Our government needs to admit there’s a problem with the privatization of something so vital as medicine. The answer is a single-payer medical system. We don’t need to live with the unsympathetic ghosts of Reagan and Thatcher policies.
As we all know, the Democratic Party has repeatedly pushed Medicare for All off the platform. To be frank, that’s not working out for them, and it’s not working out for our lives, and it’s certainly not working out for the grieving Thompson and Mangione families.
So much torment. All avoidable. Taxpayers’ saving accounts are raided mercilessly for military spending. War—a vicious, disgraceful, anti-health pursuit—evidently takes precedence over everything else.
Luigi Mangione—assuming law enforcement has the right person—gave up a safe and privileged life to take part in a microcosmic war, using warlike language about what “had to be done.” And this brought certain realities to the surface, rippling through social media and everyday conversations among friends. Needless to say, I don’t think Luigi (notably caught at McDonald’s) had the whole picture.
The Mangione family owns multiple right-wing talk radio stations, including WCBM (a channel with an “official gun range” that promotes hunting; foments anti-trans sentiment; and connects listeners with a bevy of Fox News and Newsmax personalities). Not exactly a font of tranquility and healing.
This brings to mind the animal-rights activists who will endorse threats on the lives of CEOs—but won’t engage their family members about their use and consumption of animals.
Meanwhile we have Trump walking free and indeed retaking the most privileged position in the country. We don’t have universal healthcare. The dominant political parties are funded by profit-focused insurers, including UnitedHealth. And our government is consuming the fruits of our work without taking our needs seriously.
We do have each other, and that matters. Every example of community and mutual aid matters. Let’s stay strong. Let’s stay engaged in the struggle for real change.
Benjamin Franklin purportedly said the eagle design for the Great Seal of the settlers’ new country looked more like a turkey. And a turkey would have been a better choice, said Ben. In a rather smart-alecky letter in 1784, Ben Franklin wrote:
For in truth, the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America. Eagles have been found in all countries, but the turkey was peculiar to ours…
Franklin ought to have said turkeys populated the Americas (because Ocellated turkeys are native to Central America). Franklin might well have noted that people of European ancestry weren’t true orginal natives either. They seemed to show up “in all countries” as well!
Franklin continued:
…the first of the species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and served up at the wedding table of Charles the ninth.
Charles IX of France
So Franklin knew about the turkeys of Canada, from whence priests snatched the birds and shipped them off to be consumed by Charles IX (pictured), the 16th-century mass slaughterer of Protestant Christians who, reportedly haunted by these killings, succumbed to tuberculosis, aged 23.
Franklin went on with the turkey story:
….He is besides (though a little vain and silly tis true, but not the worse emblem for that) a bird of courage, and would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.
So Ben Franklin thought the turkeys would deem the British military — and not the turkey-keeping farmer — as the opressor … actually insulting turkeys, not admiring them.
Indeed, Franklin thought actual turkeys made good experimental subjects for electrocution and cooking, thereby laying the foundation for the invention of the electric oven.
The settlers weren’t the first to confine and domesticate free-living turkeys.
Some indigenous groups domesticated turkeys more than 2,000 years ago, to have access to their flesh for food, feathers for tools and ceremonial dress, and down for blankets. Here’s → Audubon.org saying domestication showed how much Native Americans valued the birds (but not on the birds’ terms).
Today, because cougars and wolves have been exterminated in the eastern United States, New Englanders call the presence of free-roaming turkeys a wildlife management issue. (Sounds familiar?)
Moreover, these naturally confident birds have become habituated by people putting out birdfeeders.
Biologists urge people to stop manipulating the turkeys through food.
And vegans urge people to stop manipulating the turkeys for food.
The struggle continues.
This week, may we all give thanks for nature in its free state. Instead of the so-called traditions of consuming commercialized flesh or even rolling our eyes at those same worn-out turkey jokes, may we create refuges of respect. And if we need to take refuge ourselves, so be it. People who love us will get over it, or they’ll understand.
My gratitude is with you, dear friends. Love and liberation,
Lee.
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References: From Benjamin Franklin to Sarah Bache (26 January 1784), Founders Online, National Archives; and as linked. Charles IX painting by François Clouet (public domain). Banner photo of free-living turkeys in Pennsylvania taken by Lee Hall.
This World Vegan Month, let’s call at least one major fencing company in our local area and ask them to stop offering this type of fence.
Mary Ann Baron, of Philadelphia Advocates for the Deer, first told me how dangerous spiked fencing is to deer. Public officials know, if they’ve ever seen an impaled deer who failed to clear a spiked fence. I have heard a Radnor, Pennsylvania township police official call the sight an unforgettable horror.
And how many of us really need a fence — let alone one with spikes? Fences and walls are nuisances that fragment habitat. But that might be another blog topic altogether…
Some animal advocates have worked on physical remedies to spiked fencing. One subscriber to this blog remembers doing this at a cemetery in Williamsville, near Buffalo, New York. Advocates raised money for new metalwork that capped the spear tips. This story and picture may be helpful when talking with property managers, local officials, or fence companies.
Startled deer can run into unexpected perils. Photo of running White-tailed deer by Jeff Houdret.
We Can Take Action.
This World Vegan Month, let’s call at least one major fencing company in our local area and ask them if they would stop offering this type of fence. Also look out for rails positioned so deer can be caught between them.
An online search for local fencing companies typically brings up these types of fences for sale. We can address the companies on social media, engage them in discussion, and ask if they’d consider discontinuing fences that pose dangers to deer. We can also ask our town governments and property managers to rule out dangerous fence styles.
Writing a column for your township news mailing is another way to open a dialogue.
If you have any reports on engagement in your community, kindly share! Readers beyond the eastern U.S. region: Do you know of other animals in your area who are similarly at risk? Please post a note in the comment section below.
Photo source: Pixabay on Pexels/Canva. Thanks to Maureen S. for contributing to my awareness of safety solutions.
However we all might be voting in the current election, one thing I think is undeniable. It’s a horrific crisis our politicians have forced us to pay for.
Everyone killed by the military forces we’re funding was somebody’s baby or parent, defender, teacher, or muse. All, no doubt, would have liked the chance to flourish on this planet for a while. Who among us consents to anyone raiding our accounts to fund the annhilation of bodies, minds, and spirits?
So, what’s happening to Palestine and Lebanon at this moment, happens against my will. As do the attacks on Iran, Syria, and Yemen. And the living beings within all these beaten and scorched territories.
We could be different. We could define ourselves as the tribe of humanity. We could define ourselves as a biological community within a tapestry of many living communities.
Why is this not a goal for us? Isn’t it what life is all about?
Massive Need for Human Transformation
The trauma we create in each other through prejudice, war, and ethnic violence corresponds with the trauma we inflict on other-than-human beings. Vanquishing living communities—human and other—and usurping untamed places, the colonial mindset menaces every living community on Earth.
The displacement of indigenous communities and the crushing of biodiversity for domesticating other animals has created the Anthropocene epoch. As Earthly beings we’ve deprived nature and ourselves of biological diversity.
Presently, the body mass of mammals known to inhabit Earth is “overwhelmingly dominated by livestock and humans.” Meanwhile, loss of habitat contributes to rising temperatures that imperil most living beings on this planet.
Thank You for Not Dominating
Prominent vegans, back in the 1940s and 1950s when the word vegan was new, declared themselves conscientious objectors to war. They defined themselves through vocal, steadfast resistance to the human war on other living communities—which includes the human ones.
And they resisted half-measures. Dominion needed to be let go of, not administered more carefully. Veganism is the antithesis of the so-called stewardship mode that claims to preserve patches of the nature we subjugate. Veganism would resist stuff like “deer management” (stalking, baiting, killing). There are “so many deer” because humans are so keen on displacing their natural predators. Who needs to be controlled?
How did humanity lose the concept of nature as its own real steward, the expert of its own patterns and balances?
Time Is of the Essence
CNN published an interview piece this week that included someone who drove a bulldozer over human beings, both dead and alive. The driver now can’t look at meat because it’s a reminder of the bodies. Yes, slaughter is slaughter—for any victim.
Climate crisis will only exacerbate the competition for territory, the displacement of cultures, and the destruction of those who are animalized.
We humans must change course. The othering needs to stop. Those who set out to beat others into submission need to be stopped. The cycle needs to break. Caring for the well-being of anyone alive on Earth, and respecting their ability to live on their terms, nurtures our collective humanity. It’s high time we pursued real priorities.
Love and liberation,
Lee.
Photo source: Aia Fernandez, via Flickr (CC-BY SA 2.0 Generic).
While millions of people seek food aid, we feed billions of farm animals.
Fish, dairy, meat and egg products take a huge toll on the planetary systems that sustain our lives.
Let’s be clear. We’re talking about all of animal agribusiness, not just factory farming.
The local, family-run farm betrays animals who trust their keepers. It exploits resources that could sustain hungry and thirsty humans. Its waste is largely unregulated simply because small farms (which are many, in the aggregate) slip through the cracks of federal environmental law. The development of local animal farms is a form of sprawl, no less than roadside malls and mini-marts. And animal farming involves the selective breeding, the purpose-breeding, of members of other living communities.
There is no fair animal farming business.
Nor is animal ag conducive to social fairness among human beings. Animal ag on every scale contains gruesome work. While we don’t want to see how the sausage is made, someone has to make it for so long we demand it. Those in the supply chain work long hours; some are migrants, housed in dorms to be ever-available.
Save for a handful of animal refuges, all animal farms sentence their nonhuman residents to death at some point. And that means some humans experience the repetitive and ghastly trauma of the killing floors. A more privileged class need never witness the sausage being made.
Veganism responds to urgent food security and social justice needs. If it can’t solve world hunger, at least it can drastically reduce it. And in a time of global climate breakdown, high-protein, drought-resistant pulses such as lentils are making a comeback.
As a principle, veganism holds that humans are one community among many, not the very point of Earth’s existence. Vegans relinquish the human assumption that the Earth (or any other planet) is ours. Consider how this enriches the human experience. It calls for a truce with, and maybe even a sense of contribution to, life on Earth that could not be experienced otherwise.
And here I’m getting into Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s urge to “go to the root of the trouble.” Jeffrey says:
I believe the single most dangerous idea of the human community is pseudospeciation—the belief that we are superior. This leads to depersonalization of “other” cultural groups within humanity, as it mimics our notion of dominion over all nonhuman life on the planet. If sustained any longer, it will surely undo us and much of the living world. How long can we cling to our illusory feeling of control that has already fashioned hominids into the most destructive presence the Earth has known? Yet there is hope; we do have the mental power to decide on the side of respect rather than exploitation. The point is to strive. The path ahead might not always look the same to you, to Lee, or to me as we contemplate this shared journey.
After noting the pain involved in acknowledging domestication as exploitation, Jeffrey says:
I would go even further: I would claim that humanity’s original sin lies in the domestication of animals.
Amy Klobuchar praised Kamala Harris’s VP pick by saying:
“What a fantastic choice, when you look at someone, ‘cause not many VPs have stood in a deer stand in ten-degree weather. Tim Walz has done that. He can handle anything.”
Yes, yes, yes, I’m questioning some of the Democratic platform’s current assumptions. But there’s never a good time to be silent on the importance of peace. And I think a vegan perspective has profound value as a pro-peace stance. I’m grateful to CounterPunch for offering me space to speak, and grateful to patrons of the Art of Animal Liberation for offering me a place to think.
I’ve been thinking about what I do as a vegan by being car-free. Just as I resisted cheese for the calf and the cow, I’m now resisting gasoline for climate-distressed sandpipers and sea lions.
Read the full entry in our Studio for the Art of Animal Liberation.
Free-living animals become competitors to subdue and erase. In their place, we produce tame animals that accommodate our desires. Is this peace?
I know better, now. Peace is lying under a lamppost, watching bats flutter in the evening. Peace is meeting a coyote’s gaze at dawn. Or pausing to watch deer cross a snowy meadow. It’s in the silent moments when we’re awed to have been born on such a planet…
Let’s talk about it, at 6pm EDT on Thursday, the 11th of April. Come on down to the American Vegan Society’s Philadelphia digs in person, or settle in with a nice cup of tea and attend via Zoom! Either way, registration’s open.
I know this is terribly late at night for friends over the sea, but I understand it’ll be recorded and in any case I’ll be adding to this blog entry so you have some more of the gist. Check back often! Meanwhile, don’t forget to register at the link above if you can make it.
Vegan Place 
