Oppression Connections
Breaking Unjust Laws: AETA, Fugitive Slave Acts, and Oppression Connections
Published December 10, 2009 @ 08:08AM PT
Continued from part 1, "Breaking Unjust Laws: Clarence Darrow and Inherit the Wind."
In his essay "Theory of Non-Resistance," Clarence Darrow wrote, "In modern society the controlling forces arrange things as they want them, and provide that certain things are criminal." And in our society, where the majority do not object to oppression of and violence toward our fellow animals -- and indeed, where many even profit from, and much of society is based on, that oppression and violence -- that translates into unjust laws protecting violence and criminalizing, of all things, acts of compassion. Exploitation, abuse, and killing are accepted; rescue, investigation, and free speech opposing the oppression can be prosecuted.
One of my favorite quotations from Darrow fits well with his "controlling forces" statement and is oh-so-relevant for the animal rights movement (and much else) in today's climate:
Breaking Unjust Laws: Clarence Darrow and Inherit the Wind
Published December 08, 2009 @ 07:37AM PT
Note: This is the first part of a two-part post.
Several years ago, on some random television-surfing weekend, I happened upon an old black-and-white movie I'd never seen. I don't remember why I stopped to watch, but I do clearly remember how it blew me away, how I found myself wanting to clap and cheer for attorney Henry Drummond as his portrayer Spencer Tracy delivered a brilliant performance, full of powerful oratory.
This new favorite -- Inherit the Wind (1960), based on a stage play, based loosely on the Scopes monkey trial (the parallels are impossible to miss, but the drama is nevertheless heavily fictionalized at times) -- was a simply remarkable film; I couldn't get enough of it. And Spencer Tracy's superb portrayal of Drummond, the film's fictionalized Clarence Darrow, from whom the playwrights borrowed some of the lines given to Drummond, renewed my interest in the real-life late 19th- to early 20th-century lawyer. So what, you ask, do Inherit the Wind and Clarence Darrow have to do with animal rights? Plenty.
The Mass Killing of Wildlife for Your Burger, Cheese, and Leather
Published December 03, 2009 @ 07:14AM PT
Alternate title: Government Gives Finger to Prairie Dogs, High-Fives Animal Ag
Winter holidays are upon us, so what gift is the government willing to give the dwindling population of prairie dogs? Plenty of poisons that ravage their bodies and cause them horrible deaths, but no endangered species protections, officials ruled yesterday. And why the barbaric killing and the refusal of protections? People's demand for flesh, dairy, leather, and wool. If your initial reaction to this is confusion, don't worry -- it gets worse.
When I first went vegan, I experienced the same revelations that a number of people experience once they begin investigating animal rights issues in depth. I was blown away to learn just how much everything is tied together -- and just how much the vast majority of us simply don't know about the far-reaching effects (and influence) of animal agriculture, all animal agriculture, not just so-called factory farming. And one of the many areas where animal agriculture -- for meat, dairy, wool, leather, and so on -- is the bully asserting its power and causing destruction is the habitat and very lives of wildlife, or free-living animals.
Trespassing Hunters Kill People, Violate Rights, and Still Get Protection
Published November 28, 2009 @ 12:39PM PT
Well, isn't this just lovely. Men out looking for bears to kill in northern Pennsylvania trespassed on another gun owner's land on Tuesday, and sometime after the latter man confronted the hunters, there was a shoot-out. The 63-year-old landowner (for the record, I hate this word and concept, but that's another matter entirely) is dead. And the 23-year-old who was on the other end of the shoot-out was injured.
Violence breeds violence. It's a lot easier to kill your fellow humans when you're already in the habit of killing -- and when you're toting around lethal weapons for the purpose of killing.
And what else can result from hunters defiantly trespassing in their search for animals to kill? The property owners who try to stop them, even just verbally, can be arrested under hunter harassment laws. And no, I'm not kidding.
Thanksgiving Dilemmas: Family, Tension, Killing, and Compassion
Published November 24, 2009 @ 09:34AM PT
Thanksgiving. Two days to go. I have a hard time with this day. For one, I have issues with it that resemble my issues with Columbus Day. And when you're discomfited by a holiday's origins, and its current traditions are overwhelmingly exploitative and violent too, it can be difficult as a progressive, antioppression-minded animal advocate to decide how you want to approach this day.
Nevertheless, I am going to a family gathering on Thursday, like I do every year, with three dozen other people -- grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins and their spouses, and cousins' kids. I am from the heartland, from a close-knit family in the rural Midwest. And you don't miss family holiday gatherings unless you have to. But holidays are difficult. The jokes about what I do eat -- and whom I don't eat -- are hard to take. Watching my mother cut up a dead bird isn't the highlight of my day. Envisioning who that bird used to be and what she went through is not a happy, thankful experience. If it weren't for my grandparents, maybe I wouldn't feel the need to put myself through such occasions, but my beloved grandparents are still here with us, and that is something for which, yes, I do give thanks.
So I am going. And I will be expected to keep my mouth shut, to not tell my family about the animal whose flesh they're tearing into, to not dispel their illusions, to not make them feel guilt over the suffering they've funded and over which they're laughing. If I so much as roll my eyes or make a snide remark under my breath, I will be considered rude and pushy about my "beliefs." If they stick a fork in my face with a piece of animal hanging from it or make jokes about the dead animal they're eating, that will be considered acceptable and "good-natured."
Rape. Mutilation and amputation. Broken legs. Heart attacks. Terror. Slit throats. Yes, so many reasons to be thankful for the carcass on the table.
Columbus Day and Oppression -- Against Humans, Against Animals, Against Nature
Published October 12, 2009 @ 07:56AM PT
I am no fan of Columbus Day. In the way of brief explanation, here is my sarcastic tweet on Columbus Day last year: "Happy Invade, Conquer, Enslave, Exploit, Infect, and Kill Day, everyone!" That our nation continues to celebrate this day and this man -- and this era and what humans did to fellow humans during it -- baffles me; it is insulting and embarrassing that we commemorate this with a holiday. But as Tracy Chapman says (see the end of this post), "The ghost of Columbus haunts this world." And the continued celebration also gives me something to think about today -- about our human obsession with conquering and controlling all that and whom we can, from land and water to our fellow humans and our fellow animals.
Animals, Nonviolence, and the International Day of Peace
Published September 21, 2009 @ 02:40PM PT
Today is the International Day of Peace, calling for nonviolence and ceasefire, as I learned last night from Kelly of easyVegan.info. And although my plans to post on a related topic this afternoon have been derailed along with the rest of my day, I'm lucky that Kelly (also a periodic contributor to this blog) wrote her thoughtful post on the topic last night, including this:
The day’s “ceasefire” most certainly does not include the millions of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, horses, dogs, rats, seals, foxes and other domestic and wild-living nonhuman animals who will be slaughtered for food, clothing, vivisection, entertainment and the like. Quite the contrary: humans’ exploitation of nonhumans will continue, unabated, throughout the day and across the globe.
