Many white settlers here in North America like to feel better about themselves when they think they're taking the moral high ground based on others actions...
I'm better than ________.
At least I'm not a ______.
You name it .. a racist, a manipulative person, a sexist, a con-artist, a rapist, an abuser, a murderer, a thief, a gunman, a mysogynist, a nazi, a bigot, a pedophile, a smuggler, a killer...
..a *gulp*... trump supporter?!
...the list goes on and on...
And sure.. some ppl are trash.. hell, lots of ppl are trash!
But are you really better?
So maybe you never shot up a school, or raped babies, or blew up a bunch of nuns, or whatever the fuck else..
..but are you really going to call yourself a good/moral/wise person based on what you DON'T do?!
All kinds of awful people of ALL kinds exist.. but if you're a white colonizer living on stolen indigenous land you're sure as shit still one of them.
Get off your high horse and think of yourself as one of the bad people already.
Then go do something about it.
It's easier to think of other bad behaviors and people (like racists) as a lost cause..
...as those "other" awful people you simply can't stand to look at or talk to..
Yeah, well indigenous folks and POC don't like fucking dealing with opressors either. They're just forced to endure us every damn second of every damn day against their will. That's forced upon their lives.
I try to do good. I know that consistently open/non-judgemental dialog can and does change the minds and hearts of bad ppl over time. I know because I changed.
I grew up surrounded by abuse.
I was taught to abuse.
As a youngster, I abused.
I also choose not to abuse now.
I unlearned that shit.
(Thnks, feminism/therapy/friends/allies..)
People aren't born monsters.
Racism isn't biologically innate in certain humans.. it's learned.
I also know I'm not going to change minds by preaching to the choir either.
It's always seemed unfair (for me as a priviledged/rich/whiteIDd person) to not actively use my many privileges to try to dismantle systemic and internalized racism every chance I possibly get.
So I choose to talk to racists...
Because I am part of the problem.
...and I owe it to others to be part of the solution.
I don't like dialog with bigots anymore than anyone else.. but my education was never about me or for me. It was never about making things easier for me.
(the world doesn't revolve around me)
.....my education was in solidarity alongside those allowing me to be an ally.
I went to school on Duwamish land.. not for myself, but for all those who can't.
Why not strike up a conversation with a shitty person today?
I brought up human animals in my last post for this concept continuation here.. inspired again by a facebook post...
Oh, Facebook.
It's easier to understand violence against humans as human animals because we more easily empathize with violence against ourselves. It's a matter of perspective. Race, gender, and sexuality are much easier to internalize than the suffering of, say, rats.. bc we use concepts like race, gender, and sexuality to identify ourselves. It's personal.
My friend made a statement wherein she noted "I just can't empathize w the people who feel so strongly about their choices that they try to force them on everyone else." I find this incredibly telling.
This would describe the way some spoke/still speak about slavery abolition, the women's rights movement, recognition of transgender folks, BLM, etc... they were/are all philosophical movements that non-oppressed folks tried to explain as "forced" on them when seeing the issues as outside themselves. But for any person self-identfied in one of those groups, it's always phrased radically different than force... Why?
The problem these issues all shared is that we historically always made them about us, the privileged, not them the opressed. Our jobs, not immigrant lives... our morality, not trans kids lives... our cheap labor, not slaves free lives.. our economy, not poor folks healthcare.. it's always me, me, me.. never them.
I'd argue that vegan abolitionists aren't "forcing" anything on any of us in the slightest... the only real force is the steel bars and fences physically holding hundreds of millions of sentient lives in perpetual slavery.
A friend of mine posted on FB today about how she finds some vegans in Seattle particularly ferocious.. speaking in terms it seemed about their ideology; and she ended up mentioning at the end of her post that she'd have a cheeseburger to that avail.. as if for self-care.
This seemed so incredibly harsh to me... I had to put my thoughts down on this today about why... why does a movement that's specifically about OTHERS always come back to our validation of it? Why do we work so hard at erasure of others feelings? Why me, me me.. vs them them them... Specifically when so many are dying horrific deaths (both non-human animal, and humans alike)?
My thoughts continue..
It's critical to understand difference here in understanding why some seem militant about a cause, while we might not.
I preface by noting that it's in many ways unfair for me to equate non-human animal rights liberation to something like human rights liberation, because every struggle is experienced uniquely by those oppressed... so I can't, for example, compare CAFOs directly to the halocaust, because that acts as erasure; the halocaust was uniquely about the systemic murder and eradication of Jewish ppl (and other oppressed uniquly human ethnicities at that time like queer ppl). That being said.. abolitionist vegans or animal activists often identified as vegan see and feel and experience many similarities in the way humans oppress certain non-human animals with violence, to the way we also oppress certain human populations with violence.
So, abolitionist vegans fight for the rights of all animals (human and non-human alike) similarly to the way we think about Antifa fighting fascism or BLM fighting white supremacy. It's a very real ongoing daily war to them bc it's incredibly fucking personal. Much like race and class wars are very real to the people they uniquely oppress; we hear you.. solidarity can be found in this inherent violence.
I don't feel I can speak to this struggle the same way abolitionist women vegans of color can.. they really lead much of the way on this; but it does speak volumes to me about how solidarity can help fuel this incredible need for empathy.
Not everyone can wrap their mind around black violent experience or non-human animal violent experience.. we can instead always try to find modes of solidarity to try our best to listen and empathize alongside others struggles... we so desperately need to look outside ourselves in this way. We find commonality in veganism as we are ALL animals who can all uniquely suffer. I hope this shared perspective works to bring us together as abolishionist veganism grows. None of us are free until we're all free.
For the record, you can't save a life, you can only extend it.
All life ends, and every one of us will end, it's just a matter of how (when is erelevant) as far as any individual life is concerned.
The only reason we value longevity in others is because we're trained to.
Dieing alongside our tribe is instinctual, but in a state-controlled system (one that thrives on the continual labor of our bodies, commodifying our existence and our livelihoods) ...suicide, death, and choosing not to procreate is tremendously detrimental.
The second we (anyone part of a large nation state) start to take control of our own bodies and our own futures, the system falls apart rather quickly; It's our national duty to stay alive as long as possible to support the state.
Live fast and die happy, friends.
It'll be over before you know it.
This is a copy and paste yelp review from a chicks visit to the Snoqualmie Casino seafood buffet.
Just so good I had to repost it :) ------->
<3
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"(docked a star cuz the line took forever and a day)
Sunday was King Crab buffet night at the Snoqualmie Casino (regularly priced at $34.95 per person). With a combination of coupons, card points, and discounts, I calculated that a king crab buffet gorge for two people would come out to a grand total of $12.95. Total steal!
As the proud offspring of an extremely large first-generation Asian family, I have been trained from birth to take full advantage of an all-you-can-eat buffet in the most economical way. So on that lovely Sunday evening, my buffet routine went a little like this:
(1) Stop eating the night before. This applies for buffet breakfasts, brunches, lunches, and YES- dinners, on the following day. You may ingest some water if your stomach acids start acting up to the point of moderate discomfort.
(2) Drive to buffet. Pay cashier.
(3) Quickly scan the layout of the buffet area, and identify the seafood section. You will NOT dare to even LOOK at the other food choices available, as they are most likely carbo-loaded inexpensive "filler" foods, intended to trick you.
(4) However, do load up on a plate of desserts to begin with. Because, if you do your buffet-ing right, there is no way you will enjoy it after your hefty meal.
(5) Request a table that has an unobstructed, direct path to the king crab booth.
(6) If beverages are complimentary (which they usually are), skip and ask for water instead. Carbonated, sugary beverages are a sly tactic to get customers to fill up on cheap liquids and eat less. You will not fall for this!
(7) Pick up a plate of king crab. Devour.
(8) Repeat Step 7 until your body starts showing strong signs of rejection (inability to swallow, shallow breathing, desire to vomit).
(9) Crawl out and call it a night.
Now, as I was happily getting into my third plate of delicious, meaty crab leg, a teenage girl and her parents sat down in the booth next to us. Apparently, they were buffet virgins, as I overheard the father explaining to the two women what a buffet was. "No one is coming to serve you", he said to his disappointed daughter. "You have to get up and take a plate, and you can get whatever you want, okay?". The girl sighed, got up, and came back....with two slices of pizza. I openly rolled my eyes in disgust. When the waiter came over to offer her a complimentary beverage, she refused and whined for a chocolate milkshake until her parents forked out $3.75 for one. Inconceivable! I murmured to JL, "Si fuera mi hija (if that were my daughter)...PASH!*". Smack the daughter for consuming carbohydrates at a seafood buffet, smack the mother for raising her daughter wrong.
When I have children, I will purposely malnutrition them so that they can get the child's buffet price for a few extra years. I will burn their Pokemon cards and Hello Kitty pencil boxes if they dare to eat on the day of a buffet. And if they do not eat their money's worth, I am leaving them unattended at a Chuck-E-Cheese, with zero tokens and no cell phone. They shall learn, the hard way. But they shall learn.
That is all.
* PASH [n.]: the sound of a chancla (sandal) as it hits the wrongdoer upside the head, usually to teach a lesson."
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Omg, this woman is amazing.
My trick to healthy eating... it's quite simple in concept, but requires planning.
...don't make any changes to the particular dishes and foods you love, just choose to increase the quality of the ingredients you're using in them.
Challenge yourself to not eat ANYTHING out of a container or out of a wrapper... instead use fresh hand-picked market fruits and veggies, fresh seafood and meats cut straight from the butcher or farmers market (quality means grainfed and unprocessed or minimally processed), fresh cut cheeses from local markets, quick homemade yogurt (make it in a crock pot while at work for dirt cheap), use high quality whole grains, rice, legumes and pastas from bulk bins, and make sure to have a well-stocked pantry of spices and meal starter basics like soy sauce, vinegars, oils, mustard, pickles, peanut butter, olives, etc that make the bases of most other sauces/glazes/favors, etc... the stuff that easily helps us make those basics we often forget we can easily prepare ourselves.. like ketchup, teriyaki, marinara, peanut sauce, etc... which otherwise (in processed form) lack the nutritional value and flavor profile we crave in quality meals.
When we eat from bottles and boxes we're missing out big-time on flavor profiles and freshness, plus the processed versions often contain excessive fillers, starches, binders, corn syrups, oils, excessive salt, dyes, etc.. which not only make food taste poorly, but are generally less nutritionally dense after processing (by nature to be shelf-stable).
Follow the zero packaging (cooking and uncooking) challenge and you're pretty much guaranteed to eat insanely healthy.. but more importantly, you're eating fresh n' tasty as fuck! :) Mmmm.
<3
