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Viewpoint Archives 07 12/2007 11/2007 10/2007 09/2007 08/2007 07/2007 06/2007 05/2007 04/2007 03/2007 02/2007 01/2007 Viewpoint
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SVS Viewpoint archives |
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| December 2007 | ||
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Non-vegans, vegans, and
government leaders unite
Web author Arthur Poletti returns to SVS Viewpoint this month with a unique message: one that is at the core of the modern animal rights movement, but one that, sadly, is all too often completely missed: unity among all of us. Poletti's writing is often visionary. And so, with our eyes and senses hopefully cast toward 2008, SVS presents a new essay by Arthur Poletti. Our world’s human population today, in
my opinion, needs to begin to focus on just one thing. The benefits for humans, animals, the
Earth, and the Earth’s atmosphere call out for this dire need for
consensus and understanding. Most of our suffering and worry today stems
from our use and abuse of animals, and our ignorance regarding the
levels of carbon that we as humans are placing into the atmosphere on a
daily basis. Arthur Poletti |
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| November 2007 | ||
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No Apologies
Salem Vegan Society Business Manager Kim Hyder recently traveled to the Farm Sanctuary animal-care farm in Watkins Glen, central New York, where she attended the Critter Care seminar. Critter Care teaches individuals who are considering opening their own farm sanctuary how to provide the best care for animals. Here are some thoughts that the seminar evoked in Hyder.
What can I say? What can I write? What can I do? When will all of this end? How long will we have to endure this? This is very frustrating, to say the least. And I am writing, outside of captivity, as a free individual.
I’m writing following a weekend visit to Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York, during which I took part in a weekend seminar called, Critter Care.
According to the Farm Sanctuary Web site: the Critter Care event is a “shelter training conference for people interested in learning more about caring for rescued farm animals.”
The intensive, two-day seminar includes farm animal care training, including basic health care needs, proper restraint techniques, and animal housing and facilities design.
During the seminar I attended, we also received information on shelter administration, shelter fundraising, and shelter media and outreach programs.
Farm Sanctuary was founded in 1986 by Gene and Lori Bauston, and since that time, the New York and California shelters have rescued thousands of animals, and have educated millions of people who might otherwise remain largely unaware of the almost unspeakable horrors inflicted on farm animals on a daily basis at thousands of “factory farms” throughout the United States.
The brutality, torture, and ultimate death for most of these farmed animals is almost unspeakable for most American citizens today.
How much longer will we continue to inflict the degradation, humiliation, suffering, and pain upon these poor, defenseless creatures? How much longer will we have to view the raw, horrific undercover images taken at factory farms?
I refuse to offer any sort of apology for these questions, these musings. This remains, as it has from the beginning, a life or death situation. Not your life, but the lives of billions of special creations sharing the Earth with us. Each animal life has an inestimable value.
Therefore, there are no compromises, negotiations, rationalizations that can possibly enter into this tragic story.
I believe that there is, presently, an almost complete breakdown of our so-called “culture” and our “educated society” that tolerates this kind of abuse.
What kind, compassionate, educated individual believes that torturing an animal is “okay?”
Ask anyone you happen to be near right now, or who you might encounter momentarily, and you will undoubtedly get the same response from everyone: “Of course it’s not okay to hurt animals.”
When we stop for a moment to look at the statistics, how many animals are killed and consumed each year in the US, we can see that a massive amount of public education is needed.
But how do we educate others so that all of these statistics might finally “sink in?”
If we, as a people, only allowed to take place on “farms” (factory farms), those incidents which we “allow” or which we “expect” to take place in our own backyards, or on our own front steps, where present-day “civility” can be clearly witnessed daily, the problem would not exist.
If we looked outside our window now and witnessed an animal being electrocuted, or stepped on, or kicked, or stabbed with a knife, or having its throat slit, or with its legs stuck in a pit filled with stale urine and feces, unable to move, wouldn’t we stop what we’re doing to assist them?
Well, I have news for you. This is what’s going on in our “backyards,” on our “front steps.” Only all of this is happening in horrific barns, breeding sheds, and slaughtering plants called factory farms.
Now that you are aware of this, will you take the time to help make others aware of what’s happening? This is what is needed, now, as you read this. Most people simply remain either unaware or unaccepting of what's happening. And they need education, and awakening, possibly from you.
Our world is currently full of apathy on a massive scale. We’ve lost a very important connection to each other. And the bottom line is: it’s not we who are paying the highest cost, it’s the animals, who in fact deserve all of the rights and freedoms that we currently enjoy.
Where is the passion, the protest, the outrage? There are leafleting opportunities through People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM), Farm Sanctuary, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Massachusetts Animal Rights Coalition (MARC), and other similar groups in various states, and even internationally.
Believe it or not, there are even leafleting opportunities here monthly in Salem through SVS.
Have we all become numb? Helpless? Overwhelmed? Are we afraid to say to our friends, our family, our co-workers: “Look what I read today about these animals on factory farms,” or “Look what I saw today on the Internet." We can no longer assume that the things we know are known by others.
We confront other people every day and convey both the vital and the trivial to them in our messages. Can’t we find the compassion and the humility in our hearts to finally speak the words, “I learned this today about animals. Would you consider helping them, too, with me?”
What if each person who is able to afford dinner for one other person did so? Hunger would end. What if each person who finds violence toward others repulsive acted to prevent it? Violence would soon end.
Studies have been conducted in which it has been found that the crime rate is dramatically reduced in close-knit communities. In these communities, the people police each other. So, is this type of close-knit “policing” and crime reduction possible within the world community, on a global scale? Yes, it is!
But we have to start with each other first, with our neighbors, our families, our friends and our co-workers, and show that we care about each other, and about animals.
I think what bothers me the most about the lack of what is possible in this regard is that, honestly, we’re not talking brain surgery here. We’re simply talking about communication and caring at the most basic human level. It really is as simple as that, but somehow, we've made it much more difficult.
Once we as individuals are aware of what is currently happening to animals on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, when we fail to convey this message to those with whom we associate with daily, pro-actively, outwardly, we are tacitly acting as accomplices of the factory farm owners, and of the slaughterhouse butchers.
I beg each one of you reading this message today, to reach out each and every day to educate those around you, to calmly and carefully instruct them on how we can begin to move away from this ill pandemic that currently runs throughout our now complicit and apathetic society.
By kindly asking the grocery store clerk: “Do you notice the poor lobsters in the tank there slowing dying, day in and day out?” By asking your boss at work: “Would it be possible to have an equal number of vegan entrees at our next office party?” It doesn’t have to be harsh. It can be simply an observation, stated with compassion and conviction.
Let’s all continue this fight, together, as new pioneers within the movement. The modern animal rights movement began as early as the 1940’s with the formation of the first Vegan Society in the United Kingdom, and began to be documented in the early 1970’s at Oxford, and then with the publication of Peter Singer’s seminal work, Animal Liberation.
We may not see great changes in our own lifetime. But if each one of us continues to spread this simple message, about caring for animals and about veganism, to those we meet on a daily basis, kindly, gently, but with conviction and courage, the changes will come.
But we need to have foresight and strength. Our numbers as animal rights activists are currently low. But, hopefully, if luck continues to be on our side, those numbers will continue to grow. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and to understand this message. I am honored to be among like-minded souls. Now, please, do not fail to act.
For more information: Farm Sanctuary's New York Critter Care Conference
To help support Farm Sanctuary's work: Donate to Farm Sanctuary |
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| October 2007 | ||
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COK Investigation: Life inside a turkey hatchery
The print publication for DC-based animal rights group, Compassion Over Killing (COK), previously called The Abolitionist, has a new look and a new name, Compassionate Action, with its Winter/Spring 2007 issue. This October, SVS proudly presents a special investigative report and video obtained by COK at a North Carolina turkey hatchery. Viewer discretion is advised.
Every year in the United States, nearly 250 million turkeys are raised and killed for human consumption. While the abuses these birds endure on factory farms and in slaughterhouses have slowly been garnering the public’s attention in recent years, the treatment of newly-hatched chicks has been kept hidden behind closed doors—until COK’s groundbreaking investigation inside a hatchery.
For nearly three weeks during June and July of 2006, a COK investigator was employed at a turkey hatchery in North Carolina that now supplies Butterball. While there, the investigator witnessed and documented the hatchlings’ suffering as they began their short lives in the turkey industry.
What the video footage reveals is shocking: from the moment they’re hatched, these turkeys are submerged into a world of misery. Dumped out of metal trays and jostled onto conveyor belts after being mechanically separated from cracked egg shells, the newly-hatched turkeys are tossed around like inanimate objects—they are sorted, sexed, de-beaked, de-toed, and in some cases de-snooded before they are packed up and shipped off to a “grow out” confinement facility.
The video further shows that not all chicks survive this harsh process. Countless chicks become mangled from the machinery, are suffocated in plastic bags, or deemed “surplus” and dumped (along with injured chicks) into the same disposal system as the discarded egg shells they were separated from hours earlier.
When most people think about where eggs come from, they’re likely to conjure up idyllic images of Old MacDonald’s Farm. This should come as no surprise since such picturesque scenes adorn many egg cartons found on grocery store shelves across the United States. Consumers also face a barrage of assertions aiming to assuage their concern about animal cruelty. These images and claims on egg cartons, however, don’t necessarily reflect how the hens who laid those eggs were actually treated. Nor do they legally have to.
While federal agencies have already taken on the task of regulating and mandating a variety of health and safety claims consumers see on egg cartons, the use of animal welfare labels is currently unregulated in the United States. This enables egg producers to advertise pictures of happy hens roaming around outside or stamp phrases like “animal-friendly” and “naturally raised” on cartons indiscriminately—even if those eggs were laid by hens intensively confined inside wire battery cages. In fact, the dismal reality is that more than 95% of eggs produced in the U.S. come from caged hens forced to spend their lives inside battery cages so restrictive, they can barely even move.
Common egg industry practices, however, enjoy little public support. Polls show that the overwhelming majority of consumers are opposed to the use of battery cages. Yet this cruel method of production, which has been banned in several countries in Europe based on welfare concerns, continues to dominate the U.S. egg industry. To make matters worse, with no federal regulations in place to prevent deceptive animal welfare labeling, claims on egg cartons can—and commonly do—mislead consumers with false or exaggerated claims. In other words, not only is the egg industry cruelly confining hens in cages, it’s also deceiving consumers about that abuse.
Taking Action
In September 2006, COK, along with Penn Law Animal Law Project filed a rule-making petition with the Food and Drug Administration requesting that the agency address this rampant use of misrepresentations on egg cartons. The petition specifically outlines the dire need for mandatory labels on egg cartons clearly identifying production methods. If approved, battery cage egg producers would be required to stamp their cartons with the phrase: “Eggs from Caged Hens.” Read the full text of our petition in PDF format.
Read the full text of our petition and to learn more about how you can make a difference for egglaying hens.
The Turkey Industry
Of the nearly 250 million turkeys slaughtered for food in the U.S. each year, roughly 42.5 million of these birds are raised in North Carolina, making it the nation’s second largest turkey producing state (Minnesota is the first). The turkey hatchery where COK’s investigator worked for nearly three weeks is owned by Goldsboro Milling Company, a company that recently announced its acquisition of 51% of the shares of Butterball, LLC, the industry’s most widely recognized brand name and now the nation’s largest producer of turkey products.
While employed at a North Carolina turkey hatchery that now supplies Butterball, a COK investigator documented the conditions forced upon newly-hatched chicks. As the investigation video shows, from the moment they’re hatched, these turkeys are submerged into a world of misery. Dumped out of metal trays and jostled onto conveyor belts after being mechanically separated from cracked egg shells, the newly-hatched turkeys are tossed around like inanimate objects—they are sorted, sexed, de-beaked, de-toed, and in some cases de-snooded before they are packed up and shipped off to a “grow out” confinement facility. The video further reveals that not all chicks survive this harsh process. Countless chicks become mangled from the machinery, suffocated in plastic bags, or deemed “surplus” and dumped (along with injured chicks) into the same disposal system as the discarded egg shells they were separated from hours earlier.
The Investigation: Working Inside a Turkey Hatchery
In June and July of 2006, a COK investigator was employed at a North Carolina turkey hatchery for nearly three weeks. While there, he witnessed and documented the misery endured by newly-hatched chicks as they began their short lives in the turkey industry. As our investigator caught on camera, many chicks never even made it out of the hatchery alive. Those who survived the rough handling of the hatchery processing were shipped off to “grow out” confinement facilities where most of them will never set foot outside.
Turkeys are typically slaughtered for food when they are just 4 to 5 months old, meaning that the birds filmed during COK’s investigation in June and July were being raised for Thanksgiving dinner tables.
Support Compassion Over Killing's Work
If you found this COK investigative report useful and informative, Salem Vegan Society encourages you to support COK's work. You can donate to COK online. COK merchandise is also available for purchase, which also supports their work. SVS is proud to have this opportunity to network and to share ideas among other activists and other vegan and animal rights groups such as Compassion Over Killing. Please support our work this fall. Salem Vegan Society also accepts donations online.
Coming in November
In November, the Viewpoint page will present our own special report, on a more positive note, obtained by SVS Business Manager Kim Hyder, during a recent trip to Farm Sanctuary's Watkins Glen farm. Hyder spent a weekend in September observing and taking classes to discover what living and working at Farm Sanctuary is actually like, and she'll be sharing her observations with Viewpoint. |
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| September 2007 | ||
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Veganism on campus
In the past 10 years, college meal plans have made advances in giving vegan students what they want. Vegan options on campus now have variety, taste, and are incorporated into the meal plan. Vegans no longer have to resort to the salad bar. About one quarter now favor veganism. Will these numbers continue to rise? What's more: Are they really good enough?
One of the most exciting developments in veganism in recent years is the expansion of the vegan options now being offered to students on college campuses. A quick review of the menu options now available on most college campuses shows that most, if not all, colleges and universities are offering at least one vegan option on their daily breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus. And the quality tends to be improving. Not in all cases, but in some.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when this trend toward offering vegan options in campus dining halls began. At least the most current trend. Some colleges have offered, technically at least, some vegan options for many years, but often the options were nutritionally incomplete and somewhat boring. For example, a college dining hall might offer a salad bar, but not any substantial vegan protein options, or any real vegan variety, flavor, or substance.
By the mid-1990’s, with the rise of the Internet and the Information Age, along with the emergence of a stronger, bolder vision within the vegan and animal rights movement, the often anemic dining hall salad bar lost its standing as a college vegetarian Mecca. It began to be replaced by the leading corporate dining services – Aramark, Chartwells, and Sodexho Marriott – who began to actively respond to student dining surveys and overall vegan trends, and to actively, often in a very positive, substantive way, include vegan options into their standard daily menus.
By 2001, the number of news articles and college food service press releases began to increase, such as this one posted in Nation’s Restaurant News in February 2001:
Sodexho Marriott debuts vegan menu at Ithaca College
ITHACA, N.Y. - Following a successful test at Ithaca College here, Sodexho Marriott is beginning to roll out its new vegan menu at its higher-education accounts.
According to Sarah Cody, spokeswoman for the company's Education Services division, the 16-recipe vegan platform is being rolled out this year at the University of Vermont, Babson College in Babson Park, Mass., and Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala.
"Just because a food is vegan doesn't mean it has to be boring," said Matt Mantini, who is executive chef for the Education division and did lead the development team that wrote the recipes. "We knew it was important to create food that was both healthful and delicious. The students seem to agree, we've had a tremendous response to the new menu."
Among the items on the menu are mushroom risotto cakes, Turkish grilled eggplant sandwiches, grilled-herbed polenta cakes, and grilled zucchini with olive tapenade.
A far cry from a plateful of watery iceberg lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and a few garbanzo beans.
In June 2005, Aramark Corporation, which provides managed food services to more than 400 colleges and universities in the US, issued this press release via its corporate Web site:
Vegan Options More Popular Than Ever on College Campuses
ARAMARK Focuses on Meeting Customer Needs in Honor of Vegan World Day
PHILADELPHIA, June 21, 2005 - ARAMARK nationwide research has revealed that, out of more than 100,000 college students surveyed, nearly a quarter said finding vegan meals on campus - which contain no meat, fish, poultry or other products derived from animals such as dairy, eggs or honey - was important to them.
To better serve its customers and in honor of Vegan World Day on June 21st, ARAMARK, a worldwide provider of managed services, has increased its number of vegan menu items on campuses and continues to work with campus vegetarian and vegan resource groups to meet customer demand…
Training chefs and food servers for vegan dishes is critical and focuses on close inspection of ingredient labels, proper separation of ingredients during storage, preparation and service to protect against contact with animal-based products, and designation of utensils as "for vegan only" to give customers confidence in the meals being served…
For instance, students at the University of Pennsylvania are being treated to vegan items in their residential dining facilities. Menu items range from salad bars with vegetarian protein options, pasta dishes and desserts, including the popular Vegan Carrot Cake with Tofutti Cream Cheese Icing. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's new Rams Head Center, a station dubbed, Lean & Green hosts a full salad and fruit bar, soups, and made-to-order vegetarian and vegan selections. The on-campus grocery store at The George Washington University features an organic and vegan-vegetarian section and Wesleyan University in Connecticut is home to the First Harvest Vegan Cafe, a "green" food bar that provides a wide selection of vegan and organic offerings and incorporates local sustainable foods.
Further, examining several other college dining service menus at random via their Web sites yields more of the same. One example is Pennsylvania’s Allegheny College, which lists their daily menus divided into easy-to-read categories that include: Pasta, Pizza, Salad, Grill, Deli, and Vegan. The vegan options listed sound tempting and nutritious, including Portobello Sandwich and Country Vegetable Sandwich; Spice Market Hummus Wraps; and Moo Shu Vegetables over Rice.
It’s important to note that while these are great advances for college students and for the college food service industry as a whole, these services are by no means vegan. In each Web listing, the predominant menu listings are not vegan. They are made up for the most part of the usual, traditional college food service entrees and side dishes. Most of the pizza, pasta, salad, grill, and deli choices are comprised of beef, pork, chicken, fish, dairy, and egg ingredients.
While the vegan options have increased for students, they still only comprise a fraction of what is available on the food services’ menus daily. In reviewing the college menus, the non-vegan versus vegan ratio averages about 5 to 1. What has actually occurred with college and university food service menu options is that, while they have added more options for vegan students, the change actually amounts to merely a societal update, or reality check, that reflects what is currently occurring in the real world, outside of college. Is this good? The answer depends upon your own perspective and your vegan (or perhaps non-vegan) experience.
On the plus side, more students have responded to dining hall or application food surveys indicating a vegan or vegetarian preference, and the food service corporations, colleges, and universities have responded in kind, often, as stated, in a quite beneficial and generous way toward vegan students. This is probably due to the numbers. ARAMARK states that of 100,000 students responding to their survey, nearly one quarter indicated a vegan/vegetarian preference. Those numbers are difficult to ignore, especially considering the average cost that students' families are paying for their meal plan, in some cases as much as $4,000 - $5,000 or more per semester.
New York’s Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, whose meal plans costs between $4,200 and $4,700 per student, per semester, has actually introduced Vegan Cooking Seminars to assist students who already utilize a vegan sautéing station as a part of their Campus Dining plan. According to the Vassar site, chef Jack Freeman provides students with a course in “Vegan Station Basics,” a hands-on demonstration “aimed at students who want to know how to get started sautéing on their own or veterans of the Vegan station who just have some questions.”
Vassar’s effort in this regard is certainly laudable, and exemplary of what college students “should be” learning about vegan cooking and eating. (If not college, then where?) Regrettably, what’s happening at Vassar is probably not representative of most colleges and universities today. Furthermore, a quick look beyond the “Vegan Cooking Seminars” page, to Vassar’s Campus Dining daily menu, reveals, as suspected, a generous number of non-vegan entrees, with vegan options comprising about one-fifth of the daily menu entrees offered.
Leaving the Vassar site to review the latest vegan demographic statistics at The Vegan Research Panel (VRP), reveals that in the year 2000, a mere 0.9 percent of the US population overall was vegan; a number that actually decreased from a previous figure gained in 1997 of one percent. The same site also states that most people, 52 percent, became vegan between the ages of 16 and 24, and that the average vegan today is most likely to be under 35 and female. Seventeen percent became vegan under the age of 15, and 21 percent turned vegan between the ages of 21 and 34, with the numbers falling sharply after the age of 34.
Therefore, while the news about college dining services and meal plans becoming more vegan friendly is certainly good news, a closer look at what is actually happening on campus, in a relative sense - and at the still exceptionally small percentage of the US population overall that is “vegan” (as of 2000) - we can see that what is actually happening on campus is, as is often the case, simply a reflection of what is happening in the real world. And from a purely vegan perspective, that’s not really all that great.
As we’ve learned in other recent Viewpoint articles, even with the advent of the so-called Information Age, in which we’re all currently thriving, change tends to happen painfully slowly, especially if you happen to be sitting in a cage preparing to become someone’s lunch. Ironically, according to the VRP statistics, college is where most people discover veganism and become vegan. As the English philosopher Herbert Spencer noted, “The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action." If only college administrators could somehow rub elbows with the college Philosophy Department… the greatest good and all. The wheels of change continue to turn, but ever so slowly. |
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| August 2007 | ||
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Vegan Poet
The first thing that comes to mind in reading M. Butterflies Katz' poetry is a strong sense of force and power. That's fitting, since Katz strives to promote veganism. A vegan chef & essayist, she has recently written and published a collection of vegan poetry, Metamorphosis. Our Viewpoint page inspired her to write the poem, WE WILL, published for the first time here this month.
WE WILL
We will always be mindful of spreading the word, that the vegan ideal is the best we have heard. Our love for the animals will guide what we say. We will express what we know in a gentle way. We will be the example of the truth that we teach, so that people can witness the heights they can reach. By maintaining our bodies in excellent health, we exemplify a vegan’s bountiful wealth.
We will share all the plant foods that vegans can eat, all the vibrant colors, both savory and sweet. With our food and our stamina being so good, people will see that they haven’t understood; how important it is for our diet to evolve, and the planetary problems that we can resolve. For the vegan concept will magically bring a multitude of benefits to everything.
We will strive to expand our heartfelt compassion until loving animals is a world-wide fashion. We won’t pay for by-products like blood and bone, but will make our gardens veganically grown. We will read the ingredients before we buy. Our dollars won’t require an animal to die. We will oppose cruelty with each passing year, until all of the animals can live free of fear.
We won’t give up until that awaited day arrives when it’s inconceivable to exploit other lives. There will come a time, when people will wonder how, man could earn his living by slaughtering a cow. We will bring about a gentle and new age when the innocent are free from all human rage. We will be vegan and usher in a world of peace, heading toward that time when speciesism will cease.
By M. Butterflies Katz
Dear Viewpoint readers,
The Salem Vegan Society’s Viewpoint page inspired me to write “WE WILL." In my life, the inspiration for my writing has come from nearly 30 years of being vegan, and 38 years of being an ethical vegetarian, during which time I have witnessed the blossoming of the vegan ideal all over the planet.
The movement was hardly alive when I became vegan. You hardly ever heard the word vegan. Now, there are vegan shopping sites, vegan restaurants all over the globe, hundreds of vegan cookbooks, vegan societies, vegan festivals, and more. It has been amazing to be a part of the growth of the Vegan Movement.
On
the other hand, we who have been in the movement for a long time, wonder
why it is taking so long to end all the suffering. One could
become discouraged. But because of my love for the animals, I persevere
in my mission to be an instrument of inspiration. My writing is my vegan
activism. I write articles and poetry, and then send them out into the
world. I write from my personal experience of being vegan for so many
years. And I write from the knowledge I've gained from living a
quarter of a century within a vegan community and a non-profit educational
organization, Gentle World.
I
also love sharing the many benefits of living the vegan ideal. All
through my years at Gentle World, one of our methods has been to show
the public just how incredibly delicious vegan food is, so they can know that it is absolutely not a sacrifice in
taste. Whether it be through the two Celebrity Vegetarian Banquets we
held in Hollywood, the successful Vegan Restaurant that we've created in
Hawaii, our best-selling recipe books, our annual local fair promoting
plant-based food and products, or just feeding the many visitors who
come through our doors, our theme has been the same: A taste is worth
a thousand words!
M. Butterflies Katz
Here are two more poems by M. Butterflies, written expressly for the Viewpoint page.
BECAUSE I’M FEMALE By M.
Butterflies Katz WE ARE ALL ENTWINED Could it possibly be? We are all entwined. Each "me" a part of "we" We are all entwined. Every color, every face All members of the human race We are all entwined.
Both genders; straight or gay We are all entwined. Those who have lost their way We are all entwined. The old, the young, the rich, the poor And even those who live no more We are all entwined.
Those who shirk or labor We are all entwined. Each stranger or neighbor We are all entwined. All rats and cats and breeds of dogs And all the trees we turn to logs We are all entwined.
Those busy bees and ants We are all entwined. Fruiting and flowering plants We are all entwined. All furry creatures passing by And feathered things that skate the sky We are all entwined.
Green grass and shining sea We are all entwined. Even that which longs to be We are all entwined. The stars and moon that light the night The sun that makes our world so bright We are all entwined.
All life forms interweave We are all entwined. If we could just believe We are all entwined. these words would reach every land And all the world would understand We are all entwined.
By M. Butterflies Katz |
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| July 2007 | ||
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The Walk - A personal observation
“All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.”
Mark Twain
Sunday morning, June 24, 8 am. I am walking up the stairs of the Immaculate Conception Church on Hawthorne Boulevard in Salem with an elderly neighbor, who I’ve taken to Mass regularly for the past few months while she is recovering from a fall. Deeply religious and an ardent Catholic, the Mass and the sermon seem to help her mind, and the steps from the car to our seats in the front row of the bright nave seem to help her legs. I don’t question this. I’m simply assisting her.
On this particular Sunday, en route to church, at the intersection of Lafayette and Derby, we drive slowly past hundreds of walkers getting an early start in the North Shore Medical Center’s 2007 Cancer Walk. We glance at the participants through the windshield, walking on the side of the road, some in pairs, some in groups, or “teams,” dressed in the usual walking gear and hopefully doused with plenty of sun block, as the day is already turning out to be warm and sunny.
The walk (capitalized in NSMC and Partners Healthcare marketing as the WALK), an annual event in Salem, is anticipated and attended by thousands of individuals and families from the North Shore each year and raises hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. This year, the event drew 6,000 walkers. In 2006 it raised $995,000, with 2007 yet to tallied, but expected to surpass 2006’s total.
Similar to many of the regional walks for charities and various causes, the NSMC WALK is a relatively mild, family-oriented 10K (6.2 miles) that begins and ends at the Salem Willows Park. Participants register and obtain sponsors in advance of the walk date. According to the NSMC’s WALK site, the average walker raises $100, typically asking about 10 friends, neighbors, and co-workers for $10 each.
Participants are encouraged to form “teams,” often with catchy names, comprised of team “captains” and members. A quick glance through the “Tributes 2007” Cancer WALK booklet, included in a Salem News delivery as an advertisement prior to the walk, yields page after page of team captain and member names – thousands of them. In glancing through them, it becomes evident that the WALK is greatly respected and enjoyed by its participants, and that the WALK registration process is well-coordinated in Salem and on the North Shore.
In addition to individual sponsors, the WALK is also sponsored by several presenting and media companies, including, in 2007, General Electric, Eastern Bank, and Boston’s Channel 7, the regional NBC affiliate station, and by many national, regional, and local businesses who purchase display ads in the printed marketing brochure.
The purpose of all this money gathering and marketing, and of all the individual miles logged on the day of the event, in case you haven’t yet guessed, is to raise vast funds, annually, to support the North Shore Medical Center’s cancer research. A portion of the 2007 walk proceeds, along with portions of the 2008 and 2009 walks, are now being designated for a special fund that will help to build and establish the MGH/NSMC Cancer Center, which will be housed in the new MGH/NSMC Center for Outpatient Care in Danvers, a town north of Salem. Scheduled to open in February 2009, the Center’s construction cost is approximately $104 million.
Suddenly, $995,000 doesn’t seem like quite so much. Or does it? Let’s take closer look, from another perspective: a vegan perspective. A view which few, I suspect, if any, WALK participants are actively aware of.
A modern icon
According to the NSMC/Partners marketing brochure for the WALK, the new Cancer Center will occupy “44,000 square feet of the new Center for Outpatient Care, provide 24 infusion bays for chemotherapy; 4 linear accelerators for radiation therapy; 22 exam rooms; a blood lab and a pharmacy; a healing garden; a roof deck garden; a health resource library; and a café.
The brochure also provides a full-color artist’s rendering of the new Outpatient Center building. It shows a lavish, state-of-the-art building, with lots of floor-to-ceiling plate glass and a rich, marble-like appearance, overlooking a tranquil setting. The text next to the rendering reads:
"The new Cancer Center, located on the lower level, will have its own entrance overlooking tidal wetlands, providing soothing vistas and natural light to cancer patients during their chemotherapy treatments. It will feature the latest advances in medical oncology and radiation therapy, access to life-saving clinical trials, and the latest innovations in technology for patient safety and convenience, such as electronic medical records, [and] computerized physician order management."
First of all, lest anyone harbor any doubts as to the intention of this piece, I in no way wish to cast any negative light whatsoever upon the new Cancer Center. The new Danvers Cancer Center will undoubtedly provide untold assistance to countless cancer patients in the future, and will be a godsend to many. However, my intention is to point out that there is another side to this story, one that I feel should be pointed out, and one that has indeed been addressed by other authors and journalists in other vegan- and animal rights-related books and articles.
From a vegan perspective, the new NSMC Cancer Center may be viewed, in one sense, as a sort of modern icon. Many thousands of individuals, medical experts, for-profit and non-profit agencies, and businesses have spent, and will continue to spend, countless hours and dollars researching and building this fantastic, glamorous new state-of-the-art Center, which will provide state-of-the-art care to individuals who have unfortunately acquired cancer. And there is nothing at all wrong with this picture. The Center’s purpose and methods may certainly be viewed as correct and admirable.
Yet to the average vegan, and certainly to the well-read and well-informed vegan, the notion of the Cancer Center will probably still tend to revert back to an icon status, despite its noble purpose and intentions. Most vegans today are keenly aware of cancer and its many facets, how it’s acquired, and how to prevent it. Vegans know the facts and the statistics, because the transition from a meat diet, to a vegetarian diet, to veganism requires careful research and reading pertaining to health and nutrition. Vegans know that by eliminating all animal foods from their diets, their overall chance of living a completely healthy life, free from any cancer, greatly increases.
On the other hand, those who continue to eat meat and animal products may face a completely different, much more serious fate. It is these individuals, who continue along their traditional paths and ways of eating, who will certainly be among the first to show up at the doors of the new Cancer Center seeking cancer treatment. These individuals – most of whom will sadly remain forever unaware of what they’re subjecting their bodies to, not to mention to billions of farmed animals annually, and to the degradation of our environment – the Cancer Center may yet become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that those of us who have taken the time to learn these things – in our pursuit of vegan health, animal rights, and modern environmentalism – may be apt to view the new Danvers Cancer Center as iconic. An icon, as we know, is defined as “an object of uncritical devotion.” I can’t help wondering to myself, as each June I witness the thousands of participants in the annual NSMC WALK: “All of this time, effort, and money spent to raise millions of dollars to treat cancer and to erect a state-of-the-art Cancer Center, when most of these same individuals will return home at the end of the day to consume a plate of chicken, perhaps a hamburger, veal, pork, fish, eggs or dairy. They’re setting their bodies up for cancer, and they remain completely unaware of it.”
The World Peace Diet
Ironically, at about the same time that I am assisting my elderly friend up the steps of the Immaculate Conception Church, as the approximately 6,000 NSMC WALK participants are filing past us on Derby Street, I am also in the middle of reading Dr. Will Tuttle’s 2005 work, The World Peace Diet, and preparing to introduce Will at the Organic Garden Café in Beverly for a lecture, book signing, and vegan breakfast event in mid-July.
In addition to being a professional pianist, composer, teacher and an internationally-recognized lecturer on vegan and animal rights topics, Will Tuttle, in The World Peace Diet, has provided the global vegan and animal rights community with an invaluable work that remains the definitive tract within the current animal rights movement. A quick glance through the end notes of The World Peace Diet, amid Will’s Notes, Resources, and Selected Bibliography, reads like a Who’s Who within the movement. Everyone from Carol Adams (The Inner Art of Vegetarianism, 2002) to Erik Marcus (Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, 1998) to Robert and Shelley Young (The pH Miracle, 2002).
For me, someone who closely follows the international vegan and animal rights movement 365 days a year, The World Peace Diet has opened new vistas of thought. It was not until reading Will’s careful and thoughtful re-telling and updating of the movement, including the utter pain wrought upon billions of animals on a daily basis, worldwide, that I began to see the true, complete picture. I once sat and listened to an American Indian storyteller reciting ancient tribal stories to a group of silent, rapt children at a powwow at the Tri-County Fairgrounds in Northampton. As I reached midway through The World Peace Diet, I suddenly felt as if I was one of these children, sitting cross-legged on the grass, listening to a wise, knowing teacher unwind an ancient, sad story; a story that is continuing and being carried out even at this moment.
In a chapter titled, The Intelligence of Human Physiology, Will proves time and again the truth behind what he refers to as “The Meat/Medical Complex.” This term refers to the current mis-information (not to mention the vile products) provided by the meat industry, combined with the mis-information (or perhaps more accurately the lack of correct information) provided by the medical industry and doctors. These, according to Will’s meticulous citing, prime us all perfectly for all sorts of potential cancers and other diseases within our bodies; including osteoporosis, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, gallstones, strokes, and liver and kidney disease.
Will writes of the present medical establishment: “By ignoring the obvious fact that we humans are not designed to eat large quantities of animal foods typical of our culture, the pharmaceutical-medical establishment actually contributes to the supply of sick people and guarantees what John McDougall, M.D., refers to as its “job security.” This is not to imply any sort of conspiracy or that the average doctor is not motivated by altruistic impulses. Yet the medical establishment, like any other industry functioning within our culture’s economic framework, simply follows the path of least resistance and most reliable financial return.”
He goes on to conclude: “To those in the upper echelons of the medical industry pyramid, who help determine political strategies and media/education policies, maintaining the status quo must seem like a basically good idea, so they de-emphasize prevention in favor of drug and surgical treatments and encourage the continued acceptance of an omnivorous diet for humans.”
Of course, most of the rest of The World Peace Diet is full of gruesome examples of the meat industry’s contribution to this “Meat/Medical Complex.” Tuttle’s descriptions of the current meat, poultry, dairy, egg, and fishing industries' practices are not pleasant to read, yet are highly informative and insightful. But it is Tuttle’s brilliant citing and summary of the medical industry’s systematic thwarting of the vegan concept in favor of the omnivorous diet, which undoubtedly has earned him his world-renowned acceptance within the animal rights movement, including his acceptance of The Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award on July 15 in Sherborn, Mass.
The world, even the Boston-metro region, is full of examples of ludicrous attempts to raise money for the current charity- or disease-of-the-week, including laughable and grotesque hot dog eating contests to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), held in various locations, and Boston’s own annual Jimmy Fund Scooper Bowl® to benefit the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. How ironic and pitiful that pork and beef hot dogs and dairy ice cream are used to raise funds to treat diseases which, according to medical research, help to bring about these diseases in the first place.
While the annual NSMC WALK does not fall into the above category – after all, it’s only a simple 10K walk on a Sunday afternoon – I stand with Will Tuttle in his assessment, backed by meticulous research and numerous examples, that while no one wishes to blame or to criticize the many fine, hopefully altruistic individuals who comprise the medical industry, there is still something amiss. Cancer can develop in numerous ways, from sun exposure, smoking, radiation, and in many other ways. Clearly, a new Cancer Center would benefit us. And why not have the best? Yet, should a Cancer Center be elevated to icon status?
I think not. Let’s not teach our children to elevate the radiation and chemotherapy centers and place them on a pedestal, while many of those who would advise us to use them also continue to advise us to eat a non-vegan diet. Perhaps, as vegan author Jethro Kloss (Back to Eden, 1939) advised at the beginning of the last century in America, a simple, vegan diet, and a simple vegan lifestyle, are all that are needed to prevent most cancers. Just as most people today have never taken the time to read or to understand the likes of Jethro Kloss or Will Tuttle, so most people today also take stock and place their trust in cancer treatment, while tending to largely ignore careful cancer prevention. Walk, to be sure. But walk as vegans. |
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| June 2007 | ||
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Good as Gold
In case you've been living in a cave, the environment is key these days. To escape global warming, I decided to get a head start on some summer reading - and take in a movie. I was surprised to learn that James Bond was a chain-smoker. Not in Hollywood today, but in 1953. And there's more.
What is my reaction, what should it be? Confronted by this latest atrocity. Sting, The Police, Driven To Tears
There’s a wonderful, thrilling scene in Ian Fleming’s original 1953 novel Casino Royale, the first in his series of James Bond spy novels.
In this scene, Bond has just gone undercover at the extravagantly elegant, if slightly fading, Casino at Royale, a fictional town placed by Fleming somewhere near the rich holiday resort towns of Le Touquet and Deauville, along France’s exclusive north coast.
Bond's mission at Royale is to beat international syndicate boss, Le Chiffre (in French, the cipher), at the card game Baccarat, thus depleting Le Chiffre of his millions, along with his powerful influence in the underworld.
The play at the Baccarat table has gone into the early morning hours. Several excruciatingly tense scenes have already played out between Bond and Le Chiffre, and at this point, Le Chiffre has just won the latest hand, depleting Bond completely of his own millions, financed by British intelligence.
In the crowd surrounding the table are Bond’s co-agents, the amiable Mathis, the beautiful Vesper Lynd, and CIA agent, Felix Leiter, as well as Le Chiffre’s own co-conspirators, all well-armed and extremely dangerous.
Faced with his total loss, Bond remains seated at the table, along with the other players, for a few painful moments, contemplating a humiliating walk to the door, and having to report to his superior, M, in London.
Suddenly, a thick envelope arrives at the table from the caisse (the Casino’s cashier office). In it is 32 million francs in casino bank notes, enough to cover Le Chiffre’s pending bet and to keep Bond in the game. Astounded, Bond reads the single-line note included with the money. It reads, simply, “With the compliments of the USA.”
Bond is able to proceed in the game with his newly funded stake.
Contemplating Evil
The note included in the envelope is as much of a surprise to the reader as it is to Bond. The reader takes in, and grasps, the message, provided by Leiter, at the same moment that Bond does, and the effect is joyous and exhilarating. The reader shares Bond’s joy – and his sudden, miraculous recovery from total loss.
But this is 2007, not 1953, and so I suspect that the joy and exhilaration experienced by the modern reader is soon followed by the all-too-uncomfortable reality that this is now in fact 2007 – a world entirely transformed from the one that Fleming was writing about.
Of course it’s a different world now, hints Fleming, as if anticipating the modern reader’s reaction: the world continues to evolve, the issues, and our perception of them, are constantly transformed as well.
In 1953, Fleming set forth the controlling mob boss Le Chiffre as the enemy, the underworld figure that Bond must win against; the embodiment of evil. Today, it is popularly accepted that we are all – collectively – the enemy. We are the cause of death and destruction, of animals, of the environment – not some lone enemy lurking in the shadows.
Today, if Americans, or say the Chinese, collectively, have enough, or perhaps even too much, then we have obtained this at the expense of other nations, and the degradation of our planet as a whole. But it is we – ourselves – who desire these things, who acquire them, smoke them, drink them, eat them, heat them, and continue to keep them burning. And our governments? Governments today can often appear ethically flawed at best, and hopelessly corrupt at worst. More about them in a moment.
Competing with each of us today in the villain category, are a host of minor demons, even more ominous than Le Chiffre’s underworld accomplices. These include global warming, factory farming, corporate farming, corporate fishing, deforestation, human overpopulation, animal-transmitted viruses such as H5N1 and mad cow disease, and, as Harvard psychologist, Martha Stout, has set forth, the “sociopath next door,” one out of 23 Americans today, aka, our next door neighbor.
To add fuel to this dangerous inferno, Stout also suggests in Sociopath that perhaps it is not only our neighbor who is the sociopath to fear, but that perhaps – as if the sociopathic character within society has acted, during recent decades, as some sort of pervasive contagion among us – we have all, or many of us, become somewhat more sociopathic – less feeling, less caring, more apt to harm each other, and animals.
Fleming also alludes to this dilemma, of how we are to recognize the enemy, as later in Casino, following the famous Baccarat scene, Bond reflects in a philosophical way on the natures of good and evil during a conversation with Mathis.
When one is young, it seems very easy to distinguish between right and wrong, but as one gets older it becomes more difficult. At school it’s easy to pick out one’s own villains and heroes and one grows up wanting to be a hero and to kill the villains.
Now, in order to tell the difference between good and evil, we have manufactured two images representing the extremes – representing the deepest black and the purest white – and we call them God and the Devil. But in doing so we have cheated a bit. God is a clear image, you can see every hair on His beard. But the Devil. What does he look like?
Al Gore, Janez Drnovšek, the Left, and the Right
Nobel Peace Prize nominee and former Vice President Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason) and Slovenian President Janez Drnovšek (Thoughts on Life and Awareness) are two internationally known leaders and authors who have also recognized and who have chosen to address this ongoing, empirical shift in how we, as individuals, come to recognize the true enemy.
Both men, though worlds apart geographically, have come to the same conclusion: The enemy is not really global warming, or factory farming, or corporate farming, or deforestation. The real enemy is actually us, each one of us, in our failure to do what is right and compassionate, for each other, for the planet, and for animals. They both urge us to recognize this, and to take action, to help lessen the blow.
Their achievement, and lasting gift to all of us, is that they have offered us clear and concise rules and strategies to follow, in order to win, if you will, now that we have identified who the present enemy is. Gore’s and Drnovšek’s works may be viewed as our own unexpected and exhilarating “note,” similar to the one Bond receives along with his funds: compliments of…
At the same time, it should be noted that several vegan and animal rights activist writers have recognized that Al Gore does not specifically mention the vegan and animal rights cause in An Inconvenient Truth. David Steele, PhD., for example, writing in the Fall 2006 edition of The Aquarian, states:
Within this inconvenient truth [Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth] is another, equally inconvenient truth. Perhaps Al Gore missed it. Perhaps not. His movie fails to mention it, in any case. That truth is, if we're truly going to be effective environmentalists, if we're really going to attenuate climate change – if we're going to put the brakes on the tremendous destruction that we're wreaking on this planet – we're going to have to give up eating meat. In the modern world, it is impossible to reconcile a carnivorous diet with environmental responsibility.
And, lest we forget, the voice of the right must also have its say, and is therefore another, very real presence that we must all recognize and deal with. Robert Tracinski, editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com, writes (Al Gore’s Insolent Assault on Reason, Real Clear Politics, May 23, 2007):
In reality, a genuine respect for reason starts with an absolute respect for the mind and judgment of the individual. A respect for reason requires the subordination of coercion to persuasion through the strict limitation of government power. A respect for reason requires a commitment to liberty above all else.
Al Gore stands for the exact opposite. His environmentalist crusade is dedicated to the suppression of the material products of the human mind – our advanced industry and technology. And now, in his new book, he is promoting a rationalization for the suppression of free political debate.
So there are some on both the left and the right who despise Al Gore. Yet it’s evident that Al Gore is working earnestly in our best interest. He is clearly not a villain, despite his lack in promoting the vegan and animal rights message. Drnovšek, as has been noted here (Making Waves, Viewpoint, May 2007) outwardly embraces and promotes the vegan and animal rights message.
The Roles of Government, and the Individual
I’ve thought about the question of the natures of good and evil, God and the Devil, that Fleming raises in Casino – in relation to today’s vegan, animal rights, and environmental problems in particular – and I’ve come to the conclusion that: the solution will NOT be an easy one. Not as easy as many vegan and animal rights activists today might hope.
First of all, it would be wise for all of us to recognize – and to take to heart – that the impending problem, if you will, of veganism vs. non-veganism is an extremely complicated one, and at the same time, an enormous one. Over the past few years, in researching this topic, both on a personal level and for editorials, I’ve come to view it as a sort of enormous monolith, omnipresent and pervasive in modern society.
A worst-case scenario would be for this present vegan vs. non-vegan monolith to disappear or to fade away (the activists give up and animal consumption wins out). A best-case scenario, unfortunately, to reiterate, is probably not what most vegan and animal rights activists today might envision.
To read and to listen to many vegan and animal rights activists today, on the Internet, in videos, at conferences, on the street passing out literature, it’s clear that many of them are looking toward some sort of vegan utopia, or best-case scenario: a time when most, if not all, of society will be vegan. When animals will all be free, when humans will be acting merely as animal advocates and protectors.
For example, reported May 31 in TheHill.com, a publication of the Capitol Hill Publishing Corporation, “PETA seeks tax breaks for vegetarians.” Journalist Ilan Wurman reports: “Citing the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is calling on congressional leaders to give vegetarians a tax break.
Asked how the government would certify that taxpayers are vegetarian, PETA spokesman Matt Prescott said, “I imagine that a system could be adopted whereby taxpayers could show receipts for food purchases and/or sign an affidavit attesting that they are vegetarian.”
If the average citizen is rewarded in the form of a tax break for acting in a particular way, then the government must fully believe that this particular way of acting is very, very good; good for people, good for the nation as a whole, and good for the government itself. This is assuming that the leaders of the government are thinking and acting in a very ethical and enlightened way.
In my opinion, this is not an unreasonable expectation of one’s leaders, and therefore, PETA’s call to Congress for tax breaks for vegetarians is not unreasonable. But it is, by the norms of society today, light- years ahead of the game. It reminds me of what’s presently happening here in Salem this month with the Salem Vegan Food Drive: the norm is bad, perhaps even evil (re: Stout’s Sociopath), veganism is good, and this is golden.
Therefore, to this point, regarding the vegetarian tax breaks, we have vegan and animal rights groups, in this case PETA, interacting with and in a sense testing the waters with the US government. And similarly, we also have other vegan and animal rights groups around the globe, also interacting with and testing the waters with various governments around the globe. The questions on the minds of activists is: How far can we get? How much can we win on behalf of animals?
From a purely animal rights perspective, the goal should be for the threshold to be breached, the glass ceiling broken, the monolith taken down and destroyed: for government, all governments, to come to accept the vegan and animal rights perspective, and to adhere to it in the way that they govern. This would be, in a sense, Bond’s envelope containing 32 million francs. Compliments of the USA, or compliments of… [fill in the nation]. Government saying: Win over the enemy, our citizens who are eating meat, making tigers jump through rings, wearing leather shoes, allowing animals to waste their lives away in lab cages.
And so, in the meantime, here is my somewhat more humble suggestion for beating the vegan vs. non-vegan monolith:
Slip on a pair of Crocs (rubber flip-flops will do if you can’t afford Crocs), head down to the nearest Subway (Why Subway? Why not?), and clean out all of their veggies (simply ignore the slices of ham and pepperoni). There you have your Subway sub, full of veggies, and a full stomach. Subway’s happy, and you’re happy. I also recommend the Sun Chips and a Coke. That’s the best I can offer at the moment. Compliments of me. |
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| May 2007 | ||
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President of Slovenia, Dr. Janez Drnovšek: Making Waves
It's tough these days for animal rights and vegan activists to get noticed. And once noticed, how to stay there? Just ask PETA. With a wide-open free market, and billions to win over, the challenge is daunting. The President of Slovenia, Dr. Janez Drnovšek, is vegan, and not afraid to admit it.
"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
Albert Einstein, in a letter dated 1950
The signs are increasing every day, according to Slovenian President Dr. Janez Drnovšek. More and more of us, around the globe, are becoming more and more aware – of ourselves, of personal and societal ethics, and of the way we treat each other, and animals. And this is hopeful. But the President has not always felt this way. In fact, until recently, he has presented a much more grim picture of our current status as humans who share the planet.
President Drnovšek, who became vegan in 1999, following surgery to treat cancer, has undoubtedly thought at length about the direction that society, and individuals, have taken in recent years, leading up to what he refers to as a present world consciousness that is "impeding awareness,” according to a recent Vegan Society UK interview with the President, in their print publication, The Vegan.
The 57-year-old national leader, currently popular both in Slovenia and on the world political stage, has felt so strongly about this current lack of human "awareness," observed during his years as Prime Minister (1992-2002), as its President (since 2002), and following his subsequent illness and recovery, that he has recently written a book, titled, Thoughts on Life and Awareness, that has become a instant bestseller in his home country.
Thoughts on Life is meant to speak to us on a personal level. Much in the same way that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth has sought to. At the same time, Drnovšek's Thoughts, along with Gore's Truth, asks us, the reader, to actually solve current global conflicts – ourselves. According to the Republic of Slovenia's Government Communication Office, Drnovšek recently told the press in Ljubljana, “The book is oriented towards the individual. To search for his inner balance, peace, establishing a sufficiently high level of awareness towards oneself and the world."
Drnovšek has employed keen foresight to ensure that Thoughts is positive in its approach, presenting and reflecting upon society’s many ills, but also forthrightly providing strong, possible solutions to them; solutions that Drnovšek believes we should all understand, and work toward. According to the Communication Office, the President states, “It is an upbeat book, [and] I am an optimist. I'm sure we can succeed in efforts to find inner balance. We just have to start and not quit."
In a similar vein, Drnovšek has also recently founded the Movement for Justice and Development, a non-governmental organization, not affiliated with any political party, which seeks, simply, “to raise the consciousness on the necessity of solving open problems of mankind in a different manner.”
More specifically, according to the Movement’s Web site, the MJD hopes to:
In light of this, why is this single man, Dr. Janez Drnovšek, former Prime Minister and current President of Slovenia, so very important to all of us today? Why is he, in fact, perhaps more important than many of us may ever realize?
Well, the answer may be slightly more complicated than many of us today realize. Allow me to explain.
Throughout the history of mankind – and let's qualify this to say, throughout the recorded history of mankind – there has never been any purely vegan society or culture. Mankind, in a societal sense, has always killed animals and consumed animal products. Though there may have been numbers of individuals at various times in history who have been vegan, since the concept and knowledge of veganism has long existed, no entire vegan "society" or "culture" or "race" has ever been documented.
Therefore, the fact that man today kills animals and uses their by-products for his own gain is – or should be – no surprise to us whatsoever. It has, in fact, been our history throughout the millennia – and it is our heritage as humans; as well as the history and heritage of most other species that have come before us.
According to the Atlas of the North American Indian (Waldman, 1985), North American Indian tribes in the central portion of what is today the United States – prior to the period when they began to plant agricultural crops, such as maize (corn), beans, and squash on a more wide-scale basis, from 800 – 1000 A.D. – used horses to hunt herds such as bison, in vast numbers, for food and for animal by-products.
Waldman notes that massive bison “graveyards” have been unearthed at the bottom of steep cliffs throughout the central United States, leading archeologists to the conclusion that these tribes used a herding “bait-and-trap” method of hunting, whereby they would round up bison herds in vast numbers from horseback, and lead them over steep cliffs, whereupon the bison herds would plunge hundreds of feet to their bloody deaths – to be harvested and used by the "resourceful" Indian hunters.
And this was not uncommon. Archeologist believe that this type of hunting "en masse," using horses as posses, probably led to a near extinction of bison in the Great Plains and Central regions of what is now the United States during this period, prior to the Indians' greater knowledge of and reliance upon structured agricultural farming.
One might observe, if one were to reflect in a certain way, that this early mass slaughter of bison by the American Indians may be compared to our present-day industrial slaughter of cows, pigs, and chickens for modern consumption. A presage to our current "factory" farming methods, if you will.
Most societies and cultures have similar histories of consumption, usage, and mistreatment of animals. The ancient Greeks raised and kept vast armies of warhorses, trained to fight in brutal battles. The ancient Romans captured and imprisoned countless wild animals to be used for entertainment and ultimately slaughtered in the bloody games at the Roman Coliseum. The Indian culture has used elephants, broken in and trained, often using brutal training methods, to perform work for them, similar to the way in which pre-Industrial English and Americans used horses to build their cities, as a means of hauling and transport.
In contrast, it's interesting to note that there was actually one brief period in recorded history in which a vegetarian society was established on a vast scale, though it did not manifest itself naturally, nor was it of the people’s choice.
This occurred during World War I, in Copenhagen. According to The Kushi Institute of Europe’s Web site:
Mikkel Hindhede, M.D., Superintendent of the State Institute for Food Research, persuaded the Danish government to shift its agricultural priorities from raising grain for livestock to producing grain for direct human consumption. Accordingly, in the face of a foreign blockade, the Danes ate primarily barley, whole-rye bread, green vegetables, potatoes, milk, and some butter. In the nation’s capital, the death rate from all causes, including cancer, fell 34 percent during 1917 to 1918. “It was a low protein experiment on a large scale, about 3 million subjects being available,” Hindhede reported to his medical colleagues: "People entered no complaints; there were no digestive troubles, but we are accustomed to the use of whole bread and we knew how to make such bread of good quality.”
Therefore, we can see, that aside from this brief state-controlled “vegetarian experiment,” conducted with a population of approximately 3 million “subjects,” our history has been largely brutal and carnivorous, and very, very far removed from our current, modern concept of veganism. The mistreatment of animals is our norm, our history, our heritage. A heritage that some of us today, including members of the Salem Vegan Society here in Salem, and President Drnovšek of Slovenia and members of his Movement for Justice and Development, are now attempting to slowly, painfully reverse – to undo, as it were, and to somehow make amends for.
The reason why President Drnovšek plays such a vitally important role in this process – a far greater role than the Salem Vegan Society will ever play – lies in his international stature, not only as an internationally-recognized national leader, but as a publicly-acknowledged vegan national leader.
The process of the dissemination of knowledge is, as we have gathered from our brief review of history and the mistreatment of animals in this essay, an incredibly slow process. From the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and before, man has still not awakened to the fact that he needn’t consume animals to survive. (Many meat consumers, having just read this statement, will continue on with their lives, still not fully aware of this fact; strange as this might seem.) As I have stated, the concept of veganism, although it has been “known” for millennia, by various individuals at various times, has never been fully disseminated on a wide enough scale to affect any “society” fully and comprehensively.
Are we now at a turning point in history? Will the quickly approaching year 2012, as author Daniel Pinchbeck and other apocalyptic writers have recently suggested, somehow change this ugly and blood-stained historical record of slaughter, abuse, and consumption of animals, allowing for some mystical or astrological “open window" of opportunity for veganism to flourish? Or will our present, and ultimately our history, continue on as it always has, filled with hunters and consumers of flesh and blood?
These questions, or similar ones, may be ones that President Drnovšek has carefully considered, leading him to his current quest to assist in the dissemination of vegan knowledge, the promotion of veganism, and the promotion of animal rights in the public sphere. It is the hope of the Salem Vegan Society that he will succeed in this most noble endeavor. Gandhi is perhaps the only other comparable vegan (or vegetarian) figure of Drnovšek’s international stature, who espoused the concept, and who actively sought to promote it. Drnovšek is a very different figure, but equally popular and effective. Please join SVS in wishing President Drnovšek our best wishes, and our deepest gratitude.
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| April 2007 | ||
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IVU interviews Salem Vegan Society
In New England, regional food banks often request food donations to help them stock their pantries. In Salem, SVS has responded in a very positive way, but with one request of our own: make your food donations vegan. George Jacobs, of the International Vegetarian Union (UK), interviews Marc Delaney, founder of the Salem Vegan Society.
The following interview with George Jacobs, editor of International Vegetarian Union (IVU) Online News, was conducted via the Internet in March. Marc Delaney, founder of the SVS in Salem, responded.
The IVU is a non-profit, international organization, founded in 1908 in Dresden, Germany, and currently based in the United Kingdom. The mission of the IVU is to promote the concept of vegetarianism and veganism around the world by encouraging the formation of local, regional, and national vegetarian and vegan organizations, and by providing a way for co-operation among them. The Salem Vegan Society has been a Society Member of the IVU since 2003.
IVU Interview with Salem Vegan Society
Salem Vegan Society (SVS), Salem, Massachusetts, USA, organizes an annual vegan food drive in aid of the Salem Mission, an organisation that helps the homeless and hungry in Salem and surrounding communities. Initiated in 2006, the Salem Vegan Food Drive is the first 100-percent “vegan” food drive in New England, and perhaps in the United States. The IVU Online News conducted the following interview with SVS Founder/Director Marc Delaney to find out more about this great idea.
IVU: Your first vegan food drive was in 2006. How did you get the idea to do this food drive?
SVS: Each May in the US, the National Association of Letter Carriers, sponsored by the US Postal Service and Campbell’s soup company, along with other companies and organizations, conducts the annual, nationwide Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. These groups request US residents to place shopping bags filled with non-perishable food items on their front porches on the second Saturday in May. The bags are picked up that day by the local letter carriers on their routes, and then distributed to the local food banks. It’s obvious that these organizations and companies have their hearts in the right place, but what inevitably ends up happening is that an awful lot of food that is not vegan ends up in the hands of the needy, who receive these donations. The Salem Vegan Society’s job – our reason for being – is to actively promote the concepts of veganism and animal rights. The annual Salem Vegan Food Drive to Benefit the Salem Mission is our response to all other non-vegan food drives held each year.
IVU: How does the food drive fit into your overall efforts?
SVS: It’s been an uphill battle in Salem. The concepts of veganism and vegetarianism are not readily embraced here. When “active” membership in SVS dropped in 2004, following an initial interest, we decided to maintain the group as an online vegan and animal rights news and information source, a free service, both to the Salem community, and now to the greater Internet community. Folks now write us from England, Canada, Russia, and various parts of the US. The Salem Vegan Food Drive is a way for our core members, and business supporters, to show Salem – and others who may be listening – what we’re made of. To show that we can work and organize effectively offline, within the community, as well as online. The Food Drive is really what we’re all about: promoting veganism – locally, regionally, nationally, and now, I guess, thanks to the IVU staff, globally.
IVU: You’re now organizing your second food drive to be held in June 2007. What changes have you made based on the first year’s experience?
SVS: In 2006, we asked a few Salem businesses to "host" the drive by acting as “drop-off locations” and Raffle entry points. Salem residents used the lists of businesses published on our Web site and on posters around town to choose where to drop off vegan food donations and to enter our SVFD Raffle. In turn, this hopefully brought more customers in. In 2007, with the second annual Food Drive, we've decided to try one central drop-off location, the Salem Mission itself. Since the Mission’s main lobby is staffed 24 hours a day, donors can now donate vegan food at midnight if they’d like. This year, we’re also MUCH better organized: Salem, regional, and national businesses now “Sponsor” the drive and donate Raffle prizes, which are getting quite generous. The Sweet Onion Inn in Vermont is donating a two-night stay at their vegan inn, complete with mountain views and a vegan menu.
IVU: What reaction does vegan food receive from the people served by the Salem Mission? Do you do any educational work with them on the benefits of vegetarian diets?
SVS: I met at length with the Salem Mission’s Food Director Evelyn Wayson, following the 2006 drive. As far as I know, the folks served by the Mission are not, to any extent, aware of the Salem Vegan Food Drive. I imagine they have enough on their minds, simply being homeless, or in great need. And the event is actually not outwardly advertised at the Mission. Advertising, obviously, is targeted much more to Salem businesses, on the Internet, in the community newspapers, with the Salem Chamber of Commerce. Evelyn is all for the idea of a Vegan Food Drive to benefit the Mission, though, of course, the Mission accepts all food donations, year round, vegan or not. It’s the SVS that’s advocating vegan donations. Evelyn has asked SVS volunteers to come in to the Mission and speak about nutrition in general to their residents and program participants. That has not occurred yet, but I’d like to do this as well.
IVU: How do you collect the food?
SVS: As I mentioned, residents of Salem and surrounding communities drop off vegan food donations at the Salem Mission itself, which is now housed in a decommissioned church in the heart of downtown Salem. Food Drive donations are accepted throughout the entire month of June, each year. Every vegan food donation entitles the donor to an entry in our annual SVFD Raffle. If a donor donates 10 or 50 times during June, they’ll have as many chances to win from among several great prizes that are now being donated by local, regional, and national businesses, like the Sweet Onion Inn in Vermont, and the historic Hawthorne Hotel here in Salem. Even Laurie Cabot’s The Cat, The Crow, and The Crown is sponsoring this event at the top level this year. Laurie is the Official Witch of Salem. SVS is proud to have her this year as a Salem Vegan Food Drive sponsor.
IVU: Do you have difficulty with people who don’t know what vegan means? What do you do if people donate non-vegan or even non-vegetarian food?
SVS: Not difficulty. Apathy, yes, but not difficulty. As I mentioned, the Mission always accepts non-vegan donations, and SVS understands this. Donors also understand this, and those that don’t care about veganism simply donate in their own way, at other times, perhaps with cans of tuna fish, chicken noodle soup, and pork and beans. To SVS, those items are outdated, unnecessary, and a pain and hardship to animals. The Salem Vegan Society is about moving society forward, toward veganism and animal rights. Also, interesting to note, the first Vegan Food Drive in Salem was not overly successful, or not as successful as I had hoped. Other people I know have scoffed at me when I say this, and remind me that just the fact that we exist, and that we’re making our best effort with this drive, is our success.
IVU: In addition to collecting food, do you help the Salem Mission in other ways?
SVS: We would like to speak to Mission residents about the importance of nutrition – though these would probably not be a lesson in veganism per se, but more about general nutrition. Veganism can be a difficult concept for even the average citizen to fully grasp. So attempting to instruct homeless and needy individuals about it might be a bit specious. But I feel that workshops about general nutrition would be just as important to Mission guests as other types of rehabilitative counseling and resume workshops are. In a larger sense, I think SVS is helping residents of Salem and surrounding communities as much, or perhaps even more, than we’re presently helping the Mission. SVS, Salem residents who donate vegan, and the businesses who sponsor the Food Drive, are offering more than vegan food to the homeless, we’re promoting a vitally important concept to the community-at-large, and this promotion is now gaining some ground. It’s a slow process, but it is very, very important.
IVU: When and how was the Salem Vegan Society formed?
The Salem Vegan Society was founded in 2003 as a result of my doing a lot of “leg-work” for the Boston Vegetarian Society (BVS), distributing flyers for their annual Boston Vegetarian Food Festival in October. I was putting up BVS flyers in store windows in Salem, and it suddenly occurred to me, we need a similar group here in Salem, and on the North Shore (of Boston). By October, the SVS was formed and our first meeting was announced to the public.
This interview is also available in the April issue of IVU Online News. George Jacobs has requested that readers who would like to assist the International Vegetarian Union in their mission, to please direct donations to IVU's current efforts to promote vegetarianism in Africa.
You can also donate to assist the Salem Vegan Food Drive at our SVFD07 page. |
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| March 2007 | ||
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Understanding Modern Dread
When the people do not fear what is dreadful, Then what is greatly dreadful will descend on them.
Tao-te ching
As you are reading this paragraph, chances are great that millions of others around the globe, on other Web sites, in recently published books, on prime time television, are also reading and watching reports about the possibility of an impending apocalyptic or astrological event – that some say may occur on or around the time of the approaching year 2012.
I’ve followed many of these accounts and have studied closely what they are saying. What has struck me regarding most of them is that they are filled with a certain impending dread. The author or the documentary narrator will methodically – and usually seemingly endlessly – cite numerous Biblical passages, the etchings on cryptic Mayan and Incan stones, the cryptic and prophetic writings of ancient seers and mystics. They will then go on to back all of these examples up with astrological data that seems to pinpoint the year 2012 as a significant time – or period – for great change.
It’s not that I don’t believe that much or all of this may in fact be 100 percent correct. In fact, I do believe some of what is being put forth. It’s the dread factor that is, for me, somewhat harder to believe. Even if the year 2012 were to bring about some great cataclysmic physical event similar to those described in the book of Revelation, I’ve long subscribed to the view that only those who live violent lives will meet with violent deaths. And who here among us lives such a particularly violent life – one that merits a particularly violent apocalypse?
I do not. And therefore, as I read through the many apocalyptic books and surf the many apocalyptic channels, of which there are many, I don’t tend to feel a personal dread, nor do I fear the dread of others. What I do fear, as the scribes of the Lao Tzu warn of in Chapter 72 of the Tao-te ching, quoted above, is the prevailing modern ignorance that will, as current apocalyptic authors and astrologers suggest, meet its own inevitable end in the not-too-distant future – perhaps by the year 2012.
As a friend of mine was about to leave for Florida last month, we met for dinner at a downtown Salem restaurant. Before we left the restaurant to say, probably our last goodbye, she looked me in the eye from across the table and said to me: “If there’s one gift that I can possibly give to you before I leave, it’s this: Whatever you do, keep things simple. Try, do your best, continue to try to help animals, but don’t make things too complicated. And don’t carry any weights.”
In the last few weeks, in thinking about her advice, I’ve found that I do carry some weight, but it’s not mine. I’ve found that I actually carry the weight of animals – a mental weight. A certain kind of dread, if you will. The dread of countless animals facing imprisonment, lives of misery, and eventual heartless slaughter by humans, for human consumption – which may be, as author Daniel Pinchbeck suggests in his work, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, a sign of an approaching astrological shift. Although Pinchbeck does not mention animals per se in his treatise.
What Pinchbeck does present is a fascinating array of other modern events and phenomena that may signify this approaching millennial shift of planets and consciousness: the events of 9/11, global terrorism, environmental degradation, UFO sightings, crop circles, mental discoveries and writings gleaned from experimentation with psychedelic drugs. Yet nowhere amid the lines of Pinchbeck’s 394-page work does the author correlate these signs – and the eventual shift that is to occur as the result of them – specifically, with how humans treat animals.
No one can discount the unparalleled achievement that Pinchbeck has gained with the writing and publication of 2012. With it, he has placed himself far and above all other modern writers who have approached this subject to date. Yet from a vegan and animal rights perspective, Pinchbeck seems to have missed this crucial aspect of what is occurring now. Those aligned with veganism and animal rights are left wondering: Where is this direct correlation – in both the ethical history leading up to 2012, and in a possible karmic justification on that date?
Pinchbeck has provided for us the most hopeful and certainly the most enlightened response to the projected 2012 alignment to date – and to any collective sense of dread that may be felt regarding its approach. His unique experiences and purpose for writing clearly have nothing whatsoever to do with veganism or with animal rights, and he does not even approach these concepts. Since the purpose of Pinchbeck's 2012 is not to provide such a correlation, but only a human one, it is by no means lacking in his work.
He is, however, if not a vocal proponent of Taoism, as least quite familiar with Lao Tzu, the Tao-te ching, as noted in the extensive bibliography that accompanies 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.
This knowledge of the Tao is also evident on page 375 of 2012, where Pinchbeck avows his deep conviction that he – along with the rest of us who are about to experience this newly-anticipated (for many) astrological shift, and the concurrent shift in consciousness – will surely overcome, “without drowning beneath the swamp waters of that primordial darkness,” even as “the systems of governance, economics, and thought currently dominating our world quickly collapse.”
Like my friend’s sage advice in Salem, Pinchbeck’s eventual, if perhaps too subtle, harkening toward this simplicity, which is at the heart of Taoism, is his true gift to the reader, and to a modern society anticipating change. Therefore, unlike many of the other current apocalyptic chroniclers, Pinchbeck becomes more the apocalyptic sage, the wise man, the one to follow, learned from the range and depth of his experiences, and from his own meditation upon them.
However, although Pinchbeck’s ultimate gifts to us are this hopeful calmness, along with his swift and reliable mind, swamp waters of primordial darkness and quickly collapsing societies do not a smooth transition in 2012 make. We leave page 375 longing for a far more certain, more reassuring answer to the utter ignorance and prevailing dread that we all must face from year to year: from the atrocities of the annual seal hunts in Canada each March, to the annual US tally of 9 billion animals slaughtered for human consumption.
The answer must be made even clearer for even the most common among us, in order that, as Pinchbeck himself states, the positive outcome of apocalypse might be gained. Chapter 72 of the Tao-te ching begins with the lines: “When the people do not fear what is dreadful, then what is greatly dreadful will descend on them.” Therefore, the text that follows must be even more important, more telling. It reads:
Do not reduce the living space of their dwellings. Do not oppress their lives. It is because you do not oppress them that they are not oppressed.
The Tao-te ching was originally a response by a small group of enlightened writers, mountain-dwelling monks, to the period of the Warring States in China, from approximately 722-481 B.C. It was a calm and thoughtful “attack,” according to essayist Wing-Tsit Chan, against the oppressive Chinese rulers of the day. The result of this “attack” by Lao Tzu was the resulting religion, that became Taoism – the Way.
The oppressors of animals today are in part the government, but also all those among us who continue to enter your average supermarket or restaurant and choose animal products instead of vegan products or menu items. The oppressors, along with big business and corporate farming, are all those among us who do not strive daily to seek out vegan alternatives to non-vegan ones. The oppressors are couples who opt to have two or three children, instead of one or none, thus contributing to a human overpopulation that continues to mount exponentially. These individuals account for the continued reduction of living space for animals, and the continued daily oppression of their lives.
Taoism is as vital and as meaningful as it was approximately 3,000 years ago in mainland China. It is in fact, a simple, readily available answer to the modern dread that oppresses the lives of countless animals on Earth today. Compared to their present, wretched oppression, ours is a paradise. “Do not reduce the living space of their dwellings. Do not oppress their lives.” Perhaps these simple lessons put forth in the Tao-te ching, in tandem with a far stronger dose of vegan and animal rights advocacy in the coming years, will provide all of us, humans and animals alike, with a far smoother transition beyond 2012 – one which we are all hoping for.
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| February 2007 | ||
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A Little Too Popular?
The Democrats are poised to regain control of the White House.
The issues on their agenda include Iraq, national security, women's reproductive health, health care, environmentalism, and populism. Is the Democratic Party's desire to regain "popularity" making them perhaps a little too "popular?" And why is the phrase "animal rights" still unspoken? Addicted to Convenience
Things tend to be somewhat quieter in Salem after nightfall these days, during the winter months. The 6:10 train pulls into the Depot from Boston, unloads its passengers, and makes its way up the coast toward Beverly, Gloucester and Newburyport. Residents returning from work in Boston tend to head straight home, to warm houses and warm dinners.
Most of Salem’s shops have already closed for the night, leaving only dim storefront window lights to illuminate red cardboard Valentine hearts. The few restaurants and shops that are open seem to fare a little better, especially with Salem’s so-called condo boom just having completed. You can now perch atop the darkened city, starting at a mere $500,000. Not bad.
I sometimes find myself mesmerized by these late winter street scenes from my seat at the back of the bus, as it slowly makes its way toward Lafayette from Bridge Street. This outpost is usually as lonesome as the darkened streets that pass by outside the windows. On Derby Street, on a particularly frigid night a few weeks ago, I noticed something that sparked a distant memory. A brand new – or newly renovated – Hess gas station, its green-and-white façade, and brilliantly lit glass windows gleaming in the cold darkness, rests on the banks of the South River.
One of my favorite diversions in college used to be to walk to the corner 7-Eleven, or to the corner gas station convenience store, down the road from a row house a few us had rented in Richmond. I’d stop in to these convenience stores on my way home from class, early Saturday mornings, or on lonely Sunday afternoons waiting for my laundry to dry. This convenience store addiction was yet another example of the countless, thoughtless actions that some college kids sometimes find themselves involved in, when in fact they would probably fare better camping out at the library, behind a pile of books.
I don’t remember what attracted me to these places. Cigarettes? Soda? The newspapers? Anything really. It was more their mystique than what they held. They were somewhat “bad.” They held all the things we shouldn’t have. We might have referred to this as “slumming,” as a sort of a joke, until we woke up one day and realized that, in our case, we were frequenting actual slums.
After I graduated, I still held a certain fondness for these places. When I moved to Florence, near Northampton, I used to walk to Bird’s Store on Maple Street, or to Cumberland Farms on Main Street, on lazy Saturday and Sunday afternoons. There wasn’t much else to do there.
I hadn’t landed a professional job yet, but was able to write some inspired poetry after I got home from work at the local supermarket, and to explore the many haunted places that Florence, Hadley, and the hill towns beyond Florence – Williamsburg and Goshen – had to offer.
The location had changed, but the contents were still very much the same: cigarettes, sodas, beer, newspapers and magazines, the usual convenience store fare. I recall purchasing all of the menu items for my first Thanksgiving dinner alone in Florence at a convenience store, after all of the other stores had closed on a snowy afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving.
Simple pleasures, that cross generational and party lines, and economic status. It’s the stuff that we all need – and crave – on occasion, but which we, hopefully, don’t get too caught up in, in the long run.
These days, here in Salem, I’d forgotten that these places even exist. I wasn’t aware of any 7-Eleven’s, or Cumberland Farms, or other local convenience stores here; if they even existed here, prior to my late-night encounter with the Hess station. Yet I am sure that they still do exist in places like Florence and Richmond.
I’m sure that the dusty sunlight and the musty, tomb-like air still rests on the rows of magazines and aging greeting cards at Bird’s Store on quiet Saturday afternoons. And that people are still standing at a white linoleum bar without seats, eating a quick lunch of fried chicken necks and fried livers – along with a liberal dose of Tabasco sauce – staring out onto a packed 7-Eleven parking lot, at the ragged edges of Richmond’s Fan District.
In Salem, my time is spent mostly between work, weekend chores, quick trips to Trader Joe’s and to Whole Foods, and walking the dog at Forest River Park on the weekends. Whatever spare time I can afford these days is usually spent in more cerebral – and usually more humanitarian – endeavors – trying to help out whenever I can.
Most of what I do now outside of work is for the welfare of animals. Given my current constraints, rarely, if ever, will I direct my time, money, or efforts toward projects that do not directly assist factory farmed animals in some way. You might say that this is what life has taught me to this point.
Hillary Clinton’s “Let the Conversation Begin” Webcasts
I was surprised and fascinated to learn that Hillary Clinton had entered the 2008 presidential race, and, upon hearing about them, I decided to take part in a series of live webcasts sponsored by the Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee, beginning on Monday, January 22.
The webcast series, titled, “Let the Conversation Begin,” was held on three consecutive nights, from 7 to 7:30 pm each evening, concluding on Wednesday, January 24. The series was designed to engage Hillary supporters, and the public-at-large, in a series of live “web chats,” during which Hillary would answer questions submitted by anyone who cared to submit one, or several, about any topic. Signing up to take part in and to view the webcasts was extremely simple – for the average college-educated computer user, who happened to have the right technology. It involved “registering” in advance of each webcast by simply filling out a web form with your name, city and state, and email address. It only took about one minute to register. And, considering what it bought you, a wealth of information about Hillary and her campaign platform, it was well worth the investment. I learned during the registration process that the site would begin “accepting” questions from registrants beginning at 5 pm each evening, in advance of the 7 pm start time. And so, recognizing that my own question was extremely important, to all Americans, and truly wanting it to be addressed by Hillary, I dutifully took advantage of a few thoughtful moments during my lunch break at work to carefully compose my first question for Senator Clinton. I submitted the question to the site just past 5 pm, prior to leaving work on Monday afternoon.
It read as follows:
Hillary – This may be a very difficult question for many viewers, but I think it's one that must begin to be addressed by Democrats, not only in 2008, but now, as we're preparing to regain control of the White House.
Simply, what about the question of animal rights?
While it's true that we – as a nation and as individuals – have many pressing problems and concerns today, especially following eight long years of the Bush administration, if we take just a moment to truly look at current statistics, and at the many seemingly insurmountable problems that billions – not millions – of factory farmed animals must endure on a daily basis in the United States alone, we will surely see, that no matter how difficult our problems may seem to us, they simply don't equal the suffering that factory farmed animals are currently facing.
America and the world are currently advancing scientifically and technologically at a great speed. Advances in industrial applications of robotics and nanotechnology will undoubtedly play a significant role in the coming years.
Our strong desire to develop and to use these newly advancing breakthroughs may indeed "advance" us as a nation, but all of these advancements will be rendered useless and meaningless unless we can begin now to treat animals as equals, with equal rights, and with equal freedom.
A nation is judged by the way it treats its animals, yet most Americans remain unaware of this.
A federal appeals court in Texas, today, upheld a ban on horse slaughter in that state. Why do we as Americans view the slaughter of horses as unacceptable, yet we continue to slaughter approximately 10 billion animals for food in the US each year? How are chickens, pigs, and cattle different from horses?
America has to begin to wake up to the fact that meat consumption is not necessary, that veganism is acceptable and healthy, and that attempting to farm animals to feed the entire population, in overcrowded conditions, is inhumane and cruel toward animals.
Since farmed animals cannot defend or speak for themselves, it is our "obligation" to defend and to speak for them. This should be among the top priorities in a Democratic bid for the White House in 2008. Why isn't it, Senator Clinton?
Also, Senator Clinton, if you do read and respond to this question on one of your webcasts, may I have your permission to publish the text of your response on our site's editorial page at www.salemvegan.org/viewpoint.htm
Thank you in advance.
It should be noted here, that the Clinton site gave no indication whatsoever, either in the form of a dialog box, or in a follow-up email, that my question was received. I submitted this question several times on Monday night. Each time, the text simply disappeared into the field, with no acknowledgement or reply.
This question, to me, was THE beginning of the current conversation. A conversation that has, in fact, not yet begun, within either the Democratic or the Republican parties.
I arrived at home from work at 6:30 pm, as usual. When I logged into the Clinton webcast page, formal, light classical music played soothingly, yet somehow also ominously and coldly, in the background of the page. The webcast series’ blue-and-white logo, with the words, “Let the Conversation Begin,” displayed prominently on the left-hand side of the screen, where Hillary’s image would soon appear to welcome her viewers.
A few seconds past 7 pm, the logo screen changed from blue to the image of Hillary Clinton, live, seated in a warm and intimate setting, appearing relaxed and well-prepared to begin responding to questions, that had arrived, along with mine, via the Web two hours earlier. Hillary was joined, for this and for each subsequent webcast, by her Team Hillary Web assistant, Crystal Patterson.
At the start of the webcast, it was not announced how the questions were selected, or by whom. Patterson read the questions to Clinton from her own laptop screen. For all the viewers knew, the questions may have been selected by Patterson, or by members of her Web team.
I was aware that my question may have been too long, and was either ignored because of its length, or that perhaps it was not even accepted by the webcast system.
Therefore, just after 7 pm on Monday night, and just after 5 and 7 pm on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I submitted this abbreviated version:
Hillary, I'm an animal rights activist who is deeply concerned about the current plight of the billions of factory farmed animals used for human consumption each year in the United States.
My question is: Why aren't animal rights issues addressed more in current political campaigns?
More to the point, can you explain why Democrats have chosen to not include animal rights among their platform and in their political agenda?
On Monday night, and during the course of each subsequent webcast, not only was my animal rights question ignored, but, as was fully expected, there was no mention of animal rights whatsoever among the many questions and answers addressed by Clinton.
This same scenario has been the case historically in all past Democratic (and Republican) campaign discussions and debates. The truth is, the topic of animal rights is never, ever mentioned in any Democratic Party publication, forum, or campaign.
Carefully follow one of the leading Democratic think-tank publications, Robert Reich’s The American Prospect magazine, and you will never see the topic of animal rights addressed.
Follow all of the so-called online “blogs” and editorial pages of the Democratic Party Web sites, and the topic of animal rights remains painfully absent – always passed over and ignored.
Listen to and read through the many published transcripts of all of the speeches during the course of Democratic and Republican party campaigns, and you will not once – not ever – hear or see the words, animal rights. Anyone who is aware of the current agenda within the animal rights movement – which HSUS Legislative Fund President Mark Markarian says must become much more established within the current American political agenda, through increased activist involvement – could plainly see, from watching Hillary’s “Let the Conversation Begin” webcasts, that the Hillary Clinton campaign is, so far, no different from any of her Democratic or Republican party predecessors when it comes to addressing this very important topic. What topic could possibly be more important today? Billions of animals are senselessly slaughtered annually in the US.
Americans, clearly, want it all – from universal health care, to discounted prescription drugs for seniors (the current Democratic Party mantra), to women's reproductive rights – and we want it now. And, according to the Hillary Clinton campaign, they are here to help us attain it. But what about the animals, Senator Clinton? What is in store for them during your proposed administration?
Why must animal rights activists alone continue to do the hard work in the trenches of this movement? Why must animal rights groups sue companies and governments to simply improve the current deplorable conditions and the fate of billions of animals in the US by half? Why can’t the US government itself and the Democratic Party assist us in our efforts, instead of deterring us at every turn?
These are the questions that I wished could have been addressed during your “Let the Conversation Begin” webcast events – but which were all, once again, completely ignored.
Coda: The Popular Agenda
The definition of the term “populist” from M-W.com reads:
1 : a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people; especially often capitalized : a member of a United States political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
2 : a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
Would a Hillary Clinton administration prove more “populist,” or perhaps simply more “popular?”
Political analysts and news reporters have described the presidency, and post- presidency, of Clinton’s husband Bill as at times both populist and popular, in attempting to appeal to all of the people, in order to remain popular, and to advance the Democratic Party’s political agenda.
Historian and journalist Paul Street wrote of Bill Clinton in the Dissident Voice (DV) in September 2005:
“You can't blame Clinton for trying to help his wife and his party make some pseudo-populist political hay out of the Bush administration's pathetic performance before and during Tropical Storm and Societal Failure Katrina. Clinton has always had a strong sense of when to push populist buttons and when (more commonly) to return to standard corporate-neo-liberal rostrums.”
One telling sign regarding a possible Hillary presidency is evident in the upper right-hand corner of the HillaryClinton.com campaign Web site:
There rests a prominent, concise, and exuberant shibboleth, “Make History!” – a reference to the possibility of electing the first woman as President of the United States. Just to the right of this slogan are two fields for the Web visitor to use, one to enter their email address, and one to enter their ZIP Code. The Clinton campaign site would in fact be much more useful to the average Web visitor if these fields were replaced with a site search engine – one that might pull up several thoughtful speech transcripts and news headlines, for visitors who may be entering the phrase, “animal rights”. Hillary Clinton may in fact be the first woman president of the United States, but history will judge America by the way it has treated its animals. Thus far, it appears that a Hillary Clinton White House will also go down in history as simply another administration that stood by silently on the issue of animal rights – even while billions of farmed animals continued to suffer needlessly. |
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A Personal Essay by Kim Hyder
The Guilty Vegan
"Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love." William Shakespeare
I've been a vegetarian for the past year and a half. But I have to admit, I've been a lapsed vegetarian, too; although not intentionally.
For instance, during my last trip to New York, last winter, I suddenly realized, during dinner at a restaurant, that I had ordered and was eating non-vegan sushi.
Another time, months later, I had ordered an old traditional egg lemon soup, and discovered, to my dismay, that it contained chicken. I am learning – learning to deal with my not-so-distant – or entirely forgotten – meat-eating past.
I grew up Italian, whereby I would regularly enjoy meals of spaghetti and meatballs, brushelottini, and huge roasts of various meats every Sunday.
My initiation and passage into a vegetarian way of eating and living began as a combination of wanting better health (I had two near death experiences within one year), and as the result of newly forming, inner feelings of becoming an animal rights activist.
At first, being a vegetarian was fun, a novel way to eat. But as the months passed, I started to become more serious in my thoughts, until that seriousness was transformed into conviction combined with outrage.
This outrage I felt had to do with learning of the cruelty that factory farmed animals are put through. Not to mention the other forms of animal cruelty that I began reading about: cock fighting, bull fighting and poorly run zoos, among others.
I wanted to do something about the miserable plight of the many currently abused animals that share this planet with us. But at that point, I had NO inclination of becoming vegan.
Emotionally, (I knew intellectually), I really was still far removed from some of the even grimmer realities of factory farmed animals, and from fish, which are caught in the wild and also farmed.
Then, this past summer, I met Marc Delaney, founder of the Salem Vegan Society. Marc was attending the SVS information table at the first annual Salem CultureFest on the Salem Common in July.
The timing was electrifying for me, like a bolt of lightening: a sudden, new realization. My conviction and devotion to take action, to assist in the enormous task of attempting to end animal cruelty, at that moment when we met, became much more powerful for me. I recall walking home from the fair with the intention of ridding my closets of all leather items. And at that time, I didn't yet have any idea of also ridding myself of wools and silks, because I wasn't yet aware of animal cruelty at that level.
Until that time, I had kept two old and beloved pairs of leather boots, ones I had bought at thrift shops years ago. I live with a contradictory feeling about these: In my current research into the world of veganism, I’ve read that a popular vegan and animal rights activist speaker has had to deal with this same issue, and how she deals with it. She still wears her 20-year-old leather boots occasionally, but not in public where others might notice, and she’s vowed not to buy any new ones.
While discovering that others, even leading activists, are presently dealing with these same issues, these same new feelings for animals, has helped me mentally and emotionally – at the level at which we acknowledge that we’re all human and that we all share these emotions and pains – the comfort generated was still not enough for me. It didn’t resolve my lingering contradictions and doubts surrounding these emotional dilemmas, still present within me, and within others.
It was then that I decided to actually join and assist the Salem Vegan Society here in Salem.
Earlier in the year, I had joined and volunteered at the New England Anti-Vivisection Society in Boston, and I also began volunteering one day a week at the Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem. I also now donate money to various animal rights groups.
My experience thus far with the SVS has been both rewarding and enriching for me as an individual. And it's led me to begin to expand the group here in Salem, by initiating and beginning the planning phases of new events, to take place annually, that will further promote the concepts of veganism and animal rights, and that will help to promote the SVS here on the North Shore – and hopefully nationally.
Strangely, I have to confess, even with all of these new dimensions that have been recently added to my life because of my involvement with SVS, I still wasn't completely vegan.
It was as if the events in my life were somehow advancing ahead of my eating habits and addictions. I struggled and tried to WILL myself not to eat feta cheese, which I still harbored a taste for, but it still wasn’t working.
I was still rationalizing, “it’s only cheese,” and it reminded me of five years ago when I first started to become vegetarian. It had been a gradual process then, too. I recall when I had first advanced to drinking soy milk and abandoning dairy milk. From a moral standpoint, I've come to believe that it’s immoral to hurt any living creature in any way, and this has led me to the next stage of my activism. In particular, it’s caused me to re-examine how I view the egg industry.
The other day, someone told me about a farm in Hamilton, Mass., where they raise their own chickens and sell their eggs. The public is invited to visit, to witness that these chickens are raised free-range, able to run freely, without cage confinement. A part of me is hopeful: that I can eat eggs without harming a chicken in any way. Yet at the same time, I’ve learned from my own research that a lot of farms still do kill their male chicks, and that many still kill their hens once they're no longer able to produce eggs for the farm.
While I don’t have any first hand knowledge about the Hamilton farm – if it might pass my new moral compass and my newly-advancing criteria for humane treatment – I wonder if I might still want to boycott this farm, in support of and out of compassion for the billions of other chickens on Earth still raised and slaughtered inhumanely.
(It’s currently estimated that approximately 95 percent of all eggs consumed in the US are produced by hens kept in intensive confinement battery cages.)
Philosophically, I don’t subscribe to any organized religion. And I certainly do not place any blind obedience to anyone or anything.
It’s recently come to my attention that being a vegan is like a religion. And that everyone who is vegan practices this extraordinary way of life a little differently.
For me, there remains an inner conflict, which has to do with the concept that there must be an organized, vigilant, and purposeful road to eradicate animal cruelty. Another part of me questions, “Why can’t all of this occur at its own pace, naturally, without organization, each at our own pace?”
Generally speaking, my friends and family have been supportive of my newly emerging veganism. A little alarmed at first, mentioning, "What will you eat," and "Where will you get your protein?” The usual questions, I suppose.
Yet everyone is also now beginning to see how serious and dedicated I am to veganism and to animal rights. In the meantime, I'm purposefully pursuing my dedication in what I hope is a non-judgmental, informative, and educated way.
As I plan, and actively try to raise awareness with others, and for others, about the plight of our Earth's animals, all without yet being completely vegan, I continue to happily live with my own personal conflicts and contradictions for now, though this can be somewhat trying at times.
My goal is to eventually be completely vegan. Living with my inner conflicts and contradictions right now is a small price to pay to vigorously pursue the cause of animal rights.
Kim Hyder Kim is an SVS member who lives in Salem. |
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Salem Vegan Society reminds its members and others to conserve energy &
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