“Blood and Soil”: Lierre Keith, Michael Pollan, and the Trouble with Locavore Politics

Here’s Jon Sanbonmatsu’s reply to Lierre Keith’s “The Vegetarian Myth,” reprinted in full from here. The original was hard to read for me, so I thought this might help (to wit: paragraph breaks).

“Blood and Soil”: Lierre Keith, Michael Pollan, and the Trouble with Locavore Politics

          Until very recently, the terms of what we might call human species right – the perceived, autogenousRecht of our species to appropriate, exploit, torment, and kill other sentient beings for any and all purposes, forever – were seen as natural and immutable, and so went unquestioned.[i] In the late 20th-century, however, an international social movement for animal liberation arose to challenge the terms of this presumed right, suggesting that it is both possible and desirable to forgo enslaving and killing other beings, for our sake as well as theirs. Yet even as that movement struggles to find its way in the teeth of government repression, widespread social prejudice, and an entrenched corporate-capitalist system based in animal exploitation, a group of intellectuals has risen up in determined political reaction against it. Like those who earlier mocked suffragism, opposed the abolition of slavery, or lifted their pens to decry civil rights for blacks, today’s anti-animal critics would discredit the movement before its critique can gain traction in the wider culture. Despite the shoddiness of their arguments, these critics find credulous readers, not because of the quality or novelty of their ideas, but because their prejudices happen to coincide with the bad conscience of the majority.

 

Oakland!

Took the streets on the way to one of the Oakland public schools slated for closure and had a speak-out with teachers, parents, kids, and allies. Folks marched back to 19th and Telegraph, removed fencing and tore down the “No Trespassing signs” (and put one in the window of the truck driving the mobile sound system). And set an encampment back up in a vacant lot in Uptown, followed by a motherfucking dance party in the rain.

Hella hella occupy.

 

Crowd-pleasing medley, example 1

 

Fighting for our Lives

I still love it:

We fought our way through their lines to the opera house and took it over, and held discussions there twenty-four hours a day as to what that world could be.

 

Occupy Oakland speaks

 

Occupy Oakland and the Fracture of Good Order

I want to write something in depth about my experiences in and around Occupy Oakland — including last Wednesday’s strike, which successfully shut down the Port of Oakland and was the most inspiring action I’ve ever been a part of, and the fallout from other actions later in the night — but for now, here’s an excellent piece:

The unacknowledged assimilation of peace with pacification will only fetter the movement’s potential, by keeping us bound to and within the bounds of the dictates of order. This is not to celebrate an equally unthinking embrace of property destruction or overly confrontational tactics. But we must create space for a diversity of tactics—not, as some have suggested, as code for the legitimation of violence—but as a necessary corollary to the diversity of this movement itself.

 

Occupy Oakland