November 20, 2011
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.
November 18, 2011
November 18, 2011
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.
November 13, 2011
November 6, 2011
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.
November 6, 2011
November 5, 2011
We stood our ground waiting for the fight to begin. My eyes squinted at the sun, wondering if they’d swing or run. I tell no lie: jackknives in socks, they’re all gonna die. Tensions rise. Pre-pubes swarm the hill like flies. Get the caskets ready, we’re going to tear right through this city. That’s if the anger don’t, that’s if the boredom don’t, the drinking don’t intercept this north-end horde. Who am I? Fighting a war that I can’t win. Swelling with things we try to hide.
You never leave anyone behind. A harsh return that slaps you in the face. For one last chance, we leave this place. We’re all packing up and moving on. I’ve got a war in the head. Fear our lives won’t pass as great events. A better prospect hides up ahead. Do you feel it in the air? We’ve been crushed beyond oblivion. Farce and death walk hand in hand. Graves and memorial walls hold my family name. Pills and bottles do the same. I hope that freedom’s coming our way.
The fight never happened. The crowd petered out. We all dribbled home. Mission accomplished.
October 20, 2011
The population of the U.S. stands around 307 million.
Worldwide, roughly 60 billion nonhumans are killed for our consumption … annually.
As relative populations, we constitute less than 1% of the sentient creatures we kill.
October 20, 2011
Fucking stop it. Cut it out.
Just stop. Stop having exotic animal farms in Ohio. Stop shooting tigers and bears after exotic animal farm owners kill themselves and leave the gates open. Stop buying novelty animals around holidays. Stop releasing domestic animals into the wild, thinking it’s freedom rather than exposure to predictable predation. Just fucking cut it out.
Stop calling some animals cute and others dinner. Stop it with the nonsense justifications. Stop talking about your fucking teeth and read some Plutarch, or modern evolutionary biology, if classics aren’t your thing. Stop talking about protein, particularly if you live in the 1st world and are likely in the early stages of disease brought on by excessive intake of animal protein. Fucking cut it out.
Stop putting the primitive on a pedestal when it comes to food, while you engage in the thoroughly modern with every other action you take at every other minute of your fucking hypocritical life. Stop acting like it’s beneath you, or outside the spectrum of acceptable conversation, to discuss food. Stop shouting, “Culture!” every time someone questions a practice; certainly not a thing one would do with distant practices of genital mutilation, not that you actually give a shit about justice. Stop assuming nonhumans were placed on this planet for you. Stop acting like consensus processes at temporary barricades excuse your lifelong complicities in systems of oppression. Stop pretending this wave breaks on the shores of the category you’ve marked “Species – Untouchable.”
Stop breeding animals for the purpose of slaughter. Stop breeding animals for the purpose of companionship. Stop breeding animals for the purpose of anaesthia-free, live necropsy. (One hope the apes don’t ever really take over; that shit is just unbelievably fucked, and I know you agree, if speciesism hasn’t utterly eviscerated your basic and widely shared notions of moral value.) Stop bleeding animals to death while humans watch and measure instruments. Stop giving rodents cancer to see how it hurts them. Stop it. Fucking stop it.
Just stop using machines called “rape racks” to impregnate sows, and stop drinking the milk (basically all milk) produced through the use of “rape racks.” Stop hosting meetings where products generated through the use of “rape racks” are served, particularly social justice meetings. At a minimum, stop expecting people who dislike the notion of “rape racks” to show up at your profoundly and macarbe non-consentual lacto-organizing. Stop ignoring that milk requires lactation, and lactation requires pregnancy, and pregnancy requires babies. Just stop it. You’re smart enough to know there’s not much good coming to those babies; stop acting like it doesn’t matter.
Stop ordering chickens through the fucking mail. If you found a place to order them from, it means you have the wherewithal to find out that they use live male chicks (useless in the capitalist system you eagerly participate in and claim to oppose) as packing material. Stop fucking pretending your supplier is different; they’re not.
Stop making people sick by spreading animal feces on all of our plant food. And you think vegans are selfish? At least I didn’t actively lobby for more poop on your greens.
Stop killing workers, in the US and abroad. Stop insisting on systems that demand an influx of easily exploitable labor. Stop discussing labor issues over meals composed of animals killed in horrific fashion by immigrants denied basic rights. Stop sleeping well, if you think that’s ok.
Just fucking stop it. Stop creating enormous pig shit lagoons, and then responding to critiques by advocating for killing animals next door to me. Stop fucking perpetrating like animal slaughter is a foregone conclusion. From the environmental horrors of industrial slaughter to your small scale version that will never, ever, ever, ever eclipse it, you’re literally killing the world. Please stop, if you like people being alive. We’d all really appreciate it if you fucking cut it out.
Stop it with the little cages, the bigger cages, the zoos and factories and farms and labs and rodeos and circuses and underfunded school aquariums and the bullshit you feed those kids and the bullshit arguments you offer to justify this massive cruelty, fraud, plunder, and devastation. Just fucking stop.
Of course, this is pedantic and other words that are like pedantic, but meaner. I am, after all, vegan, therefore untrustworthy. But you really have to cut it out. I’m being generous by ending it here, as it could go on and on and on. Haven’t even touched on GMOs, for instance. Haven’t even considered environmental justice or racism.
If you consume or use animal products, you support the existing system. It’s really as simple as that.
Just stop.
October 20, 2011
Dude, everything is awful. For really; it’s on the internet, all the awfulness, just check. Ok, theme song!
On the other hand, some things are delicious:
