everyone awesome loves Howard Zinn, end of story. July 14, 2009

Heya sweethearts!

As is my custom, I will balance out my intense screaming anger below with this sweet post.

Look at this box!

It made my day of lawn mowing and housecleaning and Sotomayor-whining all sparkly and lovely for two reasons:

1) How stoked would you be to get your gorgeous screen printed t-shirts in a box with a Howard Zinn quote on it? I’d be super duper stoked. Even better:

2) This quote has been my email signature for years (I think I copied it out of the Zinn Reader, but I can’t find it right now), and even if it’s not true, I’m going to say that the super radical (on all levels) screen printing VG Kids peeps, from whence this box comes, were first pointed to its wonderfulness by me when I ordered some super rad pins (yeah yeah, I have to order more so you can buy them, I know!! It’s on my list!) from them in 2007. This quote gets around, I tell ya: once I did a Freecycle deal with a cute local girl, then the next time I saw her post on the Freecycle list she had the quote in her email too. I think that’s wonderful–we all need more inspirational Howard Zinn in our lives. Anyway, even if the VG Kids didn’t get the quote from me, I’m still overjoyed that they found it and put it on their boxes. Oh, small lovely companies, how you do my heart proud.

Spread the word: use VG Kids for your printing needs! Order all your swag from them, bands and companies and festivals! They are in Michigan and lovely to work with and political as all get out.

the sotomayor problem July 14, 2009

Poor poor Sonia Sotomayor! The right is being so mean to her! So UNFAIR! So RACIST! Waaah waaah waah.

I’m so fucking tired of this shit.

Here’s how it goes,

EVERY. TIME.

Without. Fail:

The quote unquote “left” (I use the term here to refer actually to the right middle, which is what the “left” is these days) picks some milquetoast shitass candidate for something. President or supreme court or dogcatcher or whatevs. And because the left is so in-fucking-clusive, they (note that I do not use “we”) increasingly pick someone of color, or someone with a vag, and that’s all well and good. (and they always, ALWAYS, have to be calm calm calm. God forbid we get an uppity Puerto Rican or an angry black man in office! The world would END!) Of course it is. We are a nation filled with peeps of color, over half of whom have innies instead of outies, and of course we should be picking candidates from the widest possible spectrum of people. Sane people have known this from the beginning of time, but it’s taken us like 2,000 years to come around to it because we’re pretty much idiots. But now we’re slowly getting there, and enough about that.

So the “left” picks someone, in this case a Nuyorican, and hooray hooray. Blah blah. It’s humiliating that this is a victory, etc.

The constant, consistent problem, of course, is that maybe because of her skin tone and gender or maybe just because, these candidates are always, without fail, CRAP. Because that’s all the left knows how to do: pick up crap.

I’m not saying Sotomayor is a Bushie or anything. All my reading points to the same thing over and over: she’s a centrist. And let’s be clear about what that means: Sonia Sotomayor will do nothing but uphold and confirm corporations’ consolidation and centralization of power and wealth and the continuing shitting upon of working people* —you know that, right? You’re a smart cookie, dearest blog reader, you must know that.

So instead of the left screaming about how WE WANT A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE WHO STANDS UP FOR US! For our values of hard work and not getting fucked over by the corporate consolidation of power that completely and totally pwns and owns us on a daily basis until we are so ground down we want to lay down and die!

Instead of doing our democratic duty and fucking screaming and protesting and FORCING our government (OUR GOVERNMENT, not The Government We’ve Decided Not To Care About Because Michelle Obama Seems So Hip And I Really Like Her Belts And Flats And Is It Just Me, or is Malia Obama Just Growing Up Right Under Our Noses?) to do what we want because we OWN IT, what do we do?

We get upset because the lunatic right isn’t treating this craptastic Supreme Court nominee nicely enough.

We do it EVERY TIME. The right, people. Let’s think about this. Who are these right wingers? We know who they are.

Liars, godfreaks, misogynists, racists, sublimated gays with raging homophobic complexes, rich white dudes, heartless fucks, literal human trash, that’s who we’re dealing with here. And we’re surprised when they lie, godfreak out, hate women and people of color and LGBTQ and poor people? WHY? Why are we surprised?

I honestly don’t understand it. Of course the work of calling idiots out on their idiocy needs to be done. But it often seems to be all the left does. I understand the impulse of a vaguely well-meaning (which is what the left is these days, vaguely well-meaning dolts) person getting what little outrage their tiny little Obama-voting brain is capable of going when one of these trashpeople says just what you’d expect a trashperson to say. I get that.

But when it’s all you talk about, always, forever, endlessly, when the entire mediablogtwittercomplex devotes itself exclusively to counter attacks when we should be talking about what WE WANT AND WHAT WE DESERVE,

well,

it just makes me a little upset, OK? That we’ve let the right define the terms of the debate, and that we’re always on the defensive.

It stinks, and I’m over it.

And you know what? I can hear all my sweet, kind, well-meaning Obama-voting friends saying: “But he’s in a tough place. He’s a politician. He can’t make big sweeping changes overnight, he’s got to work for goals he can actually get accomplished with a very uncooperative and combatitive other side….”

…and their voices just drone on and on in my ears, and I’m slowly backing away, thinking about, like, uh, lolcats and ice cream and vintage pink dresses or whatever happy, non-explosive place I can get myself to before responding.

Because no one seems to understand it anymore. Here’s how I was always taught it worked:

You work hard to elect the candidate you believe in.

That candidate always loses.

So you’re stuck with some chump, and instead of understanding their pain or whatever the fuck everyone tries to do these days, you PUSH THEM. You get all Jewy and you nag and niggle and email and call and protest and scream and yell and make signs and tattoo your forehead and make them listen to you, not the corporations that paid their way into office, not the special interest groups that own them, not the political establishment that limits their imagination and scope.

Democracy, you know?

.

.

.

*Yeah, I took that from my Facebook status update for today. What are you going to do about it? I’m workin’ it across several media networky platforms, yo.

(late) Monday miscellany: tiny readings June 30, 2009

Ick.

Totes.

IN LOVE.

Made me puke. You?

I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS!

Thanks to Carol Adams’ Facebook for this ridic link.

Thanks to the THREE! friends who posted this on FB! So not surprising, and another reason to eat real food, duh.

I’m a born secretary, OK? (Notes on last night’s Comprehensive Plan meeting) June 18, 2009

I was a secretary for a year once, in my one and only stint at working in an office. Technically I was the “administrative assistant” to a few art directors in the Art Dept. at Simon & Schuster. I worked in Rockefeller Center (30 Rock, yo! Though that wasn’t my address.) and loved everything about the job except for working in an office. I loved filing and organizing and talking to designers and my weird and crazy co-workers. It wasn’t a career job (I was in cooking school by night), so I had no pressure to succeed. Except for the existential horror of waking up at 7 AM and taking the bus into the city with all the Orthodox Jews and walking through Times Square and being confined in that suffocating suffocating building for 8 hours a day, it was fine. After a year I had saved up enough to pay off my cooking school tuition and I left the world of offices forever. However, working for and mostly by myself sometimes leaves me with a wistfulness for (this is vaguely humiliating to admit) meetings. My job (which I adore, don’t get me wrong) is super messy and unstructured and can easily dissolve into chaos. A meeting is a cool contrast to dirty aprons and endless hand washing: stacks of tidy papers, pens, clocks, quiet voices (not shouting over the exhaust fan): structure. Ideally. When I’m at meetings, I revert to my time as a secretary and take notes. It calms my brain and stops me from wondering why people are wearing the clothes they are wearing.

It is in this spirit that I present to you my notes from last night’s New Paltz Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee meeting. Exciting stuff!! No one seems to care about the Comp. Plan, but it sort of determines everything about New Paltz—it is supposed to be the master document that everyone refers to when deciding to grant approval to developments, etc. The Comprehensive Plan is supposed to be a document that tells us what New Paltz is and what it should become. I’m determined to have a say in it, and you should be too (unless you disagree with my say, that is [hey, I'm not a politician! I can say shit like that!]).

Let’s jump in:

In appreciation June 3, 2009

It seems appropriate to sit down and write a little teeny tiny, not-nearly-good-enough appreciation of a friend of mine. I’ll call her Q. I’ve written about her before on the blog using her name, but suddenly I want to shield her. My love for her is so intense. I can’t risk anything.

Q works as an abortion counselor, talking women (and their men!) through the abortion process. In spite—no, not in spite, because— of this, she is a passionate mother and political mothering activist. She’s an advocate for safe pregnancies for all women, and for all children to be loved, appropriately cared for, and wanted.

Here’s what I’ve written about her in the past:

Q’s entire life is devoted to remaking motherhood and baby-raising – she works as an abortion counselor, where she walks past protesters daily in her “business casual” vintage dresses on her way to empowering women to take control of their reproductive lives. She helps to run an amazing group that “provides pregnancy, labor, and post partum doula services…to women incarcerated in Washington State,” works as a doula-for-hire, volunteers for an abortion-support hotline, fixes up her brand new house, and, of course, is a great co-parent to her [now 2-year-old!] baby, little E.
When I met Q in college she was passionate about the injustices inherent in the prison-industrial complex, and it constantly amazes me how she managed to combine her two passions—prison abolishment and feminist ways of having children—so neatly. The knowledge that Q exists is one of those necessary hand holds I grope for on the days when I feel myself sliding off the thin edge of sanity I’ve worked so hard to build up.

The other night we were talking about The Horribleness, and she mentioned to me that as part of her job she sometimes talks to women who are about to have, are in the middle of, or just had abortions who tell her they are still “pro-life.”

“Well,” she said she says to them, “do you understand now why choice is so important?” And she said they mostly tell her the standard anti-choice line about how it’s a sin, and oh my, it just broke my heart. These women who know in their hearts that they can’t have babies right now (or ever, or maybe they were raped, or any of the million other reasons they need an abortion), but who must torture themselves thinking that they committed a “sin.”

Sins.

Our government is still holding prisoners without any proof of their guilt, there are sweatshops in downtown NYC where people work in slave-like conditions, sex trafficking around the globe continues to buy and sell women’s bodies without their consent, slaughterhouse workers continue to commit suicide because of the sickening nature of their jobs, military men continue to come home from war and beat and kill their spouses in dizzying numbers, cosmetics companies continue to blind, torture and kill animals for no reason whatsoever, our rapacious consumption of useless cheap trash continues to create an economy in which workers are paid and treated horribly because no one will pay a real price for anything, children are still being trained as soldiers in Africa and around the world, human slaves continue to pick our tomatoes and citrus in Florida, and, of course, billions of people continue to eat death on a daily basis, pretending that it is food.

Pro-life. It’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? Whose life? The obsession with babies, their purity and value above almost all else in our culture, continues to sicken me. Of course, I do not believe babies should be murdered or anything. But a fetus, a collection of cells, is simply not a baby, and the belief that it is is a certain sort of willful ignorance and childish stupidity that infuriates me. Belief in god is the only other topic that makes me so instantly furious. Meat eaters make me angry because they are intellectually incurious, misinformed, and unintelligent. God people and anti-choicers make me FURIOUS—because they are childish. I’ve never been a child. I don’t understand this kind of thinking.

Somehow, I started reading the blog of this Mormon woman who almost died in a plane crash last year. The pictures are pretty, and it’s poetic in a silly, grade-school way. I take a peek every once in a while when I’m goofing off from work. I can’t really explain why. Prettiness, I guess.

And also because I look down on this woman so very, very much. That’s the truth of the matter. She practically died in this plane crash and I’m glad she didn’t. (I’m pro-life: I don’t want anyone to die.) She’s sweet, and loving, and she wants to do what’s right in the world. But she’s just…not smart. And it irritates me to no end that all her energy could be used on so much other than popping out kid after kid (she currently has four). All she wants to do is get well enough to have another baby. She lives in that weird moronic (pun intended) world of women being valued above all else for their love and sweetness—for their ability to bear children and raise them capably. And, by the looks of the blog, she is doing a perfect job of it. She’s an intellectual child, and that’s fine. In her world she doesn’t need to be anything more. If I were to ask her, she would say, and so would her sister and her cousins and her mother and every other woman in her world, that she “chose” to have children. She would probably also throw in something about god. She most likely believes it is a choice, but she doesn’t see that she lives in a patriarchal bell jar where the idea of “choice” is so tightly defined that she can’t imagine other ways of living, except to shudder at what they must be like.

Q and I, we’re pro-choice. Motherfucking wide-eyed anarchistic thinking living breathing pro-CHOICE. All choices, for all women, for everyone, about everything. You get a choice. What you do with it, your one wild life and all that, that’s up to you. That’s what being pro-choice, and, for that matter, being an anarchist, means to me.

So, on the phone the other night we were talking about how we came to our views on abortion. We were both raised pro-choice (actually, I’m assuming you were, Q, correct me if I’m wrong), but the murder of Dr. Slepian motivated her to understand how the right to have an abortion is always under attack, and she began to develop a more radical pro-choice politic.

In contrast, I started out on the way far left and used to proudly proclaim myself as “pro-abortion” because I was an old-school Zero Population Growth advocate. These days I’ve calmed down a little and have moved just a bit towards the middle, and I’m mature enough to admit something I wouldn’t have copped to five or ten years ago: abortions aren’t an ideal situation, and one reason I am pro-choice is so there will be less of them.

My hardcore “pro-abortion” stance was partly borne (!) out of the fact that I’ve never felt a biological imperative or impulse. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to have children, so in high school and college I felt women who had children were, well—traitors. (I was into Shulamith Firestone for a while.) They were giving up the radical work of reweaving the world for the oldest and least revolutionary “job” of all, or so I thought.

I’ve grown. I still can’t imagine having children (I know I’ve pointed it out before, but this Onion article is the perfect description of my feelings about handing my body over to a baby). On the other hand, having children in my life is an experience I am cautiously enjoying more and more, and I recognize that for that to happen I need to stay friends with good, political parents.

The great thing about Q is that she is honest about the nuanced world of pregnancy. She is currently pregnant with her second child, and a few weeks ago when we talked she was suffering with horrible daylong “morning” sickness and told me, “this is not a baby inside me. It’s a creature poisoning my entire body and it’s making me crazy.” All pregnant women must feel like that at some point, right? I love Q for being so open about it.

In response, I recently told her my secret shame: that sometimes I think about the fact that if Jacob and I had popped one out when we first got together (um, when I was 18), that baby would be 13 now and could be doing some serious yardwork. I’d probably never have to change the cat boxes again if we had a 13-year-old around! Once I mentioned this hilarious thought to Jacob, and he confided that he pretty much thought the same thing. And we decided for the millionth time that having children so you can use them as slaves isn’t a great idea, and since we can’t think of a better reason, we’d rather just be Lagusta & Jacob, plus Noodle, Cleo, and Sula, of course.

And someday, hopefully someday soon, when the stars align and we don’t live near a main road and have more time and a bigger house and cats that aren’t so crabby: a dog.

Oh! A girl can dream, can’t she?

an open letter to newpaltzjournal.com May 30, 2009

My GOD man, open up your blog to comments! I’m thinking of starting a blog just to discuss/refute/laugh at your ridiculousness—as well as, very very occasionally, applaud. Damn right wingers, they never believe in democracy, do they? I mean, why spew all this stuff out and refuse to engage others in a discussion about it?

LET’S TALK.

ENDLESSLY. I’ll even promise not to comment on your insane anti-choice posts, OK? That has to be worth something.

Every time I take a hesitant peek, I work myself into a froth, nay a lather, nay—a seething, surging, spume-y squall of a froth, and it’s getting tiring not having a froth outlet, if you will. I have so much to say, about Ayn Rand*, about casual racism masquerading as….uh, I don’t know…intelligence, I guess, hypocrisy, quotation mark usage, and so much more—and that’s all from the past week!

Then again…who cares? Are we ever going to change each other’s minds? Shouldn’t I really be using my time in better ways, like masturbating or something? But the impulse to express outrage is so strong, and the hopeful thought that I could express my outrage in a thoughtful, nuanced way that might actually contribute to meaningful dialogue is stronger still.

Yuck. Why can’t everyone just agree with me?

*Just the teeniest bit about that: everyone always says Rand defended and celebrated “wealth creators” to such an extent that her entire Objectivist philosophy has seemingly been reduced to “yay for money!” While it most certainly was that (she did write a book called “Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal,” after all) to a certain extent, what I took away from Rand was a very anarchic sort of freedom: freedom to live our lives as we desire. I know that she might not be happy that what I took from her books is that I have the freedom to live my life however the fuck I please and for me that often means the freedom not to earn money, but who cares? That’s what I took from it.

I loathe everything she ever wrote about laissez-faire capitalism (I could expound on that too, all about how humans are currently too stupid to practice capitalism well [and, for that matter, anarchism, which explains why I am a Green, see?], but I love her deeper thoughts on how a life can be structured. A part of my heart—a bigger part than I’d like to admit—loves that rapist Howard Roark, OK? There, I said it. Reading Rand in high school gave me freedom from the horrible hippie household of my childhood without turning me into an equally horrible corporatist Republican (or, ugh, libertarian), because for me she wasn’t about this or that economic theory, she was about personal freedom.

Personal freedom! That phrase has been stolen by the Right, and we need to take it back. The Left is the party of personal freedom: freedom to marry whoever you want, freedom to be in a union or not, freedom to not shave your legs without fearing societal ridicule, just freedom. I always hated that stupid line “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” I mean, I likes me some Joplin, of course, but she wasn’t exactly the smartest you-know-what in the you-know-what, and it’s time for the Left to admit it: freedom is the most important American value.

I love all the stupid freedoms that we no longer have, the teeny things that make me remember why I’m an anarchist: freedom to get drunk on the street, freedom to not wear a shirt if you don’t want to. And of course, the big ones: freedom from fear of Big Brother, freedom from being forced to work (and here’s the old Roark coming back: my god those layabouts on the stoop in New Paltz make my blood boil. They say they are anarchists, but they do nothing! They are nihilists! I should be happy they are enjoying their freedom to do nothing but be high on the street at 1 PM on a Tuesday and bang on their fucking faux djembes, but I kind of can’t stand them and their damn unspayed and unneutered dogs make me so angry I could just—phew. Stopping the rant-within-a-rant!).

Just plain old American freedom, OK? I’m on the far left because I know that freedom isn’t free. And that doesn’t have anything to do with 9/11, you redneck freaks. It has everything to do with capitalism, and the way it has to, by definition, control and limit us.

chocolate brought us together May 24, 2009

OMGZ OMGZ OMGZ!

PEEPS!

OK, calm down calm down calm down,

I know it’s super dorky to get this excited about this, but

VANDANA SHIVA JUST EMAILED ME! For reals! Or, for as reals as you can ever be sure about an email. But still!

Dudes. You don’t even KNOW. I am MADLY TERRIBLY HORRIBLY in love with Vandana Shiva. She’s such a crazy wild heroine of mine, my cheeks flush with ridiculous pride to think that

VANDANA SHIVA KNOWS I EXIST!

That means that something I’ve accomplished in my life has merited the attention of someone who has done more good work in the world than almost anyone else living on this earth today.

Seriously. Oh, I’m not going to hide it: I’m proud.

See, in college I was deep into the philosophy of ecofeminism. I still am, but I got tired of explaining to people that feminists who refuse to separate their environmentalism and animal rights practices from their analysis of gender relations have a special sort of feminism all their own, so now I just say I’m a radical feminist, which I am too. (I like categorizing myself, OK?). And the philosophy of ecofeminism practically wouldn’t exist without Vandana (yes, we are on a first name basis). She is a passionate believer in the idea that putting women in charge will lead to a better-functioning world, and that in order to dismantle patriarchy we need to all move closer to a historically-devalued connection between women and the earth.

…everywhere, women were the first to protest against environmental destruction. As activists in the ecology movements, it became clear to us that science and technology were not gender neutral; and in common with many other women, we began to see that the relationship of exploitative dominance between man and nature, (shaped by reductionist modern science since the 16th century) and the exploitative and oppressive relationship between men and women as prevails in most patriarchal societies, even modern industrial ones, were closely connected…

-Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism, introduction.

Staying Alive and Ecofeminism were such important books for me during college, and I’ve been a careful reader of her articles in Resurgence and whatever else by her I can get my hands on since then. She balances serious revolutionary zeal with a down-to-earth sensibility and zest for life that makes reading her such a pleasure.

(There is so much of hers out there I haven’t read yet, too—oh, someday I will sit and read everything I’ve been meaning to read. What a wonderful thought.)

So, I emailed her to see if I could send some of the chocolates named for her, and at the last minute got super nervous that she wouldn’t be OK with me using her likeness on the box or maybe she hates chocolate or something and wouldn’t like having a chocolate named after her. I didn’t consult with any of my chocolate honorees before I printed up the boxes (though I asked Noel if it was OK if I named an X-rated chocolate after her and outed her as a former model in her little bio on the box—she’s the fiercest lesbian I know, and doesn’t exactly make a point of talking about the years she spent modeling pantyhose and cinched-waist dresses in the pages of Seventeen and Mademoiselle), so now I’m going around and trying to make sure everyone is aware of them.

Here’s what she wrote back to my email:

Dear Lagusta
Thank you so much!
The address for mailing is xxxxx
Much as I would like to taste the chocolates at the earliest, maybe we should wait till after the summer. Don’t want your wonderful creations to melt at 48degrees celsius.
Please send them in Sept if that is possible. And visit us in India some day.
With love
Vandana

“Visit us in India”!!!!! I’m on a plane tomorrow! Or, maybe next fall.

Oh life. You’re just too ridiculously wonderful to be believed sometimes. Thanks, chocolate!

Also, making the Vandana chocolate and talking it up to people (because, really, it is the tastiest, if I am being perfectly honest) I have realized that we have a major thing in common: everyone mispronounces her name too! It’s “vahn-DAHN-ah” (it’s Indian, yo) not “van-DAN-uhh.” (it doesn’t rhyme with “bandana,” yo). And for the record, mine is “la-GUS-ta” —hey, just like it’s spelled, imagine that!—not “la-GU-sta”—yes, also like it’s spelled, I’ll own that–like you’ve probably been saying it in your head.

meet Dustin Rhodes: everyday hero May 19, 2009

One of the best things about blogging in the wild, no-holds-barred way in which I practice it is that it really separates the wheat from the chaff. I’ve been pleased to find that my little blog has put me in touch with some super lovely people who also happen to share at least some of my views. I’m sure I’ve also made scores of enemies through blogging, but I’ll take lots of people hating me with a passion and a far smaller number of far more amazing people liking me over most people’s boring no-feathers-ruffled relationships any day, you know?

One of the people I’m most happy to have met in this pomo virtual way is Mr. Dustin Rhodes, who works for one of my favorite animal rights groups, Friends of Animals. I like him so much that I asked if I could be a total dork and interview him for the blog. He agreed, and here is the fascinating result. What a radical, wonderful, true-blue kind of a dude you are, Dustin. I’m so pleased to know you.

Oh, the cute assaults from so many angles! From left: Miss Delilah, Bray, Lulu, Dustin.

How did you get into animal rights work?

I don’t have a linear or necessarily interesting story. I first became interested when I was a teenager, but I never stuck with being a vegetarian. If I am being honest, I think I was more drawn to the Kool Kids Klub aspect of it. I was in 4-H for many years as a child, Cub Scouts—you know, all the groups that teach you to dominate everything alive. Plus, many in my family were life-long dairy farmers. Respecting animals did not come naturally, although I’d say I’ve always been a person who cannot bear to witness suffering. And I have been obsessed with dogs my entire life.

I became vegan in my mid-20’s solely because I became friends with a vegan. That simple. I wouldn’t describe her as an animal activist or advocate either. Veganism was simply a part of who she was, and I was very inspired by that. It was seamlessly integrated into her life. She defied any sort of idea I had about what animal rights could look like.

During that time, I worked for a really high end women’s clothing boutique. I hated the job with all my heart, but I did love my co-workers. After I left, the owner started selling fur. I freaked out. It became my mission in life to convince her otherwise. Long story short, I was successful. It was a good lesson in both tenacity and killing someone with kindness. (I think I’ve regressed).

I started writing gazillions of letters, too: to newspapers, various companies, politicians, etc. That’s the kind of activism I felt most comfortable with. My boyfriend loves to make fun of me for letter writing; I am one of those people who will write to a CEO over something really insignificant—and I almost always get a response! I am not one of those in-your-face types. I just don’t have it in me. Plus, I worked as a Director of Student Activities at a liberal arts college for 8 years; I tried to incorporate animal activism into my vocational life as much as possible. I took a group of 15 students to build 3 small barns at an animal sanctuary over the course of a week, and I hosted a Vegan Brunch Club. It was during my time there that I found Friends of Animals.

I am really interested to know your typical day—you’ve mentioned traveling to demos and things, so I wonder how much of your day is office work and how much is “field work”-type stuff.

I can’t say I have a “typical” day. I am the only person in my DC office. I get a lot of phone calls from people needing all sorts of help. Sometimes people just call to tell me about something awful they’ve heard about. I have to answer a lot of e-mails as well.

I am mainly a writer. I assist with brochure/pamphlet writing, working on and updating vegan restaurant guides; I write articles for our magazine and for our website. I write official letters to the editor, op-eds and the like. I also do a lot of public relations work. For instance, we recently self-published a cookbook, The Best of Vegan Cooking, and it’s my job to get bookstores to carry it, to get magazines and newspapers to review it, and I help arrange book signings and talks (promoting the book). That’s been a huge focus recently. I also help moderate a vegan discussion board which has over 500 members. I maintain the materials on our Facebook pages. Among many other things.

I also represent the organization at public events and vegetarian festivals. I help arrange and go to various protests. The last one was in New York City—a protest against the annual seal slaughter in Canada. Next, I am traveling to rural Michigan because Friends of Animals is hosting a speaking engagement by Nathan Winograd (who is considered the US’s foremost expert on No Kill animal sheltering). That’s in June.

I am writing this stuff as though it’s boring, but I enjoy most all of it. I can really get into mindless things like putting together huge mailings; that’s what I did today. My two dogs go to work with me every day, and sometimes I can multi-task: seal envelopes with one hand, and throw a Kong toy across the office for Lulu with the other. My life is pretty sweet.

What’s the best part of your job?

Everyone I work with is much more experienced and is much smarter than I am. That’s the best part of my job: being the dumbest person in the room. It ignites a fire in me to learn more. They all inspire me every day to become a better, more effective vegan and animal advocate.

And of course, the worst?

That’s easy: I read really horrible stuff on a daily basis. I get this really concentrated dose of horror, which really depressed me when I first started working here. I’ve always been completely pollyanna—a Fast Times at Ridgmont High kind of person sans the drugs or abject stupidity. The first year I worked at Friends of Animals, there were many days I didn’t want to get out of bed. Seriously. This is my way of divulging, subtly, that I am an ultra-sensitive person.

I’m not sure if that breaks any sort of code or anything but: What are your feelings on the different types of animal rights/animal welfare work? I remember there being big debates about this when I was heavily involved in a grassroots a/r group. We very clearly defined ourselves as animal rights people and believed that animal welfare people (Humane Societies, etc) were akin to people who would have historically argued that human slaves should have better living conditions, whereas we were abolitionists. These days since I am not involved in any a/r groups and just work as a stealth activist on my own, the debate isn’t too important to me anymore. I wish more people were doing a/r work, but since an animal rights utopia isn’t going to come about in my lifetime I guess I’m glad some people are making sure zoos are more comfortable or whatever.

I have very conflicting feelings about this, and I have to be honest and say that my views have changed on this topic. Once upon a time, I considered myself a true pluralist. Part of that was because I honestly didn’t pay much attention to so-called animal rights groups. HSUS, for example, barely even existed in my brain before coming to work at Friends of Animals.

To cut to the chase, I despise PETA as an organization. In my view, they have cheapened animal rights and done a disservice to animals. One day they are talking about why you should eat at Burger King and the next, they are telling women to flash their breasts if they’re opposed to fur; then they want to know if you think you are the cutest vegetarian alive! I think they are incredibly dysfunctional and insane. I do, however, think they are effective: effective at getting people to pay attention. It’s too bad they don’t have anything worthwhile to say. I really have no respect for anything they do. That said, I do my best to try to pretend they don’t exist, although that’s impossible. They are suing the animal sanctuary that is supported by Friends of Animals. They are in my conscience  perpetually. Blech. And don’t even get me started about all the dogs and cats they kill. (Did I mention that I hate, hate, hate PETA?)

I’d love to hear why you picked Friends of Animals as the group to work for, and what the process was for becoming a full-time activist.

I found Friends of Animals through reading Lee Hall’s book, Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror. The book came highly recommended, and I loved it. In fact, I would say I became obsessed with it. It succinctly articulated ideas that were vague notions swirling around in my brain. The book also contextualized so much I didn’t understand about the dysfunction of animal rights. Also, like Lee Hall, I see animal rights as ultimately a peace movement. This is actually a controversial, unpopular idea, even though veganism was presented in this way by Donald and Dot Watson—the founders of the original vegan society.

I got the job from becoming friends with Lee Hall, and then Priscilla Feral, the president of FoA. They definitely went out on a limb hiring me. Like I said, I am still the dumbest person in the room.

Do you have advice for young people who might want to follow in your footsteps?

Well, I wouldn’t want anyone to follow in my particular footsteps… however: I think it’s important to learn everything you can. Forget PETA, and read the really hard, challenging stuff: Read Lee Hall, Carol Adams, Tom Regan, Joan Dunayer and others. Read the challenging stuff because it will push and challenge your entire world-view. I would also recommend doing everything possible to stay emotionally balanced and, at the end of the day, happy. Practice non-judgment and live a life of kindness. I say these things not as platitudes, but because you’ll need these skills to not let the darker side of the world consume you.

I think becoming a vegan is the most wonderful, rewarding and transformative thing that’s ever happened to me. I think the secret to helping others transition really lies in sharing that joy with others. Of course that’s easier said than done.

Do you generally leave work feeling like you’ve accomplished or are accomplishing your goals? This was my problem when doing a/r work. The goals felt almost impossible to reach. Since then, however, I have seen real strides, and every time a bill gets passed or a city bans foie gras I think about all the activists and a/r professionals who put in so many long hours to make it happen and how great they must feel.

I have to take a very Buddhist attitude about this by not getting too caught up in the accomplishments or the misery. There’s always more to do. Like I said, I am a little on the polyanna side, so I naturally am inclined to focus on the more positive aspects, even if I know I am kidding myself. You are right, though: the goals seem impossible, but I have to believe that we are inching toward them. But I have plenty of bad days where I think of stepping into rush hour traffic on the walk home…

I’d love to hear your thoughts on food bans, such as the recent foie gras bans in Chicago and elsewhere. Though I abhor foie gras, banning food (rather than changing people’s perceptions about it so there is no longer a market for it) worries me. I feel it will only increase demand for it, since it will have an illicit thrill attached to it, and then animals will be treated even worse because there will be no regulation (as opposed to the almost-no regulation there is now). As a chef, I’m also opposed to the rather fascistic idea that a government can tell us what to eat (of course, this presupposes that foie gras is “food,” which it of course is not, so I recognize that flaw in my logic). On the other hand, a 100% cigarette-style “sin tax” on all animal products–that I could get behind!

I agree with everything you said. I don’t think food bans are ultimately effective. I think they make activists feel good, so I understand why the campaigns are compelling. I don’t mean for that to sound judgmental against animal advocates. But, in my mind, it promotes one kind of animal abuse as worse than another. Right?

Of course, only answer if you want to, but: when I started reading Carol Adams and realizing a lot of connections between feminism and animal rights it really added a lot of fuel to my fire for a/r work at a time when I was very burnt out. Obviously you being gay is different because it’s not a choice like being a feminist is, but I still wonder if you see any parallels between your a/r work and general LGBTQ struggles–does being part of a discriminated-against group of people inform your animal rights work?

I get asked this all the time, and I honestly consider myself more interested in feminism than LGBTQ issues—maybe just because it’s outside of who I actually am (also because I grew up in a family with a lot of domestic violence). In any case, animal rights is absolutely an issue of social justice, and the core issue is domination—specifically human domination over non-human animals. That’s not to mention how humans exploit and dominate other humans and the planet at large. I see all of these issues as inner-connected. So all of these issues, at the end of the day, should inform the other. That’s a lot of my issue(s) with PETA: they say they are trying to stop animal exploitation while simultaneously exploiting human animals.

Speaking of, how do you combat the all-prevalent burn out syndrome?

Sex, drugs and rock n roll? Just kidding. I try very hard to live a full life, and to not become myopic. There are definitely animal advocates who literally do nothing else. While I deeply admire this, I couldn’t do that. I have to lay in the park reading trashy David Sedaris on Saturdays and bake vegan muffins and watch lots of The L Word and The Wire courtesy of Netflix.

Also, it must be said: the people who run animal sanctuaries and shelters, people who do rescue work, they are the ones who experience the real pain and trauma–not me. I have so much respect, admiration and love for those people. I don’t know how they do it.

This is super sappy, but: in your expert opinion, do you think things are, overall, improving for nonhuman animals? If so, do you think this is due to legislation, people’s attitudes changing, a combination, or other factors? Are you optimistic for the future?

Yes, I am optimistic. Very much so. People seem much less aggressive towards animal rights these days, and I think that’s an important first step. I know the world can seem like it’s full of evil, but I believe we are experiencing the pangs of a shift of consciousness. (How totally New Age does that sound?). I don’t think I’ll live to see a vegan world, but I do think we’ll live to see profound progress. I think we are at the very beginning stages. I can’t wait.

Upstate political blogs! May 15, 2009

Who receives the few kisses not meant for Brittany

My lesbian lover* is doing a presentation on social networks and drew up a list of upstatey political blogs to accompany it. I went through and checked out each one, and here are the ones I’m planning on keeping up with. (Can I make every sentence in this post end with a preposition?) There were some great-seeming Albany-oriented blogs, but I just can’t force myself to get into NYS politics outside my teeny tiny 12,000 person bubble, so I left those off. And though she was so good and balanced and had some conservative blogs, I left those off because I found them all moderately stupid (the best compliment I can give to a conservative blog–and yes, our bestie/beastie New Paltz Journal was among them).

Highlights and notes:

• Pete Wassell’s blog – a Dutchess county legislator, and cool dude. Not often updated, but interesting, smart, and right (and by that I mean left).
• HV Labor Report – Labor issues
• Those Who Show Up – Best name for a liberal blog ever!
• Blaber News – Cute picture of BT right on the front page!
• Just Something 2 [sic] Think About
• Ulster County Fishbowl
• Ulster County Mojo

Also! Dear world: because I know you write blogs in order for me to read them, here is a handy list of reasons I will leave your blog in haste:

• It mentions sports teams, even tangentially. I am painfully allergic to said topic and seriously think anyone and everyone who follows sports teams is the worst sort of chauvinist, duped-by-the-machine idiot. White dudes who fetishize old-timey baseball are a subset of people in the sports-team-worshipping category that make me instantly puke in my mouth.
• It’s bonkers, or even just borderline bonkers.
• Quotes from founding fathers are sprinkled around.
• You’re a white dude and aren’t gay or vegan or have anything at all vaguely interesting about you. (Someday I’ll talk about my very 1995 attitude that gay people are cooler than nongays because anyone who has to work to overcome obstacles society throws at them is automatically cool, and how I should really grow out of this idiotic and faintly demeaning attitude)
• Your blog is just plain ugly (not to mention contains other major flaws I am too awesome to stoop to discussing)
• Your blog magically combines all these and makes me instantly vomit.
• You’re a libertarian. I agree with a teeny sliver of what libertarians believe, but let’s face it: they are all, without exception, annoying dweebs. Am I wrong? NO. I have a longstanding bet with a local lib that I will donate $100 to the libertarian group of his choice if he can find a working-class, non-white, GLBTQ libertarian activist. Because no such people exist, which proves that the libertarian party is a party for upper class anti-choice white idiot dudes, I will never have to pay this bet. (And in case some internet crazy finds someone fitting this description, I’d like to state that I am not making that bet with the entire internet, freaks.)

Not entirely related, but Billiam’s list of stuff to do this weekend is awesome, as usual. Oooh, I loves me some Billiam. For some reason he seems to live to tell me dirty jokes, which is an awesome thing to live for, if you ask me.

*I want to make clear that by calling Brittany my be-quoted “lesbian lover” when she in fact is not, I am not making fun of lesbians, who are my BFFs! I am making fun of the fact that there are apparently people in New Paltz who actually think that our blossomy, very public, very Facebooky friendship means that we must be sleeping together. Just so we’re clear!

New Paltz politics: blind items May 15, 2009

A joint post from me (um, Lagusta) and Brittany at Legislative Barbie!

What current or former Village official thinks Village Mayor Terry Dungan has completely run off the rails, but started out trying to do good and could potentially be good again, if he sets personal politics aside?

What incoming Village Board member Twitters primarily about smoking pot (not that I’m passing judgment, I’m just saying. OK, as a child of pot-smokers I [Lagusta] will admit it: I am passing judgment. Pot should be legal, but it’s stupid.)?

Which pint-sized former Village official is considering a run for Supervisor in November?

Which current Town official is considering a run for Supervisor in November?

What Village official was spotted talking to himself at a recent Village Board meeting?

Which Democratic—oops, I’m sorry, he’s technically a Green—Town official is considering a run for supervisor?

Which Village official has added parking enforcement to his/her official duties?

Which Village official’s dramatic slide into nonsensical rantings increasingly resembles Paula Abdul in a drugged stupor?

What hippie-about-town planted tulips shaped like the name of a 4-legged beast outside Village Hall?

What conservative gadfly appears to be coming over to the dark side of liberalism?

What Village official has accomplished more in 1 year than most do during a full 4 year term?

Which head of the major third party in town isn’t a fan (to put it lightly) of the “super famous” public face of said party?

Which celebrated beauty and viper-tongued political analyst is deserting town for a man, but word on the street is she will back sooner than you think?

Which sweatshoppy New Paltz gift shop is selling tie-dyed New Paltz t-shirts that seem (to Lagusta at least) to be a direct affront to its older, hippier cousin right up the street?

Which restaurant on Main Street boasts a vegetarian menu but obviously fries their frenchies in meat oil?

Which two political bloggers-about-town are having a secret lesbian affair, or so says word on the street?

I’ll give you a hint on that one: