When a social movement doesn’t want to be organized

I have to get this off my chest.

I never thought I would say those words. How can a social movement trying to bring about change actually not want to be organized? Perhaps it’s my fault for using the term “social movement” so freely.  I just assume that everyone is collective-oriented and about the movement as I am.  So I’m baffled when I meet so-called activists who don’t want to cooperate, and I’m even more disturbed when they are the majority.

CFP: Critical Animal Geographies

For all you academic, scholarly lovers out there: If you have any on-going or new work in the realm of animal geographies, please consider submitting to this anthology in the making.

Crying a River for Animal Life

I haven’t been on facebook or any social media for ages. I signed on for the first time in months and perused one of my friends’ walls and saw Mali the Elephant holding her tail.  The tag reads “She’s so lonely. She holds her own tail…”

I didn’t just feel like crying–I cried. I couldn’t help it. I can relate to being lonely. I can feel that deep sadness when all you have is yourself and that’s all you can rely upon because you have no support from the environment in which you live. I so get that, and it pains me. Regardless of whether or not this particular image is propaganda, it speaks the truth, and it touches me bone deep.

Often, I feel so helpless in the face of this real suffering. So many of us doing this work feel helpless. I fool my way out of it when I put on my theorist, philosopher, systems thinker hat–which for any of you who follow my blog know that I have a great affinity for philosophical thinking.

Recalling the Animal Rights Conference 2012

So much to say about the conference, so many words.  This year’s conference was my first attendance, and it exceeded and confirmed expectations all at once.  The conference contained for me some insight, some inspiration, some passion, some racism.  It took me a full week to recap my experience into words I could share on this blog.  Many others I have since befriended have written on the conference as well.  See Katie’s AR Conference recap for a different perspective.

Voices of the Movement

Not surprising, the dominant voices at the conference came from the large farm animal advocacy organizations.  Probably because the organizers FARM are among these organizations. Probably because major voices in the AR movement have prioritized farm animal advocacy above all others since they are the most regularly and extensively exploited and killed land animals in the US.  Nevertheless, I found

Farmed Animal Sanctuary Meets Social Enterprise

Tags

animal liberation, animal rights, sanctuary, human-animal relationships, mutual reciprocity, social enterprise, healing, therapy, animal-assisted therapy

For most folks trying to run a farmed animal sanctuary, they soon learn it is a money sink.  Not everyone is as fortunate, visionary, or aggressive in their fundraising as the founders of Farm Sanctuary.  The founders of Caboodle Ranch and Angel’s Gate Hospice may know that all too well.  It’s expensive to run a rehabilitation center and sanctuary for animals.  Majority of Americans don’t find it to be of value.  Grants aren’t available specifically for sanctuaries.  And earned income from tours and bed and breakfast don’t generate much.  The only sanctuaries that survive and become effective, amazing organizations are those that have either a strong giving program, adopt social enterprise, or have a combination of the two.

But do any farmed animal sanctuaries exist that are social enterprises?

Social Enterprise for Animals

Tags

animal liberation, animal rights, social change, vegan, social enterprise, social transformation, values, social enterprise for animals

Not a day goes by when I don’t sign into my email or search the web and find the phrase “social enterprise.”  It’s increasingly common where there’s “social change.”  More and more social justice groups are adopting it.  So what is it exactly that makes folks grab hold of it not unlike the sustainability frenzy?

Social enterprise offers a way to get to the heart of human values without having to take a single philosophy course.  And an unfortunate consequence, like sustainability, is for existing corporations to use this buzz phrase to manipulate consumer desires for a better world in order to continue business as usual.  However, I’m not going to get into the latter.  I’m more interested in its possibilities, especially for animal liberation.

Trayvon Martin and Young Wolf

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African Americans, masculinity, racism, speciesism, white privilege, whiteness

What do these individuals have in common?

One was a young black male human and the other a young male gray wolf.  Both of them were killed this year in February.  Both of them belonged to groups that have been historically “treated like animals” and are still today targeted through suspicion of acts of violence. 

Afro-Animal: Our Shared Struggle

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African Americans, animal rights, black community, social justice

In 1906, black man went on a killing spree in Asheville, NC, killing six humans, some black, some white.  The city issued a two-day manhunt to find him.  When they finally found him, rather than put him to trial, the police lynched him on the spot.  He has since become an object of paranormal urban legend, with any memory of his race forgotten, save within the black community.

His name was William Harris.

Squirrel Hustle

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urban wildlife

**I was inspired by my husband to write this brief photographic tribute to urban squirrels.  None of these photographs I have taken myself (though I wish!) so I gave credit to the sites where I’ve found them.**

You have to be adaptive to be an urban animal

Environmental Justice for Animals

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african american life, displacement of animal life, environmental racism, habitat destruction, habitat loss, habitat restoration, urban wildlife, wildlife habitat

Before some of y’all get mad or confused, the title is not an attempt to co-opt the phrase “environmental justice” away from communities of color plagued by environmental, health, and economic inequalities.  Nor is it an attempt to replace “animal rights.”  This post is concerning issues of space and habitat I’ve been grappling with for a while.  As I’ve started working directly with urban animals, urban black communities living in poverty, and this notion of interspecies community, I’ve had to rethink how I go about labeling some of these intersectional issues of habitat quality, the institutional shuffling of African Americans into ghettos that directly decrease their quality of life, the institutional displacement of animals in the city, unless they are “pets” under constant surveillance by “owners”, “entertainment” in a traveling circus, “livestock” in a backyard, captives in a zoo, or victims in a lab facility.