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.

I live in Asheville, and I’m trying to organize the animal rights community here.  It’s a community of roughly sixty individuals who identify as vegan and have been involved in some way or another with animal rights initiatives. All of them are white and the majority of them are women.

When I first arrived to Asheville, I got to know the animal advocacy “scene.” It wasn’t very strong. Quite a few restaurants serving vegan options and three vegan restaurants at the time, but I’ve never judged the movement’s performance by the prevalence of vegan products alone.  The animal rescue network and grassroots aspect of the movement was virtually non-existent.  The animal sanctuaries didn’t engage in any public outreach.  With the exception of Goat Mountain Ranch Sanctuary, which is still only known to the select few who actively seek it, none of the sanctuaries are open to the public, nor do they engage in farmed animal rescues.  Whenever I would encounter dog abuse cases, I could never get help from the local humane society or the no-kill shelter.  Their response:  they don’t do those kind of rescues, they just rescue animals from the pound.  And the local wildlife rehabilitation center neither has the physical capacity nor the psychospiritual capacity to deal with injured and orphaned wildlife across this city, never mind in their own neighborhood.  But what really stood out for me was how those who called themselves “animal activists” did not get along at all.  Nothing was happening in Asheville because nobody was doing anything because nobody could work together for two days without arguing about identity politics and making personal attacks on each other.

Once upon a time, the animal rights community here actually did stuff.  A few organizations regularly led protests and put on events.  Apparently, things turned for the worse because leadership was crazy–still is crazy–and abuse among activists is not uncommon.  One girl told me the story about one of these leaders harassing her so badly in her place of work that she withdrew from public animal activism entirely.  Another activist, who is a friend of mine, had several burned relationships in the community–one concerning difference in opinion about PETA.  Nowadays, groups of activists will boycott the efforts of other animal rights groups entirely out of past grievances.

Male leadership over predominantly female groups has also brought about this tension.  According to second hand information from local activists, these groups have been led by men abusive in their decision-making power and will often bully and intimidate women activists into doing what they want.

I’ve participated in every single one of these circles, and I have never experienced such a community of animal advocacy that is so hurt.  How can we possibly help animals and build community if we can’t even help ourselves?  Everything begins to feel like a burden.  Nobody can stand to be around the other and would rather see another activist’s efforts fail than participate.  But at the same time, nobody seems willing to heal themselves–I mean, really heal themselves.  As a result, we got a movement of suffering in Asheville.

This is the first time I’ve experienced a movement of suffering like this in animal rights. I experience this all the time in the movements to empower black people and women.  In Asheville, I work with black women and girls to help them empower themselves and make their communities vibrant, self-reliant, and ecologically whole.  Just as I did in Memphis, I struggle all the time to help motivate a people who are used to complaining, fighting among themselves, feeling depressed, and all the while doing nothing.  It’s tough work.  The best I’ve been able to do is start with myself and live by example.  But even that is a daily challenge.

I don’t know what to say about Asheville except I’m going to continue to do my life’s work, even if that means doing it alone for a while and collaborating with folks who aren’t consumed by that vicious network. Fortunately, the Southern animal advocacy movement is growing, so even if Asheville is in a pit of despair right now, there’s always hope to organize regionally.

Have any of you experienced an animal rights or social justice community that suffered like this?  I would love to learn more about how you dealt with it.

Please spread the word about this CFP for a new book on Critical Animal Geographies! Thanks!

Call for Contributors to Critical Animal Geographies edited volume

Fifteen years after the publication of the groundbreaking Animal Geographies (Wolch & Emel 1998), followed by Animal Spaces, Beastly Places (Philo & Wilbert 2000), a growing number of geographers now readily acknowledge the nonhuman animal as an important site of intellectual inquiry. Following the call to “bring the animals back in” to the discipline (Wolch & Emel 1995), animal geographers have taken up the project of “decentering the human in human geography” (Anderson 2013) by reckoning with the inescapable contingency of the human subject. This has yielded fascinating and important explorations of deeply constitutive human-animal relations and the spaces, traces, violences and practices that enable them and are left in their wake.

Since the “third wave” of animal geographies (Urbanik 2012) in the 1990s, billions of real animals have continued to service humans and capitalist accumulation as food, labourers, entertainment, clothing, biomedical research subjects, and companions. Human-animal relationships are fraught with complex dynamics of power and privilege involving the uneven appropriation of lives, labours and bodies across species, including humans. At the same time, humans and animals have an extraordinary capacity for engaging in inter-species relationships of mutual care, love, and companionship. These ambivalent material-semiotic entanglements between humans and animals are both at stake and implicated in contemporary ecological crises, bringing a critical urgency to the task of rethinking dominant orders (capitalist, species, juridico-political, scientific) that structure human-animal relations.

As geographers, we have just scratched the surface of academic inquiry into the rich and varied lives of animals, the ethical and political questions relating to human-animal relations, and the implications for thinking about alternative modes of being in this multispecies world. Critical human geography has traditionally aimed not merely to interpret and analyze the world, but to change it. In such a spirit, this edited volume makes a call for a distinct critical animal geography – one that interprets the complex plurality of human-animal relations, but does not stop there. Critical animal geographies interrogate structures of power and social inequality across species lines and presuppose a commitment to understanding and destabilizing the status quo and reimagining alternative visions of human-animal relations.

The aim of this edited volume is to feature cutting edge critical animal geographies research that radically rethinks how we conceptualize our relationship and responsibility to nonhuman animals. We are interested in empirical and theoretical engagements rooted in critical geographic research relating to animals and human-animal relations. We are also interested in fresh perspectives on methodological approach and on extending critical and radical theoretical framings to include animal geographies work. Chapters may include (but are not limited to) engagement with feminist/eco-feminist, political economy, post-humanist, cyborg/hybrid, anarchist, post-colonial, and queer literatures in order to envision a diverse set of epistemological, ontological and methodological perspectives on animals.

We ask that anyone interested in contributing to this Critical Animal Geographies volume submit a one page CV (including previous publications) and an abstract of no more than 500 words by June 1, 2013. If your abstract is selected for inclusion in the book, full chapters will be due February 1, 2014.

Please send abstracts and direct any questions to the volume editors: Katie Gillespie (katieag@u.washington.edu) and Rosemary-Claire Collard (rcollard@geog.ubc.ca).

References:

Anderson, Kay. 2013. “Mind over Matter? On Decentering the Human in Human Geography,” Annual Cultural Geographies Lecture, Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, April 12.

Philo, Chris & Chris Wilbert. 2000. Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. Routledge.

Urbanik, Julie. 2012. Placing Animals. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Wolch, Jennifer & Jody Emel. 1998. Animal Geographies. London: Verso.

Wolch, Jennifer & Jody Emel. 1995. Guest-edited issue: Bringing the animals back in.
Environment & Planning D: Society and Space, 13(6).

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. But all that theorizing does not replace or even assuage what I feel when I meet suffering. I feel so powerless when I see these images of animals in places I’ve never been before. I feel gut-wrenched sorrow witnessing animals across Asheville, locked up, in chains, killed in the road, alone with no space beyond their own bodies.  And I feel stabbed in the heart as I’m surrounded by humans numb to this suffering, confirming day after day their justification and superiority. I feel stabbed in the heart because I am one of them, fighting to be an ally for animals but also tired because I’m losing this fight the way that I’m going.

I’m posting this now because for the first time, I want to use this blog as a way to reach out. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, and I don’t want to feel lonely anymore. I don’t always feel compelled to write a treatise on the order of things and behave as though I’m an academic when in actuality, I’m just a deep intellectual trying to liberate myself and be there when it counts for animals.

I look into Mali’s face, I look into the face of a dog in chains, I look into the faces of hens who have no clue they will soon be sent to slaughter, I look into the face of a fish on a hook–and I cry a river of pain greater than my existence, greater than humanity. Right now, that’s all I know to give. And when I do, I know that I’ve let the life of those animals into my heart, more than theorizing or talking about veganism can ever do.  Nothing but this sadness feels real.  Where do I go from here?

In Buddhism, they have a word for this deep sadness older than words, as old as life itself; they call it “bodhicitta.” It literally means “awakened heart.” It’s that tender pain in your center that makes you want to weep for no real reason except in response to life itself.  I’ve realized all this time as an animal rights, social justice, and ecological justice activist, I had not let anyone or anyplace into my heart until now. College allowed me to place these areas in a theoretical, objective sphere where it didn’t have to touch my tender spot. I could go as deep intellectually as I wanted and I could say these radical things about animal liberation without feeling what they truly meant. Connecting with animals as individuals–human and nonhuman–and facing myself as an animal allowed all these feelings and behaviors to emerge. I can no longer fool myself into looking at an animal, getting caught up in my own internal dialogue about oppression and struggle, and believing I’m actually seeing that animal. I’ve come to realize I don’t know who any of these animals are. And how can I possibly be an ally to them if I don’t know who they are, where they are, how they are, and why? I cry just asking this question.

This crying is the beginning. Now I know I’m on to something. Mali’s loneliness will show me the way.

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 this skew in attention to be unfortunate and so was thrilled to see talks (though few in numbers) that brought attention to the plight of wildlife and marine animals and laboratory animals.

I was extremely delighted to see that these folks presenting on the issues were grassroots and showed no doubt that they were working from the heart toward animal liberation.  Michael Budkie and his organization Stop Animal Exploitation Now research extensively the on-going abuses and violations of laboratory institutions that use animals in research, particularly animals covered in the Animal Welfare Act.  As volunteers, they are a watchdog organization, applying pressure to the laboratory research industry by exposing them and filing complaints to shut them down.  I never knew about them prior to attending the conference.

George Guimaraes organizes a group in Brazil called VEDDAS, which stands for Ethical Vegetarianism Animal Rights Defense and Society.  Most recently, they allied with environmental groups and indigenous tribes in Brazil to resist the construction of the Belo Monte dam on the Amazon that would destroy rainforest and riparian habitat, kill aquatic inhabitants of the Amazon, displace indigenous people, and displace wildlife–all to supply 11,233 megawatts in “renewable” energy.  I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting him and connecting with him in my work as a nonprofit consultant.  I did not know anything about this dam before I attended the conference.

Direct action groups and activists such as Sea Shepherd Society, Peter Young, Animal Liberation Front, and Animal Rescue Corps were also representing.  Sea Shepherd and Animal Rescue Corps are two of my favorite animal rights organizations, and I was happy to see them in attendance and talk with Peter Hammerstedt and Scotlund Haisley.

Finally, I met pattrice jones and lauren ornelas (Food Empowerment Project) for the first time in the flesh.  That was fantastic.  They spoke, along with Lisa Kremmerer, on the “commonality of oppression” and the room was packed.  Speaking with passion and fervor,  pattrice asked the audience why they clap so enthusiastically over intersectionality but don’t do anything to demonstrate their awareness once the conference is over. Nobody gave an answer because it’s a tough question to answer, especially for this crowd that was white and privileged.  Which brings me to the next section on this conference: racism.

Racism at the conference

Of course, I was one of few black folks at the entire conference: that is not surprising.  What was surprising was the presence of other people of color–Latinos and Latinas, South and East Asians–from all over the world, turning out as passionate supporters for animal rights.  I met latinas and black women moved by the call to animal liberation but simultaneously feeling isolation and loneliness from the need to be aware of and in opposition to the constant oppression of racism.

We couldn’t just rest and experience the joy of being among fellow activists for animal liberation.  Not without experiencing racism.

No talk or piece of literature from large animal advocacy organizations goes by without their comparing animal oppression to racial and gender oppression.  Except they don’t make these comparisons out of a genuine care for people of color’s or women’s struggles but rather as fuel to fire their animal advocacy campaigns.  I had to remind Bruce Friedrich at Farm Sanctuary that just because American slavery was abolished in the mid-eighteen hundreds doesn’t make black people’s struggle for social justice and the rights to fare well any less real and serious today.

I also had a disappointing conversation with a white lesbian at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, where in response to my talking about the plight of the black community in Asheville, she pulled a common white privilege tactic of extrapolating black people’s circumstance to the general, abstract experience all humans share and therefore relegating it as irrelevant to talk about (this was in response to the displacement of Asheville’s black population by urban renewal into public housing).  Then she came out and asked me, “So are you more into anti-racist activism than animal rights? Because it sounds like you got your hands in more than one basket.” Being put on the spot to choose between the struggle of my people and the struggles of the diverse array of beings we call animals–no wonder people of color are frustrated when they meet AR folks like this who have the audacity to put their heart on trial. But I simply responded, “My heart guides me to act for the liberation of all beings, so that all living beings may live in dignity and self-reliance and freedom.  Because I am black, I cannot deny the influence race has on my life. I must be intersectional.”  She had nothing more to say to me after that.

But what put the icing on the cake was the white woman who challenged me and a fellow black female attendant at the AR Conference to be ambassadors for our race.  The sista and I were eating lunch at a very colorful table, populated by Vegetarian Society of DC members attending the lunch.  She came to us and told us how thankful she was that we were at the conference.  She lamented how few black people were at the conference, declaring that the diversity of the conference was “unacceptable.”  Then she said, “We need more diversity at this conference. What are you going to do about it?” The other black woman responded, agitated, “I’m not doing anything. I’m here. What are you going to do about it?” The white woman went on to tell us how she’s a lawyer and works with at-risk low-income youth and doesn’t know how to reach out to their communities to spread the message of veganism.  I told her, “I don’t find veganism in the black community to be lacking anymore than in the white community.  It’s not that veganism is a problem in the black community, it’s the lack of access, it’s white folks assuming they need to bring some outside message to communities they don’t understand at all.”  I advised her, “If you really want to reach black folks, then take the time to learn where they’re coming from.  Since you live in DC, get to know the struggles and perspectives of black communities in DC.  Don’t assume you know.  Actually demonstrate care and meet them where they are.  Other than that, I have no other advice for you.” And so ended our conversation, and later, sista and I spoke amongst ourselves the frustration of experiencing that but at the same time, giving the woman props for having the ovaries to at least say to our face what so many white folks at the conference were probably already thinking.

HSUS and everybody else

So far I’ve just talked about the conference organized by FARM.  I didn’t even tell you about the counter-conference organized by Tribe of Heart.  The counter-conference was a reflection of the underlying current of frustration at the conference over the presence of HSUS and the suppression of discourse around the Egg Products Inspection Act (HR 3798) currently pending review in US congress.  I won’t go into a whole lot of detail over this bill here, but I will say that large farm animal advocacy groups that were present (Mercy for Animals, Farm Sanctuary, Compassion Over Killing) are in favor of the bill, whereas groups like United Poultry Concerns and PETA are against it, and FARM is taking a neutral position.  Karen Davis was one of the most vocal opponents to the bill there, and she was very frustrated with the conference and  FARM for intentionally providing no space to discuss that bill.

What sparked Tribe of Heart to organize the counter-conference was the appearance of the national AR conference being compromised and influenced by HSUS.  Bob Linden (Go Vegan Radio) passed out flyers to conference attendants proclaiming that HSUS and their alliance with animal agriculture industry groups like United Egg Producers is “hijacking this conference and the animal rights movement.”  James LaVeck at Tribe of Heart told a disturbing tale of his experience with HSUS, PETA, and Mercy for Animals.  In his story, these organizations compete against each other to preserve their organizations first and foremost.  And Karen Davis spoke of her experience with HSUS’s Paul Shapiro and their backroom deal with United Egg Producers on behalf of the entire movement.

All in all, the counter-conference was organized out of fear, but the ultimate motives behind those fears had some bearings in truth.  And FARM’s attempted suppression of the counter-conference, their avoidance of critical discussion within the AR conference, their unchecked promotion of HSUS, and their avoidance of the egg products amendment bill didn’t look good at all.

Overall Impressions

Attending the conference, the counter-conference, and the anti-vivisection demonstration afterwards against Patton-Boggs, LLC were the most invigorating experiences of my life this year.  I am so glad I attended and met wonderful, compassionate, intelligent, fiery activists who came together over a common longing to experience animal liberation.  Even with the racism, the controversy, and the skewed representation.  And the zealous AR supporters who cling narrowly to their ideologies above all else.  I wouldn’t trade the experience I had for anything else in the world.  I’m happy to recall it, and I intend to return to the next conference.  Racism won’t stop me from acting for animal liberation.  No matter how “mainstream” the focus of the AR conference becomes, I’ll continue to network with grassroots activists and activists of color so that we may strengthen ourselves, our organizations, and our movement.

**Changes: Though Alex Hershaft of FARM said at the AR Conference 2012 that FARM was taking a neutral position, they are in fact not neutral in their support of HR 3798. http://farmusa.org/HR3798.htm and http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/anp/2012/05/12/letters-may-2012-2/

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

Last week, I wrote a post on Social Enterprise for Animals, describing what social enterprise means and its potential for promoting animals’ rights.  Now I am scouring the web for examples to see whether or not social enterprises for animals truly exist and if they do, whether or not they’re working.  I asked several online animal rights advocates on Facebook and Animal Rights Zone what their expectations are for a farmed animal sanctuary.  Space, moral integrity, active education and outreach, promoting veganism, and consideration for the animals (including making responsible assessments of the sanctuary’s capacity and not selling them or leasing them to other “sanctuaries”) were some of the responses.  So given their definition of a farmed animal sanctuary, does room exist for social enterprise?

The Potential for the Sanctuary as Healing Center

Sanctuaries that are social enterprises have the potential to shift the value of rescued farmed animals from commodity to companion and mutual healer by showing where they come from and that their stories matter.  When I visited the Gentle Barn website’s “In Memoriam” page this morning, I was moved to tears.  Each of those animals had passed away, but their stories had survived.  I could see their faces and imagine their mannerisms, their quirks while they lived.  My heart swelled with tender sadness.  A photo and a true story–that’s all it took for me to be sold.  But for many humans who are insulated from or indifferent to animals’ lives, this is not enough.  Selling the emotional and relational value of animals and the importance of their rights through social enterprise has opportunity to reach wider audiences when they also address fundamental human needs.  They earn revenue from those whose immediate response may be disregard for animals.  In addition to providing lifelong sanctuary for rescued farmed animals, sharing their stories and emphasizing their agency through those stories, Gentle Barn invites at-risk, abused, and “special needs” children to heal with the farmed animals.  Opening the sanctuary to children is not a new concept.  I would say that the wellbeing of children is definitely in the top tier of fundamental human needs.  I don’t know yet the various sources of Gentle Barn’s income so I can’t say that they are a social enterprise, but if they are not earning revenue directly from children healing with animals then they may want to reconsider.

Sanctuaries as social enterprises can also change animal-assisted therapy.  The difference between animal-assisted therapy and sanctuary as healing center is in the process of production.  Animal-assisted therapy, such as it is now, depends on networks of suppliers and producers that maintain the status quo of animals by breeding and training them for that specific lifelong purpose: to heal a human in need.  Farm animal-assisted therapy nurtures the bond for those individuals involved, but we know nothing of how and if it changes the social value or status of animals.  When sanctuaries rescue animals directly from animal enterprises and their vast system of production and then directly compete with farm animal-assisted therapy as legitimate healing centers, they can disrupt the status quo.  As Gentle Barn expands their program with children, they have an opportunity to offer extended therapy to individual children and teenagers.  They would definitely need to consider the investment into the therapy angle, but with extensive research, it may be worth it.  They would be the first to create a social enterprise that directly supports their mission to provide rescue, rehabilitation, and lifelong sanctuary for farmed animals, through helping children heal.

The Limitations of Sanctuary as Healing Center

Sanctuaries with “helping people” as an integral part of their mission are not completely identical to sanctuaries whose missions are solely to help animals.  All sanctuaries have limited capacity, and how they allocate that reflects where their priorities lie.  A sanctuary that is also a healing center may prioritize the healing of humans above the rescue of animals.  Heartland Farm Sanctuary and Sanctuary One are examples of healing farms where the farmed animals are a piece of the greater mission that is healing.  The goal, then, is not so much to inspire mutual healing between traumatized farmed animal and needy human as it is to provide healing for the needy human.  Where they lack the capacity to search and rescue farmed animals, they supplement through partnerships with local humane societies.  As a consequence, the sanctuary does not carry the rich, compelling stories of sanctuaries that actually engage in rescue or belong to a network of citizen rescuers.  However, because they are both fairly new sanctuaries and are both beginning from a social enterprise angle, only time will tell how they implement it and how it works for shifting the value of animals.

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.

J. Gregory Dees, founder of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, defines social entrepreneurs as social change agents who, like business entrepreneurs, creatively “reform or revolutionize the pattern of production.” What distinguishes social entrepreneurs from just any old venturer trying to get ahead are:

1. Adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value);
2. Recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission;
3. Engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning;
4. Acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand; and
5. Exhibiting heightened accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created.

Creating and sustaining social value is what attracts me.  Because any efforts to advance animals’ rights are to shift human values of animals from commodity to respected fellow being.  The environmental movement has been doing a stellar job all around in creating and sustaining social value.  For instance, here in Asheville, NC, the environmental consciousness is so grounded that it permeates the whole culture.  Solar panel and composting companies that hire trained low-income workers (many of whom face severe barriers to employment) from the green collar movement.  A food policy council that influences city council decision-making and city planning in edible landscaping and urban agriculture.  Public charter schools that teach human ecology and values of sustainability.  A worker-owned biofuel cooperative.  A green job training center.  An internationally-known ecovillage that serves as a hub for sustainable community-building.  Public murals that celebrate the plant and human life of an Appalachian city.  And the list goes on.

This culture doesn’t just spring from vapor.  It’s strong because social entrepreneurs create values of sustainability, and the communities they serve sustain them.  Communities sustain them because they are accessible.  Because they move individuals to action.  Because they need them.

No matter how much we as animal activists hate to admit it, when we call ourselves creating social change for animals, it’s not so much about doing it for the animals as it is doing it for ourselves and other humans.  When animal activists urge non-vegans to adopt a vegan lifestyle, animals are the primary reason why, but what moves someone to become vegan is self-satisfaction.  “I am vegan because it makes me feel good to know I am not harming animals [or think I'm harming animals].”  We’re moved to action from inside, from core feeling, from selfishness.  Selfishness is a harsh word and is often used to denote poor character, but in this instance, it’s just what it is.  We’re moved to action and thus shift values when something touches us deeply and reminds us of who we are, what we need, and what makes us feel good.

So as more vegan activists and animal advocates create social enterprises for animals, we can keep this in mind: We can create and sustain cultures that appreciate animal difference, value animal agency and communities, and promote animals’ rights when humans begin to realize that it is naturally who we are to do this, that it is what we need for a whole and healthy life, that is what makes us feel good.

As I find more examples of social enterprises for animals on the web, I’ll post them here. Stay tuned!

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. 

Both of their groups experienced a taste of what Bryan Stevenson calls “the age of terrorism” (a specific time in African American history during the Reconstruction Era where local white men targeted black families and black men in particular through acts of terror and violence and murder, which fascinatingly paralleled in time with the Europeans’ mass extirpation of Gray Wolves in North America) where they were hunted and terrorized and murdered by the good innocent white folk just trying to protect what was rightfully theirs.  By the way, I highly recommend watching Bryan Stevenson’s TED talk on racism and the prison industrial complex if you haven’t already.

Both individuals were accused by their killers of wandering into territory where they did not belong.  Their killers claimed they were out of place, “suspicious”, looking like they were up to no good, ready to commit a crime at any moment.  Their killers claimed that they mistook them for someone else that deserved to be shot, someone legal to shoot, someone who had already committed an act of violence.  These two young males are naturally violent, after all.  It’s in their genes to be predators.  And the white men must control predators to the extent of their power.

And worst of all, neither of them received justice.  One was counted as a misdemeanor and the other wasn’t charged at all!  You can’t help but wonder if there’s any justice in this country for being black and male and animal deemed out of place.  My eyes can’t help but swell with water.

What do we do?

His name was William Harris.

On July 30, 2010, female bear and her cubs were captured after killing one human and injuring two in Yellowstone National Park.  The state of Montana’s Fish & Wildlife Department euthanized her immediately and sent her cubs to Montana Zoo.

Her name came to me as Mother Bear.

The point behind these snapshots is that African Americans’ and animals’ lives are interconnected, have been for centuries.  While I assume I don’t need to go into a long dissertation on how our lives are interconnected, this relationship is not always apparent or welcome in social justice circles where communities of color fight for basic needs, political rights, environmental justice, and social welfare.  In a conversation with Daniel Lim on environmental justice for animals, he suggested that his co-workers at the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance are open to the idea of inclusion when animals’ rights are concerned, but they remain hesitant to full acceptance–partly because the topic is not one they discuss often in their communities, partly because they haven’t developed a culturally relevant language for this shared struggle with animals, partly because they as activist communities haven’t mediated the conflict that often drives them away from animal suffering.

We as Africans and animals are expected to be agents of violence toward an innocent white society.  I cannot search the web for African Americans and animal rights without accidentally stumbling on a racist blog that would argue that Africans are genetically preconditioned to be afraid of animals and less compassionate toward animals since all Africans evolved from biologically diverse, violent “jungles.” I cannot write about animal abuse in the black community without my blog post coming up in a search for white supremacists looking to demonize African Americans, once again, using search terms as “black people are violent animals” and “black people abuse animals.”

The violence committed against us–as African Americans, as animals–has been so normalized throughout European history that we’ve come to accept them as proper ways to live.  After William Harris was lynched, the police hung his body on display for the public to see.  The Asheville black community responded with complacent disapproval: Things were bad enough, no need to make things worse by protesting.  When Mother Bear was murdered, it was just like any other bear killed for being too aggressive when threatened with limited space, displacement, and harm to her babies.  According to a comment on the LA Times blog story, “when bears lose their fear of humans…that bear must be removed from the gene pool.”

In other words, uppity negroes and rowdy animals have been necessary objects to suppress for a while in European society.

But we don’t always require violent actions for Europeans to consider us rowdy.

“You might encounter a horse who’s a bit of a smarty pants,” says Wahl Equine “who’s trying to out-think you all the time. ” The way to deal with her,  he advises, is to make her run, keep her running until she forgets what she’s resisting or is too tired to resist you.  Hold her fast with rope and make her think that she will get hit if she doesn’t run, but you don’t need to actually hit her.  Just pretend and you can condition her well enough to be put back into her place.  And she will go willingly, just like the black community of Asheville in 1906 and onward.

For the past three weeks, I’ve noticed a surge in talk throughout the black community about the plight of animals.  Black thinkers and community leaders are beginning to demonstrate vocal support on our shared struggles and more specifically on the plight of animals.  Amie Breeze Harper has been exploring these interconnections for several years now in her critical race black feminist approach to veganism.  Most recently, she’s been sharing with the intersectional community her experience with Angela Davis and her conversation with her father–both of which favored support for animals’ rights in the grand scheme of social struggle.  This is a big deal, especially to hear this from Angela Davis!  We as a black community don’t openly acknowledge these issues often.  We spend more time mentioning why animals’ struggles aren’t a priority or concern for us rather than appreciating the struggles we share as animals.  So I want to take this opportunity over several blog posts to join the discussion.  I have no intention to take an academic turn into studies that have already been explored and to deconstruct arguments already critiqued.  Rather, I intend to tell stories that often go untold, of individual passions and struggles.  Most importantly, I see this shift in thinking as an opportunity to transform the attitudes that prohibit our collective potential to love animals, to love ourselves.  This marks the beginning of what I unoriginally call “Afro-Animal.”

You have to be adaptive to be an urban animal

Where there is space, create opportunity

The dumpster here today may not be here tomorrow

While the urban forest is often the best place to be

Sometimes you have to follow the money

The drey sometimes has to be on 5th Ave

And with this hustle comes a short life

Especially when they’re out to get you

But as an urban animal, you can’t afford not to overcome barriers

Otherwise, where would you be?

My work has become an issue of space, the allocation of space and environmental quality: Who performs the allocation?  Who decides who gets space and who doesn’t and what the quality of that space is?  Who benefits from the allocation?  Who gets punished for disobeying the allocation (i.e. feral animals, “pests”, homeless humans, humans of color)?  I don’t expect to address these questions in the body of this post alone but rather discuss them over a series of posts.  My hope is to create ways in which animal rights and environmental justice can meet to bring compassion, renewal, and resilience to disenfranchised, vulnerable communities.  In this essay, I’m exploring the frameworks that have influenced and limited my work for animals, all while brainstorming alternatives that can address the issue of liberatory space for animals in society.

I realize that animal rights projects tackling the issue of legal rights may not be focusing on rights to space and good habitat quality specifically, but primarily on the access to basic rights period.  By advancing scientific evidence that shows how nonhuman apes and cetaceans share similarities with humans in perception, knowledge-making, emotional experience, and socialization, these projects have resulted in an attempt to make certain animal species as close as possible to humans in the moral consideration hierarchy (see Nonhuman Rights Project).

And since the dawn of wildlife management in the 1930s as a profession, it has, and its subsidiary wildlife conservation, been the monopolizing enterprise over issues of habitat and space.  While, in the past, many attempted to protect animals from persecution, slavery, and other forms of violence often at the expense of other animals and humans of color in extreme poverty and disenfranchisement, today’s leading wildlife conservation organizations work with local communities to conserve wild animal species as the natural resources that they are (which is only a natural progression from wildlife management) and insure they as humans’ natural heritage will be around for future generations of humans (see WWF and National Wildlife Federation).

These two types of animal protection only seem to be able to protect animals, their space and habitat, and maybe bring justice for animals so long as they fit one of the two categories: 1) almost human or 2) a natural resource for humans.  If they are zebra mussels, carpenter ants, or feral dogs, they are not only out of luck, but considered a threat to the socio-ecological order.

Keep in mind, I’m not dissing any of the aforementioned organizations.  While I don’t agree with some of their approaches, I find them all essentially necessary in the grand scheme of things, even if some, mainly the wildlife conservation organizations, aren’t where I think they should be ideologically.  They are all relevant because their presence influences the creation of new organizations, grassroots alternative institutions, and counter structures that can get closer to radical social change.

What I propose is to consider animals’ access to space and habitat as a natural right, as natural as breathing oxygen or shitting nitrogen.  Let it not be an ideological issue of whether they are very similar to humans or something of use to humans.  Because even animals who do not fit those categories deserve that natural right.  It is a natural right of life.  Life cannot be without the space and habitat for self-reliance, self-determination, and self-actualization.  Life cannot adapt and find its way without the space to do so.  Accepting this, even for animals we call nuisances and threats, is our great challenge as cultures and as a species.

In his essay “The Importance of Environmental Justice,” Peter Wenz argues that environmental justice is an issue of distributive justice, where societies apportion scarce entities that citizens need or want.  And, on the flip side of that, societies apportion toxic entities that citizens neither need nor want.  How their governments go about doing that becomes a question of who the societies are structured for.  When we’re talking about class in America, society is structured to keep middle class and wealthy Americans comfortable enough to access all their essential needs and consumer wants, while delegating the resulting pollution and displacement to low-income, vulnerable, disenfranchised communities. When we’re talking about race, the same thing applies, except we’re talking about white Americans placing the overwhelming burden of pollution, habitat degradation, and ecological instability on communities of color.  When we’re talking about species, satisfying consumers’ needs and wants becomes an act of violating and exploiting those animals who have what they want and persecuting and displacing those who get in the way. As the total human population continues to expand and expand, space becomes more scarce for those who are marginalized to fringes of this expansion.  And for those who otherwise manage to thrive in human-occupied spaces, they constantly face persecution and displacement because they attempt to occupy spaces where they “do not belong.”

Imagine then a community-driven social enterprise where low-income, disenfranchised humans of color are empowered to care about the animals with whom they live in community.  Imagine then the collective effort to improve habitat quality for the whole community, not just human residents.  Imagine the imperative to appreciate animals’ natural rights that would blossom from this collective effort. Imagine environmental justice for all animals, made possible through their own self-determination, their own power.

What comes to mind when you imagine?