From the vegan duo The Pleasants, who were kind enough to travel across North America with me for issue three, to photographer Jo-Anne McArthur, who continues to challenge our view of animals within our world, the T.O.F.U. grant has been our way to give back to a community that has supported what we do since day one.

So, when work started on the sixth issue we knew we also had to keep our eyes open for the recipient of the third grant. Given the serious focus of the issue, it seemed logical that the recipient would be heavily involved in pushing the envelope on the topics we knew we would only be able to touch on. Thus, the decision came easy to choose A. Breeze Harper.

Truly Ethical Veganism

A PhD Candidate at the University of California, Harper’s work focuses on intersections of critical food studies, critical race theory, and black feminist thought. She is also the founder of The Sistah Vegan Project, which explores the lives of black female vegans. The project also looks at how geopolitical status, race, class, gender, and sexuality affect vegan philosophy. In 2010, Lantern Books published Harper’s edited volume Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans on Food, Identity, Health and Society, the first book of its kind to look at the experiences of American veganism through the lens of race and gender.

In an interview with the Creative Director for issue six, Harper goes into detail about the importance of critically thinking about veganism and its intersectionality with forms of oppression:

“…it’s not that I have a problem if a vegan still chooses to eat a vegan tomato product, but I have issues with the lack of transparency of how the vegan food actually got to your plate. Marking it as ‘cruelty-free’ elides the possibility that human beings may suffer in order to get that product to you. I actually feel that framing a vegan product as ‘cruelty-free’ creates a one-dimensional “it’s only about the animals not being exploited” approach to vegan consumerism.”

It is due to her continued efforts to put such problems on the table that we proudly support A. Breeze Harper and her work to make veganism, and the world, better.

Show Your Support

A. Breeze Harper is trying to finish her dissertation work, titled Situating Racialization, Racisms, and Anti-Racisms: Critical Race Feminist and Socio-spatial Epistemological Analysis of Vegan Philosophy in the USA. Due to California budget cuts, her dissertation fellowship for 2011-2012 was not renewed. If you would like to support her finishing her PhD and social activist scholarship for 2012 summer graduation, she is accepting donations through paypal: breezeharper@gmail.com

Please let us know what you think, and share it with your friends if you love it.

Issue Six Download

The following is an excerpt from a focus piece written by Noemi Martinez, which will be available in issue six later this week.

Being a vegan is as much an identity to me as being a poet, being a Boriqua/Chicana and living on the borderlands, both literally and queerly speaking. It seems only natural that my eating habits find themselves in my poetry and writing. As a single parent, unschooling around the kitchen table is common as well as something I call edupunk, a mix of DIY and punk ethics education. Many of our conversations revolve around food, justice, the environment, oppressions and what it means to be brown bodies living in our society. I am largely truthful about the real world to my two children. The other day I spoke to my son, River, about the high percentage of Latino and Black men in United States prisons and how one in six Latino and Black boys have a chance of going to prison in their lifetime — that is a painful reality check as a parent to a young Chicano. Both my daughter, Winter, and River, grasp that the work I do on domestic violence, DIY (do it yourself) media and racial inequalities is just as important as my veganism.

Dinner for Two

I have not tried one recipe
from the cookbook you gave me.
I finger through it some days.
The foods- elaborate experiments
you thought I’d make
when I became a vegetarian.

It’s just like you
to give me something
of little use,
like flowers that die
when I needed seeds
to take root,
plants in soft dirt,
clay to form words.

Time-the residual effect
can’t be measured by scientific methods
and can’t be seen but
we are as one
even now
when I sense your
brooding thoughts
100 miles away
when I haven’t seen you
in ten years.

Rose Colored Thread

I grew in love with you
around the table
stalking flowers we
couldn’t afford to plant.
We laughed and you let me sleep
instead of touching my hand.
We could have mended
each other’s
bloody noses with
slow nights.

Next spring, there will be time
to tend to this garden
to wake me up,
tell my stories
that make the edges of your
mouth crinkle into a smile.

The problem is Bob Parsons should have been on everyone’s radar a long time ago, and he should have received the scuzzy CEO award from PETA much earlier as well. Shooting an elephant in the dark is not the only reason Parsons should be criticized. In fact, given my ignorance of the situation in that part of Zimbabwe, where he was hunting, this lone incident may be the least of our concerns, making GoDaddy a real NoDaddy.

What is he selling?

Ironically enough, I would say GoDaddy’s ads are up there with PETA as the most degrading to women. Honestly, it takes a unique individual to decide that men joking about women’s breast sizes is the best way to sell a domain registration service. In a world where sex can be used to sell everything from jeans to dishwashers, it would seem that something as boring as web hosting and domains would be a safe bet for tech speak and the promise of cheap prices. In the world of Bob Parsons, and the one you too can inhabit if you register with GoDaddy (Domains, Websites & Everything in between!), you can demean, humiliate and objectify gorgeous women (or get one for free as a signing bonus). The last I checked, this was not the kind of world the majority of people wanted to live in, but yet GoDaddy remains an incredibly popular service provider. So, why is it that so many of us are just now complaining about Mr. Parsons?

Superhero syndrome

So, maybe old Bob just has a problem with how he relates to women? Maybe he’s done plenty of good things for other people, who just happen to not be women, right? In fact, if you take Bob’s word for it, this whole event is being taken out of context, and he’s actually doing a great deed for an impoverished nation.

“What it takes is someone like me to go into the field at night, find a bull elephant and kill it. Then the rest of the herd will leave the field for good.”

- Bob Parsons, New York Times interview

That’s right, Bob Parsons is superman with a big gun (probably the biggest gun on the block if you ask him).

There are so many underlying issues with this part of the problem that I’m not even sure I can tackle them all, and I’m very confident in the fact that I am in no way qualified to do so. The short, simplified version of it is that Bob Parsons suffers from the same sort of ideal that so many other people have in terms of Africa (which is usually spoken of in these cases as one monolithic entity, rather than 47 distinct countries), and the ways in which they can help. He may honestly believe that flying in to shoot an elephant or so, and then leaving a few GoDaddy hats behind, makes him some sort of modern day “African Santa Claus.” Of course, plenty of people fall for this comforting delusion when it comes to a continent that many of us know little about. Spending a weekend hunting elephants is not going to solve the problems of a village, and neither is spending your summer vacation working to “save those poor children” in an under-developed country. Both of these measures only camouflage the structural foundations of poverty. If Bob Parsons was truly worried about the plight of a village in Zimbabwe, and not just interested in the adrenaline rush of shooting an endangered animal in the dark, there are many, many ways he could have spent his money and his time to provide a more long-term solution. At this point, Bob Parsons is a part of the problem, not the solution.

The (pink) elephant

So, I’m hoping by now you’re already looking into the steps necessary to switch your domain, but I request that you also take the time to consider why it is that you’re only doing it now. There are plenty of options out there for domain hosting, so why were you with GoDaddy?

Whether or not you believe that your dollars make a difference, choosing where you spend them should be as informed a choice as you can make it. To me, making those choices based on whether or not the CEO is getting his rocks off by shooting elephants is just as important as whether or not he uses women’s bodies to sell his services. Sadly, one just makes for a more sensational story than the other.

It’s been touched on a bit here and there through the magazine and the blog, and I’m certain I’ve discussed it with numerous people in person, but I feel it bears repeating. Especially when the words written by Stephanie Lai are better than those I’ve written on the subject.

So, for your consideration, here is an interesting discussion on the intersectionality of racism and classism in animal rights activism, and why it’s an issue that may be just as important as many of the other ones that are focused on daily.

Addressing racism and classism in animal rights activism (thescavenger.net)

As of yet, it seems T.O.F.U. has avoided jumping into some of the darker areas associated with veganism. Sure, we’ve touched on some of the divides within, and some of the misunderstandings people may have because of them, but many of the darker subjects have been avoided.

One of these dark sides, in my opinion, is judging those who are not vegan. It’s probably evident by now that I’m not an aggressive vegan, and for the most part I seem to have surrounded myself by a lot of folks who are like-minded. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that I’m surrounded by more omnivores than I am herbivores in my daily life. Of course, a part of this is more my surroundings than my own choosing.

It is within these surroundings that I sometimes feel more of a connection to those who may not share my view on food, but understand me on so many other levels. Here in my small hometown of around 5000, where people still sit together to eat supper around 5pm, and where they long for the weekend so they can disappear into the wilderness, I write these words. Sure, Wal-Mart has its stranglehold on local commerce, and fast food litters the streets like so many other communities, but here you can still find a warm smile and an open door for a weary traveler when needed. Yes, the winters can be cold, and the summers far too short. Sure, the land may seem ragged and harsh to some, but to many of us now scattered around the world, this is home. We crowd airports every Christmas to return, and many of us spend our lives working terrible jobs just to have enough to buy a piece of this ragged, windswept land to call our own. To this day, in both the literary and the film version, when I hear of the Shire, I think of here. This is Newfoundland, Canada.

Of course, for many veg* folk, Newfoundland has a much different image. Filled with savagery and blood lust, it is the home to those who kill for fun and have no consideration for the world they live in. In short, it is home to the annual seal hunt. For decades now this hunt has been the focus of much media attention, and the majority of it has been negative.

Like so many issues involving animals and people, this one is complex. However, and this is where the dark part comes in, to some it seems incredibly simple. Those who kill or harm animals are horrible, and possibly even worthless, creatures. Based on the singular idea that animal cruelty is inexcusable, judgement has been passed by those who seem to live their lives avoiding such cruelty.

However, at the end of the day, we all have blood on our hands for some reason or another. Whether it be from the cattle an immigrant worker slaughters to keep his family fed in their new homeland, or through the death of numerous woodland creatures by an organic farmer who doesn’t believe the rabbits and the birds have any right to the carrots he is growing, the blood is there. To pretend that we, as vegans, are innocent from this is ignorant. The best most of us can do is choose to limit this bloodshed as much as possible.

So, is it fair to judge others using our choice as a guideline? Should we expect the hunters, the cattle farmers, the fisherman, and so many others to follow our lead and give up their ways? For me, I guess it all depends on what it is that I think allows me to choose to be vegan. There are so many factors that I feel are necessary to properly live as a vegan, and after spending the winter here I feel lucky to have those present in my life. Although my restaurant options have been minimized, and I can’t find tempeh anywhere on the Island, I still have choices at the local grocery store. Luckily, I also have the money to purchase these items, which are certainly not as cheap as most of the other things on the shelves. However, I also happen to live in one of the major service centres for the area.

The point is, before one makes judgement of someone else based on your own personal lifestyle choices, you should know where the other person is coming from. Going vegan in a small community is not as easy as the city. Choosing to eliminate animal products from your diet in an area where you already live mainly off the land is not so easy when your main agricultural products will most likely be potatoes and carrots. So, what makes your choice the best one?

How is judging these people based on their livelihood or diet any different than judging someone based on their religion or other personal choices? We tread a thin line the moment we start to feel that our decisions are the intelligent, superior ones to those around us, especially those separated from us by culture, language, gender, heritage, etc… History is littered with examples of those who strived to enforce their ideas and choices on those around them as far as they could reach, and the effects of such efforts are still felt today.

I touched on this idea with both Todd from Propagandhi and Zach from Rise Against a few years ago, and it’s a tough one. I’ve been battling with how to even write this for a few weeks now because I know that it is bound to upset a few folks. However, between reading a few articles that were hellbent on making life a living hell for everyone on the east coast of Canada to try and stop the seal hunt to then hearing about the horrible attitude some folks are developing towards China based solely on their treatment of animals, I thought I had to put my two cents in. I’m not saying the death or mistreatment of animals should be thought of as acceptable or negligible in any case, but I am saying that the threatened death or mistreatment of a fellow human being should be given just as much weight if we are to ever keep this world from falling apart. Those who can choose to avoid harming animals ideally should do so whenever they can, but for those of us who already do so, we should remember to consider the whole person before we lay judgement upon them.

If we are to change the way the world views everything around it, I think we should be fighting for animal equality, not animal superiority. To judge the life of an animal to be worth more than the life of a human to me is not a step forward, especially when that judgement is based on whether or not that fellow human is as good as you. As a vegan we are constantly provided with examples of famous, historical figures who were vegetarian or vegan. How about all of those who were not? Is the work of Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Lincoln any less meaningful because they may have celebrated with a steak instead of a stuffed Portobello mushroom at their dining room table? These men were intelligent, amazing individuals who chose to live their lives working to improve the world in one way or another. Just because it was not in the same manner as the way we choose, did they have any less of a right to be respected or treated equally?

With that in mind, do these sound like the words of a savage hellbent on blood and pleasure?

Garry Troake’s Speech