<![CDATA[WWW.JESUSRADICALS.COM

<![CDATA[WWW.JESUSRADICALS.COM - Vol 1. No. 2]]>Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:02:51 -0500Weebly<![CDATA[Introduction]]>Thu, 04 Oct 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/introductionBy: Nekeisha Alayna Alexis

Gently holding live mussels before returning them to the ocean at Paradise Cove in Malibu, California. Credit: Nekeisha Alayna Alexis

A goat called Fred.
A hurricane named Florence.
A song by Lupe Fiasco.

At a glance the three topics don’t seem like they belong in the same introduction much less the same paragraph. Yet, when examined individually and together, the goat, the storm and the emcee have more in common than their coincidental use of an “f” word. They make visible in a profound way the almost dizzying entanglements that the second issue of Rock! Paper! Scissors! Tools for anarchist + Christian thought and action seeks to examine: that of the brutality we inflict upon other animals and its colliding, ensnaring relationship to the oppression that takes place among homo sapiens(1) this side of the Enlightenment.

Fred came to me first via a headline in my Facebook feed. The New York Post article about the “rogue goat,” as the authors dubbed him, showed up well after I decided upon the theme, “Liberation for Every Body: Toward New Futures with Other Animals.” Fred had escaped from the Hackettstown Livestock Auction House in New Jersey during the summer of 2017 and remained a fixture in the neighborhood. Not content to rest in his own freedom, he broke out approximately 80 goats and sheep from the same site a year later.

Although no one saw Fred orchestrate the release of his fellow creatures — 10 to 20 of whom remained loose and 60 others who returned to captivity through the trickery of police officers — a couple of signs point to his likely involvement. First, residents had spotted him in the area hours before the direct action. Second, auction house manager Bouwe Postma saw the goat the next day headbutting the fence surrounding the group of animals “in an apparent effort to let them back out.”

Postma concluded that, “He must have banged that fence and let [them] out last night. I’m almost positive. He must have put a lot of force into that.” But this was no idle show of strength. To have pulled off this raid, Fred must have remembered what he experienced at the auction. He had to know who is enemies were and understand that they were also the enemies of any other animal locked up behind the gates. He must have had empathy for the other animals that ended up there, even across species. Despite the news story’s flippant tone, Fred’s rescue operation was no joke: it was a rebellious undertaking that was executed by a stealthy, self-aware, freedom-minded, nonhuman person. It was a courageous, compassionate move that many homo sapiens do not dare for one another, much less for other animals.

That we do not see or hear more stories about such acts of selfless, creative resistance is neither a reflection on the intelligence of incarcerated and abused other animals nor some testament to their “willingness” to be sacrificed for us. Instead, our lack of attention to these narratives highlights the ways we fail to see them as actors in their own struggles for self- and communal determination, and the ways we write off their disobedience as mere coincidences. It is also a sign of the near total, crushing power we have attained over other animals and the efficacy with which we carry out this domination, hidden away as the machine often is from the vast majority of our hearts, minds and visions.

Florence, which landed in North Carolina about a month after Fred’s sabotage, is a fitting example of this callous violence. As the hurricane neared the mainland, there was anxiety about the impact it would have on the massive shit lagoons generated by the millions of pigs raised for slaughter on the industrial farms in the area. However, as Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond notes, the 9.7 million pigs as well as their fellow chickens and turkeys were absent from news reports on this potential problem. She writes, “The more we see of them, the less we see them. Their suffering is defiantly ignored in stories which, bizarrely, use their images but focus solely on their manure.”

Even as my fellow race and animals scholars(2) grieved that living, thinking, feeling orphans, babies, mothers and children were being left to drown without so much as the chance to save themselves, we were not surprised. As property and soon-to-be commodities, as creatures designated for death, the 5,500 pigs and 3.4 million chickens were never really alive if by “aliveness” we mean more than existing and tortured. To the minds of those who “owned” them, each animal was already expired — walking dead — and the transition from perception to reality by the filling of lungs with putrid water was just a novel form of dispatch compared to the everyday practice of bolt guns, slit throats and mutilation.

As Florence loomed, I came across another story I had not heard before: that of the plight of the inmates at Orleans Parish Prison during Hurricane Katrina. Despite the mayor of New Orleans and governor of Louisiana calling for a mandatory evacuation, the city’s sheriff declared, "The prisoners will stay where they belong." What transpired in the days after was chaos as the facility’s generators and lights failed, the already stuffy air became stifling and flood waters mixed with waste began to rise around those trapped in their cells and in a locked gym. Over the course of the unprecedented storm: “…terrified prisoners began to riot in the sewage-tainted floodwaters” and “Downstairs, water rose from the prisoners’ ankles, to knees, to waists.” Eventually, personnel fled and basic services like food distribution stopped. In an anonymous interview, a guard later reflected that, “The prisoners thought we were all planning to leave them to die locked in there’…’and I can’t say I blamed them for thinking that.’” Instead of waiting to die or be saved, they freed themselves by breaking through the cinderblock walls only to discover armed deputies waiting in boats ready to both rescue and recapture them.

To be clear, the argument I am not making in recounting the tale of another hurricane is that the suffering of the prisoners in Orleans Parish was “the same” as that of the pig, chicken and turkey captives in North Carolina. Although we are indeed all biological animals, each group and each individual within the group has important similarities and differences in the way they experience trauma. There is also the subtle but important distinction that the exploitation of other animals denies their ability to fully and freely exist in their own species worlds, while the exploitation of Black and other non-White people, the economic underclass and other excluded and vulnerable homos sapiens results from a denial of full access to a body within which we already technically belong.

Even so, a profound, gut-level truth is revealed when an anonymous statement launching this year’s nationwide prison strike reads, “Prisoners understand they are being treated as animals. Prisons in America are a warzone. Every day prisoners are harmed due to conditions of confinement. For some of us it’s as if we are already dead, so what do we have to lose?” That is, the truth that the term “animal” is not merely a biological category identifying those who are not members of the species homo sapien. Instead, “animal” is a container that justifies a social location of vulnerability and worthlessness. It is, as Maneesha Deckha describes it, “a violence-producing category,” and it is a violence-producing category that applies not only to those we think of as actual animals, but also to those homo sapiens deemed not-quite-human-enough in the various hierarchies that now order our world from early race theorizing through colonization and its aftermath.

In her insightful work, Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age, Claire Jean Kim writes:

The conventional wisdom is that powerful groups have used animalization to 'dehumanize' less powerful groups, demoting them from category A (humans) into category B (animals) and this stripping them of the entitlements, rights and protections distinctively owed to humans... I argue... That racialized groups were never fully seen as human to begin with, so they did not have this status to lose.

As Aph Ko and Syl Ko outline in Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism by Two Sisters, the category “human” does not merely describe homo sapiens. Instead, on this side of the Enlightenment, the human is reserved for White (able-bodied propertied heterosexual Christian) males while “’the animal’ is supposed to express a deviation from that way of being” (25). The ultimate contest and the extreme ends of the hierarchy, then, are not between Whiteness and Blackness, but between Whiteness and the animal. It also means that Blackness, imagined as we are as the most like animals if not actual animals, is the mark of the most abject of homo sapiens: that our rank in the hierarchy is close enough for us to face the same brutality. As the Ko sisters explain, “what condemns us to our inferior status, even before we can speak or act is not merely our racial category but that our racial category is marked the most by animality” (67). This means that, “The racial hierarchy tracks not just a color descent but also a species descent. . . .The closer your category is to the shady, vague animal, the less you ‘matter’” (66).

Which brings me to the third F, that of Lupe Fiasco, and the arrival of his album, Drogas Wave. The overarching narrative of the 24-track project is that of a group of slaves jumping from a ship on the Middle Passage into the ocean and, instead of drowning, living under the waters and sinking other slave ships as they pass. Although there are many incredible songs, the one that immediately brought this journal issue to mind is “Down.” An entire essay could be written unpacking each line and verse, but a deep look at the chorus which opens the song will suffice. Together, Lupe and collaborator Nikki Jean sing:

Fish is my friends and the whales is my homies
Octopuses my people, the shrimp, they all know me
The sharks is my niggas, the dolphins is with us
The crabs is my comrades, the seahorse be holdin' us down
Jellyfish, they just be rollin’ around
Lobsters is cool, they are not food
They're part of the crew
And that mean they down (and that mean they down)

In this imaginative myth, oft forgotten, underrated and routinely slaughtered-by-the-billions sea creatures join with submerged former slaves who were themselves, in the colonizers minds, non-humans. Together they destroy vessels of pain, sickness and trauma before the boats reach the land, the plantation and all the violence of that socioeconomic arrangement. The words of the song communicate a shared reality and kindred existence in which the now ocean-dwelling African-descended ones who live “at the bottom” are embraced by the ones who are already “at the bottom.” The single word, “down,” here is thick with meaning. It signifies that this cast of beings are on the last rung of a hierarchy that upholds White masters and slaveholders, and as such are unseen, unheard, unvalued. But “down” also means that they are in the business of sabotage together: they understand one another’s plight and form their own crew in opposition to the crews aboard the ships. This shared existence of being “down” ultimately transforms the standard set of homo sapien and sea creature relations. Among the not-quite-dead, not quite-human slaves, the lobsters are “cool” instead of "its" to be captured, boiled alive and eaten. Instead of captive and catcher, consumer and consumed, the joint situation “at the bottom” makes them friends, niggas, comrades and co-conspirators. Solidarity rather than antagonism or disregard characterizes their connection as they struggle against death-dealing, dominating powers together.

I don’t know if Lupe allows this image of interspecies rebellion to affect his personal choices or if the animals serve only as a clever metaphor for Black experience. But “Down” remains a striking track within the context of the project and nevertheless communicates a message of intersecting liberation between other animals and the least of the least among homo sapiens. As the Ko sisters insist, “If we reclaim ‘the animal’ in the same way that we’ve reclaimed blackness, we acknowledge that nonhuman animals, too, are among the many beings who are condemned in the current system” (69). This understanding can move us to act for other animals “from within an antiracist commitment” (69) and, I would add, from a commitment to life abundantly for every body more broadly.

If hatred of Blackness especially, and of other groups who are denied full human status — women (“bitches”), Muslims (“terrorists”), LGBTQ persons (“deviants”), the poor (“trash”) and disabled people (“retards”) for example — is anchored by the destructive ways we conceive of other animals, then the work of liberation must involve reevaluating our thinking about and changing our behavior toward nonhuman beings from objectification, dismissal, subjugation, and violation to recognition, release, compassion and peaceableness. We cannot have functional antipathy toward other animals and expect to get closer to new life for all who are animalized. Animal advocacy interhooks and overlaps with other forms of resistance, and I am grateful to the poets, witnesses, organizers, writers, carnival-makers, mothers and care-givers in this issue for helping to make this perspective clearer.

(1) Giving credit to Aph and Syl Ko whose exceptional book, Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism by Two Sisters, has inspired my use of the term homo sapiens and has sharpened a great deal of my thinking on race, animals and oppression.
(2) Gratitude to CalvinJohn Smiley for raising my awareness to the situation in North Carolina and to he and Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond for all our sharing over the course of the storm.

Nekeisha Alayna Alexis is an independent scholar with wide-ranging interests in race, human and animal oppression, intersectionality and co-liberation with other animals; Christian ethics and theology concerning other animals; and connections between anarchist politics and liberative Christian faith and practice. She is the co-founder and a co-organizer of Jesus Radicals.

]]><![CDATA[Labor Pains]]>Wed, 03 Oct 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/labor-painsBy: Sarah Withrow King

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!—Matthew 23:37

Kiska, a female orca, being held captive and alone at Marineland, Canada. Credit: Jo-Anne MacArthur / We Animals, 2011

I am a mother.
I am a vegan mother.
I am a Jesus-following, vegan mother of a tween-age mostly-vegan, living in the Pacific Northwest of the United States in 2018.

I have been thinking a lot lately about mothers and about the path of human destruction that leaves grieving mothers in its wake; about the hope and love and viscera connecting me to my own son, and the unspeakable fear of losing him; of becoming intimately acquainted with the deepest grief.

The reality of maternal grief has many faces, past and present. Eve, who lost one son at the hands of another. Hagar, abandoned in the wilderness to watch her son die. Bathsheba, Jochebed, and Mary. Refugee mothers whose children are kidnapped at the U.S. border — the continuation of a long national history of tearing children of color away from their parents. Mothers who have lost children to violence; to addiction; to disease; to poisoned water and air and land; to others’ pursuit of power or material wealth at the expense of all else. These mothers are everywhere.

This August, a grieving orca mother, called J35 by some and Tahlequah by others, carried her dead calf for 17 days while swimming near the coast of Washington state. She and other orca mothers, weak from hunger caused by Euro-American colonization and commodification of the environment, have lost many other babies. But she would not let this baby sink into the ocean waters easily.

J. Nicole Morgan, author of Fat and Faithful says, “Like many, the grieving mother orca story has shaken me. Her relentless grief is universal…I can't stop thinking about Rizpah…the biblical mother of sons who were killed in the political, power games of King David. She stands guard over their bodies, forces the King to take notice and see the implications of his choices. I believe that creation tells us the heart and story of the Creator. And I can't help but think that Tahlequah is refusing to leave the body of her child, holding her up above the waves, protesting with all the might she has and hoping it will mean that we see the death-causing implications of our choices.”

Tahlequah and the other orcas in her pod are starving and losing babies because the wild salmon that sustains them no longer live in abundance in the waters of the Pacific Northwest, stymied in large part by the choice to construct dams along the Lower Snake River. These dams, erected by the U.S. government to generate electrical power, have had a devastating effect on the ability of the Nez Perce and other First Nations tribes to maintain their way of life, and the dams violate treaty promises to maintain indigenous access to fish in the river. The fish the orcas do eat are often now contaminated by the byproduct of human activity (pesticides, plastics, chemicals).1

Each time I think about Tahlequah, I think about Clarabelle, a rescued mother cow who was spared from the slaughterhouse after being used by an educational dairy in Australia. Workers at the sanctuary that rescued Clarabelle were delighted to discover that she was pregnant, knowing that for the first time in her life, the mother cow would be able to raise her offspring. Like other mammals, Clarabelle produces milk for babies. But the dairy industry takes calves from their mothers within hours of birth. The milk meant for them is used by humans to pour on cereal or is processed into the cheese that is melted onto the ground-up body of another bovine mother. When Clarabelle’s behavior changed noticeably, sanctuary workers discovered that Clarabelle had given birth and was systematically hiding and moving her calf to avoid human detection. Because labor doesn’t end when the baby exits the body. The pain and struggle of protecting our children continues as long there is breath in our bodies. Clarabelle’s actions demonstrate that other creatures have ability, emotion, and intelligence, a fact that some find astonishing simply because Clarabelle is called an “animal.” Syl Ko says, “The ‘difference’ is, in the case of humans and animals, created by us, as a functional device. As a result, many terms that are animal-specific carry within them the parameters for how to treat that being.”2

The stories of Clarabelle and her infant Valentine and of Tahlequah, the salmon of the Lower Snake River, the Nez Perce, and the colonizing U.S. government are two specific examples of similar stories playing out in lands and waters across the globe. They are, in part, stories of misused and abused power, of hierarchy and dominance, of myopic and anemic ideas of what it means to flourish. They are a product of the mindset of scarcity, not abundance.

Through Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, the Creator God began the work of reconciling the whole world back to Godself. “Everything old has passed away…in Christ, God was reconciling the world,” says the writer of 2nd Corinthians. The epistle to the Romans declares: “…the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves…” (New Revised Standard Version).

The whole creation has been groaning in labor pains. God’s very good creation adapts in an attempt to survive. She breathes and shifts her body, pushing out new life.

How can the church serve as midwives to a reconciled creation? How can Jesus followers reject the abuses of power that create systems that lead to the unnatural and unnecessary suffering of mothers and others? Can we feel the tragedy of an orca mother? Can we connect our grief to the grief of a cow mother? Can we reimagine what it looks like to live as one creature, one family, one community in relation to other creatures, other families, other communities?

As a Christian, a follower of Christ, I am called to a life in pursuit of mercy, justice, simplicity, and faithful service. When I read Tahlequah’s story, I feel helpless. I can’t take back the events of the last two hundred years that have led to her sorrow and the sorrow of so very many indigenous mothers. I don’t speak her language and can’t provide direct comfort.

But there are a few things I am led, even compelled, to do to try my best to avoid complicity in systems and habits that cause harm to others. I have a lot to learn and I make a lot of mistakes.

But I am connected to Clarabelle and to Tahlequah and to grieving and frightened mothers all over the planet. We are all connected to the God who gave us life and who suffered the death of her own son for our sake and for the promise that, one day, wolves and sheep and asps and humans and orcas and salmon will inhabit the earth together, in peace.

Notes:

Danielle Beurteaux, “Starving Killer Whales Are Losing Most of Their Babies,” Hakai Magazine, September 18, 2017. Accessed August 10, 2018. https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/starving-killer-whales-are-losing-most-their-babies/
Syl Ko, “Emphasizing Similarities Does Nothing for the Oppressed,” Aphro-ism (New York: Lantern Books), 2017

Sarah Withrow King is the co-director of CreatureKind, a project to engage the church on animal welfare, with a particular focus on farmed animals. She is the author of Vegangelical: How Caring for Animals Can Shape Our Faith (Zondervan, 2016) and Animals Are Not Ours (No, Really, They’re Not): An Evangelical Animal Liberation Theology (Cascade Books, 2016). She is fueled by black coffee, dog snuggles, and repeat-watching The West Wing. She is pictured with Daisy.

]]><![CDATA[The Sparrow]]>Tue, 02 Oct 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/the-sparrowBy Jacob Winn

Sparrow silhouettes. Credit: Alan Huett / Flickr Creative Commons

I saw a sparrow fly into glass:
The window of a church, no less.
It fell to the ground defeated;
Only its ghost took flight again.
As I moved it on to blowing reeds,
A meadow for its rest,
I thought upon the cruelty
That humankind had brought it.
Our glass and massive towers,
All built to please our eyes,
Attacks the creatures God created:
Like a beacon of danger,
Brought about by our arrogance.
We think we must have the nicest,
The greatest and the tallest:
And what does that leave us with?
A pile of bones from other beings.
God sees when sparrows fall to earth
And knows our greed has put them there!

Jacob is a youngish fellow with a passion for writing. He is currently working to unlearn the imperial notions that have attached themselves to Christianity in America, and to hold only to the beautiful Way of Christ.

]]><![CDATA[“I am animal liberationist”: Scenes from the inaugural Indiana Animal Rights March]]>Mon, 01 Oct 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/i-am-animal-liberationist-scenes-from-the-inaugural-indiana-animal-rights-marchOn September 1, 2018, the Indiana Animal Rights Alliance hosted the first animal rights march in downtown Indianapolis. Jesus Radicals co-founder Nekeisha Alayna Alexis was among the speakers. She also took photos among the hundreds of people who participated in the demonstration. For videos of all the speeches, visit http://inanimalrights.com/2018-indiana-animal-rights-march/

Photo Credit: Nekeisha Alayna Alexis

]]><![CDATA["Seeing the Pigs Keeps Us Going": Seven questions with Sky Dawson and Linda Cridge, Fort Wayne Animal Save]]>Mon, 01 Oct 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/seeing-the-pigs-keeps-us-going-seven-questions-with-sky-dawson-and-linda-cridge-fort-wayne-animal-save

One of the thousands of individuals sent to slaughter in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on September 17, 2018.

What is Fort Wayne Animal Save and how did it start?
Sky: Fort Wayne Animal Save is a chapter within The Save Movement, a world-wide activism organization. We go out to our local slaughterhouses and document the thousands of faces we see inside the inbound “livestock” trucks in an attempt to get people to see an individual — a victim and not a commodity. In March of 2018, I had been watching a lot of vegan channels on YouTube and they inspired me to get involved with activism. I’d always felt like abstaining from cruelty wasn’t enough.; I felt the need to do something about it. I searched for ‘Save groups’ around me but then realized there really weren’t any in Indiana. That is when I decided to start my own.

Linda: It was close to eight years ago when I read the book Skinny Bitch. That was the catalyst for change. My husband read it as well, and we began our journey into veganism along with our two children who were then nine and eleven years old. I quickly found the local vegetarian/vegan group on Facebook and soon after the group branched off and added an animal rights group called Indiana Animal Rights Alliance.

I wasn’t as active in the beginning. However, in the past 18 months or so opportunities for activism havey has exploded locally. I am now part of Anonymous for the Voiceless and I help manage both the Louisville Pig Save and the Fort Wayne Animal Save. I definitely have found my passion helping to end animal exploitation.

What kinds of things do you do? What do you hope to accomplish or what message do you hope to send to others?
Sky: We go to a Tyson slaughterhouse and the Indiana Packers slaughterhouse to bear witness to the pigs as they arrive. Our goal is to get their faces on camera and share them on social media to friends and family. It is easy for people to disconnect from where their “food” actually came from. It’s easy to forget that a sentient being died to be on your plate. When we post photos and videos of these pigs, our families and friends might see it and start to question their decisions. They might start to think about the victims and realize that the animal cruelty they’ve seen online before really isn’t as far away as they thought. I’ve had so many people who aren’t vegan tell me how heartbreaking our footage is. Our goal is to plant a seed in people’s minds to get them thinking and feeling compassion for the victims of this industry.

What are the biggest challenges to what you do and hat keeps you going out every week?
Sky: Lately, the biggest challenge has been with the truck drivers and the police. I completely understand why the slaughterhouse workers and truckers hate us:; they feel like we’re protesting them and that our goal is to make them lose their jobs, which absolutely isn’t the casel. We have had a lot of issues with the truck drivers being extremely aggressive with us or just being completely reckless with their vehicles and putting themselves and the pigs in danger.

There have been multiple times that the drivers have gone through stop signs to avoid us. But at the last vigil, a driver went in the wrong lane and ended up knocking over traffic signs when he turned left. The vigil before that, a driver came out screaming at us with a hammer in his hand. Even more troubling is the fact that the police seem to side with the drivers. The cops I’ve spoken to have been incredibly friendly, but they always seem to be more understanding of the drivers — even the violent ones.

My co-organizer, Linda, has had bad experiences with one cop, who has given her two tickets in the past month for allegedly hanging on the trailers and putting her hands inside of them, neither of which was true. Despite all of this, seeing the pigs keeps us going out every week. We know their lives have been hellish and there’s really nothing we can do to help them. But we can share their story and show people that they can live in a way that doesn’t support this.

Have the incidences with the police affected your thoughts on the legal abuses of power experienced by other groups?
Linda: Yes. I am much more disillusioned now about the system. I did not get the impression the police were really seeking the truth. I have not gotten that impression from the prosecutor, either. They should be concerned with our safety but it doesn’t seem like they are. I will revisit once I have my court date.

Do you experience hope while you are doing the work you do? Do you have any daily practices that help you sustain your hope?
Sky: We normally get harassed by cars driving past us on the highway, but once in a while someone will stop and tell us we have their support. We’ve had a couple people stop and tell us they’re vegan, too. We also had an old man park his truck, get out, and come ask for a picture with us and all of our signs. He wasn’t vegan but he said he hates the Tyson slaughterhouse. His son works there and he thinks it’s terrible and cruel and he is encouraging his son to quit. Seeing positive reactions like this from the community really gives me hope for a less cruel future.

Is there a particular moment that stands out for you so far that you would like to share?
Sky: Sometimes at the Tyson slaughterhouse the trucks will get backed up and some will have to park out in the street, on public property. My most memorable moment was when I brought my friend Maddie to a vigil and we got to spend about 5 minutes with the pigs in the trucks. Maddie had seen a lot of videos online regarding the cruelty that happens to the animals in the food industry and she was in the process of changing her lifestyle to be cruelty-free. I reached out to her in the hopes that attending a vigil would be impactful and reinforce her decision to go vegan.

When we walked up to the parked trucks, we got to see each individual animal in that truck, touch them, and talk to them. It made it so much more real than when the trucks would quickly pass us by and we would get 30 seconds of footage, mainly focusing on our cameras being on them the whole time. This time we didn’t have to worry about the truck moving or being unsuccessful in documenting their faces; we got to just stand there and truly see them. We were all shaking:; it was so intense and so emotional. Maddie was extremely impacted by this experience. I looked over at her and noticed she was crying. Getting to see each individual and knowing their exact fate is so heartbreaking.

What advice do you have for those who want to start a Save group in their own town?
Sky: Build a network of activists around you, especially experienced activists. There will be many times that legal questions or other new and unexpected questions will come up. For example, I had no idea where I was-or-wasn’t legally able to stand but after speaking with police and other activists I now have a much better understanding. Also, don’t be afraid to reach out and talk to the police. It is very useful to utilize them when trying to figure out what is legal and what isn’t. Even when we’ve dealt with cops that were being rude, they still completely respected our right to be out there protesting. Their only concern is the safety of everyone involved.

For advice on how to start a ave group in your community, contact Sky Dawson and Linda Cridge at fortwayneanimalsave@gmail.com. They can walk you through the steps or answer any questions you might have.

]]><![CDATA[Nonviolent Canine Disobedience]]>Sun, 30 Sep 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/nonviolent-canine-disobedienceBy: Benjamin Isaac-Krauss

Retired and waiting for adoption at a greyhound adoption center in Victoria, Australia. Sometimes the dogs wait six months for a new home. Credit: Jo-Anne MacArthur / We Animals, 2010

Some years ago, I spent a year living and working on a Palestinian farm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The farm was on a hill surrounded on every side by Israeli settlements. I was there with other young people from around the world to provide an international presence that would deter Israeli settlers from stealing the land, destroying crops, or worse. While I was there to stand with the oppressed Palestinian people, the animals I was put in charge of taught me a deeper lesson about liberation I had not considered before.

One of my responsibilities on the farm was to tend to the animals. There were two horses, three goats, ten chickens, a flock of pigeons, and five dogs. All of these animals had a strong will for freedom but it was not only my job to feed and clean them but also to lock them in their cages and repair the fences. Their will for freedom conflicted with my role.

While the goats rammed me with their heads and the horses sometimes tried to run away or kick me, our dogs employed a different strategy. During lunch or dinner, they would always break out of their cage and run around barking to protest their lack of food. Every time they did this, I would need to interrupt my own meal and catch them.
Then the strange thing happened.

When I would catch them, they would more often lie numb on the ground and stretch their feet out towards me. They did not try to bite me: they just lay there.
I tried to convince them to go back to their cages by telling them it is my duty to lock them up and that I was sorry I did not have more food for them.

No reaction.

Next, I petted them and promised to try and get extra food though I knew there was none.
No reaction.

On a lucky day I would by chance have some extra food and they would follow me to their cage, thereby achieving one of their main demands — food — while giving up the other — freedom. But most days the escalation would go on. I would grab their scruff and try to walk with them, but they would remain numb, making the task more difficult. In the end, I would need to carry them to their cage and find out where they escaped and repair it before they broke out again. (All in the dark, of course, since it got dark at half past five.) A little later — sometimes a half-an-hour, sometimes two days — they would break out again, using a new hole. When I caught them, they would go numb again. Little by little, they wore me down.

One evening, the dogs actually escaped three times by removing a heavy stone and pushing themselves through the resulting hole at the bottom of the fence. That night, I left them outside and only re-incarcerated them the next morning. At some point, I realized they were using nonviolent civil disobedience against me. But since they were dogs, I decided to call it nonviolent canine disobedience.

They refused to give up their freedom, but they also knew that violence wouldn’t get them anywhere. If they bit me, I would get really aggressive and have justification to treat them worse. But their nonviolent discipline exposed me as the aggressor I was and the other volunteers started reproaching me for putting them in the cage. Their actions were successful at shifting the spectrum of allies.

When I reviewed Gene Sharp’s list of 194 nonviolent tactics, I discovered that the dogs were using at least four strategies in their nonviolent freedom struggle against me:

Sit-In (or Lie-in)
Noncooperation
Crossing fences (escaping from the cage and entering the volunteers’ area)
Boycott (one of the dogs refused to eat the extra food I gave him to lure him into the cage)

One working definition of nonviolence I have encountered says this: Nonviolent resistance is used by or on behalf of the oppressed, serves to end their oppressions, and challenges the humanity of the oppressor to stop oppressing.

There are two parties: Oppressed and Oppressors. And nonviolence is the “weapon” of the oppressed.

So, if the dogs were using nonviolence, they were the oppressed.

But wait a minute! That made me the oppressor!

But I’m not an oppressor! I was just doing my job! The dogs have to be in the cage or else they poop everywhere, drag litter from the enormous pile of junk in front of the farm, and scare the tourists! And I’m even nice to the dogs! Some of my best friends are dogs! There is even a dog we don’t put in the cage because he’s so cute and fluffy.

But these statements are the arguments used by oppressors all over the world — especially those who serve the state by protecting the status quo: from cops who shoot black men to the Israeli soldiers who manage the occupation. When I lived in Palestine, I would see Israeli soldiers whenever I left the farm. They were the same age I was. They were pawns of the occupation. Many of them hated standing at a checkpoint all day, making Palestinians wait the whole time. But it was their job and both men and women are required by law to serve in the military (unless they are Orthodox or pregnant).

These young people are stuffed into uniforms, given guns, and told to keep those terrorists from getting stupid ideas. It’s like Yehuda Shaoul from Breaking the Silence said during my delegation with Christian Peacemaker Teams: “I’ll give you a gun and you can try to control a thousand people who are waiting at the checkpoint. It only works with fear. So you count them and harass every 10th Palestinian. It’s as simple as that.”

At some point, I realized that the dogs had worn me down through their nonviolent canine disobedience and I had responded by escalating the conflict. To keep them from breaking out I put bigger stones around the fence. I thought about throwing them into the cage next time I caught them and rationalized my cruelty by telling myself that if I opened the door the dogs who were already incarcerated would escape. I started to feel a decrease in my motivation to give them food or to spray them against lice. My boss, seeing how the dogs were growing, suggested that we separate them into bigger cages and put them on the corners of the farm so they could each be watchdogs and have more space.

More space, but also solitary confinement.

Throughout my time on the farm, I wrestled with what to do with these dogs. At times I grew aggressive towards them, but in my dreams I found a way to join them, running around howling at the moon at night. The contradiction inside myself kept growing right until I left the farm to start college. The year was not enough time for me to defect from my position of oppression, but the experience left me wondering how many Israeli soldiers dream of dropping their guns and joining hands with the people they have been taught to fear.

It has also left me wondering how creative nonviolent resistance can help them make the scary decision to defect from their familiar world of cages and domination to a new world without cages.

Benjamin Isaak-Krauss continues to wrestle with what it means for a rich young ruler like himself to follow a God who is on the side of liberation. This question has brought him many places from farming in Palestine, to working with refugees in Greece and France, and most recently to Elkhart, Indiana, where he is studying peace studies and theology with a concentration in creation care at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. This semester he is on a farm again, as part of Merry Lea’s Sustainability Leadership Semester. Luckily, there are no dogs to be caged and all the animals have enough food.

]]><![CDATA[Consider the Ravens]]>Sat, 29 Sep 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/consider-the-ravensA collage of reflections curated by Jay Beck

This essay is a collage of quotes and thoughts. Collage is a technique of art production, primarily used in the visual arts, in which the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. So this will not be "only my words", as if I could even have some original reflection that isn't influenced by all of my ancestors, guides, mentors, elders, friends, and the wider more than human world speaking through all this language. It is a collage on purpose, to emphasize the many speaking together.

"Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them."—Luke 12:24

See how quickly shit gets absurd
You invent angels then you ignore birds
You forget to actually listen to the messengers
While you're writing and reciting
Your own goddamn words

Alrighty, I'll try to chill
Though I'm acutely aware that only ill
Can come of being cut off from all of consciousness
Save for that expressed by humans
In their big hot mess—Ani Difranco

I am only just beginning to understand how to listen to Spirit speaking through the more-than-human and how desperately we need to learn how to hear it.

We at Holy Fools Arts have been experimenting with different approaches to try to aid this type of listening. We believe that art, ceremony, myth, storytelling, and embodied ritual can help us wake up and liberate us from the trance of the human-only-centered dominant reality which is causing so much destruction and oppression. All of life is intricately intertwined together and the things that affect one affect the rest, whether with disaster or liberation.

These concepts are obvious in Indigenous traditional cultures and spiritual thinking but we have found them to be deeply a part of the Jewish and Christian traditions as well. These scriptures tell us: "Pay attention to the Ravens!" and Hebrew prophets remind us that the trees will rejoice when the oppressive empires fall. We have been following these ideas while simultaneously unlearning the twisted versions of biblical interpretations taught to us in the destructive dominant culture of the U.S.

So let's actually consider the ravens:

Ravens show up all over the world through legends and literature. Because of their dark feathers, massive intelligence, croaking caw, and habit of eating dead things, the raven has long been considered a mysterious bird. It also carries omens of coming doom and has become associated with having a prescience that can be understood as prophecy. A bird as prophet. Can we hear its warnings? According to the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the raven (like the coyote) obtained mythic status because it mediated between life and death.

The raven is considered one of the oldest and wisest of all animals. In Swedish, Germanic, and Norse folklore, ravens have connections to the dead as well as to thought and memory and are understood as being messengers for the gods. The Greeks and Romans placed the bird with Apollo, the god of prophecy, and among the Irish Celts the raven was associated with The Morrigan, the Triple Goddess, who took the shape of a raven over battlefields while acting as “Chooser of the Slain” and the protector of warriors. “To have a raven’s knowledge” is an Irish proverb meaning to be one who holds a seer’s supernatural powers.

In the Aboriginal lore of Australia and the myths of many North American Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, including the Tsimishians, Haidas, Heiltsuks, Tlingits, Kwakwaka'wakw, Coast Salish, Koyukons, and Inuit, Raven appears as dual-natured – both Trickster and Creator God – credited with bringing fire, light, sexuality, song, dance, and life itself to humankind.

The raven is the first species of bird mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible and on numerous occasions thereafter. In Genesis 8, Noah releases a raven from the ark after the great flood to test whether or not the waters have receded. In Luke 12, Jesus uses ravens to illustrate God's provision.

There are many examples of the ways that people across cultures and history have paid attention to this bird for deep spiritual guidance. Theologian Ched Myers reminds us that

Sadly, we modern folk have no intention of learning economics from birds and flowers. But to dismiss Jesus here is to miss the key to his alternative cosmology—and to our liberation. The raven (12:24) calls to mind three Hebrew Bible texts that praise the Creator’s gracious provision to all living things, particularly in times of hunger. Job 38:41 says, ‘Who provides for the raven its prey when its young ones cry to God and wander about for lack of food?’ Psalm 147:9 reads ‘God gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.’ And the prophet Elijah is fed by a raven (1 Kings 17:4-6), a story that takes place during a famine and is followed by another ‘feeding miracle (17:7-16).

“Birds know nothing about the rich man’s agriculture or barns, yet they can teach us about divine provision. Jesus invites us to have ‘eyes to see’ a Great Economy from which we are deeply alienated, being utterly preoccupied by the works of our hands and our built environments, having objectified and commodified nature beyond recognition.... This very cosmology has been embraced by indigenous peoples the world over and throughout history, whose economic lifeways were traditionally characterized by symbiosis with nature and by local, cooperative, and sustainable production and consumption....The Bible is simply reminding us of the oldest wisdom on the planet. But we moderns long ago rejected it in favor of the delusion that we can defy every limit in our pursuit of artificially engineered ‘growth.

Jesus tells us to pay attention to birds and flowers to understand how to live in right relationship: to understand our interconnection with each other and the more-than-human.

In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram explores how "the human mind came to renounce its sensuous bearings, isolating itself from the other animals and the animate Earth."

Because the dominant culture is firmly grounded in the myth of human specialness, a myth encouraged by technology, we can feel free to exploit other animals and the Earth itself. But our very perception, our very human-ness, depends on a "synchronization" between our rhythms and the rhythms of the natural world. With technology, we use our minds to master functions; our senses are hardly used at all.—Susan Salter Reynolds

If our destructive behavior is grounded in a myth, a story, a false telling of the way we should think about the world, then we need to hear some different stories. Who else is speaking and how can we listen? How can we respond in a way that helps us form healthy and liberated lives for not only us?

Consider too: are the stories we tell more than just mere words?

For [w]ords are increasingly merely signs, codes, not the ‘echo of the deeply interconnected matrix of sensorial reality’ it once was and still is in some cultures ("a swirling garment of vapor and breath worn by the encompassing Earth itself"). The alphabet, the written character, no longer referred the user ‘to any sensible phenomenon,’ further widening the gap between the senses and the natural world.

“The only way to heal this rift, to bring meaning back to speech and to the written word is through the recognition that language must be flexible and that it is not our exclusive provenance. Animals speak, the Earth speaks; to us, about us, with us.—Susan Salter Reynolds, quoting David Abram

If there is an important, massive, cross-species conversation happening then what do the Jewish and Christian traditions say about listening to the more-than-human? How are our liberation and understanding connected to hearing them?

One of our mentors and friends is a powerful theologian and poet from Detroit named Jim Perkinson; he writes:

“Untamed spaces of wandering have always been the place of both deepest pedagogy and most reliable regeneration for the social movement known as ‘Israel.'”

"The biblical witness is preeminently a witness to the priority of the ‘wild.’ Wildlands emerge in its narratives as the source of both material life-support and of spiritual teaching, the incubation chamber and inspiration for folk movements of all kinds seeking to elude or exit the imperial project of domestication and enslavement. Israel itself begins as a … movement of slaves exiting Egypt and re-learning how to ‘live on the land’ in the outback environment of Sinai, led by a Moses who had himself been re-schooled for 40 years by his herd animals in that ecology.
“…The later history of the Hebrew ‘outlaw’ movement after it settles uneasily into subsistence farming … is a series of prophetic movements, epitomized by Elijah, living raw and wild in wadi Cherith, pronouncing weather as weapon in the struggle against King Ahab, and learning his hunting tactics from resourceful r.avens. The movement begun by Baptizer John camps out in Elijah’s old ravine, and teaches its lessons of return to what the watershed can teach and provide.
“…Which is to say, that the biblical tradition is inspired by a version of the earliest resistance tradition on the planet — pastoral nomads who went AWOL from exploitative agricultural practices relearning their ecosystems in apprenticeship to their herds, finding Divinity most powerfully present at the head of the watershed as a Storm-Deity, granting life and nutrients in seasonal rains and riparian veins of abundance, revalorizing ritual practices (like Sabbath and Jubilee) whose significance is one of limiting human aggression on the environment in favor of trusting the land to produce ‘of itself.’”

Because Holy Fool Arts resonates deeply with this view of these sacred stories and we see that listening to the more-than-human is necessary for sustainable lifeways and liberation for all, we try to amplify this message by re-membering with our art. In the theatrical productions of our project ‘The Carnival de Resistance’ we address these many layers of symbolism and tell these old stories again, speaking from the perspective of the more-than-human. In our show "Rooted Wind" we weave ceremony, Midrash, theater, music, dance, storytelling, and circus arts together to highlight the powers of Earth and Air by embodying what we imagine to be the voices of birds and trees. This show features loud-mouthed “Raven,” mute “Dove,” and the “Voice of the Cedars,” using poetic soliloquies for the gift of creation and prophetic rants against its destruction. We believe that this type of art is resistance and helps us wake up.

We need this ‘waking up’, for, as mythologist Martin Shaw says:

I notice that several times a day I go into what you could call a mild trance state. I’m … talking about falling under the influence of advertising, or various politically engineered neuroses that might be floating around. …And the way I recognise it is that I feel less than grounded. I feel I’m not in the realm of imagination, I’m in the realm of fantasy. So the imaginal is not present; the Earth as a lived, breathing, thinking being is not present. … And so actually I think stories have a capacity to wake us up.

We are living in a time when we need symbolic intelligence, not just sign language. We are being fed signs, and signs that frighten us, and then paralyse us, and then colonise us. And imagination, through myth, wants to give you symbols to raise you up.

The complete colonization of the mind is the final frontier of capitalist domination. This domination proceeds, at ever-increasing speed, through the reduction of the imagination to that which can be predicted and controlled. This is why, as J.F. Martel says:

Art is in itself a form of resistance to the commodification of consciousness. Every bit of time and energy spent creating or experiencing works of art escapes the grasp of those forces that would reduce us all to a quantity or algorithm.

Similarly, the only thing art can do is reveal the non-human forces that shape the world. It oxygenates society by infusing it with a more expansive reality than its preconceptions, opinions or beliefs allow for. True works of art are powerful symbolic constructs, genuine oracles that can give society access to what’s going on below the threshold of collective consciousness.

Since we are all …caught up in a mass of abstractions, our attention hypnotized by a host of human-made technologies that only reflect us back to ourselves, it is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth -- our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.—David Abram

With this understanding in the forefront of our artistic approach, our ceremonial theater then endeavors to embody the more-than-human and begins to be able to hear it speaking back to us, saying, in the voice of the Raven:

"i, full of cries, shaman-hopping, rock to rock
tricky in disguise, in shape-shifting lies
leading evil astray, fed from on high
listed in the book of ages, but no one’s easy food
pecking out the cursing eye
dweller in the re-wilded cities of edom
i neither sow nor reap, but live like an original creature . . .

Quotes From:
Ani Difranco
song: "Alrighty": Album: "Binary"
David Abram
The Spell of the Sensuous
Ched Myers
https://www.chedmyers.org/articles/ecology-faith/pay-attention-birds-bible-study-luke-12-ecology-and-economics
Susan Salter Reynolds
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-03-01/news/ls-41670_1_natural-world
James Perkinson
Messianism Against Christology
https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2015/01/30/breakin-down-messianism-with-dr-jim-perkinson/#more-1387
Poetry excerpts from Carnival De Resistance scripts
Martin Shaw
https://dark-mountain.net/the-mythos-we-live-by-uncolonising-our-imagination/
JF Martel
http://realitysandwich.com/266261/reclaiming-art-an-interview-with-j-f-martel/

Jay Beck is a percussionist, vocalist, drum-maker, storyteller, actor and educator who has been performing, teaching, touring and recording professionally for many years. He has performed with numerous groups including Madison Greene, Woodspeak, Unidos da Filadelfia, Phillybloco, Netos de Kansala West African Drum and Dance ensemble, Psalters and BEAST. He is a founder of Holy Fool Arts, a core organizer for the Carnival de Resistance and collaborates with his partner Tevyn East in Philadelphia. His newest musical project, Beast, exegetes the symbolic relevance of certain plants and animals within scripture and sacred mythologies through percussive blues-infused original compositions.

]]><![CDATA[“My people will be healthy, happy, thriving , powerful”: An interview with Jamila Anahata, Afro Vegan Society]]>Fri, 28 Sep 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/my-people-will-be-healthy-happy-thriving-powerful-an-interview-with-jamila-anahata-afro-vegan-society Afro Vegan Society is a non-profit organization in Baltimore, Maryland. It's goal is to is empower our community by using veganism as a tool to overcome systemic race-based oppression shared among those who have a common African ancestry." It's works toward this mission through community engagement, event planning, providing vegan resources, and writing, Nekeisha Alayna Alexis interviewed Jamila Anahata, Community Engagement Director. Below is their conversation, edited for clarity.

Zeki Kelton, Jamila Anahata and Maya Alfred at the 2018 table for Afro Vegan Society at the Charlottesville Vegan Roots Fest. Photo provided.

NAA: We’re talking today because you are part of Afro Vegan Society. Do you want to say a little bit about what that is and what your role is there?
Jamila: Sure! So Afro Vegan Society, we’re very food justice-, community-, and, well, I don’t want to say health-based, but we do understand the benefits of a plant-based diet. We do want to move people away from eating more processed food, but we understand that with food injustices in Black and Brown neighborhoods, that’s not necessarily a huge priority. We do community engagement events. So we have the Baltimore Black Vegan Social Group Meetup that meets every month where we make food ourselves for free for everybody in the community (if you’re Black of course). I can tell that people really enjoy the food—especially since it’s made from scratch and love. We have events [such as] cooking demos. We’re having a Cooking Demo Extravaganza coming up in November, which we’re really excited about. We haven’t really advertised for that yet, but we’re definitely going to have some great demonstrators there; some people who are local and have a name. We like to do that so people understand what vegan cooking looks like; you’re not shaving a celery stalk, you’re not just going to be eating three carrots and that’s it. There’s so many things you can eat. From what I remember, there’s about 30,000 – 80,000 edible plants on earth.

We try to take those things that are available to us, especially in local DC and Baltimore, and make that a thing. And by season, showing people what seasonal looks like; showing them what vegan-on-the-go looks like; vegan on a budget; how to transition your kids to going vegan; things along those lines. So we do a lot of exciting work. We also have our website. We have a lot of vegan resources [on there]. There are recipes and something called the Black-Owned Vegan Restaurant List. That’s something that’s really good for a national audience just so people, when they’re traveling, they can go out and support their local Black business and have some good food on top of that. We’re just really for the community. We just want to make sure that Black people are transitioning easily to a vegan lifestyle.

NAA: You all are based in Baltimore, but I feel like I’ve seen you all travel as well. Where else have you been hitting up with Afro Vegan Society?
Jamila: Last November we did a Vegan Soul Food Search where the AVS team went across the East Coast and parts of the Midwest, hitting up Black-owned vegan restaurants that were on our list. That was pretty fun! There were a few [restaurants] that popped up that we didn’t even know existed, and some didn’t pop up at all. So it was a great experience. We got to meet face-to-face with the people that we interact with online. There were people who live in Chicago or North Carolina that we haven’t really gotten to talk to [in person] but we’re best friends on Facebook or Instagram. So it was really good to see their faces and hear their words and just experience vegan soul-food in another state. We do try to make it more national. That’s why we have our recipes and our resources online but for the most part we’re really local.

NAA: How long have you been vegan and what prompted you to go in that direction?
I’ve been vegan for almost 5-1/2 years now. I’ve always had health problems from childhood and even now it kind of lingers. I had digestive issues because I ate the SAD diet—the Standard American Diet – just like everybody else. Pizza, burgers, fries—I just did not stop. I didn’t look at a vegetable until I basically went vegan. My body was screaming for my attention to finally give it some nourishment and I listened. I finally listened. So once I looked up my diet and understood that animal products were the cause of my issues, that was almost enough for me to quit altogether but I also watched Earthlings. I never really considered myself an animal lover or anything. I do love animals: I have a great, deep appreciation for them but you’re not going to see me licking a dog’s face. But seeing that [film]was really what made me… I just don’t want to support that at all. I just could not do it anymore.

I also wanted to be an example for my people. Actually, contrary to popular belief, veganism is pretty common in the Black community: we just don’t talk about it enough and we don’t really explore those circles because they can be deemed as White. For some reason, we associate eating fried chicken and eating the worst of the worst food with being Black, but that’s the complete opposite [of the truth]. That is something we’ve been conditioned to believe. So those notions really did help me stay vegan because I knew that the more I was vegan, the more I cooked, the more I showed people my smoothies, the more I gave information about veganism, that my people would follow along. So here I am.

NAA: You touched on the ways being vegan as a Black woman helps to dismantle these myths around “This is what Black people eat” and as veganism as something that White people do. What are some of the ways that people respond to you? What are some of the challenges—the strongholds—that you still see within Black communities?
Jamila: Luckily, we’re very well received, but I do notice that people are really hesitant. I would say that there are two things that really happen quite often. The number one thing is that people really get defensive. Because I am also somebody who can be very defensive when you make a viewpoint that I don’t really agree with, especially when it’s taught your whole life. The cognitive dissonance is real when it comes to things like that. So people will usually waltz up and, even though they're very nice and they love what we do, they’re like, “Well I can’t give up my meat, but thanks for being here.” I totally understand that ‘cause that’s where I was a long time ago. But we [at AVS] usually react to that like, “You know what sis, bruh, fam, that’s where I was a couple years ago. So have fun saying that. But I’ll see you in two years when you’re begging me wanting to go vegan.” Veganism has something for everybody. So if you try it out, you’ll like it. So there’s just a lot of defensive people, which is totally fine.

The other thing that we get is that Black men don’t really agree with our logo, which is a side silhouette profile of clearly a Black woman with natural hair. AVS is a Black woman-run business and that just so happens to be an accident. We’re just Black women who wanted to do this. But Black women are a great focus ‘cause mostly Black women are vegans. Not all Black women in American are, but there are tons of Black vegan women that we refuse to acknowledge. Black women are compelled to go vegan if you sit down and explained it, I’ve noticed. So that’s a number one audience, our demographic pretty much. But we’re for all Black people— trans, whatever your class is, it doesn’t matter. But a lot of the Black men see [the logo] as us just marketing to Black women, even though that’s not the case. It just so happens the logo looks like that and we’re all Black vegan women. And I think they don’t like the fact that they don’t feel like they’re included even though we don’t make anything Black women specific. That really irks me because Black women and femmes specifically don’t have a lot of safe spaces. We’re the highest rates of being murdered. We’re the highest rates of being disrespected, abused, assaulted — even in childhood. And the one thing that we can have that can celebrate us, it’s a problem. You know what I mean? We acknowledge those things because when we think of Black people, we automatically jump to the issues of Black men because men are the default gender in society. So that really irks me and we’ve gotten that comment too many times for it to be appropriate in my opinion. So, yeah, I pretty much just want to set the record straight that it’s not just for Black women alone. But it just so happens that a lot of Black women flock to us because they’re more receptive to becoming vegan.

NAA: How do you or Afro Vegan Society see the practice of veganism and the ethic of animal liberation connecting to other issues of resisting oppression? There is a type of veganism, or of plant-based eating—not even full veganism--that doesn’t see a connection. Could you reflect on why you see these things as connected?
Jamila: Totally. A quote that I really do like, I think it’s from Martin Luther King Jr. that says, “An injustice here is an injustice everywhere.” I really agree with that because if we try to justify hurting another being then that means we can hurt everybody else. The notion that a certain group of people will get special treatment is complete damaging. It connects because it’s almost like your hurting yourself when you’re hurting another person. If you see that you’re being rude as a White person and if you’re conscious enough that you’re being rude to a Black person only because their physical form is of a different color of yours, then you’re hurting yourself and you don’t understand it. Not even the fact that it’s going to come back to you, but just the fact that you’re taking this role as a White person too seriously. You know what I mean? We [think we] have this role that we’re gods to the earth, that we oversee the earth, that we have dominion over the animals. Things like that. And if we don’t see how we treat animals and (I hate comparing it to slavery but let’s be real here) don’t see the similarities between American slavery and factory farms, then we’re doing this movement a huge injustice. That’s why White vegans really baffle me with their cries to “Leave race out of this!” We can’t. It’s because of racism that things like this exist. It’s because of the notion that one group of people is superior to others. So if we don’t intersect how we treat animals to how we treat humans, then we’re not going to go anywhere, especially with racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism. All those things are connected, too, because they’re basically letting you know that a Black transwoman who is differently-abled and dark skinned with natural hair is your enemy. Making enemies out of people because they look different than us. So if we dismantle White supremacy or White terrorism, then I have a great feeling that animal agriculture wouldn’t be as prevalent because White supremacy and capitalism go hand-in-hand. So if people stop buying these things and people stop having the idea that they’re superior to animals then this wouldn’t really exist anymore. Like the world would have a better understanding of veganism as a whole for what veganism is if White supremacy didn’t exist. So I just don’t think that we’re going to free the animals if people are still racist and sexist and homophobic.

NAA: There’s something really problematic about accepting that violence is the way to know someone who’s different from you. That’s part of my problem, too, with “humane slaughter.” Actually knowing someone as an individual and still, for your own purposes, deciding that the best way to have intimacy with them is to destroy them is so problematic it’s not even funny. I tell people factory farming is awful, but it’s consistent. "You’re a thing, you’re a thing, you’re a thing, then you come out a thing." At least they’re not trying to hold together “I love you and I respect you” and "I will destroy you at the end of the relationship."

A lot of people are like, “How do I get more folks to come out to my events?” And particularly, too, you’ll hear folks usually from White-run vegan organizations saying, “We keep doing things and the Black people won’t come.” Obviously, it helps that you all are representing the community that you’re trying to reach. But in addition to that, what are some of the strategies you all use to bring people out? But what are some of the things that you do in a really practical way?
Jamila: So, first of all we’re very lucky to have Brenda [Sanders] because Brenda has been doing this type of work for a long time and she can bring people out. But if she weren’t in the equation, advertising is a must. I don’t like to spend a dime; I’m very penny-pinchy. But sometimes you might have to invest in paid advertisements, maybe doing a sponsored on Facebook or Instagram. Probably print out some copies of fliers if you can. Of course, we’re very environmental, too, at AVS. We try to keep it low waste. Maybe have somebody help you flier around town. Go hard on social media.

Consistency [is important], too. If you’re advertising well and in a way that will attract Black people, great. I’m not saying put grape soda and a fried chicken wing on an ad because people really try that. But there is probably some terminology, maybe something from AAVE—African American Vernacular English—maybe there’s something that you can throw in there to make it clear that this is the audience that’s going to be there. We somehow forget that we do have a language. We have a culture. You know what I mean? Some people like to keep it very plain and simple with their advertisement to make it very race-neutral or whatever. But if they’re trying to attract a certain type of crowd, it needs to be specific to what this crowd likes.

Also, make your topic awesome. Have a really exciting title. Probably three to four words tops. Just so it’s a mouthful of something awesome. For example, last July we had something called The Dairy-Free Deliciousness Tasting Party, where we basically everybody could have free dairy-free desserts and treats. So I feel like the name itself also did bring people out. Also, use Canva. Canva can be for free. Make your fliers pop! Have some color in there. Don’t have a boring, bleh flier. Make it relevant and make it cute.

Also, as I was saying before, it’s about consistency. Even if your first event doesn’t go really well, whatever. That’s your first event. Just show people you’re going to stick around. Oftentimes, usually in Black neighborhoods or Black communities, you have to build trust and you have to build rapport. Just because you come in there once and you feel all cute doesn’t mean people are going to trust you enough to come back. You have to be a regular face. That’s why Brenda does such great work because she stays in the same area. She’s been there for years, which makes her reliable and somebody that you want to come to. She’s very approachable. She’s just not somebody that’s just gonna dip when things get hard. And that’s what people like to see.

And if you can, look for donors. Ask for grants. If you’re having an event that’s very vegan specific, there are a lot of places these days that will donate to you, even if you put the “Black” part in there. …because sometimes you don’t know what they be thinking.
Also, just because you show up and you put a little food down and you make an announcement doesn’t mean anything. Walk around. Talk to people. Make sure that you’re building relationships. Get an e-mail sign-up list. Even you don’t have an e-mail list, maybe create one. Just be very creative in building a repeat audience so that you know who’s coming back and so you know what Black people might like to see at vegan events.

NAA: What’s it been like to start AVS? What have been some of the challenges? What have been some of the joys? And, as a closing question, what feels life-giving about the life that you have chosen around this?
Jamila: You know, we’ve only been around almost a year and a half so we’re still fairly new but we’re already making waves ‘cause people have our names in their mouths. People are really starting to catch on to what we’re doing here in Baltimore. Challenges here would probably be being in a small group, because we are a very small group. You definitely need some help when you have ideas. We have some lovely volunteers here: we’ve had to build those up over time. But we have such big ideas and there are only a few of us. Trying to execute ideas with a small staff can be very challenging. It can be done – anything can be done – it’s just sometimes the time and money and energy and all those things are just not there. So the challenges we face now are just really executing everything.

Also what challenges me personally is looking at the future. Because also we want to get bigger, we just don’t know how. We know how—but it’s like how? It’s inevitable: Afro Vegan Society is going to be a thing. We’re doing it. But it’s just probably not going to be at the pace that people would like to see because we don’t have many people.
So it’s all good. You know, once again, consistency is key. The more we decide to take on the more moves are going to happen anyway. But right now, we’re just very much still aligning with what our purpose is. And people are starting to see that. We’re doing a good job already. But we’re trying to woosah.

NAA: And what gives you joy?
Jamila: Oh my God—so many things. So what brings me joy from AVS especially, is knowing that my people are interested. You know what I mean? That’s our audience. And of course we have White supporters or whatever here and there. But just knowing that my people are interested. To me that’s just a good way of showing that, in the future, we have all the potential. We have the power. We are empowered. It just sucks that, along the way – ‘cause no one can really take away your power – but along the way we just become victimized by so many systems.

Another thing that brings me joy is that I know when I pass, when I’m two hundred years old when I pass, that most likely my people will be healthy, happy, thriving, even more powerful human beings. ‘Cause, you know, slavery was just like, what, four generations ago. We’re just one generation ourselves removed from the Civil Rights Movement. We have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. Just knowing that my people want the help. We really want this help. We’re not hiding anymore. We’re transitioning. We’re changing. We’re waking up. We’re seeing things for what they are. And I want to be the one to help walk people through that process; that really brings me joy especially, as I’m also a holistic lifestyle coach. So my audience will always be Black women—Black queer women especially. So watching us heal is the most beautiful thing ever. And for me personally, just being healthy, happy, and sharing my light with others. And them being a mirror for me to be better.

Jamila Anahata is a passionate activist, blogger, and lifestyle coach in the DC/Baltimore area. Her favorite topics to write about are social justice, veganism, and spirituality and how it affects her life as a black femme. In her free time, she likes to read tarot cards, cook healthy food, and lift heavy at the gym! Website: thesoulfulveganista.com Instagram: @thesoulfulveganista Facebook: @thesoulfulveganistablog

]]><![CDATA[The Incomplete Intersectional Animal Liberation and Veganism Resource List]]>Wed, 26 Sep 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jesusradicals.com/vol-1-no-2/the-incomplete-intersectional-animal-liberation-and-veganism-resource-list

Books

Websites

Sistah Vegan Project

Sanctuaries and Farms

Vine Sanctuary

]]>