“At what point do we escalate? When do we conclude that the time has come to also try something different? When do we physically start attacking the things that consume our planet and destroy them with our own hands? – Is there a good reason we have waited this long?”
*intro*
A mind is always in need of liberation and wants to be removed far and away from former operations that had a means to suspend it in a constant state of anxiety. A mind unliberated is a mind chained down and eventually will only know itself in one way: to operate through an existence of apathetic adherence to the dominions of class warfare.
These chains placed on the mind are done so by antagonists who have reason and aim to bind the mind, making it incapable to form any thoughts or criticisms of them. This is an act that takes its time to whittle away at the mind and does so slowly with an end goal of hope to achieve from you full compliance to becoming a subordinate to them and to meet their needs to control how they are perceived by the mind.
The liberation of freeing your mind grants the capability to reach beyond a mere recognition of self as merely being the kind of mind begging to be free and knowing liberation will allow it to fully generate critical thoughts and unique ideas uninhibited and limitless in scope and possibilities. It is a must to free your mind.
I hold a belief that a movement based on the behalf of human liberty aiming to liberate minds can only be possible if it is done through the guidance by free thinking individuals whose minds and bodies know for itself full liberation. This is not a unique thought on its own and was a found inspiration from the words of Emma Goldman.
I also hold a belief that movements should move to adopt a mindset to always be executing escalated acts of defiance. Lurking beneath the surface of what that means, to be defiant, surfaces a question of “should a need to further escalate actions of defiance, what does going beyond defiance look like and what does that mean?”
Answering this question is an act in and of itself committed to attempting peace within your mind, to prepare yourself for the truth that is the answer to it, acts of violence. To recognize violence as an answer is to acknowledge its necessity for ushering in tangible and equitable change.
I also believe that the time given towards efforts of politely submitting lawful requests for societal and civil liberties like a recognition of identity, reparations for accumulated generational trauma, equitable human rights, etcetera is a long expired exercise and, putting it plainly, presents the need to completely stop asking for shit from the state who have had centuries to make good on these requests that they clearly are choosing not to give and that the disrespectful inaction from them speaks volumes of their character and their intentions.
Me stating to be a person with a mind agreeable towards actions of violence is an oversimplification regarding the whole of my beliefs and as such lacks a fuckton of context that smacks of vagueness. My statement isn’t meant to postulate me possessing a need to shout out platitudes of how bad fucking ass I am.
Entertaining the notion that I might be lying about my motives as an attempt to look big fucking tough, aa far as reality is concerned, it wouldn’t matter or could even stick. Remember what Stephen Donziger said, “if it wasn’t me right here right now they’d have someone else in this role”. To show why it doesn’t matter what I think of you think of my statements, I’ve pulled what I needed for context straight off of the front page of the white house dot gov website.
This snippet comes from the FACT SHEET: National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism published via The White House dot org and released to the press on June 15 2021 backs up my assertions by stating; “Under Federal law, “domestic terrorism” is defined as “activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.–It found that the two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat are (1) racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race and (2) anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.”
None of what was published from this barely reported on press release is new material. This presser is mostly unchanged and is dressed up as an update that reality undresses to reveal it for what it is, a rehash of red scare era language. Perusing the halls of US history for an equitable parallel to validate my assertion, the perfect choice is easily J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO applied to groups like The Black Panthers and AIM, which stands for American Indian Movement, heavy surveillance, intimidation tactics, and jumping straight to the worst of it, and the assassinations of, refered to on paper as “neutralizing”, high profle members and us citizens of these groups memntioned as well as the many unmentioned. These groups were perceived as threats to the State and sometimes as threats to democracy.
The specificity of the use of the words “white” coupled with “race” being printed for press in an official government document might be the only thing that’s new to that document. Further driving home as to who they are targeting, bringing me to my point, going further into the document is this quote from president joe biden “In a true democracy, violence cannot be an acceptable mode of seeking political or social change.”
This statement is at its best, a career politician armed with rhortic that wants to be a revisioning of US history, and at its worst a limp and tired recycling of their fascist rhetoric aimed at maintaining a complacency and agreeable nature. For evidence to refute this statement made by the president I offer up both The Spanish Civil War and The Russian Revolution aka The Bolshevik Revolution. I’m just sayin, Lenin is still on display 90 years later and last I checked only successful people have shit like this happen to them.
If inspiration or examples are what’s needed for you to feel comfortable with thoughts of action, your search for it will be in no short supply of people or groups who have been or are currently successful at making impacts as agents of change.
Individuals who are currently active can sometimes be found featured in headline news presented by mainstream legacy media. If that sounds like the unappealing chore that it is, allow me to present to you here and now a couple of organizations I picked due to their diligence towards always placing the climate crisis at the center of everything they do.
These organizations are known currently as Indegineous Climate Action and Fridays For Future international. If the names of these groups are unfamiliar to you I highly recommend taking the time to go on a deep dive of each. I won’t be going that deep in this episode but instead will touch on one example that stood out to me for its excellence from each of these organizations.
Indigenous Climate Action is a group based in Canada. It’s stated aim is to place Indigenous peoples of Canada at the table of discourse concerning policy and law. They state their reason for doing so is based on the necessity in making up for the centuries of underrepresentation in these policy decisions that were engineered with purposeful intent to exclude them, doing so with no regard given to them and their needs. The organization recently executed a project that saw them team up with researchers Dr. Jen Gobby, Rebecca Sinclair, and Rachel Ivey intent to produce an in depth report with a purpose to share the findings of a their year long research conducting an in-depth critical analysis of Canada’s recent climate policy and plans: the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change (PCF) and A Healthy Environment, A Healthy Economy (HEHE).
The report, Phase One of Two, also found evidence to support the assertion of indigenous peoples’ underrepresentation and exclusion in these matters. Phase 2 had the organization seeking to create Indigenous-led climate policy – climate policies by and for Indigenous Peoples that will raise up and empower Indigenous-led solutions.
Fridays For Future India and its founder Disha Ravi are a group of young climate activists whose founder was most recently attached to the Farmer Protests of India, a protest movement that started in August of 2020 and paused as of December 2021, with Ravi being detained and arrested by her government on conspiracy charges for her role in sharing a document that acts as an online toolkit that assists activists in organizing actions as well as resources that aid in giving support to the farmers who are protesting. She was released on bail and hasn’t slowed down her work at all as a self professed law abiding citizen and activist. The organization Fridays For Future, initially called School Strike for Climate, was founded by Greta Thunberg. Thunberg was inspired by student protests of years prior and has stated on more than one occasion that it was specifically the March for our Lives demonstration in Washington D.C. organized by young adults in support of gun control legislation. It was organized due to and in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School school shooting in Parkland, FL and the 880 sibling events that followed. Fridays For Future has international chapters and is notable for its numbers and for the support it receives from accredited climate scientists.
I will not beg any person to join in any cause afflicting the inhabitants of this planet, movements for equality, political and cultural movements, or causes for climate crises legislation. I will implore you on it but if you show me that you can’t be bothered to find for yourself what your level of bare minimum involvement is towards participation, even in the face of mountains of supporting evidence, then I will leave it at that. These movements and the people who give to and work for them understand that pressure in numbers as an asset is a real thing and a loss can occur before it was ever gained by way of gatekeeping and superiority supposition posturing acts.
If you are someone who is already involved in activism on any level, I encourage you to dig deep within yourself and go further to find reason and purpose beyond the baseline of “capitalism bad.” If today is the day you begin taking strides to assist or become more involved, don’t forget to take that step above to connect yourself with it and those who came before you. You won’t be alone either. This fight is not new and that statement is especially true for those whose experience of societies by and large was a front row seat witnessing the rapid growth that stemmed from industrial and technological advancements that displaced and dismantled their very ways of life. These agents of change and protectors of the planet have been on the frontlines of every theater of climate war patiently waiting for you with you being a euphemism for anyone who is listening and not involved and especially if you are white. For clarity’s sake, joining these actions is not a casting call looking to fill the role of hero. You are a number because numbers can and do tip the scales of bargain and policy. If you find that truth hard to swallow, I recommend sitting with that before doing anything else and seeking for yourself a deeper connection.
There is an assertion often found to be coming from the side of the oppressor that would have you believe that indeginous people are to only be viewed and relegated as being VICTIMS of climate change. By controlling the narrative, they control perception to a higher percent. The byproduct of this of course is so you won’t recognize them for what they are and have always been, as AGENTS of environmental conservation and agents of change. For example, take the propaganda from the Keep America Beautiful campaign used to indoctrinate an entire nation, the campaign officially known as “People start pollution. People Can Stop It.” and unofficially and more popularly known as “The Crying Indian”.
Make no mistake, this advert was engineered to make you believe that the fault lies with you and your lack of effort to recycle so as to mitigate the harm caused by trash, your trash, is fucking up the planet. The reality that was somehow missed by the majority of an entire generation of US citizens is that this trash is not yours at all and was produced by companies who knowingly produced trash. Companies and sectors of industry worked hand in hand with Keep America Beautiful to create these PR campaigns, and I’m sure if I don’t say the term used to describe it someone’s head might explode so here ya go GrEeNwAsHiNg, to divert responsibility away from themselves.
Instead of yammering on in an effort to fully express my disdain for this sort of gaslighting and manipulative behavior, I’ll instead play a clip of Scottish climate activist Lauren MacDonald doing a much better job than I ever could with words.
*insert LAUREN clip*
A note of commonality found in those aforementioned agents of change is, excluding the members and founders of Indigenous Climate Action,that they all began to chart their current courses through life as teenagers. I make note of this not to make miraculous or remarkable due to their age, at least not exactly for that reason in that context and also not to create an opportunity to present that fact in a typically lazy fluff piece. My reasons for making note of their shared qualities owes itself to the problem that I have with most Americans’ cavalier attitude towards teenagers being forced into launching themselves head first into advocacy work aimed towards dixinf and finding solutions for problems that have existed longer in years than they have been alive. Finding a story covering a 6 year old raising money selling lemonade so they can help pay off their peers’ school lunch debts to the teenagers who marched on Washington on a school day knowingly hurting the many states they come froms federal funding for scores of absences are a stone’s throw away from each other and always receiving what I call the treatment.
The treatment is, putting it simply, a media spun fabrication made up of some truths that focus heavily on the individuals and their families’ good deeds as to make for a feel good story. At its best it can be summed up as lazy journalism and at its worst can be summed up to be a shield for the parties responsible in fostering inaction in regard to the situations they created or helped to create. The actions reported on coming from these kids aren’t being questioned here and neither is the level of their morality. What is being questioned and also criticized here is how is it possible and why is it happening that children are accruing debt for food and furthermore how and why is the state both federally and locally posturing to be in a position that’s unable to afford to feed children through its programs and to slam the hammer down on the head of the nail to lid this bad boy shut why do we, citizens of our communities, allow ourselves to be perpetually bullied and played over and over again by not challenging these feel good stories for what they are as the obviously engineered fluff pieces that allow an escape of owning accountability that further sees itself an allowance to happily carry on letting children make attempts towards solving the problems that they created?
A fair question to be asking yourself at this point is if thre is a limit as to how low can these fucks can or will go? Because of course, the answer will show anyone looking for it that there is always a lower level and getting there is for them to be no issue. There always seems to be a lower level. The lowest levels find them securing for themselves the lawful rights to ownership over intellectual properties to shoulder out all forms of competition, which is a joke to see them regard any company nowhere near the size of them as competition. Their actions that destroy competitors are legal somehow. Also legal is the commodifying of what are considered to be the foundations of basic human needs and necessities required for survival and justifying this as merely being a proactive participant in the free market of capitalism.
They’ve gobbled them all up. Clothing. Housing. Transportation. The creation of societal standards and expectations of beauty through marketing and advertising that implants a seed that grows a need of fear in being left out if we don’t consume their products that no one actually asked for. Entertainment. Self-worth that’s measured through a showing of consumption that, in some circles, is regarded like a sport and mirrors itself as a competition that creates empty winners of nothing. Nothing is safe from their touch. And what may be the most disgusting and lowdown acquisition by them to top them all is their level of control over Food. Fucking Food.
It is through an ownership of the means of production that they are able to mass produce and mass market their products and it is this same setup that has created the overall industry known as Big Food. This enterprise is a complex web that supplies most of the food consumed globally and has in its grip the majority of people living. These are the systems that make up Big Food
- Agriculture: raising crops, livestock, and seafood. Agricultural economics.
- Manufacturing: agrichemicals, agricultural construction, farm machinery and supplies, seed, etc.
- Food processing: preparation of fresh products for market, and manufacture of prepared food products
- Marketing: promotion of generic products (e.g., milk board), new products, advertising, marketing campaigns, packaging, public relations, etc.
- Wholesale and food distribution: logistics, transportation, warehousing
- Foodservice (which includes catering)
- Grocery, farmers’ markets, public markets and other retailing
- Regulation: local, regional, national, and international rules and regulations for food production and sale, including food quality, food security, food safety, marketing/advertising, and industry lobbying activities
- Education: academic, consultancy, vocational
- Research and development: food science, food microbiology, food technology, food chemistry, and food engineering
- Financial services: credit, insurance
It’s probably considered by those who run in the upper echelon of the Big Food camp to be a point of pride having managed to leave no stone unturned, thus allowing for them the maximum amount of net profits. Their profit shares and expenditures are reported and are tracked on open secrets dot org which is where I’ve sourced the information used here and the terms and definitions that go with them. Open secrets dot org tracks them when they spend on politicians both directly or if they go super with it. One channel for them to spend their gains influencing policy and law is known as special interest lobbying. 2021 saw a reported collective total spent towards lobbying from Food and Beverage totaling $21 million. But wait, there’s more! In 2020 a total of $11,621,937 was spent on PACs. A PAC is an acronym that stands for Political Action Committee.
So what is that even? In short, a PAC is a popular term for a political committee organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to elect and defeat candidates. Most PACs represent business, labor or ideological interests. PACs can give $5,000 to a candidate committee per election (primary, general or special). They can also give up to $15,000 annually to any national party committee, and $5,000 annually to any other PAC. PACs may receive up to $5,000 from any one individual, PAC or party committee per calendar year. A PAC must register with the FEC or federal election commission within 10 days of its formation, providing name and address for the PAC, its treasurer and any connected organizations. Affiliated PACs are treated as one donor for the purpose of contribution limits. PAC’s began their practice in 1944 in an effort to reelect President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
A new type of PAC emerged in 2010 being created after the U.S. Court of Appeals decision in Speechnow v. FEC, a case that laid out the definitions that separate it from a normal PAC as well as drawing out the lines for monetary limitations to adhere to the sike, gotcha, my bad cause yea there is literally none of that shit going on at all. I’m guessing no limit spending is where it gets the title of super from. These kinds of PACs make no contributions to candidates or parties. They do, however, make independent expenditures in federal races – running ads or sending mail or communicating in other ways with messages that specifically advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate. There are no limits or restrictions on the sources of funds that may be used for these expenditures. These committees file regular financial reports with the FEC which include their donors along with their expenditures. So yea…go vote I guess. This has all featured federal level elected officials but you can be sure that your locally elected officials can also get in on that super PAC action as well.
And yes, to make a statement coloring me as being someone who advocates for the total dismantlement of and committing to an untangling of the ills that shape my country’s systems of operation and government would be a wholly true and accurate statement so, bravo, you got me. And though I am of this mindset, I’m not so naive to believe that a major movement aligning itself through those aspirations could successfully take off. That being stated based in the realm of reality, what I’ll choose to do instead is advise you to be a more informed voter, an active and presently aware member of your communities needs as a whole when it comes time to make choices on your ballot.
And because I’m petty and can’t seem to allow myself to go forth without saying this,I also advise that should your candidate win it is up to you along with those who voted for them to at the least insure the candidate maintains and keeps existing policies already in place that work in yalls favor in place and at the most advocate for the changes yall want to see through lawful means and measures with a mind to always hold them accountable to their role as a civil servant. Should this route of protest become itself a point of necessity, be mindful that no matter what end of the spectrum you choose for communicating your demands, at any point the lens used by them to perceive you can see them shift that perspective to place you in the “domestic terrorist” category. A note to sew this advice up; The best organizers and protestors, regardless of whatever the level of extreme picked to be the threshold, always make an action count for something and because of this, that feeling you get from it has been described by those who’ve felt it to be a feeling that’s nearly unmatched. That I would say is what making it count looks like in the immediate and in the longview. To live long enough to witness an absence of strife in the new and young generation.
The English word Food is made up of four letters with two letters repeating. Regardless of its small size, it manages to qualify for 4 out of 8 parts of speech adding versatility to its repertoire. It continues on its streak of versatility as a sentence word, which is a word that is a stand alone one word sentence, as an idea, as a feeling, as a need, and in specific situations a place that’s conveyed through itself as a concept of it as being both and more. These elements when applied to an individual presents complexities unique from its use in this context. With food being an important key element that is required for our species to function and survive, it is a universally understood concept and as such it finds itself attached directly to our mortality.
This is accepted generally by all and regarded as being a fundamental truth for our existence. With that being said even if a language barrier exists for all parties while also being in the presence of it, a use of available sensory faculties like sight to take in the physical appearance, to read body gestures and actions that directs your attention to it while mimicking eating with the hands. The use of hearing to identify familiar sounds of joy and pleasure through eating allows the word to transcend itself to become achievable in a majority of situations. Even so and with all of these factors, the default experience of Food itself is a unique experience had in this one way and only by the individual experiencing it or a lack of it.
The best practices used in food production for the business that is the food industry is executed across its many facets. These practices show through studies to, in some way or another, be a negative contributing factor that’s impacting the planet and worsening the climate crisis issues at hand. Studies have also shown the negative psychological impact that those who live with food scarcity experience from the class division created by the food industry through their marketing and advertising as well as the experience that comes from the food industries political contributions. This entire experience of food and bev inserting themselves into politics allows for the successful election of a candidate that doesn’t consider lower class constituents’ needs to be of importance enough to directly acknowledge and address them in a way that meets the problem head on with solutions in the form of assistance and aid. Instead they regard them indirectly through the use of rhetoric intended to paint them as a burden on society that only adds stress to a system already stressed, providing a different welspun fabrication that appeals to their political base and appeases their donors. Also observed within similar age groups with varying gaps of income is a steady deterioration of an initial acceptance and tolerance of the poorer peers within the peer group based around them not meeting the peer group’s accepted dietary standards and restrictions with a higher observation of this behavior when the peer groups are vegan.
Veganism, defined as a philosophy, is the rejection of the commodity status of animals. Defined as a diet is a dietary practice that abstains from the use of animal by-products. The last decade has granted for veganism great strides in areas such as becoming more inclusive and affordable, a growth in selections particularly in the plant based meats, and a growth in accessibility for lower income people and families. That last point is key for many reasons but the most outstanding reason is that it has become more widely available for lower income people and families.
Though it is a mostly true statement that the options are more and affordable, it is also a truism to state that this also highlights the already existing issue of canyon sized wage gaps and the lack of effort from companies to speak directly to new markets and potential consumers that do exists on the lowest ends of class incomes. Coupling this with the unfortunate reality of class division found dividing the vegan community for some decades now, what should be an opportunity to better the lives of humanity as a whole and viable sustainability of the planet gets lost in capitalist tropes that are embedded in the minds of people the world over.
Looking at the quote that opened this episode, pulled from Andres Malm’s 2021 book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, we find that some context is missing as to who is being addressed as a target and who is doing the targeting. In a nutshell, the target is to only be the corporations and it is the reader, and like minded individuals, to do so through unity. Relating this context to the topic of veganism, there is a disparaging disconnect between some vegans who are militant, the philosophies of veganism and its diet, and a lack of acknowledgement by them considering the ongoing class war taking place between us all.
On a surface level it would seem an obvious solution to demand the entity of Big Food, through legislation, to conform itself to the philosophies of veganism as an act of preservation of life and planet. This of course is a demand that discounts an array of factors leaving them unconsidered. Instead of listing the many factors and tackling them one by one, I propose instead to simply make an assessment of demands and base that assessment on a broader, wider, and more inclusive scope that places at its front those most affected by any impact be it positive or negative and work out from there. It is, after all, through unity and greater numbers that success is an almost guaranteed achievement.
It is a false narrative to assume that we have little to no influence on the decisions made that have or will ultimately shape this one world we share and is the only one that’s capable of hosting its known lifeforms. It is a false narrative as well to think it is not worth dying for when measured against the fact that so many have already given themselves to it. Death will come, or more correctly it has arrived long ago and is already taking lifeforms with regularity, eventually and there is no chance of stopping it on the current course we are on.
Over the course of what are the last two episodes of this season I have made clear with examples of what roles exist, how they are being performed and for what function, levels of influence had from their actions, and by who. Where you go from here, is up to you.
*CARL SAGAN CLIP*
SOURCES ETC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_America_Beautiful
https://www.foodpolitics.com/tag/lobbies/
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/10/food-industry-consumer-brands-association-043892
https://lakotalaw.org/news/2018-12-12/veganism
https://www.dw.com/en/veganism-good-for-the-environment-bad-for-people/a-19476296
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ende_Gel%C3%A4nde_2016
https://www.indigenousclimateaction.com/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-59566157
https://aninjusticemag.com/going-vegan-isnt-an-option-for-everyone-53ad0069136f
https://www.fao.org/3/xii/0568-b1.htm
https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/about-dietary-guidelines/history-dietary-guidelines
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-56068522
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_for_Our_Lives
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_industry
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/what-is-a-pac
https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/speechnoworg-v-fec/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Civil_War
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/16/crypto-mining-oil-industry-waste-climate-crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives////////goldman/aando/anarchism.html
Another Noisy Noise 