veganarky

I attended a local, annual gig which raises funds for suicide prevention recently. I had not been to the show for a few years due to living elsewhere, being too ‘busy’, and my time being taken up with other projects. Where I live has a long history of progressive politics rooted in a worker struggles, a longstanding immigrant community and campaigns for justice. The music scene here reflects, embraces, and in many has ways provided leadership for decades. This was again clear in the festival, the bands, the discussions and the audience. Woman continue to play a key role in organising and runni…

I had an “interesting” experience on a bus recently. It was very much a wake up call about the ways in which racism is (more) prevalent in Australia, to which I have recently returned, compared to Canada. I was one of close to two dozen people who hopped on the bus at a university campus, adding to the one or two people who were on it. It was an mid-evening service, after most classes had ceased. Before the bus had left the stop, a person who was already on the bus exclaimed very loudly something along the lines of “why don’t you shut up you stupid Asians?” (there may have been expletives or o…

I think many (most, all?) of us are troubled by the question of how effective what we do is. And that this question exists outside of specifics about what it is exactly that we do. I was challenged on this recently, resulting in this reflection. Reflection is something we should all do, regularly and repeatedly, as long as such reflection is not crippling. More than the last 15+ years of my life have had working for a more just world as their precursor. What actions I have taken, being many and varied, have all emanated from this maxim. The first question which arises is how do we define, labe…

At a recent Critical Animal Studies conference at Brock University, many of those in attendance were exposed to their own strategic ignorance: the unmarked and nonconsiered (to them) implications of words and discourse used. One of these was the term ‘standpoint’, a reference to Donna Haraway (and others) insightful standpoint theory. In seeking to address this, a term I have used in the past seems much more apt: situatedness. In much the same vein, the term widely used by Gary L. Francione and others, ‘moral schizophrenia’, has implications that are unmarked and nonconsiered by those who are …