I was born on a cold January day in Chicago, just on the northside where Chicago meets Evanston in a hospital aptly named Edgewater. I was born around 10:30 with a twin brother seven minutes older than I am. I pushed him unceremoniously out of the womb so that I could start handing out abolitionist pamphlets. When at last I had crawled out, to see my mother's beaming face, the sun forming a halo behind her head, she said: �Finally, someone to take care of me in my old age!� Patiently, I tried to explain to her that all animals had one basic right, a right not to be used as property, and that includes human beings. �We might come to some reciprocal arrangement later in life when I'm old enough to consent, dear Ma,� I tried to tell her, �but for now, I can only promise you to be handsome.� And I was.
Then the doctor slapped my ass. I tried to explain to him that violence, except perhaps in self-defense, causes us to use others as means to our ends. Unfazed, he reminded me patiently that to slap a child out of anger or retribution and to slap a child to save his or her life are meaningfully different actions: one subordinates the interests of the child to those of the adult; the other takes the best of limited choices to act in the more basic interests of the child. I argued that he should have put the fine points of his rational justification to me first for consideration and he insisted I was just being contrarian. Nothing provokes a shouting match with an Irish American faster than trying to tell him that he's being contrarian. The Irish are never contrarian.
I ended up having to take his word for it that his act was in good faith and not on general principle. Of course, this story is a complete fabrication after the second sentence. But it raises serious questions: how much does the drive to sustains myths about ourselves, to shore up our sense of our own identity and to minimize concerns about our shortcomings limit the vibrancy of our uniqueness? How much of our ensuring that we're included rests on our complicty in the exclusion of others?
In all truthfulness (insofar as I know it), I was born with my brother two months premature in Edgewater, in Chicago, around 10:30 (I have no reason to doubt any of this). We didn't move to the corn belt until I was 2. They didn't know there would be twins and everyone was unprepared. My father, in true fashion, was out drinking, not terribly uncommon to blue collar, working class Irish American males at that time. It took concerned parties a while to track him down, by payphone no less (I still don't fully understand that part of the story) and when they did, he rushed home to pull two drawers out of the family dresser to make cribs for us (this part of the story is undoubtedly his fabrication).
Both of us were premies. He was 4lbs, 4oz, and I was only 4lbs even. Small, but even smaller babies are born today. We both had jaundice. We both developed pneumonia. Both of us got a backstage pass to the ICU. The nurse (who was also Catholic, naturally) was so worried we wouldn't make it (and that my mother was a Protestant) that she performed a lay baptism. My mother spent about a month in the hospital after we were born. I doubt it was the baptism that saved our lives; it was far more likely a combination of luck and the intense interest in continuing our lives, to be a part of the world and to have our days in nights in it, an interest that anyone who has ever spent time with animals or grown up in a small town/farm country as I did knows that all animals share.
Like cows who run from the slaughterhouse, hide in the woods, only to show up on someone's door step chewing their flowers, we both hung on. They put us both in those little hats that premies wear to conserve their body heat, swaddled us in blankets, my brother, not unlike Jesus, and me, more of a Moses really. We both tucked our thumbs and waived our fists (a muscle memory that would stay with me for the rest of my life). Apparently, we cried a lot, although personally, I have my doubts about that. If I cried, it was probably because I felt bad for all the other babies who were born under far more fortunate circumstances and for whom this would prove to be a hindrance later in life.
Sixteen years later, I went vegetarian. Ten years after that, I went vegan. Today, my twin works, of all things, as a meat cutter in Chicago. Strange, but true. When people remark on the irony of my veganism and his profession, I usually say he's the good twin. I enjoy irony and I'm mostly unapologetic about it. A captivating story, by where's this blog going? The question is: how should I treat him? Like me, he's an animal. He has an interest in continuing his life. He has an interest in not being forced to feel pain, to suffer or to be exploited. But how do I take into account his profession?
Part of the animal adovacy movement would have me assassinate him, on the basis that if only suppliers could be terrorized into stopping supply, the Walls of Jericho would come tumbling down and every animal would be freed, by magic rather than just resold to larger, more effective and more tenancious suppliers. Part of the movement would have me outside his house with a mob of friends and strangers, terrifying his daughter (and my niece) with placards, shouting slogans, making false accusations and other nonsense. Part of the animal advocacy movement would have me stop being vegan and be veg*n or something else (I'm not sure what) so that he wouldn't have to feel bad about his choices. It's not clear to me how any of these would stand any chance of advancing veganism or freeing nonhuman animals.
What I owe him is patient but firm guidance and education to take animals seriously and go vegan. I imagine there will be a lot of teeth gnashing and chest beating and other emotionally reactionary posturing over this. �I can't believe you would disparage him!� says one part of the crowd. To engage in a critical dialogue with others is to believe in their ability to change, to act morally, and to be willing to invest time in helping them to make that change. If that's disparagement, then I imagine the doctor slapping my ass was really assault. �BUT OMG, ANIMALS ARE DYING!!!1111� says the other half othe crowd. This is true, almost incomprehensible in its tragedy, and the principle reason that many of us are vegans today. Thanks for the news flash.
But taking the enormity of one cow killed because she can't produce enough milk anymore, one pig killed for someone's bacon, one fish killed for omega 3s, one male chick killed at birth because he'll never lay eggs, one elephant killed by the exhaustion of the big top, one seeing eye dog killed by a lifetime of faithful guidance (multiplied by thousands to millions every year and all of it unnecessary) still means taking each and every one of those lives seriously and equally. We all feel conflicted at different points, but there is no point when any vegan should feel �neutral� about violence towards any sentient being.
At some point between lying in a dresser drawer and my late 20s, I realized that if I took the time to take lady bugs gingerly outside of my apartment when I found them, rationally, I couldn't be apathetic about, or worse, histrionically in favor of, violence towards human beings. This blog is to remind everyone who troubles to read my work that there's a middle ground between opportunistic economism (the �veg*n�) of welfare reform that pretends that a kinder slavery is in any way meaningful to nonhuman animals, and violence, which far too frequently mistakes burning down the plantation with undoing the shackles of slavery.
If we take rights seriously, then they limit our behaviour. It was important to try war criminals after the Shoah (even though I unquestionably disagree with the death penalty). Furthermore, other animals call me to be nonviolent as their advocate. First and foremost, their slavery, and the labor I owe them in calling for their freedom in light of it, binds me to act in a disciplined and organized way, with a thoughtful strategy in combination with only those tactics that will clearly fulfill the strategy. Creative, nonviolent vegan outreach, education and the promotion of animal adoption, as well as the end of their property status outright as soon as possible is what I owe them. Nonviolence is also what I owe him and it's what I owe myself.
My own unique and resplendent being (and I'm pretty resplendent), a being that I had to survive and fight through decades of inculcated prejudice and idiocy to even begin to get back to (those Selves we all have to fight to get back to), is nonviolent. I'm vegan; and so I'm non-violent. I'm pro-feminist, and so I'm nonviolent toward women (and men, and children). I'm anti-heterosexist, and so, I'm nonviolent toward queers, gays, lesbians, trannies and bisexuals (and straight people). I'm a Marxist, and so, I'm nonviolent towards the poor, and even the rich. I'm anti-racist, and so I'm nonviolent towards people of all colours (even my pratically transparent Irish American sisters and brothers).
I'm far from perfect, but in my longing to be unwavering and unequivocal in my commitment to justice and equality, it's not clear to me who's left that I could do violence to without shaming the very meaning of those two beautiful words and to let down those for whom I'm advocating. I'll repeat them, brothers and sisters, in the hope that they may not merely echo in your mind but resonate within your fuller being.
Justice. Equality.
Often, it amazes me that a human being invented them, but I have to accept the facts and work accordingly. Of course, there may be moments when violence towards me or those I love limits my choices over whether to use force in self-defense, but this is meaningfully different from actively seeking to harm others, planning to harm others, feeling joyful, strong or satiated by harming others or by the harm that accidentally befalls them. Veganism is a debt to both the living and to the dead that each of us will be paying for the rest of our lives, and we should be both humbled and grateful that we have the opportunity to pay it. Indeed, veganism is without a doubt the greatest gift that I have ever been given by anyone, and I wish we all understood that better.
Instead, the lack of humility toward their role in perpetuating slavery on the part of some animal advocates often exceeds galling. We may speak for them, and we should, but if we do, we should do so honestly and with humility. We may work for them, and we should, but if we do, we should do so maximally and sincerely. But revenge is not a debt we should ever, ever make the mistake of feeling ourselves to be in a position to collect on behalf of nonhuman animals.
We may not always have equal choices in every situation down the road, but today, I can be the most effective advocate I can through nonviolent means. There's no need for me to try to justify other means or even to consider the so-called �alternatives�. I do not need to resign myself to pitiful welfare campaigns and juvenile antics. I do not need to ingratiate and indulge my frustration with the slow movement of change with violence. Nor is is my place or privilege to do either. I take the rights of all animals not to be used as property seriously. Creative, nonviolent education isn't just an answer, it's the only real answer, not just the vegan answer, it's the only properly social answer. And so, I'm nonviolent, and I'd sooner fight than switch.
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