The BP Oil Spill Never Happened

Photo Credit: Deep Water Horizon

Was there an oil spill, around Earth Day this year? Oh, I hadn’t noticed. Actually, I think it never happened. I think we are all sitting around a fire in the woods, entranced by the choreography of flames, and consequently we had a collective vision of being raped and dismembered. The oil spill and its related disasters are all metaphors for human brutality, I suppose.

Was there really an oil spill? Or did my water break and did I give birth to a dead baby?  She felt like a giant, bloody, ice cube sliding out of my body who melted away into clumpy ravines as she sobbed down my thighs. Oh right, that never happened, either. The oil spill and the still birth were both nightmares. I must have been under a lot of stress that week.

No. No. It’s true.

We’ve almost shot Mother dead and I’m not sure she will recover. The oil spill did happen, despite my denial.

When I have braved peeking at photos of oil-soaked animals, dead and alive, I  sob. What have we done?

What have we done?

What have we done?

What have we done?

I can’t handle this. I feel like I am holding Mother’s hand as she struggles to

Photo Credit: Deep Water Horizon Response

breathe, her lungs pop up like little bursting buttons.  I feel like my heart is about to shoot out of my chest like a flurry of F-sharps from a tenor sax as terror engulfs me because a man is about to force himself into me. I feel like I am choking on my own vomit as I wake up from a season of drunken avoidance. I can’t handle this. I can’t handle this.

Sea turtles were burned alive.

About 50 per cent of our bodies is water; cells and billions of subatomic particles swim within us, just like sea life swim in Mother’s oceans. What if your heart were burned alive like the sea turtles? What if someone pried open our mouths to pour millions of gallons of gasoline inside, causing us to suffocate from the evil batter that pushes us down like cinder blocks to the bottom of the Gulf?

Most of us are sorry, I believe — sorry that we have been so terrible to Mother, been so terrible to each other. Mother will live on after we are gone, but we cannot live without her, needless to say.

Photo Credit: The Sierra Club

There are several things that we can do in response to the spill. I cry over spilled cow’s milk and Mother’s milk (oil). I think crying is important. I cry real tears and through paintings, songs, and other art forms. This is how I express myself the best. But it’s not only self-indulgent and self-soothing. The arts are a form of communication to the masses and communication creates awareness and helps others get in touch with their feelings. This is why my arts group, the Tryst Collective, is hosting a one-night event next month (date TBD) about the NYC’s creative community’s response to the spill. Please see the Call for Entries and Musicians for more information if you are interested in participating or attending.

I also encourage getting directly involved with oil spill cleanup. There are a variety of things that we each can do, including donating and advocacy work. Here are two helpful links, both chock full of information:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/27/gulf-oil-spill-help_n_558736.html

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/fresh-greens/2010/05/03/10-things-you-can-do-to-help-the-gulf-coast-clean-the-oil-spill.html

(c) Jessica Rowshandel, 2010

The Healthy School Meals Act and The Forgetters Who Abhor It

Photo Credit: PistolPeet

Advocacy group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) shared a letter that comic, long-time vegetarian, and one of my favorite celebs, Sarah Silverman wrote to her congressman urging him to pass the Healthy School Meals Act of 2010 (H.R. 4870).  The act promotes eating a more plant-based diet by making fresh fruit and vegetables and other plant-based vegetarian meals available to students.  Silverman is not the only celebrity to support and promote the Act; others include Tavis Smiley and Scarlett Johansson.

One thing in particular stuck out to me when I read Silverman’s letter.  She wrote, “Many kids aren’t able to bring lunches from home—they have to eat what’s in the lunch line.” If you know me well enough by now, you know where I’m going with this. And I hope that your mind starts to automatically go there too. Yes, no child should have a diet-related heart condition or diabetes, typically found in middle-aged adults who have abused their bodies for decades (though, this is an epidemic, as well). Yes, childhood obesity and its evil spawn, heart disease and diabetes, are epidemics. However, (now remember my rule of thumb, ha) whatever the wealthy and middle class are suffering from, the poor have it worse. By virtue of being poor, some children will not be able to bring lunch to school. And by virtue of being poor, if they do, it’s likely not an organic, plant-based meal, sourced from Whole Foods. And healthy food can get expensive and when parents have to stretch a buck or food stamps because they are faced with eating at all versus eating an idealized meal that they cannot afford, it’s not fair to say that parents need to teach their kids healthy habits, or that it’s the parents’ responsibility to feed their children healthy food when you have no idea what a parent is teaching a child despite her ability to fill up her shopping cart like a traditional Whole Foods maniac.  Guess which parent has way more resources to her name? Pssht.

Opposition to anything related to healthy food in schools comes mostly from the food and beverage industry. You can read all about it in chapter 10 of Appetite for Profit, which author, Michele Simon, allows you to read for free online. Before getting to the first letter of the first word of this chapter, Simon shares a most horrifying quote by Coca Cola president and COO, John Alm. He said, “The school system is where you build brand loyalty.”

Pause.

Think about that. Vomit in your mouth a little, spit it out. Pat down the fire growing in the pit of your belly.

Yes. The food industry doesn’t care that they are killing you and your children. They want your money.

Yes, the food industry doesn’t care they are killing you and your children, especially if you are poor and/or a single mother and/or a family of color. Gender, race, and class. Social Injustice’s Holy Trinity.

Institutional racism means that policies and procedures are constructed in such a way that they inherently create a disadvantage for people of color, women and  the LGBtQ community, and the poor. Can you see where I am going with this?

Not only is the food industry brutalizing animals, killing you and your children with an overabundance of food (or as Michael Pollan puts it, edible food-like substances), but their business tactics are inherently targeted at putting children who are from certain households (i.e., The Holy Trinity) at the greatest disadvantage.

Moving on.

That being said, articles like, “Invasion of the School Lunch Nazis!” disturbs me because not only does it ramble opposition to this bill, which does nothing but propose good things for our children, but it forgets. And I’m really tired of people forgetting.  While I agree with Sandy Hingston, who wrote the article, that we need to “hit those corporations where it hurts… ,” I don’t agree that this Act is as frivilous as she makes it out to be. What she seems to have forgotten is that some children don’t have any other option at lunch than what’s fed them at school, and if I had my way, corporations like Coca Cola would never have had the opportunity to poison (poor) children as a way to stuff their own pockets like greasy, inauthentic, chain-restaurant chimichangas. In New York City, public schools provide children, 18 years-old and under, free meals, twice a day — breakfast and lunch.  So perhaps middle class and wealthy kids don’t rely on school lunches for their nourishment, but poorer kids sure do. Wake up Hingston and anyone else who forgets. The Forgetters – People who create and/or perpetuate racist and unjust policy, procedure, public opinion, and social infrastructure by virtue of a persistent omission from their memory that they are totally and completely privileged.

But let’s forget about them, quit whining, and make some positive change.

Call your congress person and tell them to help get this act passed! PCRM has provided instructions and tips to make this as easy as possible.

Update (June 29, 2010):

Please be aware that equally important legislation called the Child Nutrition Act should be included in your advocacy work. PCRM’s instructions tell you to ask for the reauthorization of this Act. It includes, but is not limited to, making food available to low-income pregnant women, infants, and children; it’s also the legislation that allows for those free summer meals I mentioned earlier.

(c) Jessica Rowshandel, 2010

Latino Farmers Bring Food to Your Table, Have None of Their Own

How do you feel knowing that the people who are responsible for getting fresh produce to your tables have no food or shelter of their own? The sad thing is that this is only a small piece of the injustices they suffer. Read more here. I wrote an article about this issue on Change.org, entitled “California Drought Causes Widespread Homelessness Among Farm Workers.”

Things That Make Me Go Grrrr

I have been going Grrrr for many years now.

Although I’m a few days late for Earth Day, everyday should be Earth Day, right?  And what better way to celebrate than to soap box about my top five gripes regarding environmentally-unfriendly behaviors.

Our mother, The Earth, and the animals she hosts  (including us) are interdependent. What we do to one impacts the other. Knowing this, I can’t help to have inner-world screaming fits (and sometimes audibly) when I am witness to certain environmentally-unfriendly, but everyday, behaviors.

1. Litter – Hang out with me long enough and you will witness me point and squeal when I catch someone in the act of littering. And then I yell, “That person just littered! I can’t believe it!” I am always surprised when someone just tosses trash on the ground or out of a car window. It’s something I just cannot comprehend. Why would someone just throw something on the ground? When that person is at home, does he just throw garbage on the floor? I will never understand this. Haven’t people been taught why littering is wrong? There are even Sesame Street videos on this. As a kid, I loved one in particular (And if you find a clip of it, please pass it along!), which taught me  if every single person litters just once, ever, that adds up to billions and billions of pieces of trash. Yuck! I just read Huff Posts’s article on the newly discovered Atlantic Ocean’s garbage patch. I guess it’s competing with the Pacific Ocean for the Eew, Yuck Award. Simply put,  litter kills and it ruins the environment. Don’t be a slob. Don’t litter.

2. Plastic Bread Tags, Twist Ties, and Those Little Plastic Rings You Pull Out of  Juice and Milk Cartons – One day I walked into a family member’s house and saw an opened bag of twist ties. This person actually went out to the store and bought twist ties. Why would anyone do that? We don’t need to encourage the use of more twist ties in the world. Twist ties are infectious, pimply and ubiquitous and should be collected or recycled. There’s really no need to go out an purchase more. Most people don’t recycle them (rip off the paper, ball up the metal until you get a good wad, and stick them in a tin can) and animals eat them, thinking they are food, which could kill them. Other culprits include paper clips, plastic bottle caps, cellophane, rubber bands, and other small garbage. Animals will eat plastic bread tags and those round plastic things you pull out of the spout of milk and juice containers (anyone know their name?). Also, it is best to cut the bread tag in half and slice open the ring so little feet don’t get stuck in them. (I usually stick them inside empty bottles, but if your city doesn’t recycle hard plastic, you can wrap them up in a piece of garbage so they don’t get loose and then eaten by small, unsuspecting, animals.) Twist ties and bread tags can be reused. I had a box of tangled wires and neatly organized them by reusing twist ties to hold wires together. People have come up with creative uses for bread tags, as well, including making jewelry with them.

Landfill Trash Sculpture - Photo Credit: darinmarshall

3. Six-pack Rings - While six-pack rings are hardly the cause for the downfall of non-human animals and the environment, a small percentage of animals do get trapped in them, starve, and die. There are other, more prolific,  mass murderers, much related to the fishing industry and (plastic) pollution, but alas, I have hated six-pack rings since childhood, and can’t just kick my bilious attitude toward people who don’t cut them open. In the very least, I hope that being conscious about cutting six-pack rings and recycling twist ties and bread tags will help influence bigger, more significant environmentally-friendly changes in your life.

4. Plastic Bags - As you can see, plastic can be the demise of many animals, but plastic has contributed to environmental destruction, as well. Avoid using plastic bags as often as possible. Reusable shopping bags are cheap. I have gotten all of mine for free or for 99 cents. I don’t normally use more than 4-6 bags. So, that’s an investment of no more than six dollars. I think most of us can spare that. Remembering to bring the bags to the store could be an issue. From time to time, I find myself in a situation where I don’t have one. Some people keep an extra, very compact one, in their hand bags or back packs. And they can be used in places beyond the grocery store, like a book store or electronics store.

5. Water Bottles – I hate water bottles. Please purchase a stainless steel bottle and a water filtration system and enjoy portability that way. I use Brita and Kleen Kanteen. Kleen Kanteen’s a bit pricey, but I have seen five dollar water bottles in many stores. There are a few key reasons to avoid bottled water, which include pollution and harm to wildlife, not to mention the ways corporations have co-opted and privatized water. We need water to survive, and I hate to give corporations the power to control its availability. Take the No Bottled Water Pledge, today.

Bonus

6. Recycling – I almost left this out because it’s so natural for most of us to recycle that I thought it was a little too obvious, but it is a big gripe of mine. When people have the means to recycle, but don’t, I can’t help but cringe a little inside, sometimes more than others depending on how environmentally reckless the person is, overall. If your town or apartment complex recycles, please don’t add  to the pollution problem by adding more waste to our landfills, waste that could so easily be prevented.

Please remember the 3Rs – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It’s been chanted often for many decades now that it’s become cliche. But it’s still relevant and important.

Photo credit: John Joseph Cina, 2010

None of these activities are necessarily ground breaking nor will they save the world, but they do make a difference. We all need to start somewhere, and to get to the big and complicated changes, we have to start with practicing and understanding the easy ones.

As I review this blog entry, I realize that almost all my gripes revolve around plastic and how it’s destroying life on earth. I have come to the conclusion that I think I hate plastic, and coincidentally, there’s a website made by plastic-haters, for plastic-haters everywhere. It’s conveniently titled, i think i hate plastic. Do you hate plastic? What are some of your environmentally-unfriendly gripes?

(c) Jessica Rowshandel, 2010

Going Green – Lessons from the U.S. Homeless Population

For Earth Day, I wrote an article for Change.org about how the homeless in the U.S. have the smallest carbon footprint in the nation. Check it out.

What Do Homeless People Eat?

Earlier this week, I wrote an article for change.org called “Can Homeless Seniors Be Foodies?” It asks the question, “What do homeless people eat?” Enjoy.

Choked by Weeds: Food Injustice and the Poor

Photo credit: cekrypton2

It really bugs me that I talk about being vegan and buying organic when there are entire groups of people who can’t have this conversation because it’s not an option for them. They don’t have access. It’s the I would if I could, but I can’t so I won’t sort of thing.

The poor can’t afford to eat organic. This isn’t rocket science. Most normal people understand that we would be hard pressed to find someone collecting food stamps paying $2.99/lb. for organic apples at Whole Foods.

There are poor people who are hungry, and there are poor people who eat. Just because people eat, however, they are not necessarily eating food, rich or poor. They are eating “edible food-like substances” as Michael Pollan puts it. And these substances make people’s hearts burst and legs fall off. If you think I’m kidding, there’s an impoverished man I know whose amputated leg – caused by diabetes complications – has a wound so persistent that it refuses to heal. I knew a homeless girl in her early twenties who’s had parts of several fingers removed, also due to diabetes.

The point is that not having access to real food doesn’t end at hunger. People might eat, but edible food-like substances kill people, or at the very least makes them chronically sick. It’s these substances that the poor have access to, and the healthy stuff is difficult to afford or come by. Plus, whatever levels of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer the United States averages, poor people are bunched up together in droves at the summit of the (skewed) bell curve, piled high like refuse. There are more sick among the poor than among the middle class and rich. There are more poor among people of color than among non-Latino/a whites. There are more poor among single moms than among married couples, more among immigrants than citizens. The rates are alarming. Whatever social problems we have, like our ongoing diet-related health epidemic, the poor’s experience of them is worse.

A clip from the movie Food Inc. illustrates our current food crisis. It features the Gonzalez family, a struggling Latino-American family. Mrs. Gonzalez poignantly summarizes food injustice as she explains, “When you have only a dollar to spend and you have two kids to feed either you go to the market and try to find something that’s cheap or just go straight through a drive thru and get two small hamburgers. This is what’s going to fill her up more than that one single item at the market… .”

Fortunately, the food justice movement is designed to help people who normally don’t have access to good food get access to healthy, nutritious, food. There are food justice groups forming across the nation in neighborhoods where it can be difficult to obtain fresh produce and healthy food. The People’s Grocery is a good example. I strongly encourage you to watch this video, where Brahm Amadhi, its founder, explains the ways The People’s Grocery works to solve the food crisis in poor neighborhoods. He says, for example, “Today, in 2008, we have the highest level of hunger that the United States has experienced.

Photo credit: cometstarmoon

Approximately, 35 million people are vulnerable to hunger every single day in this country. That is largely consequence of economic disparities both in terms of income but also in terms of how the food system has been structured to become a mechanism for wealth creation for those who control the means of production.”

When we talk about food justice, we talk about changing systems. At the very basic it includes changing what agribusiness is allowed and not allowed to do when it comes to producing and distributing our food. This impacts all of us, rich and poor. It goes beyond this, however. Where you find food injustice, you find other injustice as well, including racial injustice. Not only are people of color overrepresented among the poor and malnourished, on the other end of the food crisis, at production, immigrant workers are paid slave wages, held against their will, beaten, or forced to work under dangerous conditions. Injustice is viral. It invades. It persists and it chokes, like weeds.

But we can’t get depressed about it. We have to do something, instead. Whatever you race or socioeconomic class, your gender or immigration status, there are groups who would love for you to join them in their fight to change systems and improve living for all of us. What we do to fight injustice, we are doing for all of us. If our food system goes to hell, it goes to hell for all of us. The poor aren’t the only ones dying at the hands of agribusiness. Diet-related health problems like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, are killing all of us. The poor happen to have it the worst.

At the very least, educate yourself. I can’t say that I know everything about our food crisis, or even social problems, and I’m a social worker. So I don’t expect anyone else to know it all either, but you can’t do anything if you aren’t well informed. This blog entry is chock full of links to articles and videos that will help get you started. And here’s a few more that I just can’t resist sharing:

In 2003, the Gotham Gazette published an article that serves as a great introduction to the food justice movement.

Photo credit: foxandfeathers

Check out this interview with eco-chef and food justice activist Bryant Terry, a very cool dude. He’s perfectly in tune to the ways poverty, race, socioeconomic status, gender and food intersect and has some great suggestions on steps we can take to help the food justice movement flourish, both on the personal and the community level.

I recently stumbled upon a blog about race and popular culture called Racialicious. I have linked you to the food section, since it most directly pertains to this conversation; however, I urge you to take a look around the rest of the site. Subscribing would be a convenient way to keep up with her posts (Subscribing to my blog would be great, too!). It will help you keep in tune with the ways race permeates through all aspects of living.

One day, when I was looking for vegan vitamins, I came across the Sistah Vegan blog, and swelled with joy when I found out that A. Breeze Harper, the author, is scheduled to come out with the first book to examine food justice and being vegan through a gendered and racialized lens. Super cool.

Happy reading! Let me know what you learn along the way.

(c) Jessica Rowshandel, 2010

Don’t Feed the Homeless!

Photo Credit: Patrick Doheny

In some U.S. cities, sharing a sandwich is an arrestable offense. Within the last several years, anti-feeding ordinances have been springing up in mean cities across the nation, where it is a crime for individuals and groups to share food with the homeless in public spaces. Some homeless services providers strongly advocate against feeding street homeless individuals because they believe it deters them from seeking services. Lawmakers and public officials, however, have taken this a step further and decided that sound public policy means criminalizing hunger and the public’s kindness. Don’t feed the homeless, they command, as if we aren’t referring to our own species, even, but rather a subcategory of feral stray.

They fear that feedings enable the homeless lifestyle. Apparently, they are under the impression that human suffering is a coveted existence. In reality, they want to rid themselves of the homelessness problem without actually doing anything to help the homeless. They fear that the homeless do drugs and loiter, which causes businesses to lose money and others to feel unsafe. It also means that if homelessness is a problem in a given community then that community’s tax dollars must be spent to solve the problem, and few want to spend money on people they don’t even like.

Such ordinances ostracize the homeless, distancing them even further from food sources, and do not help to establish long-term solutions to hunger and homelessness. Instead of criminalizing the homeless and their generous friends, it might be wise to follow Cleveland’s lead, for example, where agencies coordinate with food-sharing groups to enhance and organize services, instead of making it more difficult for the street homeless to eat and for a caring public to feed them.

For individuals who do like the homeless and care about what happens to them, truthfully, unless you are with a homeless services agency that provides regular meals or legal and advocacy services, whether you give a homeless person a sandwich from time to time or whether you, instead, keep walking, is not going to make a big dent in the overall problem. Giving away a couple of sandwiches or hot meals every once in a while, however, is not going to deter homeless people from getting the help they might need. If this were true, then peanut butter and jelly could have solved homelessness decades ago. So the next time you feel like feeding a homeless person, while you are not solving social problems at the core, the gift is appreciated and you spread a little kindness and good cheer. Plus, acknowledging someone’s existence and suffering is always better than apathy. Perhaps it can even lead to other things, like volunteerism or charitable contributions.

(c) Jessica Rowshandel, 2010

You say Potato, I say Radical

Photo Credit: skippyjon

No one says, “When I grow up, I want to be a radical tuber!” or a radical potato or a radical yam. Although, if I were a potato, I’d be a radical potato. I’d fight against the dangers of overindulging in potato chips and the bad rap potatoes get for being a bad, starchy food, when they are indeed packed with protein, vitamins, and minerals. I’d be a cool cat potato, perhaps even sporting a top hat and a walking stick—a potato with style, rad for sure.

To be radical means to grow from the root. While, obviously, I’m not a potato I do grow from many roots.  That makes me a radical human, I suppose. This is one way to define a radical, someone who grows from the roots– someone who is so intimate with the root (of a social problem) that s/he can grow right from it, improving existence. And coming from a social justice perspective, it is important to distinguish between a person who grows from roots and tumbleweeds broken off from the roots.

I had the heartbreaking misfortune of coming head to head, recently, with an insane girl in a radical’s clothing, a tumbleweed whose roots are planted somewhere, everywhere, but with her. When I was a kid, I would’ve said, “When I grow up, I want to be a radical social worker,” had I known how to define myself in those terms. And now I have grown up, and I am learning and then learning and then learning what this means exactly. And I thank the insane girl for teaching me some of these important lessons:

1. Being radical means that instead of having to be right about everything for the sake of being right, you find ways to be humble enough to admit where you need room for your own improvement and learning even if you are part of change efforts and even if the suggestions come from “the enemy.”

2. Being radical means knowing your stuff. Don’t assume that you know everything about a given situation or population because you have read a lot on a given topic or have had a few experiences with it. Learn all sides of the story. Talk to the experts to gain an understanding of their experience if you can’t have a direct, prolonged, experience yourself. This is a major problem with policy makers and certain types of activists, in my opinion.

3. Being radical means to peacefully and respectfully collaborate with the people who you feel need to initiate and maintain change in a given system.

4. Being radical continues to mean working to change the status quo in order to fight oppression. But the how is as important as the what. Don’t add to the cycle of oppression and hatred by approaching others with accusations and threats. Not only is this unhelpful, it creates an atmosphere of distrust, ultimately closing the doors for communication, collaboration, and positive change (good job).

5. Being radical means behaving in such a way where open communication can take place between all parties involved. If you are hostile toward others, they are unlikely to sit down in collaboration with you in openness and honesty.

6. And finally, being radical means not losing sight of what is right because you want to be right or because you have become extreme to the point of unhelpfulness (e.g., animal rights activists who throw red paint on fur-wearers; pro-life activists who murder abortion doctors).

I recently learned from a very wise Buddhist nun that true compassion is a very radical practice.

Photo Credit: lovelypetal

And to the tumbleweed, thanks for burning the bridges we needed to collaborate on critical change efforts. Hopefully soon I can have enough compassion, humility, and forgiveness to work with you.

(c) Jessica Rowshandel, 2009

Vegan in Furs (2009)

Photo credit: kthypryn

Hi my name is Jessica and I’m not the new centerfold for PETA, bare-breasted save a crudités bikini bottom, fortunately or unfortunately for you. You might be familiar with Venus in Furs (1969/70) the nauseatingly elitist movie, which left me with a disturbing memory of endless nipples — fleshy stars that I could’ve spent a lifetime counting had I cared enough. My hope is that I am neither as boring or obnoxious as the film.

But I’m being tangential on purpose. I’m hesitant to point out the obvious tension in the title of this blog, the juxtaposition of nouns –nouns at war — and a title that may leave you wondering and hoping that I will get on with my point already. Well, ok. In a very 12-step sort of way, I will make my announcement.

Hi, my name is Jessica and I wear fur.

There, I said it. It’s out now. The ceramic plaque hanging from my purse that reads vegan would probably be more accurate if it said vegan hypocrite. I’m self-centered enough to believe that strangers stare at me wondering how in the world I could be such a proud vegan while prancing around in my cute little down-feather, rabbit-fur lined, winter coat. Well, I am a proud vegan, and an ashamed fur wearer.

My name is Jessica and I wear fur.

I wear down feathers.

I wear leather.

And I wear wool.

Have I no shame?!

I even have these kickass bright-red leather Dr. Martin’s, and while the outside is vinyl, the inside is as leather as leather can be.

You can’t see me now but trust that I am sitting at my laptop typing this, driveling and drooling, wiping my snot away with my sleeve (not really). And my sleeve is so saturated that it’s sticking to my arm (again, not true, but go with it).

Look, my winter coat is incredibly warm… and probably the most fashionable thing I own. I never ever bought fur before this in my entire life and for just as long was strongly opposed to such a thing. But I had a moment when all I could think about was my own stress within the bubble that is my little life and within that moment I was as far away from my values as you are in purchasing a ticket to mars. What can I say?

I’m sorry Dylan, the bull! I have torn off the skin of your ancestors and tied them around my brittle and calloused, undeserving, feet! How will you ever forgive me?

Half of my winter wardrobe is wool; Louise, the sheep, do you think we could ever be friends?? I am eternally sorry! I know how abusive those sheep shearers can be!!

>>Insert overly dramatic heaving breaths. Insert snot and drool that run rivers down my neck.<<

And… cut.

I’m not really that dramatic.

First, let me explain my hypocrisy. I have only been vegan about 6-8 weeks this time around. It takes a while to transition out all of the old clothing. It’s silly to just throw them away. But that’s actually an aside.

I writing to tell you that you’re not perfect, and neither am I. I’m writing to tell you that things take time, sometimes lots of time. Living a lifestyle of having respect for all living things doesn’t require terrorism or self-deprecation.

And I’m writing to tell you that just because I made the choice to be vegan, doesn’t mean that I expect you to or that I am judging you down to your leather shoe strings.

Photo Credit: http://www.greenisthenewred.com

Everyone has their own story, and for me, there were five years between the last vegan chapter and this one. I needed to take that time to figure out who I was, to figure out who from the inner world of my childhood and adolescence I was going to bring with me into my adulthood.

So many people tell me, “Oh, I can’t be vegan,” or “I’m sorry I’m eating chicken in front of you,” or “I just can’t afford organic food no matter how much I try.” And I say, “It’s OK.”

It’s OK.

That’s all I wanted to tell you, really. It’s OK.

There are ways to improve health and protect the environment, animals, and people for all, even without shopping organic, and even if you eat meat. There are ways to do the best that you can do with what you have (time, money, or emotions). And I swear I will get to all the practical tips relating to this in another blog entry, soon enough!

A wise friend recently reminded me (ehem, Kelley) that it doesn’t take the entire world to agree on something to make change. And it’s true. Usually it takes about 2-5% of the population. No one is going to agree on everything, all at once. As a social worker, I believe that real change comes from community- and broad-based organizing: real democracy that’s directed by the people. But creating change is definitely not about becoming a vegan prophet, trying to force everyone I meet into a lifestyle change while disregarding their interest or ability to do so.

Bottom line is that we can’t all be passionate about every single cause that’s out there because then passion would be arbitrary, and we’d all be exhausted to the point of apathy. But I urge you to find your passion. Remember the golden rule. Be the person you wanted to be before responsibilities talked you out of it. Stop letting your life revolve around you and think about the bigger picture, which inevitably involves others. Love your life no matter what. I think this is a good place to start.

The finest pleasure in life is kindness to others. -Jean de La Bruyere

Do Something (a site technically for teens, but psht, who cares)

Ordinary People Change the World

The Artist’s Way (find the creative person you forgot about, or improve the one you remember)

29-Day Giving Challenge

Change.org

(c) Jessica Rowshandel, 2009