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Tag: Comrade Black

8 The Hidden Cruelty of Sustainability

November 13, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Uncategorized

With the rise in popularity of the ideas of urban gardening, deep ecology, and permaculture amongst activists, anarchists, and subcultures such as punk often questions of ethics seem to have become simplified to the equation of SUSTAINABLE = GOOD. Yet often all kinds of cruelty can be hidden behind the veneer of that buzzword sustainable.

The unfortunate reality is that simple fixes rarely offer much beyond false hope and easy ways out. Perhaps they help people to ease their personal guilt by assuming they are not part of the problem (everyone else is), but is this any more than a self serving delusion?

https://scontent-a-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/p417x417/270848_10151423231148549_2132240944_n.jpg?oh=84644c7e34e2093f6ceeaead85954973&oe=54DB3CD5 — The farm I grew up on near Kitscoty Alberta. This picture looks out the window of my mothers bedroom over the garden and barnyard

I grew up on a small family run farm in Alberta, 10 miles north of a town you have likely never heard of, with a population under 700. My mother grew up on that same farm with her two brothers. Her dad and his family lived there for many years, they had immigrated up from Nebraska where the family had farmed for a few generations since their original migration from Scotland, where again they had been farmers. It would be fair to say that farming is in my blood, so to speak (or perhaps I have just been reading too many Vampire The Masquerade books as of late?) Either way, I feel at least semi-competent to write about some of the ‘sustainable’ realities of small scale farming, drawing on my personal experiences.

I have many memories from growing up on the farm, from playing in the garden and eating carrots straight out of the ground with the dirt still on them, to collecting eggs from the chicken house, or chasing the turkeys for fun, being chased by the turkeys (which wasn’t so fun), or moving cattle from one pasture to another by horse back. There were some great memories too; picking saskatoon berries, wild raspberries that grew in the coolie, or building forts and campfires in the bush by the ravine. However, there were also just as many memories that were not so wonderful to look back on. Branding cattle with a hot iron as they screamed, or castrating steers — many city folks don’t realize you do not eat cows, and you do not eat bulls, you eat a male who had it’s nuts cut off so the flesh will taste better. All of which could be argued as sustainable.

Now I recognize that not all this is relevant to the popular trends I see amongst self styled alternative people over here on the west coast, as most of the folk punks are more into having pet goats and living on boats rather than farming beef or dairy cattle for auction. So I will try to keep more focused on the aspects of small scale farming that would be more of interest to the DIY crowd with their fantasies of farming and sustainable farming.

Chicken Squawk

One of the more popular trends amongst the urban radicals is having back yard chickens, to collect and eat their eggs. Where I live, in the Cascadian bioregion, it has become almost as cliché to have 6-10 birds pecking around your back yard of your community house as it has to wear Carhardts, have a large dog, and all black clothing, or to play banjo. Unfortunately, I also live in an area where one thing that is not popular is sticking around. The radical community here tends to be quite transient in nature, with lots of college kids, traveler punks, and others folks who often didn’t come from here and even more often don’t have much intention of putting down roots. This is a common frustration to those who are part of long term projects propelled by volunteers, but none the less, it has its pros and cons. However for the chickens pecking the dirt and laying those golden eggs, it is a much bigger problem. An average chicken may live up to 8 years, which is far longer than the school term, or even a bachelors degree. A quick peruse of Craigslist at the right times of year will give you a good indication of just how expendable these animals are to many of the people who are excited in September (at the beginning of the school term) to build a chicken coop for their back yard. But even for those who don’t intend to go traveling or tree planting soon as the summer hits, few want to care for a chicken until it dies naturally of old age. You see, chickens only lay a lot of eggs when they are still fairly young, as they get older they will produce less and less. For many of the urban agriculture enthusiasts, a chicken that doesn’t lay eggs is just work with no pay off.

But the plight of the urban chicken doesn’t end there — or more accurately; it doesn’t begin there. You see, chickens don’t just appear, and they are not brought by the stork to deserving families, they come from somewhere – or in other words, someone breeds them. Few of the breeds of chickens people farm have any resemblance to wild breeds, and wild chickens are pretty rare these days due to our destruction of wildlife habitat for cities and farm land; never mind that there was chickens, like Europeans, are an invasive species to this part of the world. So most of the domesticated birds come from a hatchery; either directly – or indirectly.

I remember how exciting it was for me as a kid to order chicks. We would get a catalog in the mail, with pictures of the full grown birds, and you would select them by recording the order number of which breeds you wanted to buy. A few weeks later, you would get a large cardboard box in the mail which would be chirping. Upon opening it, you would see it packed full of fluffy yellow chicks, divided and layered with cardboard dividers so they could fit more into each box. Every so often a couple would die while in the mail, so you would get a few dead ones in every box.Kinda like two scoops of raisins, right?

An important thing to note is, that they also were separated not just by breed, but also gender. See chicks are born about half females and half males, but most people don’t want to order males. Roosters don’t lay eggs for one, and for two, if you have more than one (or maybe two) roosters, they will kill each other. So the chicks are bred, the females are sold through mail order and the males are killed. Yup, right into the wood chipper. When people get back yard chickens, they often order from a breeder or hatchery. I know some get “second hand” or even call them “rescues”, but where do you think those birds came from before you got them? Buying chickens is putting money into the industry that breeds them for profit. This is the industry of commercial chicken breeders, and they are often the same places that supply big farms, as well as small farms and your average urban gardener with their new found interest in permaculture. And I didn’t even talk about the forced insemination.

Permanent Agriculture?

The study of words can reveal a lot. If you look at the etymology of the word Garden, we discover it is related to the German word for guard, and to words for walled, or closed lot. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to begin to see the relationship between these terms. As anthropologist Layla AbdelRahim explained in Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams, domestication requires the domesticator to control access to food and land. When you begin to garden a space, you must control what other species have access to that land or you will likely not have much of a crop to harvest. Whether we are talking about other non-human animals that might desire and easy lunch, or even competing plant species, insects, or other humans – gardening requires us to control what species are able to access the space. On an even more basic level, gardening usually begins with removing undesired plant species to prepare the land so we can plant seeds of the species we desire.

It has always amazed me how uncritically many Green Anarchists, Vegans, and Primitivists seem to embrace and support permaculture. Yet permaculture is in its essence another system of domestication rooted in anthropocentric desires. In other words, permaculture might be presented by its proponents as being sustainable (and therefore ethical) and based in local ecology, but in fact it is once again about human wants and needs. As well revered permaculturist Erik Ohlson explained in his interview in the book Tangled Roots: Dialogues Exploring Ecological Justice, Healing, and Decolonization, “Permaculture, which could be permanent—agriculture or permanentculture is about designing human culture that is beneficial to both the land and to human at the same time.” That might sound great on the surface, but look at it a bit more closely and it follows all the same old patterns; humans are in control, Erik posits us as the managers and designers, and in the end it is about human needs first and foremost. Animals are not even acknowledged in this relationship, even though you would be hard pressed to find a permaculturist who doesn’t argue that domesticated animals are needed in order to maintain a healthy closed circuit. The implicit goal of permaculture is to make this human domination of wildlife spaces, plants and animals – sustainable and thus permanent.

I am fully aware that not every radical out there agrees with the anarcho-primitivist critiques of domestication, which sees domestication as not only the control of the wild, but also as the root of many other systems of domination such as patriarchy. It took me a long time myself to come to a place where I was open to those conclusions and the difficult questions they lead to. However there are many lenses to view the question of ‘sustainable farming’ through. From an animal liberation lens, another set of problems presents itself in that permaculture like other forms of gardening for human consumption involves turning wildlife habitat into farm lands that are exclusionary to certain wildlife, and even further permaculture also uses domesticated animals.

This is where it really becomes a problem for me, as it perpetuates the use and domestication of non-human animals for human benefit. But due to the SUSTAINABLE=GOOD formula, we choose to not see its implications for animals: both wildlife and domesticated. Often when I have presented these arguments to proponents of permaculture design, the response I get is akin to the lesser of two evils. The same argument often used to justify voting for shitty, racist, business friendly politicians.

I am by no means arguing that permaculture is worse for the land than monocropping, factory farming, or industrial agriculture, rather I am arguing that it is not the be all end all simple fix that many seem to desire it to be. Permaculture still means wildlife habitat is destroyed and used for human benefit that does not allow wild species full access and use of the spaces. Permaculture still involves captive breeding and continued domestication of animals for human consumption, whether it be chickens to scratch and turn the soil, or goats, pigs, or other species. Many of those animals will be from commercial breeders, and the care of those animals will continue to support industries that profit off of animal agriculture. Many of those animals will also still be killed in the end either so humans can consume their flesh and bodies, or because they have quit producing at the rates desired by the domesticators. Most of those animals will also be of breeds that simply did not exist in the wild, did not exist until humans interfered with their reproductive strategies to cause them to develop traits deemed more desirable. Did you know that wild pigs were never pink skinned, that sheep didn’t produce a harvestable amount of wool for hundreds of years after domestication, or that cattle bred for meat are different breeds than the cattle bred for dairy production? Wild cattle don’t produce as much milk, the animals we farm today are the product of thousands of years of selective breeding.

It is indisputable that modern industrial agriculture is anything but sustainable as it depletes the infrastructure of the landbase for higher temporary crop yields. Such a system by definition is incapable to sustaining itself indefinitely and would eventually lead to a collapse as once fertile croplands become less and less able to produce, due to nutrients in the soil being depleted. Technological fixes such as fertilizers may increase yields in the short run, but only work to deplete the health of the land in the long term. Permaculture on the other hand aims to be sustainable, which may be its most insidious trait. It seeks to make permanent the ability of humans to dominate the wild, and thus maintain industrial civilization. Advocates often argue that permaculture can allow us to use less land in order to grow crops to feed our populace (which is a population of not just humans, but also of the animals we domesticate for our use). However, promises of abundance aside, we live in a society of exponential growth. Capitalism is an economic system that requires such growth, both in profits and in populace which will consume the products of the capitalists. Permaculture does nothing to challenge or disrupt this growth, and in fact may allow it to continue far beyond the limits of industrial agriculture in its current form.

Capitalism kills animals. Industrialism kills animals. Civilization as we know it is based on the domestication of animals and destruction of the wild. I have no doubt that permaculture may live up to its promise of sustainability, I would even go further and suggest that many older practices of agriculture (such as crop rotation and choosing crops based on soil conditions) can also allow long term sustainability, yet like permaculture these techniques do nothing to challenge the relationship of human dominance, capitalism, growth, or cruelty to animals. The system always seeks to recuperate easy reforms in order to maintain itself. If we do not actively work to disrupt these power relations and include questions of ethics, sustainability will just become another way of hiding our violence and rationalizing our domination of other species.

At the very root of agriculture is the domination of other living beings by humans. At the very core of ethics is the question of domination and hierarchy. For me, any system that perpetuates these historical patterns is a system based on violence. I am always reminding myself that agriculture is a relatively new invention in the timeline of human existence. The world I would like to work towards in one that encourages and fosters the growth of wild species and habitats, not the subjugation of them.

I don’t know what the solution to all of this is, but I do know that if we hope for total liberation it can not perpetuate the oppression of others.

For those of interested in finding alternatives to these oppressive systems we need to consider more than simple solutions. Directness of our relationship to our food, and sustainability of our practices is only one part of the question we need to be asking. Another key question is, what is the outcome for non-human animals and for other species? Do the ‘alternatives’ we are promoting make any difference to the chicken in the cage? How about to the Wolf? the Trout? The Orca? Or Mycelium? Are they better off because of our actions? Or does our liberation continue to come at their expense? How can we begin to foster relationships that benefit wildlife? And how can we imagine our relationships to other species in ways that have the potential to be liberating and symbiotic?

by Comrade Black

0 Rise of the Fitpunx…Comrade Black

September 28, 2014
by stinkbot
· Features · Radness

In this latest of the posts spotlighting those in our community who are into actively pursuing healthy lifestyles I am happy to bring you a conversation with Comrade Black. Many know that Black is a prolific poster on PE, is actively devoted to animal rights and politically aware. I am happy to bring you Black’s story about fitness and health.

I’ve read that you were into martial arts as a young person, has fitness always been important to you? Or has dedication to physical activity been a more recent occurrence?

Physical fitness has been a big part of my life at some points and not at others. Kinda had an on again off again relationship with fitness for many years to be honest.

I started Judo at 11, in large because I was picked on growing up because I was so small in a town known for sports and jocks (the sign on the way into town actually reads “Western Canada’s Biggest Little Sports Center”). I wanted to be able to defend myself. Turned out Judo wasn’t that useful for that, but once I started I loved it. I competed in tournaments across Saskatewan, and won a few silver and bronze metals. I even went to Judo camp at 15 yrs old where I was lucky enough to train with people like Sensie Hiroshi Nakamura and Ralf Ibanez.

Also when I was really young I was a geeky kid and was super into professional wrestling, and super hero comic books; so I always wanted to be huge and built and strong. I convinced my mom to buy me weights from an auction sale when I was around 11 years old and for a few years I lifted as much as I could. I didn’t really know what I was doing as I had no training but I would read bodybuilding magazines and try to make sense of it. I did get pretty strong, I could almost do an iron cross on the rings when I was in gymnastics in about grade 8, and for a lot of years the only reason I passed gym class each year was gymnastics, weightlifting, and the ne or 2 years we did Olympic style wrestling. Years of Judo helped me with all of those.

I did judo and weight lifting until I was about 16 and started getting to much into traveling and drinking, and left town to live on the streets. When I was around 20 II spent about two taking Muay Thai kickboxing, and submission grappling and later took Jujitsu. After that I ended up back on the streets again. I have also taken a small amount of Ninjitsu here and there.

It has been an on again off again thing throughout those years; but what’s different now is that I really fucked my body up from all of it, so now paying attention to health isn’t an option – it’s fucking necessary just for me to be able to function day to day. If I don’t eat well, sleep well, and keep fit I deal with more pain.

0 5 Simple Tricks to Great Vegan Cooking

August 10, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Columns · PE Web Zine

Cooking a good Vegan meal is really fucking easy, yet often people seem completely confused as to what to do to make a Vegan meal. When you are new to anything it can be baffling, even though once you know your way around it will seem so stupidly simple. So here is some simple advice that I hope will help you out so that you don’t have to feel stupid, whether you are a new Vegan, or if you have friends or family who are Vegan and you want to have them over for dinner. Or perhaps that cute boy who you want to impress with the Animal Liberation Front back patch

Start Simple – Most Vegan meals follow this basic format: Choose 4 or 5 vegetables, chop/prep them, boil, fry or bake them, add spices or sauce. There is really nothing difficult about that. Often simpler is better.
You Don’t Need Processed Specialty Items – Stores are full of all kinds of over packaged and over priced “Veggie” items such as fake meats, cheeses, and dairy alternatives. The simple reality is that most Vegans don’t eat that much of this stuff, and if they do it is only now and then. You don’t need it. Stick to vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and legumes and you will be better off than with some heavily processed fake meat wrapped in plastic.
Be Open To New Foods – Often when someone is considering going Vegan people will think that it means you are cutting stuff out of your diet and being restrictive, yet in reality the opposite is what normally occurs. There are tons of foods you may have never heard of that are totally worth trying, such as Chia Seeds, Nutritional Yeast, Quinoa, Hemp Hearts, etc. Experiment with them, be open. There is nothing weird about these foods, most have been eaten by people around the world for thousands of years before the word Vegan was even coined. They are only new to a boring western diet.
Use A Recipe or Ask A Vegan – Especially when baking, it is good to use a vegan recipe at first rather than trying to modify a non-vegan recipe. That’s because baking is all about formulas; mix your dry ingredients, add your fats & sugars, then mix in liquids. But if you don’t understand what certain ingredients do on a chemical level, you may find the baking doesn’t come out quite how you were expecting. For example, in a omnivorous diet recipe, eggs work as a binder. You can easily replace the eggs with other binding ingredients, such as bananas, apple sauce, or boiled flax seeds; however, you may find your baking seems dry or doughy. This is because eggs don’t just bind the ingredients together, they also cause a chemical reaction with other ingredients such as baking powder. If you don’t use eggs, the baking powder won’t respond like normal and your cake might seem heavy. Most vegan recipes compensate for this by adding other ingredients that replicate the reaction that animal proteins usually create – such as adding an acid like vinegar or lemon juice which will cause the baking powder to react as it would with milk or eggs. My recomendation is to either use an already Vegan recipe if you are just starting out, or ask a Vegan for advice. Guess what, most Vegans know how to cook Vegan food.
You Already Know How to Cook Vegan, You Just Didn’t Realize It Till Now – Thats’ right, and here’s why. Pretty much everyone on the face of this earth already eats Vegan foods every single day; they just don’t think of them as “Vegan Food.” Think about it; ever ate falafle? Pakoras? Dahl? Hummus? How about beans and rice? A fruit salad? A Veggie wrap? Bean salad? Corn on the cob? Or pasta with tomato sauce? A pear? Bananas? Grapefruit? Guess what, all these foods are typically Vegan (unless you are doing something really fucking weird with that grapefruit). You don’t need to do anything fancy, stick to what you know. Mashed potatos can be done vegan super simple too, just use olive oil instead of butter. Or the most basic of all deserts, an apple crumble. You can make home made granola or oatmeal Vegan super easilly, all fruit smoothies, etc. This is so easy I am going to stop talking right now.

By Comrade Black

Comrade PE

0 Don’t Hate on Soy!

July 18, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Columns · PE Web Zine

I know that people have a hate on for soy and tofu, but I honestly think Soy gets an unfairly bad rap.

In part I think it is because soy is often associated as “the vegan food” even though tons of vegans don’t eat soy, and tons of non vegans around the world regularity eat soy. None the less, people who are anti-vegan, including industry – often will attack things they deem as “vegan things.” Another example of that is articles like Can Vegans Stomach The Unpalatable Truth About Quinoa? Which was an odd article since quinoa is eaten by people around the world and vegans only make up a small percentage of those people. Never mind that most the arguments could apply to nearly any industrial crop.

Now I am not saying Soy has no problems, any industrially produced monocropped cash crop definitely does. What I am saying is that soy gets a disproportionate amount of criticism compared to other crops. Here’s the thing, most of the time when people hear you eat soy and reply with a statement like “oh you better watch out, soy isn”t healthy because…” they end up pointing out something that is common in other foods as well – foods which they eat and never think twice of. For example, Soy is known to contain Phytoestrogens… You know what else contains Phytoestrogens? Try: nuts, seeds, oils, breads, oats, grains, legumes and even animal flesh. Flax seed is actually the food highest in Phytoestrogens, and I think any nutritionist or dietitian out there would tell you the health benefits of eating flax far out way any potential disadvantages. In fact, I saw a certified dietitian speak last year who has been vegan for 30 years, and she was asked about soy, she wasn’t too concerned about it. Flax, like soy is also high in tons of important nutrients like EFA’s.

A second weird criticism is this idea that most soy is GMO. Aside from the fact this simply isn’t true – at least not where I live – it also isn’t exactly unique even if it was true. People do this thing where they cherry pick the science they will cite based on what agrees with the things they already want to believe, and I think this is what is happening here as well. I see it all the time, where people will be concerned with GMO’s in some foods, then gorge on junk food or other processed foods that are completely GMO. In the case of soy, read the package. It isn’t that difficult. Where I live most soy sold in stores is labelled GMO free and Organic; and most the soy that isn’t labelled as both is labelled as either GMO free or Organic. And for the record I don’t shop at some fancy yuppy store either.

The other direction that anti-soy rhetoric often comes from is an ecological one, in which the arguments are just as equally flawed. one common one is that soy is causing the rainforest to be cut down to grow soy crops for vegans. This simply isn’t true, the parts of the rainforest being cleared to grow soy are not for human consumption but rather to feed beef and dairy animals. Most the soy we consume here is grown in places like California. Now again I am not saying that makes it ok or there is no issues with it, but rather saying that the problems are not unique to soy. Pretty much every crop we buy from industrial farming is grown with the same problems and then shipped thousands of miles. None of these problems are unique to soy. As much as people might want someone to blame, vegans are not at fault – industry and agriculture are.

Back to the health thing, there is 2 other aspects of the arguments against soy that I find absolutely silly. One is that most the people I have met who ever try and say how unhealthy soy might be, have never actually read any of the studies about it. They are simply repeating what they have heard some where.

The second, well let me tell a short story. When I first moved to Victoria, and got involved with Food Not Bombs, I would meet these people who would tell me things like that I shouldn’t put pepper in my food cause it can be hard on the colon, Then I would see these same people go out to all night dance parties where they would consume MDMA all night, and not sleep for days. I have seen this patterns often, of people who don’t seem to live healthy lifestyles or care much about health who take it upon themselves to lecture me or others about how soy, or pepper is unhealthy. The reality is this, there are more more unhealthy things most of us do than eat soy. In fact, there are far more unhealthy things most people eat than tofu.

Aside from that, I fucking love fried tofu! I can eat an entire pack, 14 ounces, as a snack – 14 ounces is 65g of protein! You can hate soy as much as you like, but I am gonna fry some more up with Cajun spice and sesame seeds! Your loss.

By Comrade Black

1 Up The Ante to Shut Down the Stampede – No More Dead Horses: Interview with Marley and Sam from VADL

July 11, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Interviews · News · PE Web Zine · Radness

On July 4, 2 activists from Vancouver Animal Defense League locked themselves down to the inner railing of the chuckwaggon race track at the Calgary Stampede. Marley Daviduk and Samantha Baskerville used bike U-locks around their neck, in this inspiring act of civil disobedience. PE took the opportunity to ask them more about what they did, why they did it, and what they hope to achieve.

This interview with Marley and Sam was conducted by Comrade Black

PE: Why are you targeting the Calgary Stampede? It seems far away from home for a Vancouver based group?

Sam: I lived in Calgary for about 7 years and have always thought poorly of the Calgary Stampede. When this opportunity was presented to me, I couldn’t say no.

IMarley: I’ve been a horse person my whole life and my love of horses is what brought me to veganism and activism. Ever since I was young, the Calgary Stampede, specifically the Chuckwagon races, has been on my list of issues that needed to be dealt with. It came to a point where I felt that the Chuckwagon races were vulnerable and lacking public support. I hoped that an action like this would give us the opportunity to bring national media attention to the event and, for the first time, to their sponsor GMC. The Calgary Stampede may take place in Calgary but it’s an event that puts Canada in the public eye.

Sam: Being the largest rodeo in Canada, we knew that this action would raise international awareness and really enlighten people on the deaths and risk of injury during the Chuckwagon races.

PE: Was this action pre-planned, or improvised based on opportunity?

Marley: We started planning this event more than two years ago. This event was actually supposed to take place last year until Calgary was hit with a devastating flood, and much of the downtown core was under water including most of the Stampede grounds. The Stampede adopted the slogan ‘Come hell or high water’ and the show went on. We decided it would have been an inappropriate time to address this issue, the media was rightfully wrapped up in covering the devastation of the flood. There was a MASSIVE amount of planning and preparation involved with coordinating a crew of more than 18 people in 3 locations. In the last two years we have had dozens of strategy meetings, training sessions and fu VADL3 ndraising events. Sam and I had locked down to just about every basketball hoop, cat scratching post and fence post in East Van to train for this. We had to be able to get on the track, lock down and dispose of the key in less than 30 seconds, in full view of a crowd of 20,000 people. It would have been reckless to attempt this without serious preparation efforts.

PE: How did you get onto the chuck wagon track without being noticed or stopped?

Marley: All it took was a plaid shirt. Just joking. We paid for tickets to get into the venue and both Sam and I had our bags searched. Our bike locks were in our bags and we had prepared for the search by filling our bags full of tampons and pads knowing most people wouldn’t dig through them. The security guard took one look inside our bags, and basically recoiled in horror and pushed us through. Once we were in the grandstands, all we had to do was hop over one small barrier and we were on the track.

Sam: It was pretty easy. We just ran from the beer garden down the inner track and locked down. It took several minutes before security reached us.

PE: You have a lot of firsthand experience with horses, yet I have read some people are trying to dismiss you by claiming you don’t know what you are talking about…

Marley: It seems like the most common response from Stampede officials in response to opposition is that ‘these dang city folk simply do not understand the ways of the horse’. I understand horses as much as any of them, but it doesn’t take an expert to acknowledge the risk of injury and death associated with the Chuckwagon races. This years death makes it the 10th year in a row horses have died during the event. Denny was a 12 year old thoroughbred, he died of an aortic aneurism near his kidneys, resulting in massive internal bleeding.

Sam: My experience is minimal in comparison to Marley’s but I did have a horse while growing up and took lessons as a child. Regardless, when one or more horses are dying every year from an event that only lasts ten days, you know that something is wrong and change is needed.

PE: Did you have any expectations of the outcome? Were you hoping this would shut down the race?

Marley: We were hoping that our actions would get national media attention and we knew that would happen even if we got tackled before we had a chance to lockdown. It would have been great to have prevented the races from happening that night, but due to unforeseen complications we had to lock down earlier than expected which gave them more time to locate a grinder to get us out.

PE: In the video, the officials with the stampede covered you with a black tarp. What’s the significance of the black tarp?

Marley: They covered us with the black tarp, which is the same black tarp they use when a horse goes down on the track. They use it so the crowd cannot see what’s happening.

Sam: I felt like we were that tragic mess that they were trying to hide from the public. Just like they do with the horses.

PE: Are you facing charges now? What are the repercussions?

Marley: We are facing mischief charges, our court date is on Aug 20th. We are banned for 99 years from the Stampede and we cannot approach within 3 blocks of the grounds.

PE: How can people help?

Sam: We need to keep this momentum going by sharing information, helping the Calgary activists, and by voicing their opinion to GMC to ask them to end their sponsorship of the Chuckwagon races.

Marley: People can help by contacting GMC the sponsor of this event, asking them to pull their sponsorship. @GMCcanada 1-800-263-3777 They can support our legal defense and the cost of this action by donating here. The cost of moving a crew of 10 people more than a 1000km’s to Calgary was pretty expensive and we were not able to find a lawyer in Calgary who was willing to do pro-bono work for us.

PE: What other campaigns are VADL engaged in? Have you had much success?

Marley: For the last 1.5 years we have been targeting Canada Goose retailers with protest campaigns (Canada Goose jackets with wild trapped coyote fur). Our efforts have resulted in 2 (out of 14 Vancouver retailers) dropping the brand and adopting a fur free policy. For a more detailed list of our campaign history please visit www.vancouveranimaldefenseleague.com

PE: Some people feel the tactics employed by VADL are controversial and too confrontational; why do you choose these tactics? Are they proving effective?

Sam: Protesting outside the venue was no longer bringing the attention that we need (although I still appreciate their efforts and encourage them to continue) so we had to amp it up a bit. And look, people are talking and the support has been overwhelming.

Marley: Sometimes I think we get more criticism for our tactics from vegans in the movement than from the opposition we target, especially when it comes to those who are involved with large multi-national organizations. We choose these tactics (pressure campaigns) because they work, and they provide achievable goals; which keeps people involved and motivated. Civil disobedience, like a lockdown, is not something we see very often within the Canadian animal rights movement, and yet actions like this have been such a massive part of AR history. We hoped to inspire activists across Canada and show them that there really is a diversity of tactics available that go well beyond vegan outreach and we hope to see more actions like this happening within our movement.

PE: Where can people get updates on your actions? Is there a way people can get involved with this campaign or VADL in general?

Marley: People can get in touch with us via facebook or vancouveranimaldefenseleague@live.ca or www.vancouveranimaldefenseleague.com

PE: Is there anything else you want people to know about the stampede?

Marley: We want other activists to know that we chose the Chuckwagon races because we felt there was a tactical advantage to isolating this race, not because we are at all okay with any other rodeo events.

Sam: While Marley and I cannot participate in direct protests against the stampede, I strongly encourage Calgary activists to continue the fight. The rodeo consists of events that cause extreme stress to the animals involved and continuous action is needed to bring the abuse to light so that more people will raise their voice against the Calgary Stampede.

PE: Any last advice for other activists?

Marley: My advice to other activists would be to pick a tactic/tactics that you are comfortable with and work at them without condemning the actions of others. I see so much public criticism of campaigns and tactics, specifically coming from people with little or no knowledge of historical campaigns and what has worked in the past. All I can ask of people is to embrace a diversity of tactics, please challenge yourselves, and finally lets learn about the history of our own movement.

Sam: don’t be afraid to push the limits a little bit, as long as it’s done safely and you are prepared to face the consequences responsibly.

6 Neo-Paganism is Not the Answer – Climb A Fucking Tree

July 6, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Columns · PE Web Zine

More and more people have begun to reject Christianity, Islam, and other monotheistic religions, and are instead turning towards what are seen as older, earth based forms of spirituality.

Meanwhile we live in a society where 90% of the old growth forests have been cut, as the world around us becomes increasingly synthetic, polluted, and urbanized. In response there has been a growing interest in European polytheistic religions as alternative to the hierarchies of the church with it’s gnostic abstracted concepts.

However these polytheistic religions are often just as problematic as what is being rejected. There has been a lot of revisionism, presenting many of these patriarchal religions where male war gods dominate as though they are anything but – where godesses are now talked about as though the original practitioners were matriarchal and the males gods were just minor characters. Ignored also is the inherent heterosexism of these religions where often female goddesses are all based around fertility.

Yet the bigger problem lies deeper. In a blog post I just read about Asatru (Odin worship) the blogger pointed out that these “old” religions developed through “the Iron Age up through the Viking era – that is, a few centuries BCE up through about 800-1200 CE. ” (I acknowledge the problems in using these anthropological stages as markers of ‘progression’). This is preciously my point. The old polytheistic religions of Europe were still religions that developed during a period of violent conquest, early colonization, war, and long after the rise of agriculture where people had moved into dominating the land and living a sedentary lifestyle rather than nomadic or semi-nomadic ways based on relationship and ecology. To then call these polytheist religions ‘nature based’ is like calling Christianity in it’s current context ‘community value based.’

The reality is that before there was polytheistic religions that worshiped symbolic gods of the harvest, war, fertility, or death, there was an older non-theistic religion based in place. If you want to worship nature, you don’t need a sunwheel, pentacle, or a godess to do so – go out and climb a fucking tree, sit in it’s branches, learn ecology, listen to the wind rustling the leaves through the branches, watch the squirrels, strip naked and swim in the river as the sun sets. Then do whatever it takes to stop those fuckers who wanna cut that tree cause all they see is dollar signs. You don’t need a european god or goddes to tell you life is sacred.

by Comrade Black

0 Surviving Memories

July 5, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Columns · PE Web Zine

I was 16, had just turned. It was my second time on the streets that year. Edmonton Alberta, living in a squat house just off Whyte avenue, 107 st. Now a Condo sits where the abandoned house we called home use to sit.

There was about 7 of us living in one room, the youngest was a kid named Small Fry who was 13 and on crutches. I liked him. I had only been at the squat a few days, or maybe a week; a guy I hardly knew named Justin had shown me the way there a few nights before and I stayed. I crashed hard that night, sleeping through everything that was to happen

Devon wasn’t a very popular guy, in part cause he was one of those guys who can be hard to like. In part cause he was openly bisexual in a very homophobic place. A case of wrong time, wrong tastes. I liked him though, as he was nice to me. About an hour or so after I fell asleep, Devon came ‘home’ quite drunk and ready to pass out. There was a young girl visiting us, I can’t recall her name, but she had a home yet would come to the squat to hang out with the street kids. Everyone liked her. She was drinking with the others when Devon came in. She was using the pallets he slept on as a chair. This is what lead to the argument. I slept through it all, so all I know was from what i was told after I woke up.

When I woke up, people were practically celebrating, partying and bragging about how fun it was to kick the shit out of Devon. They told me “you missed all the excitement!” Glad I did. I was told that Devon had pushed the girl to get her off his bed after she refused to move, and so Justin attacked him, and everyone else jumped in to help in the assault; everyone that is except me and Small Fry of course. They bragged about how he had “turtled like a coward”, and drank in celebration of their assault. They pretended that they beat him for “pushing a girl”, but the real reason was more a mix of homophobia and a desire for violence.

I asked where he was now, and was told quite gleefully how after beating him unconscious, they had drug him outside into the alley way. They left him there then walked to the near by Mack’s store and claimed to the worker that they had found a guy beaten badly in the alley way. They left before the cops got there.

Months later I heard rumor that Devon had been in a coma for a few months, and when he woke up he had no memory of what had happened. I never saw him again, and can;t verify if it was true or not

I feared Justin, and no one dared to stand up to him after that. None the less every so often he would find an excuse to attack someone, turn on someone.A few months after the assault on Devon, Justin beat another kid into a coma for breaking a alcohol bottle in the park and refusing to pick up the glass. He justified it by saying that people bring their dogs there and the dogs could step on the glass.

He left the squat, luckily, and I lived there until police busted it some months later when the parents of a girl named Sarah who had been kicked out decided to claim she had run away because she wouldn’t stay in the shelter where her parents had left her. So they came to find her, apparently knowing for months that we were squatting there. A while after that I was in a car accident, along with that girl, and had to return ‘home’ to Kitscoty do to my injuries. Her parents refused to take her back and told her on the phone from the hospital “It’s just like you to get yourself in trouble.” So she moved in with me and my mom and after she healed enough she went to school with me in the town I had tried so hard to run away from. The town where I had been bullied nearly to suicide.

A year later I heard Justin was convicted of attempted murder after pulling a knife and trying to stab a Sikh guy in Gazebo park.

I was 16 then. I am 33 now.
just over half my life ago.
This is how I remember it. There is not a single person from that scene I have talked to in over a decade. But I remember most of that year like it was just weeks ago.

by Comrade Black

1 Blown Away: Guns & “Random” Mass Shootings – An Interview With John Zerzan

June 13, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Uncategorized

In recent weeks there have been a number of mass shootings throughout North America which is becoming increasingly normalized in modern society. John Zerzan has written and spoken extensively about the phenomenon of shootings, never shying away from the difficult subjects and questions that many others actively avoid.

Interview by Comrade Black

John Zerzan (right) with PE writer Comrade Black (post-Left)

PE: I remember you once saying on your radio show that when the media talks about mass shootings they use a set of buzz words and often present it as though these acts are incomprehensible. Can you explain what you meant and why this is problematic?

Zerzan: First, let me say that my focus has been on the unprecedented rise in what are commonly called “random” multiple shooting; those that, as you say, are presented as incomprehensible. Of course they are not incomprehensible and speak to the nature of modern mass society. They are deeply symptomatic of the growing isolation, a product of the disappearance of community. Society becomes rapidly more technological and – contrary to the propaganda claims of the tech agenda – people are ever more adrift and lonely. With less and less to hang on to unspeakable things happen.

PE: Often mass shootings get blamed on mental health, yet many of these killers had no history of known mental illness?

Zerzan: Yes, most of the shooters have no history of mental illness. More often one reads what has become a kind of cliche description: ‘he was the quietest guy, very nice, never missed work or made trouble, etc’

PE: A while back there was an article about kids being bored by mass shootings. Do you think they have become part of the spectacle? Or are they the cracks?

Zerzan: It’s possible that as these multiple homicide acts become almost daily occurrences events they are tuned out or even become boring. Think what else is routinely tuned among the common horrors of civilization…

PE: I saw a feminist blogger recently write that all these shootings have one thing in common, that the perpetrators are all men. What’s your take?

Zerzan: Not all the shooters are male. A horrible part of of the phenomenon in recent years has been family slaughters, including mothers murdering their children.

PE: I have heard you say that mass shootings are a phenomenon that appears to be unique to both the modern times and certain parts of the world? What is the connection between privilege and this type of violent act?

Zerzan: Roughly speaking, these rampage killings happen in the more technological societies and are spreading from the US to other technologically advanced countries. Thus one wonders how ‘advanced’ or ‘privileged’ these places really are. In terms of individuals it is less often poorer people committing theses acts, more likely white suburbanites, with some exceptions.

PE: Ever since Chris Dorner opened fire killing a couple cops, more people are beginning to target the police. As an anarchist, what do you make of this?

Zerzan: Police brutality and the militarization of the cops seems to be increasing. So, not a big surprise that more folks would strike back.

PE: Another interesting aspect of the more recent shootings, starting with Dorner – is that the killers used facebook or other social media to post statements before committing their killings. I am certain this will justify increased profiling and surveilence. What’s your thoughts on this?

Zerzan: Social media usage is of course extremely widespread so we see more use of it by shooters e.g. the Isla Vista killer recently.

PE: Layla AbdelRahim writes about how politeness and manners are a form of civilized violence that helps to hide the violence of our society. We live in a horribly violent culture that pretends the violence doesn’t exist; what do you make of these outbursts of very public violence in the spectacle of polite society?

Zerzan: Layla refers to how domestication represses the violence, if less effectively these days, eh? The violence is less hidden than ever but denial reigns and the ‘solutions’ put forth are very superficial. For example, gun control laws which miss the basic reality. That is, guns have always been very prevalent in this country, since colonial times in fact. But the shooting rampages as a common phenomenon is quite recent historically. A year before Adam Lanza killed twenty-some children at a school in Connecticut he called Anarchy Radio to tell of a chimpanzee who attacked its owner. The chimp had been dressed in human clothes, fed human food, provided with TV – and snapped because of the degrading domestication it was subject to. The bitter irony was that Lanza himself snapped and killed two dozen people about a year later.

PE: When Ted Kazcinski was arrested as the Unabomber, you wrote him letters and visited him in jail; how do his acts of violence differ from these others? Is it simple a difference in ideology?What can we learn from “Uncle Ted’s” actions?

Zerzan: Kaczynski’s acts were in no way random. They were part of an exclusively anti-technology campaign.

PE: Is there a connection between how we as a society treat animals and the land with this type of violence?

Zerzan: I think it’s quite reasonable to see the mass cruelty of industrialized agriculture – to use a big example of how animals are treated – as cheapening life in general and thus contributing to these explosions of violence among humans.

PE: I remember when the Columbine shooting happened which seemed to be one of the first; followed by another highschool shooting in Taber Alberta not far from where I grew up only a week or two later. As a kid in a highscool that was tormented and bullied nearly to the point of committing suicide myself; having a couple kids pick up guns and shoot back was something I paid close attention to. But things didn’t seem to get better in the aftermath, rather kids like me were treated like we were all potential psychopaths and nothing else really changed.

Zerzan: Bullying is one triggering factor in some of the mass killings. But bullying is nothing new whereas there is something unprecedented going on as mass society shows such pathologies. I went to a rough high school where, in addition to beatings by some of the priests, there was a fair degree of bullying. No-one brought a gun to school and started blowing folks away.

PE: Fredy Perlman described civilization as a monster that keeps growing and consuming, while telling the story of people who either resisted by running away until the monster caught up to them or by fighting back – often becoming more like the monster they resisted in order to stop it until it collapsed and they took it’s place as the new monster. How do we resist without becoming recuperated into the machine we seek to destroy?

Zerzan: Civilization must be attacked at a deep enough level to hit its target. Activism that lacks critique, lacks a qualitatively different vision or paradigm is doomed to be quite limited in my opinion. This means, among other things, that we must not shrink from embracing property destruction, which is hard to co-opt.

PE: You have argued that technology alienates us further. Are these shootings a symptom individualism? Capitalism? Lack of nature? Or something else?

Zerzan: It’s all these things even if technology is major – and generally overlooked. Domination is a totality and needs to be seen as such to avoid single-issue reformism.

As Adorno put it, in terms of causes: “It is idle to search for what might have been a cause within a monolithic society. Only that society itself remains the cause.”

PE: You have written about hope, where as the trend seems to be moving towards nihilism. Where do you find hope in times like these?

Zerzan: I am hopeful because I see the energy of resistance alive in many places. It has not gone away. And because I think that the system of domination is actually quite hollow and weak. It is plainly losing the allegiance of many on many levels, has no answers to the myriad problems it has created.

Cover of _Origins: A John Zerzan Reader_, 2010 Cover of _Future Primitive Revisited_ Cover of _Twilight of the Machines_, 2008 Cover of _Running on Emptiness_, 2002 Cover of _Future Primitive and Other Essays_, 1994 Cover of _Against Civilization_, 1999 Cover of _Elements of Refusal_, 1988

If you are interested in more of John Zerzan’s work check out his radio show Anarchy Radio, live every tuesday at 7pm PST. You can also read many of his writings at: http://www.johnzerzan.net/articles/

2 From Cow Shit to Capitalist Pricks : Business of Abuse as Usual in the Dairy Industry

June 10, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Columns · News · PE Web Zine

by Comrade Black

I don’t know why everyone is claiming to be “so shocked” by what was found in the recent Mercy For Animals investigation into the dairy industry. There is nothing shocking going on, all of this is standard practice in industrial farming.

It also bugs me that the employees are being scapegoated; I mean, I am not defending what they did but I hear person after person on the radio saying how they should be charged and we need more harsher animal welfare laws. Yet there is nothing unique about what they dd it is common practice in animal agriculture .

There were open sores on the animals, and yet the owners of the farm claimed to also be shocked and not know what was going on. I mean, I guess if I was the owner, I would probably tell the media that too. But lets not be stupid here, they knew. So the employees are fired, and might be charged – but the industry continues milking on, the owners continue to profit from this, and the cattle will still be milked tomorrow. The employees were fired, how will them being charged help the animals they abused?

They keep saying we need more animal welfare laws, stricter laws and more punishment. But we have animal welfare laws right now which clearly don’t work as one investigation after another, in one animal industry after another shows the same patterns of abuse. How will having more laws make a difference when people just ignore them anyways. This is a standard response; when the thing they refuse to question is proven to not be working, the response is to call for more of that thing. More laws cause the laws don’t work. More people jailed, and of course it isn’t the owners of the farms sitting behind bars, it never is. Meanwhile in the USA industry has been trying to lobby politicians to pass Ag-Gag laws that would criminalize this type of investigations to hide their abuses even more.

I grew up on a small family run beef and dairy farm in the prairies. This goes far deeper and is far more wide spread than 8 workers at one farm in BC. This is not about a couple bad apples, it is a bad industry.

When they say we need more animal welfare laws, stricter, what they are saying is the first priority is making sure the dairy industry can continue to use animals for capitalist gain. Never question the existence of the institution, only the minutiae of how it works.

1 June 11 SOLIDARITY WITH LONG TERM ANARCHIST PRISONER

June 5, 2014
by Comrade Black
· Columns · Events · PE Web Zine

by Comrade Black

June 11 is coming up, the international day for solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners. I want to take a moment to encourage all of you to consider showing support for long term anarchist prisoners and earth defenders.

Prisoners need our support, it keeps them alive and strong. These are people who are in jail for their dedication to movements for social change, whether they broke into labs to free animals or were framed by law enforcement, their involvement in activism is why they are now sitting behind bars. If we believe we can create a better world on the ashes of this one, we need to step up and support those who have become captives for trying to put into action those very same beliefs. In the words of Resist and Exist “It’s important that we Support political prisoners. Because if we don’t One day you might be a political prisoner and there will be no movement to support you“

There are many ways you can show solidarity, but remember solidarity isn’t a word, it’s a relationship. that means solidarity is more than words, it requires action! But action can be as simple as writing a post card or letter to a prisoner, or sending them a book to read. Action can mean a lot of things depending on what you are willing and able to do. Here are some ideas of actions you can take to support prisoner:

Send them a book or magazine. When you are in jail there is one thing you have a lot of, time. Books and magazines can keep prisoners from boredum, keep them informed on what’s going on outside so they will be more up to date when they get out, and sometimes give a much needed escape. They also can help keep the brain sharp. Many prisoners actually have wishlists on amazon.com, so if you don’t know what to send them you can buy a book directly off their wishlist and soon as you pay for it it will be sent directly to them. Even better, instead of giving money to corporate amazon, many anarchist and radical publishers like AK Press or Ardent Press will send books to prisoners at a discounted price, some will even send books to anarchist prisoners for free. Similarly, many magazines like Earth First! Journal, Iconoclast, or The Fifth Estate will also give free subscriptions to prisoners. Do note that while in the USA you can easilly send books to prisoners, in some other countries such as the colonial nation state that calls itself Canada, you can not send books directly to prisoners. However in Kkklanda you can send photocopies of books 15 pages at a time.

Write a letter or post card – Prisoners have very limited connection to the outside world. Imagine going from having a large social network of friends to seeing the same 6 prisoners and 3 guards every day, and being locked in a cell for up to 14 hrs or more. This is the reality for many prisoners. Sending a letter can keep people sane, and brighten their day. If you don’t know what to say, make it easy, send them pictures of your cat, or even cut out photos of wild animals. Send them your favorite poem, lyrics to a song you are writing, or some article or short story you really love, a Sudoku or crossword puzzle. It doesn’t have to be hard. Many prisoners are happy to just hear about your day and the wonderful dog you played with river you swam in or tree you climbed. You can also tell them about activism going on so they will know stuff is still happening outside. It can be easy.
NOTE – a few things to avoid: don’t send creepy shit. I hate to have to say this but a female friend of mine who served time for black bloc actions had men send her letters hitting on her. that is NOT ok. On another note, don’t complain about shit. I know, life can suck some times, but no matter how shitty your drama is or how annoying dealing with the cops or government beirocracy, or school can be, it doesn’t compare to sitting in a cell and being strip searched and yelled at daily. remember the point is to cheer them up and build relationships, not to emotionally puke on them and use them for therapy. Lastly don’t tell them about illegal shit you have done or are thinking of doing, This might sound obvious, but it happens. Often if you tell them about something illegal, they can be punished. It si also just bad security culture.

Another way to send support is to donate money through their support committees. Often the support website will have a pay pal account to help make this easier. Money is important to help prisoners get many of the basics of life we take for granted, such as toiletries, pens paper and envelopes, phone cards for calling your loved ones, and especially decent food. This is particularly important for many animal lib prisoners who are Vegan, as the prison food is often quite inadequate for a healthy diet. Having a healthy diet is important to maintaining mental and physical health, which often suffers when one gets locked into a concrete box the size of your bathroom.

There are many other types of actions one can do, such as organizing a protest, a banner drop, graffiti in support of the prisoner, making posters, t-shirts, writing a song about their case, or setting up a punk show as a fundraiser for them. Be creative, think about what would mean a lot to you if you were in prison? For many movement prisoners, continuing the work they care about while they are jailed can also be one of the most effective forms of solidarity

Also remember these people will be in jail long after June 11. While June 11 is a good day to start, especially if you have never done support work before; I do hope you will continue to support our captives long after. Prisoners also need support to continue when they are released, this can happen in the way of helping them find work or other income, places to live and community supports such as counseling if they need it. It can also mean just being there if they need someone to have lunch with; as well as not expecting them to want to hang out. It can be a hard transition from living in a box to living in a society of boxes, and often people need to slowly move back into socializing.

I hope this will encourage you to get involved, it is easy to make a difference. You can find lists of prisoners, anarchists, ecoprisoners, animal liberationists, and indigenous land defenders on sites such as ecoprisoners. There is also groups like the Anarchist Black Cross which are dedicated to doing prisoner support for movement prisoners. You may want to check if there is an ABC chapter in your city and get in touch.

Your support is needed. Your support can make a difference

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The legendary crust classic is now available once again!

We are happy to announce our next new release

WILT – “Self Titled”

Here is a track from the upcoming LP

“Sermon for the Bootlickers”

Tag: Comrade Black

8 The Hidden Cruelty of Sustainability

0 Rise of the Fitpunx…Comrade Black

0 5 Simple Tricks to Great Vegan Cooking

0 Don’t Hate on Soy!

1 Up The Ante to Shut Down the Stampede – No More Dead Horses: Interview with Marley and Sam from VADL

6 Neo-Paganism is Not the Answer – Climb A Fucking Tree

0 Surviving Memories

1 Blown Away: Guns & “Random” Mass Shootings – An Interview With John Zerzan

2 From Cow Shit to Capitalist Pricks : Business of Abuse as Usual in the Dairy Industry

1 June 11 SOLIDARITY WITH LONG TERM ANARCHIST PRISONER