Thanksgiving is a painful time to be a heart heavy vegan. Every news cast talks about how people are cooking “their bird” and everyone talks about “turkey day.” Even the seven day forecast on our news had steaming cooked bird corpse on screen where pictures of clouds and rain usually are here in Portland. It is the normal for your family to expect you want to enjoy the holiday by sitting at a table whose centerpiece is a corpse with bread crumbs rammed up her ass.
I fucking hate Thanksgiving. The release for me has always been the next day when the rest of the world is focused on stomping Wal-mart employees to death to get a half off TV’s. In the Animal Rights world this is not Black Friday it’s Fur Free Friday. In 90’s it meant getting arrested or doing jail support as activists blockaded stores that sold fur from it’s customers.
In the 90’s we had the fur industry on the ropes, Things looked grim for the industry. So what happened? It is a larger debate than I have time for but I believe in part we lost focus on this winnable target. We can’t that energy back because as best I can tell the current AR movement is a little focused on peaceful protest. Which our media has proven they could care less about.
Chad of Food Fight our local all vegan grocery store recently ruffled some feathers by pointing something that is sad but true about our local vegan community. “Folks need to try and understand how frustrating it is, to consistently have a handful of people turn out to issue-based activities that can make us all more effective advocates for the animals. And then have hundreds show up to sample the newest vegan snack.”
That being said a huge crowd showed up for Fur Free Friday, next year I hope we can do better. Sure I’m annoyed that crème filled vegan donuts are a bigger draw than the biggest protest of the year. Vegan hipsters of Portland were missed but they were not the presence I missed the most. Where was the news media? A police sanctioned march doesn’t bring out the media.
The fur industry probably feels pretty good about that but they should not. If the media keeps staying away were going to have to figure out a way to get them back. The fight we used to put up at their front door worked. Don’t forget that. Animals are suffering so it’s time we remember what it took to remind people.
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