Presumably on the theory that there’s no defense like a good offense, Green Mountain College has for some weeks been engaged in a disinformation campaign intended to convince the public that animal advocates calling for compassion are terrorists.
Yes, they are actually using the T-word and have also referred to VINE –the friendly local animal sanctuary that generously offered a retirement home for two oxen beloved by students, alumni, and neighbors of the college– as an extremist organization.
It was bad enough when a Green Mountain College student made a video depicting VINE staff members as Nazis. Now the college President and faculty are comparing VINE to al-Qaeda and the KKK.
Green Mountain College students and faculty tend to loudly proclaim their distaste for factory farming. But now, unable to bear criticism or even scrutiny of their own practices, they’ve gone to the top tactic in the industrial animal agriculture playbook: Call the animal advocates terrorists, thereby discrediting them while gaining sympathy for yourself.
Sorry, GMC, it won’t work this time: Vermonters aren’t that dumb. Vermonters can see who wants to save a life and who wants to take a life. Vermonters are also deeply devoted to democracy —which often involves vociferous disagreement— and do not equate dissent with wrongdoing.
For the record:
VINE Sanctuary is a nonviolent organization that has neither perpetrated nor condoned any sort of threat against Green Mountain College or any other entity.
VINE Sanctuary does promote agriculture reform — as does Green Mountain College! We can and do differ in our definitions of sustainability and in our vision for the future of farming here in Vermont. In a democracy, such differences should be debated rather than denigrated as if they were evidence of destructive disloyalty to the region.
As we have so many times before, VINE reiterates its willingness to come to Green Mountain College to articulate and debate its ideas concerning the question of how to feed the world without wrecking the planet.
Didn’t they just recently arrive in VT after being in Maryland for a while? Maybe they weren’t welcome there either.
Yes. But what GMC was doing was neither of these things so what’s your point? Malicious harrassment is also against the law.
GMC doesn’t need to show you anything. End of story. You say you don’t know VINE but somehow you believe their story and refuse to accept GMC’s Why is that? Because their story helps you feel some wrong has been done where there is none? Let it go already.
Please explain why GMC not giving you a forum to denigrate their program (as you’ve done anyway)is some sort of crime against VT?
Yo are right. Vermonters are not stupid and are independent-minded folks who won’t be flim-flammed by some extremist newcomers showing up and trying to tell them how to run their food system. You’ll see that soon enough and that’s why you needed to get global intervention.
==============
This is a significant misunderstanding of how the feminist movement evolved, from early century first-wave feminists to mid-century icons of the movement. For what transpired in the ensuing years, I would suggest you read Susan Faludi’s “Backlash” to at least get some insight into how various conservative forces of the past decades have effectively pushed back against the gains to which women literally devoted their lives. The co-opting you describe has some nefarious roots if you dig deeper. There have been cultural undercurrents, at times, fabricated precisely to marginalize and trivialize movements like feminism, in an effort to produce the type of societal rejection you cite. Certainly, there are individuals in any organization or social justice movement who use poor judgment. But there’s a lot more at play politically. If you’re familiar with COINTELPRO of the 70s, you know just how far entities will go to discredit those movements and organizations they perceive as threats to the status quo and to the economic welfare of those who benefit from the status quo.
In a different way, however, your discussion of feminism is relevant to the discussion here because the types of labels leveled at animal workers and advocates are similarly and deliberately destructive to a justice movement that also strives to challenge the status quo, and to reduce the suffering inherent in the exploitative models we use for animals. I’ve worked with wildlife primarily, as a rehabilitator, and, along with many others here, I believe, unwavering, in respectful non-violence while promoting causes of justice, peace and non-violence that could reduce the massive amounts of suffering we inflict on other humans and nonhumans alike. In any forum where I’ve had the opportunity to voice my concerns and opinions, I do my best to abide by that ethic. Regardless, those whose who have strong, vested personal or economic interest in the exploitation of others, will disregard those views without even entertaining them, because advocating for mercy and compassion for nonhuman animals presents a dramatic challenge to the entrenched and heavily-defended views of our culture.
The point is that using the term “extremist” has been exploited throughout history to effectively ridicule, silence and even prosecute opposition to the established paradigm. These efforts have, at times, been part of a larger plan to completely dismantle the power of a movement that speaks some truth to the injustices of the reigning model. If you doubt this mechanism is at play with animal advocacy movements, I urge you to look at the record, how throughout history, any movement that has revealed uncomfortable truths about cultural norms has faced the same process of vehement opposition. You will find that similar arguments and even the same words were used in most cases.
The inherent difficulty of advocating for animals is that nearly every human being is complicit in a system that raises and kills animals for food or other products. Whether that end is achieved on a small farm or in an industrial facility, both models essentially validate a form of exploitation that is, ultimately, unsustainable in a world that has far exceeded the population numbers of our bucolic past. From a climate change perspective … taking into account global hunger, resources, land use, pollution and so forth, what GMC is advocating for doesn’t resemble what global climate and food experts are saying about the future of our sustainability and survivability — which is much less meat. In fact, livestock “intensification,” for all of its evils, has been proposed as more sustainable than small farms when you consider the level of meat production that will be necessary if we continue with our excessive meat consumption. I obviously don’t promote that.
My point is that sustainability was a weak argument for what the college proposed for Bill and Lou, and many people had cogent and intelligent perspectives on this. I realize that GMC students felt it wasn’t anyone’s business but their own, which is probably why most people felt stonewalled or ridiculed when they expressed heartfelt concern for the welfare of Bill and Lou. But, what those same students ignored in their glib comments and cartoon memes was that if sustainability and environmentalism are, indeed, models to which GMC ascribes, they should understand that it’s oxymoronic to suggest that sustainability exists in a vacuum, or within the confines of a campus. The whole point of living sustainably is to ensure a better future for communities outside our own, and in the larger spectrum of global communities. As such, the very designation of environmental sustainability as a program is open to scrutiny by virtue of what it professes to be and promote. If GMC is concerned only with the “sustainability” of its own college or own community, and with how that small population will feed itself irrespective of how it affects the rest of the world, I would suggest the curriculum be changed to “survivalism” to better represent that more insular idea.
And sending those steers to a sanctuary changes the sustainability how? By having 2 more living beings on the already over-populated planet you describe?
World hunger is a broader issue than “not enough food available” but stems from a global economy that leaves many of the poor disenfranchised, with their lands being used to produce export products. In addition, unstable markets within a country produce huge swings in price and subsequent production.
None of the issues above can be mitigated by: 1)sending two 10 yr old VT steers to a sanctuary 2)stopping students at GMC from learning how to sustainably produce food 3)promoting veganism.
Isn’t that saying “think global, act local”? Local community-based food production is acting local as I see it and hardly the “survivalist” tag you try to demean GMC with.
BTW – how is rehabilitating wildlife helping with this sustainability thing? And remind me again where you buy your food and the feeds for your animals? Nigeria? South Africa?
Beyond that, almost every issue in life has moral and ethical components that ought to be considered in conjunction with the utilitarian ethic that seems to prevail at GMC. We’ve seen what happens, historically, when personal, local or large-scale policies or decisions are based exclusively on a limited Cartesian methodology. Much injustice and exploitation has been perpetrated and justified under the auspices of dualistic thinking which separates emotion from reason. As a supposedly evolved and intelligent species, I believe it’s incumbent upon us to weigh factors outside of our immediate, pragmatic needs when situations call for such consideration. For various reasons, the situation with Bill and Lou went public. And when it did, GMC had the opportunity to either use the experience to expand the discussion … to incorporate the ideas being presented by the likes of other professors, attorneys, philosophers and many who wrote to very coherently state their objections. Instead, the college contracted the debate and deflected everyone on the “outside” by rationalizing who they were (extremist) or what their agenda was (mandated veganism). That may have been GMC’s prerogative. But the point many have been making is that it shouldn’t surprise students when this immovable, obstinate stance causes people to question just what academic and intellectual tenets are being upheld and encouraged.
The other problem I have with this discussion is that it converts all human-animal relations to that of pet or none at all. I prefer a world with more options (and also more animals).
At any rate, I’m checking out of this whole thing at this point, I didn’t actually expect anything other than a defensive reaction, but that’s fine.
Peace
Once again – GMC has no requirement nor responsibility to address VINE, GMAD or others in how it legally operates. So ignoring them is certainly allowed – just as you can ignore me or my comments. The idea that GMC was ridiculing and marginalizing folks who were only thoughtfully pleaing for mercy is bogus. Unless you have copies of all dialog coming into and from GMC, you can’t know who was “thoughtful” and who was “marginalizing”.
“I believe it’s incumbent upon us to weigh factors outside of our immediate, pragmatic needs when situations call for such consideration.”
And you get to decide when a sitution calls for such consideration? Or VINE? Why not GMC?
“Beyond that, almost every issue in life has moral and ethical components that ought to be considered in conjunction with the utilitarian ethic that seems to prevail at GMC.”
Funny that the animals we all love don’t have moral and ethical dilemmas. They are pragmatic and utilitarian. And it’s only when our utilitarian needs are met that we can sit and contemplate the moral and ethical dilemmas you mention.
I would argue that a moral and ethical dilemma a domesticated food animal might raise (if it could) would be the ultimate extinction of its species if there were no animal agriculture. Without animal ag, there would be no need for nor source of cattle, horses, pigs, etc and they would disappear. A higher thinking being, seeing the end for its species would certainly take its current state over extinction.
but I will repeat:
LOU WAS EUTHANIZED AT 4AM—- which is technically morning,
By the time his body was taken to the burial site, the sun was coming up.
Lou will not be eaten by anything, but the Earth.
You obviously haven’t read any of the latest scientific literature on animal emotion and cognition. Nonhuman animals may not share our ethical deliberations — perhaps that’s a good thing seeing how much cruelty our “ethical” models tend to perpetuate. But they are not automatons as you seem to suggest.
Further, you make the very point that others have been arguing in response to GMC: GMC students do, indeed, have their utilitarian needs met and can thus contemplate the higher moral relevance of their actions. That’s precisely the point.
As far as your argument about animal extinction, you might want to do some reading on genuine extinction dilemmas and how our consumption habits are contributing to pervasive and rapid extinction patterns around the globe. Also, it’s clear you haven’t read much in the way of animal rights philosophy and its counterpoints if you think this is a new and viable argument in support of sustaining current agricultural practices.
Ain’t gonna fall into a personal battle with you.
I did find a real bona fide “animal welfare professional” – Temple Grandin. Let hear what she has to say.
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20121113/NEWS02/121113011/Video-Temple-Grandin-weighs-Green-Mountain-College-oxen-controversy
http://www.lairdwilcox.com/news/hoaxerproject.html
Joyce Collins:
At least Geoff has more to say on the matter then you. It is refreshing to know that there are others out there who do not sound like a broken record.
By the way, you never answered my question about whether or not the meat that you eat had a name or not? Don’t you know? Do you talk to your farmers? Or did it only have a number?
Do you support/purchase from farms that give animals numbers and keep them in small cages? Do you know where your meat comes from?
I am a student at the school. I live off campus and purchase my food locally. I receive food stamps because it is terribly difficult to purchase food while being a student. I was going to purchase the meat of Bill/Lou from my school farm and share it with my family.
We were also going to sell that meat to a couple of restaurants and CSA members who were interested in purchasing grass-fed meat at a local price. If you were to visit our little town of Poultney, you would discover that a number of people would have jumped on this opportunity to purchase meat from a local source.
Just because we were going to serve most of the meat in the dining hall, does not mean we were not going to make some available to the public. WE DO RUN A CSA.
I’ve been thinking a lot about why some students–and even more shockingly, some faculty–at Green Mountain College continue to launch attacks on the small, local animal sanctuary that generously offered a free retirement home for Bill and Lou.
Green Mountain College is a powerful institution in the state, with ties to the governor and a multi-million dollar budget. There are some 600 students and dozens of faculty members on campus.
In contrast, VINE Sanctuary is five people with a budget that barely stretches beyond animal care. Unlike GMC, we don’t have a Communications Office, a Board of Trustees stocked with affluent and powerful people, or the clout to get the governor to drop everything to issue a press release in our support. And yet, to hear some GMC students, faculty, and administrators tell it, GMC is the weak victim of the powerful VINE.
Here are some of my explanations for that:
(1) Just as it didn’t guess what the original decision to kill Bill and Lou would look like to the outside world, GMC doesn’t see how silly it seems to portray a sanctuary as some sort of scary “extremist organization.” Why doesn’t it see these things? Insularity. The GMC campus was already a highly insular group when this all began and has defensively become even more shut-off from the rest of the world—including the rest of academia.
(2) By focusing its attention on VINE, GMC can keep on not paying attention to the tens of thousands of people around the world who voiced their distaste for its way of thinking in many different ways.
(3) By focusing its attention on vegans, GMC can keep on ignoring the fact that those tens of thousands of people also included vegetarians, meat-eaters, hunters, ranchers, and farmers.
(4) By focusing its attention on VINE, GMC can keep on not noticing that scholars in the fields it claims guided its decision-making have not come to its defense and, indeed, have been very forthright in their condemnation.
(5) By focusing its attention on VINE, GMC can keep on not noticing that no environmental organization of any substance has stepped up to agree that killing Bill and Lou was mandated by considerations of sustainability or that, in fact, numerous environmental scholars and activists have stepped up to condemn its misuse of that concept in this case.
(6) Scapegoating, take one: It can’t be easy to have tens of thousands of people tell you that they think your moral reasoning is repugnant. Of course, there is a wish to fight back rather than reflect. GMC can’t attack Green Mountain Animal Defenders (the animal advocacy group that started it all) because that group includes many GMC alumni. But VINE can be portrayed as “outsiders”—even by college faculty who themselves come from elsewhere!
(7) Scapegoating, take two: Given that the proposed killing of Bill and Lou was highly symbolic to begin with—”we will kill our friends to demonstrate our dedication to sustainability”–it is maybe not surprising that it has turned to another sacrificial animal now that it was prevented from killing the oxen. And what better sacrificial lamb than a sanctuary where actual lambs are protected from slaughter?
(8) A handful of faculty members really, really wanted to kill Bill and Lou and are really, really mad that they weren’t ale to do so. One has now shown where his head and heart really lie by sending out a “request for common cause”– not to faculty members at other colleges and not to environmental organizations, but to meat producers and others engaged in animal-exploiting endeavors. This tells me that, as we have said for some time, something has gone dreadfully wrong with the GMC farm program, which initially really was about sustainability but in recent years has become more and more about exploiting and kill animals. The program’s vegetable plot is smaller than some home gardens, which makes no sense since even non-veg*n environmentalists agree that everybody should be eating a predominantly plant-based diet. VINE has worked with many, many non veg*n environmental groups, pursuing shared aims such as opposition to the globalization of factory farming. We’ve never encountered anything like the hostility we encountered –from the very first phone call– from GMC.
Late last night, I was brooding about all of this again, and came up with what is maybe the most chilling item on the list. I was trying to figure out why people at GMC keep slandering VINE by calling this a fundraising stunt even though we’ve never asked for funds related to Bill and Lou and, indeed, suspended even routine fundraising during the campaign to save their lives. Why, I wondered, do GMC folks seem to need VINE to be some sort of self-interested organization that will lie or bully to get what it wants for itself?
(10) Sadly, GMC students and faculty are unable to even imagine people acting from selfless compassion rather than from some sort of profit motive. I’m sure that GMC students enter the school with a more charitable view of the world and also with much more personal compassion for animals. I believe, sincerely, that the GMC farm program –as it is presently constituted under the direction of Profs Ackerman-Leist and Mulder and under the supervision of President Fonteyn– teaches callousness under the guise of agriculture. Students are taught to suppress their feelings for animals and, in so doing, lose parts of themselves. Using animals as objects to be used for the profit of people and lying to themselves in order to live with what they are doing, GMC farm program participants come to believe that everybody must act that way.
I don’t know which would be worse: for GMC folks to be deliberately lying about VINE or for GMC folks to be unable to believe that people can act selflessly. For GMC folks, evidently, killing somebody you claim to love is normal behavior while trying as hard as you can to save somebody’s life is extremism. It’s a sad, mad, world.