Veganism: the Politics of the Century, Not the Politics of the Day.

I buhdeuce yen I know you've been rather
critical of direct action everywhere lately and and I understand the the reasons that you have for that but I also have seen you know we all sought with Occupy Wall Street that was another kind of disorganized you know everybody felt different things but they did have an impact I mean whether it was just to kind of awake in a certain sense in a gestalt in a certain segment of the population it can still have its own kind of effectiveness because I think all of us are interested in different things some people are more interested in that organized political movement that were more or more interested in businesses that are vegan and then there's the people who want to just protest something so and then there's room for that too I think well yeah there's room I mean the great thing about didn't know the great thing about capitalism is there's always room for new ideas there are terrible things but capitalism too but you know I was in Saskatchewan during the organized Wall Street phenomenon and I like to compare you know there's sort of the politics of the year the politics of the decade the politics of the century the politics of the millennium and for me the contrast was between Occupy Wall Street which came and went in a year and from my perspective I think it was a failure I could say why but I need to say and yeah I lived in Edmonton at that time and we had people sleeping outside six months it wasn't it wasn't weird weird schedule to Edmonton uh right right but me right right next to occupy wall street we had protests that time linked to First Nations you know I mean obviously can often you do but at that time in Saskatchewan in particular we had a big we had a big movement a big series of rallies or see it was like ok to me this is the politics of the year and then over here we have the politics of the century and the politics essentially they've been going on for a hundred years and it's still gonna be quite here so now and you know to me this is really important in deep and people are really there is high stakes build a lot involved what have you and yeah like you say you do need that you need that couple of percent and unfortunately with any movements for for native peoples here in canada we just do not have the kind of support that we should have from the general population and that oh sure in saskatchewan in saskatchewan there was basically one law firm that was crucial to every single First Nations yes and I'm not saying they were bad laufer but it was just obviously I was doing that kind of research they bought every single case it's the one lawyer it's the one law firm without that guy you know none of this none of this would have happened yeah yeah yeah and you know also I mean there are other senses in which the the First Nation situation is lamentable I went to one of those protests with my wife but you know at those protests people will be playing the drums and singing songs but they don't know any lyrics to the songs in inquiry you know language has gone to that extent where they're just they're making kind of nonsense noises that sound like create but you know I pointed out to my wife we're at one of those events i said look it sounds like they're singing and Kree but they're not you know it's it's just chanting San once and you'll I I myself at scenic library that type of song it had lyrics luckily there was a time with this song would have been about something you know we're just at the point of the cultural egg which is a period but anyway for me this question of the politics of the century the politics of the millennium um I think whether or not I want um you know veganism to be part of the politics of the century I think it has to be I think it's that kind of long-term slow um you know movement cultural movement for cultural change that the sense in which i think the comparison to evolution of alcohol is important is that it does also have this tremendous moral gravitas to it and now you know I I'm tolerant if I don't drink alcohol myself but I think human beings are going to drink alcohol it's always going to be part of our society but I just mean that that that movement the movement to make alcohol illegal that could have never gone anywhere if it was just based on the number of people obviously was based on the fact that that small minority had a claim that had cultural resonance and religious significance and moral significance way beyond way beyond the numbers so I think that that ultimately has to be the kind of position that veganism is is going to play is not my choice I would love it for veganism to be a fast-moving you know lightning quick powerful you know political movement um I know yeah losing so many vegans is a challenge because we do so many people just give up because they ostracized and alone and I think that is part of the challenge and I think that's one area where YouTube helps a lot is that at least it gives people the chance to talk to other people who are vegan to see people talking and there's kind of minimal involvement necessary if you're just watching a video on youtube it can make you feel better without having to really do that much on your own although we do want to see people starting to get involved in real-world activism sure but I'm sure they just mentioned about that you know there was a guy here at my school he's now long gone I stay here longer than any other students so I see students coming seasons go and he was a jokester he grew up in Philadelphia um bit of a rough town so he he knew how to pick a fight you know what a joke his way out of a fight just that kind of character which she don't meet that often these days cuz these days most people just play video games so anyway he was a funny guy he joked around a lot and he often a couple times he pretended he was starting a fistfight with me in the cafeteria here which he wasn't but anyway so memorable character and we only had one serious conversation but in that conversation he admitted me to the first time the when he was living in the United States he was actually living in California he ate meat only once per month which began as a surprise okay so he's obviously a pretty serious reducer tarian but the next thing he said to me which again he said very seriously sort of he was uncharacteristically serious as he thought it with this he said when I become a vegetarian and he stopped and he said I meant to say if I become a vegetarian it would be for purely political reasons to me I completely identify for me the difference between being a reducer tarian and being a vegan is a political commitment I in terms of another contrasting example you know we had a guy here who's ex-military a lot of muscle on his body but also a lot of fat over 50 years old he's on all this medication including for heart condition and blood pressure I saw his diet I saw him eat every day I maybe didn't see him three meals they have a two meals a day he ate meat dairy and eggs at every meal here but nevertheless his meat consumption in China was so much lower than had been in the united states that he had to stop taking his medication for those conditions including blood pressure he was cured and I can't even call his diet reduce it area he was eating the amount of meat Chinese field which is a few little scraps of meat and the rest is rice and vegetables and I i I'd said to him what the hell do you eat when you're in America obviously you know cheeseburgers or what have you you know so I I wish you only got the health benefits when you were one hundred percent vegan but it's not true and all those Health Studies on you know the Okinawa Islanders and the different native peoples of the lovely none of them are vegan they may feel they have right they have lower meet and even you know some of the studies from California to talk about vegetarians and vegans who are seventh-day Adventists those guys are not vegan when you read the fine print they need once in a while those guys which you know again I'm not hating on them but these are also basically reduced to Terrance so the commitments to never wear leather shoes which to me is a very simple very fundamental thing III only see people getting their through through politics I either see getting through politics or yeah I'm just curious annuda fine that a little bit because to me it's more of an ethical decision that you see right well I was just writing about that in Chinese you know I really feel I'm gonna try to nail right this and in Chinese convincingly but you know I think if you decide or if your father decides to quit smoking it may be for him a private ethical decision it may even be a religious decision some people find religion and quit smoking I've seen such things sure in that sense we maybe just ethical or maybe just personal maybe just a lifestyle choice but the decision that we should quit smoking that nobody equipment that I don't want my daughter to smoke the rest I don't want you to sponsor I don't want anyone in our community of smoke cigarettes that I want to move forward on that that social scale theoretically you don't want you want everyone in the world stop smoking but hey we're not going to worry about in Lebanon we're not trying to get people to quit smoking we're trying to get fewer people shot in Syria right now I mean there are places where smoking is a low priority we don't think those things but that's when it must become political so for me veganism from me veganism every day I at the table with people who he meet so right now the total number of students the school is small in the past comes and go several times but let's say there are seven students in the school if all seven of us were vegan this kitchen would stop buying meat and would stop cooking me yeah if even one student eats meat then they buy meat every day and cook meat for the students me right so sometimes you're there have been like two of two other students who were vegetarian we've never had any actual vegan see or sever myself okay I have zero impact as long as I'm only one vegan even though they're only six other meters my in fact is zero it has to become political because as soon as we care about outcomes the ethics in terms of how you feel in your soul maybe they're meaningful insensibility outcomes they're completely meaningless it's only when we move up to this social scale now oddly in this school the the executive director is vegan so it's literally true if all seven students were vegan then she would get rid of the meat while we had those seven students here we could have one month or something with nobody that's cool but if you can't reach that scale of some kind of functional community the whole school can be vegan the whole prison can be eaten the whole workplace can be vegan your whole apartment building can be vegan or something it's too much to think of a city being vegan these days but when it's one know when it's one person you never impact outcomes whatsoever neither in terms of shoes or what have you even seen that my own home obviously because when we um initially stopped buying meat and then it's just been kind of a gradual transition and my husband finally decided he doesn't want to eat eggs anymore either so that's the first time because we stopped buying dairy products a long time ago but um we just finally so now there's you know this is the last carton of eggs and so that's a it's been been interesting and of course now it is different when you do when you're when you get a whole group to commit to something like that so you are more pragmatic and utilitarian in that sense yes well I you know I don't see this as you told there in but I mean you know for me taxation obviously has such a clear connection to something veganism you know we didn't make cigarettes illegal we just raise taxes on them and taxes communicated a whole moral message in health mess nails just threw a dollar sign up for me I see no reason why we can't have a twenty-five percent tax on leather shoes and if you want to sweeten it for people you know you can have inverse taxation you can have a 10-percent discount on all the non leather shoes you can make them even cheaper by reallocating some of the money and again for me that communicates a message beyond merely putting money in the government's pocket saying people hey guess what now in 2016 leather is obsolete you can actually do everything you need with it with it leather and that's you know now something can say isn't that forcing your beliefs on people we force our beliefs on people every day that's what politics is that's the core upon but the core functions we got organized so that we can force their beliefs and you my beliefs include clean drinking water and the government has a giant conspiracy to make sure everyone gets clean drinking water I want you to suffer from my belief that you should be able to turn a tab to get clean drinking water we're all forcing our beliefs on everyone all the time and that's that's politics in a nutshell yeah i banished yen you know from your point of view what does OG meet told you that president has been there look out you know that puts you all game tell you to write it wrong but not necessarily force it on you the OG and really go for nothing on you but he is gonna tell you you the options you got this is what option hey does is what option B does you can make an option see you know and if y'all'd you're not doing that you're doing it ah bah Luo Yin