Ecology: Pragmatism & Local Activism (vegan / vegans / veganism)
04 May 2016 [link youtube]
A recurring issue on the channel is the contrast between local (community-based) activism and more "nomadic" approaches to social change. In this video I'm speaking with Adriane Gilbert, a vegan activist from Southern Ontario. At the time of the interview, she was 18 years old and had been vegan for less than a year. You can find her on instagram, here: https://www.instagram.com/adriane__gilbert/
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I was actually a part of the health unit
I was part of like a youth group and we were doing like smoking and met like mental health stuff and um I see a lot of people may try to blame they tried to blame everybody and our point for the smoking thing was to blame the company's not the people like you can't attack people and expect them to change you have to like change the company's not that it's really hard to explain yeah I understand going but um I'm not exactly how to like be an activist for veganism like there's so many different approaches and I'm like I don't know what to do yo it's in the country and there's not much stuff we can do I don't know yeah well look I mean um I think the the big question that I I kind of want to talk about more on my youtube channel because it's boring but it's really important has to do with your commitment to the place you know I you know I've made comparisons between veganism and smoking all the time but the other kind of comparison have made since the start of my channel is talking about vegan politics as opposed to going to City Hall you know being involved with activism on local issues that way uh in some ways being in a small town is an advantage in that you can build up the trust of people and contacts with people locally but the choice of where you are and whether or not you're really committed to that places is fundamental in terms of my own political development I went through a long series of stages before I really embraced what I would just call pragmatic politics where I really made the decision in my life look what matters to me is whether or not the drinking water is poisoned is whether or not you know like so Toronto was on a lake all right and at that time this may have changed but I doubt it you could look at a map and be like here is the tunnel that puts sewage into the lake and here is the tunnel that takes in drinking water for the city and they were so close together what the city did was they be ult and they extended there was a little like brick wall underwater it doesn't even go to the service there's like a little wall underwater to try to make the poo go off in one direction and the drinking water come in and other day she's like if you do not need an advanced degree in biochemistry to see what the problem is anyone could look at that map and see the reality that oh another thing I'll just mention that's interesting in terms of like the larger scale of ecologic Toronto is built on a tiny tiny river now the Don River that that's just a trickle there's like nothing there there's a small park there and so on a river that was destroyed ecologically when Toronto was founded that river was big enough to have steamboats going up it so like old-fashioned southern American South steamboats would carry people up this river basically the whole length of the city the city is this now from the from the lakefront up the reason why the the water level dropped so dramatically was deforestation when you cut down the trees you cut out the hydrological cycle you reduce the amount of water being pumped through the ecosystem to simplify slightly and river levels drop so in Toronto nobody perceives these problems they're invisible although they're right in front of your face like people cross over that river on a bridge they drive their cars over the river they don't see an ecological history they don't see the devastation that's implicit in right people drink water out of their tap every day really in 5 seconds they could look at a map and see that problem so that for me this is before i became vegan back then i was strictly vegetarian i made a video tide I'd really never even heard the word vegan but I was I was pretty close to vegan in terms of what I believed in I was I was already very close to vegan and I refuse to wear leather and stuff like that um but you know for me it was really a turning point my life was like okay I want to deal with real politics and I admit it's a completely subjective definition like what is real and then what is real politics it's completely it's not objective it's subjective but to me I decided look there's all this kind of BS going on with you know people holding signs in the streets and protesting and in Toronto there's a lot of very far left politics extreme communism that sort of thing and people wanting to have opinions on issues they can't influence so like an issue an example this is probably even true at your college probably even as Sheridan College there will be people protesting human rights in Israel which is understandable but if you live in southern Ontario you cannot make an impact on human rights in Israel yeah no no but I just mentioned so like on many university campuses that is something gets protested like on campus as if it's something your professors can change you know but these kinds of issues like you know the water and the deforestation and pollution and city you know city ordinances city plan city political changes those were things I really could impact and influence and to me that seemed like something that was completely morally positive for me to do with my time as opposed to what was going on again on basically in left-wing politics in Canada I I didn't have any contact with right wing right wing politics like right-wing politics also exists but I mean I I don't I'd never even met those people it's just downtown Toronto I didn't see it obviously like I think the majority of people in Toronto vote for the Conservative Party so it exists but it may be oh I just say this not wasn't wasn't really part of my life there was no temptation for me to join the Conservatives me yeah maybe things would have turned out better for me at it haha but look what you are yeah well I don't fit in in Canada there's no place from here and you know i'm going back to china in a few weeks so we'll see how that works out um they will come back to what to what i am if you want a second but look this is this is me giving you the advice about you and activism in a small town of the material I there is no way i could tell you that the town you're born in or the town your parents own a house answer you may be more nel so does matter but there's no reason why the town you're living in would be the right town for you and in a lot of ways Toronto was the wrong city for me like in a lot of ways it's the wrong place for me to make that commitment but I think any kind of meaningful activism it's very humbling to recognize it does require that type of commitment to say I'm committed to this place at this time like for whether it's 10 years 20 years or what and this also reflects why religious organizations have a huge advantage over like vegan organizations or just left-wing organizations the fact that a church owns property it owns a building there's a church and a church basement and people meet there and play the guitar I'm not religious at all as you may have guessed but we're saying the churches of a huge advantage of that and you can go to that church and you can do fundraising where you say look we're really concerned about the drinking water we'll just stick with the same example and you know here's the map here's where the sewage goes in here is where drink water comes from this is really a problem we're concerned about and the city government is doing this and maybe at that church maybe there is 50 people who are sympathetic willing to listen you may not even need their money you know you may actually need their signatures some some things and democratic process you need 50 people to sign a piece of paper but maybe they each give you ten dollars you know can make can make a really big difference and then to be building that kind of trust with people face-to-face in one place at one time that's why historically churches that this huge advantage and vegans by and large we've started with that kind of infrastructure with other kind of support so I see one speaks I'll just finish the sense that is also when vegans make the comparison to martin luther king jr dr martin luther king jr. you have to give his full name they always skip the religious component the reality is the political power martin luther king jr. had was built on christianity was built on christian churches was built on the fact that he could go from town to town speaking at churches and each one of those churches had deep grassroots support from people who knew each other face-to-face who trusted each other they had the potential to make a political difference already before he got there and of course he had his own church he had his own ministry he had his own status in that so again when people say the oval look at Martin Luther King jr. ok we'll really look I don't I don't have any of those advantages I'm a guy on YouTube I mean and and that is the in some ways I love it like in some ways I love the fact that anyone can watch my youtube channel and get interested and get motivated and in theory can make a difference in the world but i'm also really aware of the disadvantages that I've got and that and that collectively we've got so but but the implicit point that I was saying is there's no way i can tell you you're living in the right town it may be the wrong place to maybe you decide like one year from now or whatever that you hate the town you're living in and you're going to move to Montreal or you're going to move to to Beijing like could be or or Florida you decide Sarasota Florida is where you want to sit down roots but I think the point is if you want to move somewhere else even if it's just Montreal the decision not to be there as a tourist the decision to say no no these are my people this is my problem this is my responsibility I'm not just here for fun or not just here to make money I'm you know I'm going to set down roots that even if it's completely invisible that's a big change that's a big difference that's different from just being there because all these people go to Thailand I was talking to vegans who went to Thailand and they were really being sincere with me they didn't think there was any poverty they didn't think there was any prostitution they didn't think any of these social problems existed there they're seeing it I'm I can't explain it they're seeing it just as tourists but obviously it's possible to go to Montreal or go to Toronto stay with Toronto it's possible to go to Toronto and not see any problems definitely you go to Toronto when you don't see where the drinking water comes from right and you don't see the deforestation in the destruction that river there can be very obvious problems when I was there Toronto actually was running out of drinking water it's not worth explaining why it's for technical reasons even though Lake Ontario is really big you can still rendering water when i was there Toronto had literally run out of places to put its garbage and we're wasting millions of dollars sending it on trucks to the United States and a huge distance of the border was a catastrophe financially as well as psychologically basically due to government and competence obviously as a tourist you don't see any of that but if you're there and you care just a little bit you see all of it and I think I obviously I would give this advice to someone who is non vegan but I think it's even more important for vegans because vegans may think about these issues in an abstract way like it's only about the whole world like it's about air pollution on a global scale and my perspective is no it never is it's always about your town your five friends your 10 people again it would be your church group if you've got a church group I don't it's on that level of local local unit organization you know that's that's where the struggle gets fought and that's where you figure out you know if you can live a meaningful life or not and if you can't I don't know you got to move to Montreal whatever
I was part of like a youth group and we were doing like smoking and met like mental health stuff and um I see a lot of people may try to blame they tried to blame everybody and our point for the smoking thing was to blame the company's not the people like you can't attack people and expect them to change you have to like change the company's not that it's really hard to explain yeah I understand going but um I'm not exactly how to like be an activist for veganism like there's so many different approaches and I'm like I don't know what to do yo it's in the country and there's not much stuff we can do I don't know yeah well look I mean um I think the the big question that I I kind of want to talk about more on my youtube channel because it's boring but it's really important has to do with your commitment to the place you know I you know I've made comparisons between veganism and smoking all the time but the other kind of comparison have made since the start of my channel is talking about vegan politics as opposed to going to City Hall you know being involved with activism on local issues that way uh in some ways being in a small town is an advantage in that you can build up the trust of people and contacts with people locally but the choice of where you are and whether or not you're really committed to that places is fundamental in terms of my own political development I went through a long series of stages before I really embraced what I would just call pragmatic politics where I really made the decision in my life look what matters to me is whether or not the drinking water is poisoned is whether or not you know like so Toronto was on a lake all right and at that time this may have changed but I doubt it you could look at a map and be like here is the tunnel that puts sewage into the lake and here is the tunnel that takes in drinking water for the city and they were so close together what the city did was they be ult and they extended there was a little like brick wall underwater it doesn't even go to the service there's like a little wall underwater to try to make the poo go off in one direction and the drinking water come in and other day she's like if you do not need an advanced degree in biochemistry to see what the problem is anyone could look at that map and see the reality that oh another thing I'll just mention that's interesting in terms of like the larger scale of ecologic Toronto is built on a tiny tiny river now the Don River that that's just a trickle there's like nothing there there's a small park there and so on a river that was destroyed ecologically when Toronto was founded that river was big enough to have steamboats going up it so like old-fashioned southern American South steamboats would carry people up this river basically the whole length of the city the city is this now from the from the lakefront up the reason why the the water level dropped so dramatically was deforestation when you cut down the trees you cut out the hydrological cycle you reduce the amount of water being pumped through the ecosystem to simplify slightly and river levels drop so in Toronto nobody perceives these problems they're invisible although they're right in front of your face like people cross over that river on a bridge they drive their cars over the river they don't see an ecological history they don't see the devastation that's implicit in right people drink water out of their tap every day really in 5 seconds they could look at a map and see that problem so that for me this is before i became vegan back then i was strictly vegetarian i made a video tide I'd really never even heard the word vegan but I was I was pretty close to vegan in terms of what I believed in I was I was already very close to vegan and I refuse to wear leather and stuff like that um but you know for me it was really a turning point my life was like okay I want to deal with real politics and I admit it's a completely subjective definition like what is real and then what is real politics it's completely it's not objective it's subjective but to me I decided look there's all this kind of BS going on with you know people holding signs in the streets and protesting and in Toronto there's a lot of very far left politics extreme communism that sort of thing and people wanting to have opinions on issues they can't influence so like an issue an example this is probably even true at your college probably even as Sheridan College there will be people protesting human rights in Israel which is understandable but if you live in southern Ontario you cannot make an impact on human rights in Israel yeah no no but I just mentioned so like on many university campuses that is something gets protested like on campus as if it's something your professors can change you know but these kinds of issues like you know the water and the deforestation and pollution and city you know city ordinances city plan city political changes those were things I really could impact and influence and to me that seemed like something that was completely morally positive for me to do with my time as opposed to what was going on again on basically in left-wing politics in Canada I I didn't have any contact with right wing right wing politics like right-wing politics also exists but I mean I I don't I'd never even met those people it's just downtown Toronto I didn't see it obviously like I think the majority of people in Toronto vote for the Conservative Party so it exists but it may be oh I just say this not wasn't wasn't really part of my life there was no temptation for me to join the Conservatives me yeah maybe things would have turned out better for me at it haha but look what you are yeah well I don't fit in in Canada there's no place from here and you know i'm going back to china in a few weeks so we'll see how that works out um they will come back to what to what i am if you want a second but look this is this is me giving you the advice about you and activism in a small town of the material I there is no way i could tell you that the town you're born in or the town your parents own a house answer you may be more nel so does matter but there's no reason why the town you're living in would be the right town for you and in a lot of ways Toronto was the wrong city for me like in a lot of ways it's the wrong place for me to make that commitment but I think any kind of meaningful activism it's very humbling to recognize it does require that type of commitment to say I'm committed to this place at this time like for whether it's 10 years 20 years or what and this also reflects why religious organizations have a huge advantage over like vegan organizations or just left-wing organizations the fact that a church owns property it owns a building there's a church and a church basement and people meet there and play the guitar I'm not religious at all as you may have guessed but we're saying the churches of a huge advantage of that and you can go to that church and you can do fundraising where you say look we're really concerned about the drinking water we'll just stick with the same example and you know here's the map here's where the sewage goes in here is where drink water comes from this is really a problem we're concerned about and the city government is doing this and maybe at that church maybe there is 50 people who are sympathetic willing to listen you may not even need their money you know you may actually need their signatures some some things and democratic process you need 50 people to sign a piece of paper but maybe they each give you ten dollars you know can make can make a really big difference and then to be building that kind of trust with people face-to-face in one place at one time that's why historically churches that this huge advantage and vegans by and large we've started with that kind of infrastructure with other kind of support so I see one speaks I'll just finish the sense that is also when vegans make the comparison to martin luther king jr dr martin luther king jr. you have to give his full name they always skip the religious component the reality is the political power martin luther king jr. had was built on christianity was built on christian churches was built on the fact that he could go from town to town speaking at churches and each one of those churches had deep grassroots support from people who knew each other face-to-face who trusted each other they had the potential to make a political difference already before he got there and of course he had his own church he had his own ministry he had his own status in that so again when people say the oval look at Martin Luther King jr. ok we'll really look I don't I don't have any of those advantages I'm a guy on YouTube I mean and and that is the in some ways I love it like in some ways I love the fact that anyone can watch my youtube channel and get interested and get motivated and in theory can make a difference in the world but i'm also really aware of the disadvantages that I've got and that and that collectively we've got so but but the implicit point that I was saying is there's no way i can tell you you're living in the right town it may be the wrong place to maybe you decide like one year from now or whatever that you hate the town you're living in and you're going to move to Montreal or you're going to move to to Beijing like could be or or Florida you decide Sarasota Florida is where you want to sit down roots but I think the point is if you want to move somewhere else even if it's just Montreal the decision not to be there as a tourist the decision to say no no these are my people this is my problem this is my responsibility I'm not just here for fun or not just here to make money I'm you know I'm going to set down roots that even if it's completely invisible that's a big change that's a big difference that's different from just being there because all these people go to Thailand I was talking to vegans who went to Thailand and they were really being sincere with me they didn't think there was any poverty they didn't think there was any prostitution they didn't think any of these social problems existed there they're seeing it I'm I can't explain it they're seeing it just as tourists but obviously it's possible to go to Montreal or go to Toronto stay with Toronto it's possible to go to Toronto and not see any problems definitely you go to Toronto when you don't see where the drinking water comes from right and you don't see the deforestation in the destruction that river there can be very obvious problems when I was there Toronto actually was running out of drinking water it's not worth explaining why it's for technical reasons even though Lake Ontario is really big you can still rendering water when i was there Toronto had literally run out of places to put its garbage and we're wasting millions of dollars sending it on trucks to the United States and a huge distance of the border was a catastrophe financially as well as psychologically basically due to government and competence obviously as a tourist you don't see any of that but if you're there and you care just a little bit you see all of it and I think I obviously I would give this advice to someone who is non vegan but I think it's even more important for vegans because vegans may think about these issues in an abstract way like it's only about the whole world like it's about air pollution on a global scale and my perspective is no it never is it's always about your town your five friends your 10 people again it would be your church group if you've got a church group I don't it's on that level of local local unit organization you know that's that's where the struggle gets fought and that's where you figure out you know if you can live a meaningful life or not and if you can't I don't know you got to move to Montreal whatever