Vegan Warrior Princesses Attack!

In the first of our two-part series, Nichole and Callie discuss what mass incarceration is, how we came to have the system we do today, how the system currently works (including topics like bail, pleading guilty vs not-guilty, and who is actually in prison), and then we end with a heartbreaking story from Kalief Browder about his tragic experience in our prison system.

In This Episode

Content Warning: discussion of unfair policies around incarceration including racial targeting, links to slavery, and economic discrimination; rape and suicide.

What is Mass Incarceration/The Prison Industrial Complex?

“Whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, the carceral state, or hyperincarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage”

Source: Mass Incarceration (Oxford Bibliographies)

* Obama said -”The United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.”

* “An estimated 1.6 million individuals were held in state and federal prisons at the end of 2014, while roughly 1 out of every 36 adults fell under correctional supervision, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.”

Source: Ending Mass Incarceration (The Atlantic)

How did we get here?

Slavery and the 13th Amendment, ratified on December 6, 1865

* “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”

* People celebrated but it *also* legalized slavery for convicted criminals

The Civil Rights Movement

Reagan & the War on Drugs

* Reagan “Total war”, “War on Crime”, “War on Drugs”, “Law and Order” all subtle signals

* Reagan was fighting back against protesters, backlash from Civil rights movement, black power/panther movement, anti-war, women’s liberation movement and gay liberation

* Reagan’s enemies list

* With the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 Congress enacted different mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana

* “Southern Strategy” – switched poor whites over to republican party

The Clintons

* “Bill Clinton presided over the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. Clinton did not declare the War on Crime or the War on Drugs—those wars were declared before Reagan was elected and long before crack hit the streets—but he escalated it beyond what many conservatives had imagined possible. He supported the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine, which produced staggering racial injustice in sentencing and boosted funding for drug-law enforcement.”

* “Clinton championed the idea of a federal “three strikes” law in his 1994 State of the Union address and, months later, signed a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police forces. The legislation was hailed by mainstream-media outlets as a victory for the Democrats, who “were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it th...

A common tactic in the vegan movement is to talk about how affordable veganism is. But that doesn’t hold true for many people. To illustrate this point, the princesses tackle how expensive it is to have no money.

In This Episode

This week we cover several aspects of being poor, reviewing the realities around housing, food, banking, jobs, medical costs, bail.

To kick off this topic, we started with some important stats:

Federal Poverty Level (FPL)

A measure of income issued every year by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Federal poverty levels are used to determine your eligibility for certain programs and benefits, including savings on Marketplace health insurance, and Medicaid and CHIP coverage.

The 2017 federal poverty level (FPL) income numbers below are used to calculate eligibility for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). 2016 numbers are slightly lower, and are used to calculate savings on Marketplace insurance plans for 2017.

* $12,060 for individuals

* $16,240 for a family of 2

* $20,420 for a family of 3

* $24,600 for a family of 4

* $28,780 for a family of 5

* $32,960 for a family of 6

* $37,140 for a family of 7

* $41,320 for a family of 8

Children & Poverty

Children are the most likely to be poor – nearly one in five children live in poverty.

Households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (17%), especially households with children headed by single women (30%) or single men (22%), Black non-Hispanic households (22%) and Hispanic households (19%).

Nearly 101 million Americans – just under one-third of the population – are trying to get by with

incomes this low (twice poverty level)

In 2015:

43.1 million people (13.5 percent) were in poverty. 42.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, including 29.1 million adults and 13.1 million children.

Joke in the Middle

How do dinosaurs pay their bills?

Links and Information

News

* Arkansas Governor Signs “Ag-Gag” Into Law (Mercy for Animals)

* Brazilian Meat Producers Caught in Global Scandal (VegNews)

* Harvard Hosts Vegan Conference (VegNews)

Recommended Vegan Organizations that Help Food Insecure People

* Food Not Bombs

* Chili on Wheels

* RADDISH

Resources Used in this Episode

* Federal Poverty Level (HealthCare.gov)

* Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics (Feeding America)

* The High Cost of Being Poor (CBS)

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This week on VWPA we’re talking about the problems with consumerist veganism and the concept of “voting with your dollar.”

In this Episode

Nichole and Callie critically analyze the popular concept of consumerist veganism, whereby a vegan can be an activist through the purchases they make. Once consumerist vegans themselves, the princesses relate information they’ve learned along their SJW journey that led them to conclude that consumerist veganism is in many ways harmful and should not be touted as a definitive way to end animal exploitation.

Main themes addressed:

* Consumerist veganism fails to challenge systems of oppression and in fact actually supports them, particularly colonialism and the white heteropatriarchy that ensures that affluent cis white men have more economic power than anyone else

 

* Voting with your dollar acknowledges and encourages classism and erases the experience of people without as much economic power, while also being racially insensitive to the dark history of voting in our country and others

 

* 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe accounts for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent

 

* Personal consumption is only 25% of money spent

– The other 75% is military, industry, government, and corporations

 

* Consumerism means we are still buying into marketing and are allowing corporations to tell us what is and is not possible/available = they are still in control

 

* Consumerist veganism is human-centric: it seeks to make humans as comfortable and accommodated as possible in choosing a diet that is free of animal products VS being animal-centric to focus on the injustices of speciesism and how to end them. It fails to challenge speciesism or the capitalist idea that it is ok to exploit living beings for profit.

 

* The government will subsidize and use animal surplus anyway; while some lives are being saved the numbers are still staggering. 400k out of 9.5 billion is not really progress in the grand scheme of things

 

* Having to pay for food is in itself a violence; by being consumerist vegan we support this violence against basic rights to life

– 1 in 8 people worldwide do not get enough food

– 1 million children die from hunger-related causes, 34 million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition

– Hunger kills more people per year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined

 

* Look into low/zero waste and

To prep for our “voting with your dollar” episode next week, VWPA tackles voting from 1776 to 2016, in the United States.

In This Episode

First Nichole walks us through the history of voting in the United States, focusing largely on federally passed legislation, and then Callie takes us into today, looking at voter suppression tactics used to influence and steal the 2016 election.

History: Timeline

Intro from Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

The basic principle that governed voting in colonial America was that voters should have a “stake in society.” Leading colonists associated democracy with disorder and mob rule, and believed that the vote should be restricted to those who owned property or paid taxes. Only these people, in their view, were committed members of the community and were sufficiently independent to vote. Each of the thirteen colonies required voters either to own a certain amount of land or personal property, or to pay a specified amount in taxes.

Many colonies imposed other restrictions on voting, including religious tests. Catholics were barred from voting in five colonies and Jews in four.

The right to vote varied widely in colonial America. In frontier areas, seventy to eighty percent of white men could vote. But in some cities, the percentage was just forty to fifty percent.

1776 – voting started off classist, racist, sexist AF

* Only land owners can vote

* Must be 21 or older

* Religious restrictions keep Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and others from voting

* mMost are white male Protestants over the age of 21

* Women are allowed to vote in New Jersey, as long as they own property

1787 – states decide who can vote

* A national agreement on voting rights can’t be reached, so each state will decide

* Stays primarily white male landowners

1789 – George Washington elected president

* Only 6% of population can vote

1790 – only white men can become citizens & vote

* The Naturalization Act of 1790 bars non-white immigrants from becoming citizens

The act restricted citizenship to “any alien, being a free white person” who had been in the U.S. for two years, in good standing, and had sworn an oath to the Constitution. In effect, it left out indentured servants, slaves, American Indians, Asian people later on, and most women

* As anti-immigrant sentiment grew in the U.S., the residency requirement was increased to five, and then 15 years

* Created due to a lack of definition for a citizen, or natural born citizen, in Constitution. When Constitution was drafted, the prevailing belief was that “one became American by choice, not by descent.” Ironic how much this would change in a few short years.

* At this same time, interestingly, 6 states did allow for free African Americans to vote (Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont)

1807 – New Jersey Bans Women From Voting

* Women will not be allowed to vote anywhere in the U.S. for the next 113 years

1812 Mass Governor redraws voting district lines

* Governor Elbridge Gerry redraws voting district lines to favor the Republican-dominated legislature against the Federalist Party

* The term “gerrymander” means the drawing of legislative district lines, usually in a bizarre and quite transparently biased manner, to give an unfair advantage to one group or political party

This is still an issue today – for instance, the 2012 election cycle in Pennsylvania saw 51% of votes cast for Democrats, and yet the Democratic Part only won 5 out of 18 seats

Today we review the latest vegan health-related documentary, What the Health, by the makers of Cowspiracy!

In This Episode

We were honored to be invited to prescreen What the Health, the latest hard-hitting documentary by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, the creators of Cowspiracy. While disappointed by a few things in the film, mostly the continuation of fat-shaming and promoting veganism as a magical cure-all, we found the documentary incredibly effective, engaging and entertaining. We highly, highly recommend it. Even as two people who came into veganism through health, we were stunned by the amount of information that was new to us.

Be aware that there is a lot of footage of dead animals being processed, and there’s some really disgusting footage of pus that has rendered Nichole unable to eat ever again.

What the Health will be available online from March 16-20 only, you can pre-order or arrange a screening on their website here: http://www.whatthehealthfilm.com/

Links and Information

News

* Independent Advises Christians to Go Vegan for Lent (VegNews)

* Think Tank to Focus on Plant-Protein (VegNews)

This week we’re talking about losing relationships over politics today, given that it is such a common occurrence in the current political climate.

In This Episode

It is very common nowadays to hear about people unfriending, unfollowing or flat-out ending relationships with people around them over political disagreements. Trump’s election brought passions over social issues to the forefront and forced us all to take strong sides for what we believe.

Links and Information

News

* Germany Bans Meat at all Official Functions (One Green Planet)

* City Council Asks VegFest to Sell Meat Sausages (VegNews)

* Bacon Brand Buys Plant-Based Meat Company (VegNews)

Mentioned in this Episode

* America’s Latest Social Crisis: Couples Call It Quits Over Trump (Zero Hedge)

* 2016 Brought Out Worst in People (Monmouth University Polling Institute)

* When a presidential election costs you the people you love the most (Mashable)

We’re back with part 2 of our blow-by-blow breakdown of what is wrong with the Unnatural Vegan’s recent “Why I’m not an intersectional/social justice vegan” video, and also using this as an opportunity to go back and do intersectionality right.

In This Episode

Finishing up where we left off last week, we finsih our analysis of the Unnatural Vegan’s video about why she is not an intersectional slash social justice vegan, and give our final thoughts on the matter.

Links and Information

News

* The NRA has persuaded Congress to legalize the killing of bear cubs in wildlife refuges (ThinkProgress)

* 12-Year-Old Marley Dias Is Publishing An Activism Guide For Children And Teens (Bustle)

* CRISPR Scientists Are Bringing Woolly Mammoths Back From The Dead (I Fucking Love Science)

* Animal Testing Resumes For Avon, Mary Kay, And Estee Lauder (The Dog Files)

* School District Swaps Pepperoni Pizza for Plants (VegNews)

Mentioned in this Episode

* #BHM: Donate to Black Vegan Projects – Black Vegans Rock’s list of black vegan organizations, campaigns & projects that you can donate to

* Black feminism and intersectionality (International Socialist Review): great breakdown of the history of black feminism and intersectionality, including reference to the Matrix of Domination by Patricia Hill Collins mentioned in last week’s episode

* RE: “Dogmatic Justice vs. Morality/ Why I’m not an intersectional vegan” Unnatural Vegan: A Privileged Vegan’s AMAZING response to the latest follow up video by Unnatural Vegan

* Unnatural Vegan – The Miniseries: Reg Flowers is on 10 and it’s glorious.

* Unnatural Vegan’s Dogma About Intersectionality: Reg Flowers is still on 10, and it’s still glorious

We are on 10 today, talking about the Unnatural Vegan’s recent “Why I’m not an intersectional/social justice vegan” video, and also using this as an opportunity to go back and do intersectionality right.

In This Episode

We can’t even begin to summarize the problems in the Unnatural Vegan’s video about why she is not an intersectional slash social justice vegan, so we took this chance to go bit by bit through her video and talk about how each point made is problematic and deeply concerning. There was so much to say we couldn’t even fit it into one episode! Stay tuned for Part 2 next week, we finish deconstructing her video and wrap up our thoughts on the matter.

We also were glad to have an opportunity to revisit the topic of intersectionality, since we made an episode about it before we were properly educated on the concept and have always wanted the chance to do better. So we review intersectionality, the origin and definition of the word, as well as discuss why it is so critically important not just from an emotional, communications aspect, but also from a legal one.

Links and Information

News

* Trump delays listing bumblebee as an endangered species (The Verge)

* Meat substitutes are on the curriculum at UC Berkeley (SF Chronicles)

* Millennials are Bringing Down the Beef Industry (VegNews)

* Stop Fighting Veganism, It Has Already Won (Huffington Post

Mentioned in this Episode

* Easily-Triggered Privileged People Have Turned Society Into Their Own Giant Safe Space (The Establishment): Our culture is set up to protect the powerful from anything they can’t handle.

* Re: “Why I’m not an intersectional/ social justice vegan” by Unnatural Vegan: A Privileged Vegan’s response video

* Unnatural Vegan Gets an “F” for Social Justice: Reg Flowers’ response video

We needed a break from all the heavy this week so we popped some corn, poured some drinks, and watched Zootopia. Here is our intersectional, vegan review! SPOILERS AHEAD!

In This Episode

We kicked back to watch Zootopia this week, Disney’s animated animal adventure that attempts to tackle issues of sexism, racism, and achieving your dreams despite adversity.

We enjoyed the movie overall but definitely had some criticism of how this complex, sensitive material was handled. Cute, fun, and a little off the mark, Zootopia is worth watching and also worth criticizing.

Beware: this episode contains many, many spoilers!

Links and Information

News

* Vegan NFL Champ Urges Super Bowl Fans to Go Meatless (VegNews)

* USDA Removes All Animal Welfare Info From Website (VegNews)

* California Dairy Workers File Class Action Suit (VegNews)

We’re celebrating two years of VWPA on today’s episode with TWO jokes and answers to listener questions while we eat tater tots and drink Bloody Mary’s. Cheers!

In This Episode

We’re drinking Bloody Mary’s, eatin’ tots, telling jokes and answering questions on today’s 2 year celebration episode!

Listener Questions

* What super power would you have if you could only have one? (from listener Rose)

* What has been the hardest part of keeping the show going? (from listener Tabitha)

* Have you changed your opinion on anything since you started? If so, what? (from listener Tabitha)

* Favorite books? Tv shows? Games? Feminist role models? (from listener Melissa)

* Are you returning to England ever? (from listener Lucy)

* Have you looked into zero waste lifestyle, what do you think about it? (from listener Lucy)

* What are your biggest pet peeves and weirdest habit? (from listener Lucy)

* How are you? (from listener Pellumb)

* Do you know how awesome you both are? (from listener Tabitha)

* How do you feel about being patriarchal-capitalism-carnist smashing heroes to your listeners? (from listener Melissa)

* What’s next for VWPA? YouTube? Overnight activities, lectures, etc., future plans? (from listeners Mike and Allison)