Angela Davis on being a Vegan
..."I think that that’s the next major arenas of struggle. I’m sometimes really disappointed that many of us can assume that we are these radical activists but we don’t know how to reflect on the food we put in our own bodies. We don’t realize the extent that we are implicated in the whole process of capitalism by participating uncritically in the food politics offered us by the great corporations-
I usually don’t mention that I’m vegan but that has evolved… I think it’s the right moment to talk about it because it is part of a revolutionary perspective- how can we not only discover more compassionate relations with human beings but how can we develop compassionate relations with the other creatures with whom we share this planet and that would mean challenging the whole capitalist industrial form of food production.
It would mean being aware driving up the interstates or driving down the 5, driving down to LA seeing all the cows on the ranches. Most of people don’t think about the fact they’re eating animals. When they’re eating a steak or eating chicken, most people don’t think about the tremendous suffering that those animals endure simply to become food products to be consumed by human beings.
I think the lack of critical engagement with the food that we eat demonstrates the extent to which the commodity form has become the primary way in which we perceive the world. We don’t go further than what Marx called the exchange value of the actual object- we don’t think about the relations that that object embodies- and were important to the production of that object whether it’s our food or our clothes or our I-pads or all the materials we use to acquire an education at an institution like this. That would really be revolutionary to develop a habit of imagining the human relations and non human relations behind all of the objects that constitute our environment."
http://www.radioproject.org/2012/02/grace-lee-boggs-berkeley/
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