Me: as told by a friend.

2 days ago, a friend told me that I "am easily offended by people who are easily offended". This was quite the epiphany. and I totally agree. I am still sorting it through.

The Mayor's Grand River Clean Up

The 8th annual movement to clean all of the trash that dirty people throw into the river! Hosted by the West Michigan Environmental Council. Volunteers wanted.

http://www.grandrivercleanup.com/#!about

let's pretend that sex trafficking is because pimps exist.

i went to a seminar on human trafficking put on by wedgwood, a trafficking education and support program. the representative who spoke did a thorough job of explaining the global and local presence of held slaves-- adults and children, sex workers and agricultural laborers.

the accounts of the victims were mortifying,

the techniques of the pimps were disturbing,

and the proximity of these occurrences was upsetting.

much of the presentation was not to engage the world of trafficking on a global scale but on a local one. businesses, intersections, and events such as art prize were cited as hotbeds for sex slaves, and the relevance of such injustice and trauma was important for me to be affronted with. community members working locally to engage this silent presence is vital.

but,

i found myself dissatisfied with some unacknowledged presences. having never taken a gender studies class in college, i owe my awareness of gender & power to my smart friends. they always remind me to consider the many ways gender passes unacknowledged when engaging issues of justice, and today's seminar was a perfect example.

it's easy and simple to pose the pimp and the prostitute as these extreme instances of how someone with power can coerce and destroy someone without power. the audience this morning accepted the trafficked girls and boys as victims of sick, power-hungry individuals- - not victims of a patriarchal power structure we all uphold. the pimp was never linked to masculinity as a product of a constructed, maintained, and affirmed system of power where men are subject and women are object. the men in the room and the power we act out every day were not acknowledged as being the fundamental source of this social disease-- the buying and selling of people for sex.

how are we to attempt to solve a problem when the reason for the problem isn't even voiced? do we [men] really think that sex trafficking is a isolated occurrence and not deeply connected to messages told to us [as men] by our culture? does our society not support the demeaning of women? can we not see that {men as heros in movies} and {men pimping 16-year-olds} are two points on the same continuum?

until issues like human trafficking are discussed not as random fluke occurrences by particularly evil people, but as symptoms of systematic social ills, we're going to continue to toss those seastars into the ocean one---at---a---time. that's what i think.

Walk For Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer is supportive of Farm Sanctuary in Eating Animals. They are the ones organizing this walk:

October 9th

6th Street Bridge Park

Grand Rapids

http://www.walkforfarmanimals.org/

Animals for thought

Eating Animals, recommended by Karie Rose! and written by Jonathan Safran Foer, has captured the mind of this non-nonchalant, watered down vegetarian(me!).I n this book, Foer uses metaphors and stories to create discussion on this country’s purposeful blindness to meat processing and all that it entails. I appreciate Foer’s honesty. He is not afraid to comment on the absurdity of our actions or lack there of, especially in lieu of current environmental crises. Foer also comments on the innate sense of power that people have. It seems to be the right of people, especially when left to their technological devices, to corrupt the seemingly simplest things, i.e. eating!

Before child labor laws, there were businesses that treated their ten-year-old employees well. Society didn’t ban child labor laws because it’s impossible to imagine children working in a good environment, but because when you give that much power to businesses over powerless individuals, it’s corrupting. When we walk around thinking we have a greater right to eat an animal than the animal has a right to live without suffering, it’s corrupting. I’m not speculating. This is our reality. Look at what factory farming is. Look at what we as a society have done to animals as soon as we had the technological power. Look at what we actually do in the name of  “animal welfare” and ” humaneness” then decide if you still believe in eating meat.
Eating Animals p. 95 and 96
bekah*