Supporting the Animal Voices Community
While our democracy is slowly crumbling around us, from budget cuts to social services to the corruption that is robocalling, here at Animal Voices we are glad to say that co-op radio is keeping this dream of democracy alive. Co-op station is non-hierarchical and your voice is part of the collective. As we push for more compassion and care towards our non-human friends, we must remember to support those organizations that care about their human members – and what is caring if not allowing you to speak and be heard.
The community that cares for nonhumans animals, that strives to see how our messy entangled lives interact is small – unfortunately small. Platforms like these help sustain our community and if you want to help support the work we do and our community, please help us by making a donation to Animal Voices at Co-op radio. It is only due to your donations that we can stay on the air. Simply go to www.coopradio.org and click on “Donate Now!”and please mark that your donation is for Animal Voices. And if you’re in Canada and make a donation of at least $25, your donations are tax deductible! Help us support and grow our community!
Locavorism and the Danger of the Local
If veg*ns really care about the environment, should they eat sustainably raised local meat, as argued by Michael Pollan in his book The Omnivores Dilemma? What is the locavore movement and what does buying local mean?We have with us Vasile Stanescu, a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in the Program of Modern Thought and Literature. We discuss an essay he wrote entitled: “‘Green’ Eggs and Ham? The Myth of Sustainable Poultry and the Danger of the Local”, in which Vasile uncovers and clarifies the trend of localvorism.
Vasile argues that locavores express a falsely nostalgic desire to return to a nonexistent past, wherein they express or ignore issues of sexism, racism, speciesism, homophobia and anti-immigration sentiments which an emphasis only on the local, as opposed to the global, can entail.
Permaculture, Nature, and Animal Labour
Delving deeper into the themes of the local and veganism, we talk to Erin Innes. She is a radical educator, permaculture 
activist, and cultural changemaker. Her background in anti-capitalist and environmental justice struggles informs her practise of Permaculture as a radical realignment of human social processes with the living earth that we are a part of. In 2008, Erin started the Farmhouse Farm, Vancouver’s first bike-powered backyard Community Supported Agriculture project. She turned the lawn of this rented home into a farm that provided produce to the Farmhouse’s five residents as well as to five other families across the city, delivered once a week by bicycle.
With Erin, we explore exploring what permaculture means today and how it relates to veganism, local eating, and social justice. She explains how permaculture involves non-human animals in labour that challenges many vegan conceptions of just relationships with animals. Much like Vasile, Rin helps complicate our ideas of veganism and caring for animals when we start thinking about how we relate to and use the local and global environment.
Listen to this show here.
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