Why don't people put their passion and energy into all the women and children that white men abuse? Why not focus on the white male power system that makes people of color, women, children, animals and the environment instruments of their control? That's where the locus of the mis-use and abuse of power is.

If ALL people (not just white men) were treated with respect, dignity and as equals maybe collectively we would treat our animals better too. How can you expect animals to be treated well in such a fucked up world with such fucked up value systems? Get to the root of the problems. People abuse animals because they think they have the right to.

I wouldn't put the change in my pocket on Tucker calling for his death. Hell, I'm willing to bet that someone on FOX will excuse the man!

Cheers
Aj

[QUOTE=BullDog;256233]Why don't people their passion and energy into all the women and children that white men abuse? Why not focus on the white male power system that makes people of color, women, children, animals and the environment instruments of their control? That's where the locus of the mis-use and abuse of power is.

If ALL people (not just white men) were treated with respect, dignity and as equals maybe collectively we would treat our animals better too. How can you expect animals to be treated well in such a fucked up world with such fucked up value systems? Get to the root of the problems. People abuse animals because they think they have the right to.[/QUOTE]


That's exactly what I have been saying BullDog. The root of the problem is the othering which allows us to view animals and other human beings as less than and therefore not worthy of decent treatment. I think others have been saying this too. So that is where my passion and energy is going.

Fighting for the rights of animals is not overlooking or not fighting for the rights of women and children. And the reverse is true as well. Anytime someone fights for the rights of queers, POC, women, animals, children and so on they are helping to fight for all of us. At least that is how I see it.

When people get all upset over Michael Vick and have multiple threads about it, but there is no discussion of women being abused by multiple football players over and over and over, I think women are being ignored. It's been all over the news. Some of the biggest football stars have done it.

[quote=julieisafemme;256238]Each issue is a piece of the puzzle. If you leave out any one, the picture will be incomplete. None of us can take care of ALL of the issues, but if we focus on the ones that speak the loudest to us and respect the efforts of others who speak on the other issues, we might actually get somewhere as a society.

I am here to tell you I am NOT ignoring the abuse of women. Not now. Not ever. As a survivor of abuse it filters into and affects EVERYTHING I touch in this world. Ignoring the abuse of women is ignoring me and I do not do that anymore.

This thread is about animal abuse and what Obama said to a football coach. I am thinking about that and trying to link it to the bigger picture as I see it. That includes the abuse of human beings as I have mentioned in all of my posts.

I am tired of being lumped into some group who does not care about, advocate for or passionately fight the abuse of women.

I have no idea why you think I am lumping you in with anything.

Then who are you talking to? You do not quote posts of specific people. You paint these broad brush strokes and we are supposed to figure out if we fit or not??? I will NOT sit by and let any woman be abused. I will NOT sit by and let another woman or girl go through what I went through and still do this day! Now I am riled up and so I will take a break from this thread. I do appreciate your voice in defense of women. I wish you would use it to support us here instead of what feels like to me tearing us down.

So we're not supposed to bring up things like racism and sexism? This thread was placed in the politics section and the OP said they weren't going to vote for Obama because of his remarks. Some of us are looking at this from a much broader picture than others.

You make a good point. Because people were talking about taking justice into their own hands or expressing fantasies about what that would be like, I thought it might be useful to post some links about what happened the LAST time that was allowed in this country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynchin..._United_States

http://withoutsanctuary.org/ (this is a slideshow of lynching images, they are VERY disturbing)

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj...chingyear.html

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj...nchcauses.html

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj...ingsstate.html

http://www.umass.edu/complit/aclanet...t/USLynch.html

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum...9.02.04.x.html

Now, I want to say this. I get it about revenge and vengeance fantasies. I understand why people have them. But when you *indulge* in them and give voice to them, I think one should be fully and completely cognizant of what one is talking about. When one is fantasizing about the cathartic glories of vigilante justice, one should know that the reality of vigilante justice is not what you see in an old movie with Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson. Vigilante justice is brutal, it is violent and while it might seem that someone like Michael Vick would only be 'getting what he did to those dogs back' keep in mind that this is the SAME mentality that inspired the Billy Holiday song 'Strange Fruit'. To the minds of the mob, those that were hung from trees were just getting what they deserved.

Reading this thread I had a most ironic moment. Perhaps the most ironic I've had on this site so far. A justice system that I do not trust and which I KNOW is stacked against me, is also the only real protection I have against the sentiments expressed here. My only hope, irony of ironies, is that if *I* were accused of a crime the courts would get to me first and then I could get a lawyer and hopefully something resembling a fair trial (class would be my ace in the hole here).

As I said at the head of this post, I get the fantasies of righteous vengeance visited upon the deserving. But I also get it that I cannot--and most certainly should not--indulge in such fantasies. In 1998, a man named James Byrd was murdered by three white men in Texas. Not just murdered. They slit his throat, beat him with a bat, and then tied him to a truck and dragged him just to be certain. When I first heard about that, or about Matthew Sheppard or Brandon Teena, I certainly had feelings that were of vengeance visited upon those criminals. But then I thought "if I indulge this, if I let myself think that I am righteous for this stance, what POSSIBLE moral distinction can I draw between myself and the people of a small Alabama town who lynched one of my uncles in the late 20s?" I realized that there was none. I would be no better than them--lacking in a mob, I would not have the means to carry out my vengeance--but as Organicbutch's tagline says "thoughts become things, choose the good ones". I am the niece of a man who was lynched 40 years before I ever drew my first breath of air and yet his death stabs through the heart of my family to this day and it has been the best part of a century.

I am not trying to change anyone's mind or make anyone feel anything differently about this issue. Indulge your vengeance fantasies in expression here. Sleep well at night knowing that you are on the side of righteousness. But know what it is you are fantasizing about. Know what side you have chosen.

Cheers
Aj

Toughy posted a link, did you go and read that page? So you're talking about YOUR personal feelings about Michael Vick, okay. I’m not sure I have anything to say about your personal feelings about anything--in fact, I can't imagine why I should say anything about your personal feelings so I won't.

Cheers
Aj

I might have sadistic fantasies about torturing him and taking the law into my own hands but I would not. thats the big difference. Instead of stalking him, sending hate letters and contemplating ways to make his life miserable I'll use my time constructively helping animals.

For the people who haven't heard the song that Aj mentioned:

I think for myself it might sometimes be easier to talk about, dissect and express outrage about mistreatment of animals than to touch on the mistreatment of women and my own abuse. I don't know if this is true for others. That does not though mean that I am ignoring the discussion.

Happy New Year to you all and thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. I'll be thinking about in the days to come.

I've been chomping at the bit trying to get online to post.
Sometimes a big pause to really think about it all backwards and forwards is
the only damn way I can really see shit for what it is.

I am disgusted to say neither my sisters or father could serve impartially on a trial of a POC person for any crime. I have worked internally very hard on many levels for a hell of a lot of years to not be anything like them. I think we as white people gotta pull out the mirror look in it and most importantly feel where POC people are coming from.
Our brains absorb all types of bull shit. At some point though there must come a time when people make a choice to be fuckin rigid in their thinking because that's easier than examining under that ugly layer.

I wonder what a good lawyer's eliminating juror questions must be when defending
a POC in this world?
In all honesty would I be eliminated?
Have I deprogrammed enough ugly yet?

In addition -

http://www.theamericanmuseum.org/february.10.fifth.html


Strange Fruit

First Published In
The New York Teacher
1936

Abel Meeropol, under the pseudonym Lewis Allan
(1903 – 1986)

Southern trees bear strange fruit:
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze;
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south:
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop.
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

"On August 7, 1930, in Marion, Indiana, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, black men arrested the previous day on robbery, rape, and murder charges, were forcibly taken from their jail cells by a white mob, beaten savagely [possibly to death], then hanged [or hung] from a tree. Marion police officers took part in the kidnapping and murders. The photograph was taken by Lawrence Beitler. Beitler worked almost around the clock for ten straight days, printing thousands of copies of the picture, which he sold for fifty cents each. Abel Meeropol was moved to write Strange Fruit when he saw a copy of the photograph. The poem was set to music, and became the piece Billie Holiday sang to close her performances. Samuel Grafton said of the song, in 1939, "If the anger of the exploited ever mounts high enough in the South, it now has its Marseillaise." In 1999, Time Magazine named Strange Fruit the song of the century.
...
[Editor's note: Marion was not in the South. Indiana was not a Confederate state, nor did it even share a border with any of the states that seceded or remained neutral 70 years before the lynchings. Although it is comforting to believe that the demon of savagery borne of hatred lies only in the Southern character, in fact, Marion, Indiana, lies farther north than New York City.]"

NPR recently took a retrospective look at these events - worth listening to.

Strange Fruit: Anniversary Of A Lynching

One lawyer will want the ugly because it will help the case. The other won't be able to eliminate the ugly because it's so pervasive. To be picked for a jury, I think you have to seem generic, bland, open but trusting of the justice system and at least a little reluctant to be there. Jury selection isn't a question of worthiness, sadly.

Ps. I would love to see more public debate about what a jury of one's peers actually should be.

You bring up a salient point here, Corkey--you'll notice that nothing I have said in the last three days of talking about this can be read as me forgiving Vick or proclaiming him my new best friend and boon companion through thick-and-thin. I don't know Mr. Vick and the odds-on chances are that I will never meet him since he lives in an orbit that, quite honestly, I don't aspire to. Blessedly, it is not up to me to forgive him.

I'm a sucker for redemption stories. Maybe because of my own manifest flaws and the ways in which I have lived below my potential or made just mind-numblingly stupid choices. I want to believe that Michael Vick truly feels remorse. Because even though some people--perhaps with good reason--believe that he doesn't feel remorse or doubt it, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I want to because it would be a better world by a small increment if he felt remorse and was truly determined to go down a different road. I want to because I want to believe my own self-redemption--from something I will not bore you with the details with--was genuine. I hope it was. Everyday I wake up and strive to be a little better than I was yesterday--a little more the woman I dreamt of being, the woman my son saw when he was only six months old, the woman my wife fell in love with, the person I sold myself to my employer as being, etc. I don't believe in any kind of divine beings or afterlife, as far as I can tell, this is It. You have one take at life, there are no rehearsals, and the director said "Action!" the moment you took your first breath we have a limited amount of time in which to figure out how we are going to live. The consequences we wreak on other's lives are very, very real. None of the things I've done that were stupid in galactic proportions were done out of malice or a desire to do evil. Most were done out of selfishness and within a reasonable amount of time, I realized how horribly I'd fucked up. Then I only wanted to make things better. Absent other evidence, I feel bound to give Mr. Vick the benefit of the doubt because I've been a complete fuck-up at times in my life.

That might be pure sentiment on my part. It probably is. I still want to believe that he understands that what he did was wrong, that he only wants to make things right and I hope that his example inspires others to turn away from cruelty. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. I know I would mean it and for all the right reasons. I want to believe that he would to.

Cheers
Aj