Glenn's little ugly blog

I work for a company that develops direct mail campaigns for charities, among other things. I end up reading a whole bunch of examples of fundraising letters, and I see outside examples as well. Some are powerful and some are good.

I've found that the powerful letters are the ones that actually bring tears to my eyes. And very often it's one small section of the letter, a turn of phrase, a sentence that catches me. It's hard to explain – and I'm no good at really analyzing it.

Roger Craver posted on the Agitator today about an email he received. That email has one of those sections that caught me right in the chest. (The whole post and email are very much worth reading.)

And if you live near Philly and need your car washed, or your dog walked, or your plants watered while you're away... I'm there. And I can bring a gaggle of Youth Ministry kids to help with bigger jobs. If you visit Philadelphia and would like a home-cooked meal while you're in town, I'm your gal.

More importantly, however, you'll get a great deal of sincere gratitude from everyone involved, prayers of thanks and warm blessings on your behalf, and the knowledge that you helped another human being, one on one.

Bam. Right there in the second paragraph of this excerpt.

Last week a co-worker sent around a letter from a refugee to an Amnesty refugee coordinator, sharing the news that he successfully got asylum in Canada. Powerful stuff to begin with, but his email also had one of these moments:

In her conclusion the judge talked about so many things but the one, which touched me- She mentioned AI Canada, which gave me a support letter. I felt like she was saying that if AI Canada supported Mr. Mugisho, who am I to deny him.

I think there's something about really getting across not only the personal element of the story, but the power that Amnesty supporters have to change people's lives and make a real difference. All presented so simply.

The first example was written by a professional copywriter and the second was not, but they both have this moment of emotional power.

I've found that some poetry has this kind of effect sometimes, when it's really well written. When I'm browsing in the poetry section I often judge a book on whether a random selection has a moment when I feel a catch in my throat, the sudden presence of tears in my eyes.

I had someone say to me today that "meat is not killing for pleasure." Of course he said this after I said that meat is just killing for pleasure because meat is unnecessary.

In our world (at least in North America) we don't need to kill animals to eat. There are plenty of options available. This would seem to me to make eating meat a choice. We don't need to eat meat to survive anymore.

When we choose to do things that are no longer necessary we do it because we like to do it, because it makes us feel good. For our own pleasure.

Maybe we aren't doing the killing ourselves, or finding the act of killing pleasurable, but we are certainly getting pleasure from the death of an animal.

Last week I took a 3-day course, "The Practice of Engagement" which is part of SFU's certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement. Vince Verlaan, who works with HB Lanarc, a consulting firm which focuses on community planning, especially around issues of sustainability.

From their website:

HB Lanarc is a leading planning and design firm helping to create complete, attractive, ecologically resilient, and prosperous communities in British Columbia and across North America. Our mission is to produce planning and design solutions for a sustainable future.

I thought the class was really good. I've been really inspired by the courses in this certificate program so far. 3 days of intensive class time is tiring, but I leave with lots of ideas and renewed confidence.

For instance, I'm involved in planning a dialogue event with members of Vancouver's animal advocacy community which is to be held on January 23rd. I've been concerened, even worried, that the discussions may be broken up by a lot of disagreements and arguments. Now that I've learned more about how to plan these events, and have seen more examples of how they work, I am much less worried about conflict. The format of the event will be such that conflict is less likely to happen, and even if it does, I think it can be handled.

What I have begun thinking more about is mapping out the potential attendees of this event, and how we can make as many of them aware of the event as possible.

It's all exciting and fun, and I'm looking forward to the event, even if I am anxious about it. The room at the library has been booked, and the pre-planning committee will be meeting soon to go over the next steps.

If you have any ideas about the event, or would like more info, get in touch!

This course was a practical look at designing engagement processes. One of the interesting case studies was participatory budgeting in Brazil. Entire communities come together to decide how 6-10% of the budget will be spent. It sounds pretty amazing, and I would love to see something like that happen here.

Vince was a good teacher, and I don't really want to spent time critiquing him or his teaching style. There was some time spent doing lecture-style class work, and then we did several sessions of actual practice with different tools and dialogue methods.

My favorite exercise was the "Critical Friends" exercise. We broke up into groups of 4 people. 1 person in each group explained to the others a challenge he or she was working on. Then the other 3 people had 5 minutes to ask that person clarifying questions. Not challenging questions, just clarifying questions. For the next 12 minutes after that, the 3 people discussed the original person's challenge, while he or she took notes on what they were saying. Finally, the original person recapped what he or she had heard from the others and what had been learned.

In our group it worked really well. The person with the challenge that we were discussing was actually quite amazed that it worked so well. Hearing other people talk about your own idea without being able to take part in their conversation somehow frees us up to really listen to what is being said and not take it personally. I'd really like to try this out in other situations, like possibly work situations, although it won't work all the time and has pretty specific uses.

Now I've got a few more tools I can use and lots more ideas about exciting future uses for them!

This past month has been really busy, and I'm going to try to do a better job of writing on this blog from now on!

I went to Book Camp Vancouver last week and heard a good talk by Lorraine Murphy (aka Raincoaster). The biggest takeaway for me was that "blogs need to be fed." I've been terribly neglecting this blog and feel like I haven't been taking good enough care of the poor guy.

From now on I'm resolving to write daily.

I'm not really going back to school, but I have signed up for the SFU Certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement.

I'm very excited about this series of courses. The program is 4 3-day courses, plus at least 3 1-day workshops, and a final practicum (to be determined). Since I'm already working on the Animal Advocacy Camp to be held in January of 2010, that will probably end up being my practicum.

From the SFU program website:

In this program, participants will become aware of and learn how to design and implement a range of engagement models that create and structure good practice in a variety of settings, e.g., local neighbourhood organizing, multi-stakeholder dialogue and decision-making, planning for land use or service provision and many other important matters of public interest.

The first course (which is a pre-requisite for the rest of the courses) is "DLOG700 - Dialogue and Engagement – Principles and Concepts Course":

This course provides the conceptual foundation for the certificate program. Students will learn key frameworks for understanding the nature and core elements of dialogue and civic engagement, the power dynamics involved in engagement, and how to choose the right dialogue process for different kinds of issues and contexts.

A couple of days ago I got all the preliminary readings and assignments for this first course. All in all about 23 pages of reading. Before class begins we are expected to have read and written down at least 2 comments or questions about each of the frameworks we'll be studying.

The first of the readings is "The Core Principles for Public Engagement" from National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD, www.thataway.org). It presents 7 recommendations for conducting successful public engagement events, from planning through to follow-up.

I was particularly struck by the suggestions to be as inclusive as possible by breaking down potential barriers of race, class, economic situation, and so on, as well as being as open and transparent as possible. Being inclusive can be extremely difficult. It seems to me that it would involve clearly defining who the event should include, such as who is affected by the issue under discussion and what limitations might affect their inclusion. How can an event be inclusive of all potentially interested people if lines of communication are not open to them already? The logistics of trying to reach into another community can be daunting.

I really liked the recommendation to "Be clear and open about the process, and provide a public record of the organizers, sponsors, outcomes, and range of views and ideas expressed." Knowing who is involved in an event helps not only the attendees but also any outsiders to better understand and trust any outcomes. Transparency can sometimes conflict with efforts to create a safe environment for sharing and interacting, since some subjects demand anonymity for reasons of safety and security.

The rest of the readings deal with different frameworks for dialogue. I have not read them yet, but I'm looking forward to learning the tools they'll present.

I am not a farmer. I did grow up in the country and ate a whole lot of food grown on our own land. I have a small garden now, but the majority of the food I eat is grown by someone else.

Photo by thebittenword.com via flickr

I have also never studied agriculture, so this post is a whole lot of conjecture. It would be interesting to know if any of my ideas are valid or just completely out there.

I of course would like to see an end to the use of animals in agriculture. By this I mean all agriculture. We already know that small scale farms can function extremely well using no animal by-products as fertilizers of soil amendments. If you have any doubts about this check out the Veganic Agriculture Network. The Heugonaut Street Farm in upstate New York has been farming veganically for years, and doing well at it.

But can a system like this work on a large scale?

From reading and listening to farmers I sense a strange tension in their worldview. Farmers seem to want to be seen as tillers of the soil, but they also want to use the technology of GMO crops and pesticides. They use the phrase "modern family farm" but and invoke an idyllic vision of green hills and grazing cattle, but in reality the farms are all closed barns and computers. Animals are fed, watered, hatched, and killed by machines. Crops are partially planted and monitored by machines, but for some reason they hold on to the past, holding archaic country fairs that praise growing plants by hand, knowledge of nature learned from hard work rather than books at a university.

For some reason this seems to me like it's a halfway adoption of technology that's really undermining any potential for real effectiveness. Instead of this haphazard use of technology, why not re-evaluate the whole system?

What if leaving agriculture in the hands of farmers isn't the best and most efficient means of feeding the world? Current systems of agriculture are inefficient and wasteful. I don't know if this is necessarily bad - since natural processes are very often inefficient and wasteful. But, if we take out this emotional attachment to farming, could we develop a system that has more potential for feeding more people and doing much less harm to the planet and its inhabitants?

One system that is being proposed is vertical farming. This is by no means a perfect system either, since there would be large energy costs with artificial lighting and heating. More information about the pros and cons of vertical farming can be found on the Wikipedia page.

Of course, reducing or completely eliminating animal agriculture would free up huge amounts of farmland to be used for food for humans instead of the extreme wastefulness of growing crops to feed animals which we then eat, at a huge net loss of energy and nutrients.

Unless we reduce the amount of land that we are using to grow crops, we're going to continue destroying wildlife habitat, pushing more species to extinction.

Would GMO crops increase productivity so that less land could be used to grow more crops? There's a whole lot of mixed information on this, but mostly the companies who produce these crops say yes, while some scientists have found that GMO crops may actually decrease yields while increasing the amount of pesticides required. A nasty side-effect of this increased pesticide use may be pesticide-resistance in insects and weeds, which would require ever stronger pesticides and herbicides. More on GMO crops can be found onthe Genetically modified foods page.

This is kind of a half-formulated bunch of thoughts about this subject, but maybe it will be part of the conversation that I think we really need to have about how we are going to feed all of the people on this planet fairly, without destroying it for future generations. I'm sure it can be done, if we really think seriously about it. I'm sure that we can reduce ecological damage, stop the exploitation of animals, and provide for the growing population of humans – I think we might be smart enough.

Food extremist

One who feels that the enjoyment of food is more important than any pain or suffering caused by the production of that food.

Food is a touchy subject. Eating and the making of food (cooking, farming, gardening, etc.) play such a central and emotional role in our lives.

For some, the enjoyment of food becomes a central and almost fetishistic part of life. Eating and the preparation of food become more important than any other part of life. These people say things like "whatever we do to animals is ok, as long as we eat them" or "it's my right to eat whatever I want".

They skew reality to make food more important than sustenance. It becomes art, a reason to live, performance, an absolute core of experience. They push food – which has some of these aspects – to a complete extreme of experience.

Just as an alcoholic comes to depend on alcohol, so the food extremists come to depend on ever more novel, strange, and gluttonous eating experiences.

No amount of pain and suffering on the part of the animals involved – the animals who become the food – is a reason for them to hold back their desire for the pleasures of fat, meat, juices, and all the mixed tastes that drive them to such heights of gustatory gratification.

This past weekend I was at the Liberation BC table at Under the Volcano. If you've never been to Under the Volcano you really should check it out. It's a 1-day festival of music and activism in Cates Park in North Van (Deep Cove). It's awesome.

My friend, who has a blog called Dawn of a New Era, shot some film of me talking about how we eat baby animals.

I am immensely uncomfortable talking to a camera. As you can likely see in this video I smile a lot because I'm so self-conscious.

Here's some video from this past Let Live Conference of a talk I did in conjunction with Erica Meier from COK.

Tactics & Tools for the Effective Activist from Let Live Foundation on Vimeo.

And, finally, here's a talk I did the year before at Let Live.

How To: Becoming the Media and Getting Creative from Let Live Foundation on Vimeo.

I've said some useful things in these videos, and I hope to improve in my ability to communicate on camera and in front of a group of people. The only way to do this is by speaking more and practicing.

In The Animal Activist's Handbook, Bruce Friedrich and Matt Ball suggest taking public speaking classes (or joining Toastmasters). This seems like good advice to me, but I probably won't follow it. Being forced into opportunities to practice is probably what I'll rely on.

On one of my favorite albums, "Blazing Arrow", Blackalicious raps:

Passion
The will to win, the spark within
Passion
The strength within the hearts of men
Passion
The drive to press, to strive for best, to rise
You've just arrived the quest is driven through
Passion
To play through pain and love the game
Passion
To break the chain and blaze the flame
Passion
The fight for rights to love your life, to rise
You've just arrived the quest is driven through
Passion

Being an activist is hard. Devoting my life to a cause that may not be won during my lifetime is incredibly hard.

It's so easy to give up, to spend time doing enjoyable things like hiking, watching movies, reading, or traveling. Staying healthy and leading a balanced lifestyle is important – but I think that it's very easy to avoid the work of activism by indulging in pleasurable activities.

Of course, our passions don't all lead to the same place. Some people are passionate about the outdoors and others are passionate about art or writing. But our passions can always be used to fuel activism – such as environmental activism for people who are passionate about the outdoors.

Paul Rogat Loeb wrote one of the best books I've ever read about activism: The Soul of a Citizen. When I'm feeling overwhelmed by the daunting task of working for animal rights for the rest of my life I grab my copy, flip it open to a random spot, and read for a while. I can usually find something in there that inspires me.

For instance, Paul Loeb writes about Susan B. Anthony, who fought for her whole life so that women could vote. She never saw a victory, and died unsuccessful. Did she feel like she was a failure? Maybe, but that's really unimportant. What is important is that 14 years after her death women were granted the right to vote in the United States (4 years earlier here in Canada). That victory could not have happened without all of her work.

Can you imagine how much passion she had for her cause? And what if she, and all of the other women (and men) who worked for so long, had given up?

One of the biggest lessons I learned from Soul of a Citizen is that we all play a part in a movement – and we may not see what that role is or the value in it at the time. But it's vitally important that we keep working at it, since all of our efforts combine to produce eventual victory.

Keeping our passion alive so that we can continue to work towards animal liberation without burning out is very important. The issues that face us have faced millions of other activists before us, and are not enough to stop us. We are working together, whether we know it or not, towards a better future. Just keep on standing up and speaking out, keep the passion burning, and never give in.

There are probably over a dozen groups in Vancouver working on animal issues, maybe even more if you count all the small rescue groups. Many groups, some with large budgets, some with small budgets, some with no budget at all – all working towards a better world for animals.

There are also many people who aren't affiliated with any groups, or who volunteer with several.

What can tie us all together to be more effective? Is this even possible? I've been wondering about this.

Of course, this does raise some additional questions.

How similar are our goals? Helping animals can mean many different things for many people. Even people who agree on a general goal may have different immediate or secondary goals.

Do our choices of methods and tactics create what look like irreconcilable differences between us? Even though two people may agree on an end goal, the means we select can push us apart, or, worse, turn us against each other. Some people may even argue that another's choice of tactic is counterproductive and will actually lead away from the expressed end goal.

Added on top of these differences in goals and tactics are likely many personality differences that may have led people to start their own groups instead of joining up with another group. Or, they see their group as filling a gap or need.

On the whole, I think it is a very good thing to have many varied voices working for animals.

However, I wonder, could there be more coordination or cooperation – or at least dialogue – between all these people and groups?

Last year the Work Less Party hosted a forum on animal rights which brought together a number of people. People met other people they hadn't met before and found out about groups that they didn't know about. It was really great to see conversations starting and people exploring their similarities and differences.

What's the next step?

One thing that I am interested in trying is an unconference focused on animal advocacy. The idea would be to bring together a number of people working on a range of animal protection issues in a format that is really designed for open dialogue.

I attended the Vancouver ChangeCamp event, and would like to try a similar format: an Animal Advocacy Camp.

I'm hoping that people could come together with the intention of exploring their common ground and similarities, rather than pushing their own agendas and ideas.

I've started a Google group for anyone interested in helping with this event, and I'm looking to hold it in November of this year. The event wiki has been set up, but has no content yet.