A year or two ago, a friend sarcastically made a comment about writing vegan cookbooks, that it was “culinary terrorism.” You know, because animal rights activists are dangerous enough to be the number one domestic terrorist threat. This makes an inverted kind of sense. If you believe the war-rhetoric, we have to kill (those who disagree with american policy) to prove that killing is wrong…or something. So naturally those of us advocating to not kill for any reason must be trying to prove that…that…killing is right? Well, close enough, I guess, for those who write up the priority list for the FBI.

And so The Powers That Be must have taken note! Will Potter at Green Is The New Red reports that the FBI is trying to infiltrate that well-known stronghold of dangerous terrorist activity - vegan potlucks!

They’re on to us!

When Mork and Mindy first came to the sanctuary, they were quite frightened of people. They were only a few months old, and they had spent their entire lives at a vet school where various procedures were practiced on them. Thus, human contact meant pain, jabbing, nothing pleasant.

Usually when the vet schools are done poking and prodding the baby pigs, they send them to slaughter. This time they arranged for the two babies to come to Poplar Spring.

The difference in the little pigs in the short time they’ve been at the sanctuary is drastic. They are not only relaxed and happy, settled in their community of fellow pigs, they are also curious and interested in people. Humans are now associated with good things. They approach eagerly…expecting treats, I’m quite sure! Humans, formerly pain givers, are now known as food givers.

Yesterday when I woke up, Tempest was off. I didn’t notice right away - it was 5:30am, after all - but the signs started seeping into my brain as I got her food ready. She loves food, more than anything, and yet she wasn’t complaining in her usual impatience as I got the food ready. Though she’d followed me to the kitchen, she sat quietly and once I put her bowl down for her, she just sniffed it and walked away.

That’s when I knew she was feeling really horrible. She walked back into the bedroom, and I let her be as I finished getting ready for work. She was under the bed, another sign that she was stressed to some degree. I pet her, as best as I could reach her, and made sure to feel her stomach. No cramping that I could tell, and she seemed to relax as she purred for me. The only problem with purring as a sign of anything is that it can mean either pleasure or pain, from what I’ve read.

I went to work, but was fretting, and so I looked up some info as soon as I logged in. I wondered if she’d been bit by something, and so that’s where I started looking.

And pretty well freaked myself out at first. Black Widow’s are deadly, and very quickly, did you know that? Cats are especially sensitive to their venom, which is a nerve toxin, and it is almost always deadly for cats, even with quick treatment. Lucky for me, I quickly figured out that she’d already be dead if she’d been bitten by a black widow. The other spider that could cause problems was a brown recluse, but there would be time to deal with it, if that was the case.

I read as much information as I could stand, and worried all day long. Should I go home? Should I call the vet? I’d convinced myself by then that she wasn’t in danger, at least not immediate danger, but I couldn’t stop worrying, since I couldn’t check on her. It was a judgement call, and not a comfortable one to make. Deciding not to go home definitely felt like I was disregarding my concerns and putting work first, which isn’t accurate but hard to shake nonetheless.

When I got home, she met me at the door, as normal. She was maybe a tad off her usual, though the maintenance guys vacuuming the building’s hallway could have been the culprit, since she’s stressed both by strangers and by vacuums. She’d eaten all her food while I was at work, and she was eagerly awaiting more.

Normalcy had returned, it seemed.

I still have no idea why she was off yesterday morning. Perhaps it was nothing more than an upset stomach. We all have off days, after all.

What was scariest for me was realizing in retrospect how little I know, despite having lived with cats and dogs literally all of my life.

I started researching first aid books, and that highlighted again my lack of knowledge. I don’t know why we never had books like that at home, but I’ll definitely be getting one soon. I’ve started looking into them, and flipped through a few at the bookstores. There’s more than I’d have expected, which is nice. (Any recommendations?)

It is funny how something so (relatively and in retrospect) minor could drive home so strongly the responsibility I have for this precious life, and just how easy it is to fuck up.

Well, I don’t know of one, it is just what I’d like to have in my life. Inspired by the Rock Doves, as well as the activists who really are.

I don’t know exactly what it would entail - depends, as always, on the others who would be interested. What I have in my mind is a network of people willing to put in time on other people’s issues in exchange for additional support on theirs.

It could be virtual, but it could also be real life help.

Like, exchanging help trapping feral cats for a letter written on behalf of whatever.

The specific exchanges are just details, the important part is the people willing to do.

That’s what I want.

The things the collective members would offer could be both general (writing letters, for example) and specific (photography, web design, research, for example).

The hard part, of course, is finding others who would be interested in something like that. It would seem that most activists would be, but…I think I’m naive that way.

I know I have two other people who are already my unofficial collective. It would simply be nice to make the idea bigger. Seems to me that we’d be more effective if we got together to get things done once in a while.

Mary posted at the beginning of the year talking about and asking our thoughts on what the “movement” would look like, if we could imagine it. I guess I’ve had it with big organizations, likely most of us have. I’ve had it with them always trying to guilt me, and yet ignoring anything I might have to say. Enough of the manipulation. Even knowing that movements don’t have to be like that, it is hard to separate out the idea of a movement from what I currently experience within this one. I want a movement that is a network, not a hierarchy. I want a movement that is simply people who can and will get together and get shit done. Together. Helping each other. Supporting. Learning, mentoring, and having a beer.

And so that is why the “activism collective” idea came up. Just add people. Any takers?

Apologies for starting off with a gruesome photo. Sometimes it is necessary to know what the stakes are. That is a picture of the first Kofa Mountain Lion, killed in September 2007. Picture provided to me by Ron Kearns, who received it from the government through a public records request. This mountain lion (aka cougar aka puma) had killed more than one Bighorn Sheep in a six month period, and that is how the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge managers justified killing him.

I’ve been writing about the Kofa Mountain Lions for almost a year and a half. I stumbled on the first bit of information sort of by chance. I can’t actually remember how I came across the information. At the time, it was during a public comment period about the Mountain Lion proposed hunt. I wrote in, got some friends to write in, and in the end it was HSUS (believe it or not) that saved the day, at least temporarily, for those mountain lions, via a lawsuit against the US Game and Fishing Department.

Since then, two of the five Kofa Mountain Lions have been hunted via radio collar and killed in government sanctioned canned hunts.

The reason given for the killing was that the Bighorn Sheep population was at the lowest level since the 1980’s. Potential causes for population decline would include: drought, disease and sickness, and disturbance and/or destruction of habitat, especially sensitive areas, in addition to whatever impact the mountain lions have on the population. Hunters, who all along have been sold hunting permits for the Bighorn Sheep despite the low sheep population, are never included in the “official” lists of possible causes of lowering sheep numbers. For that, among other reasons, the list I mentioned is not exhaustive. It is safe to say that no one has bothered to find out, yet, exactly why the sheep population has dropped. They simply used it as an excuse to kill mountain lions in radio collar canned hunts.

The government agencies also neglected to mention that the sheep population rose by close to 20% between 2006 and 2007. While all five mountain lions were alive. (The first was killed in September of 2007, so in the interests of accuracy, all five lions were only impacting the populations for 3/4 of 2007, and only four lions for the remaining quarter of 2007.)

So the government mislead the public. The government used partial information to justify killing mountain lions that had killed two sheep in a six month period. The government, however, refused to even limit the number of sheep hunting permits they were selling, even while they claimed the sheep population was in danger due to the predation of the lions.

PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) stepped up to the plate this time, and again the mountain lion hunting has been halted, this time for a year. In this next year the government is going to go through the formal analysis process, including a “formal scoping period”, to start research into the impact the mountain lions are having on the sheep populations.

We all know that the government is already biased towards the hunters, against the mountain lions, against biodiversity, against letting animals live their lives for themselves, rather than as entertainment revenue. The hunting permits for the Bighorn Sheep are the refuge’s biggest source of income. We know this, and yet the government is actually obligated to go through this formal process to justify what they are doing.

And this is where we come in. You, and me, and everyone else can write in and give our arguments against the mountain lion hunting.

From now until May 24, 2008 it is what they call the “formal scoping period” and we can send letters, electronically or via snail mail, with our thoughts, and have them entered formally and officially in public record. And, especially importantly, we should include our suggestions for alternatives. For instance, no hunting of mountain lions on Kofa NWR by agencies or hunters.

That would be a really fantastic alternative to propose.

And since this is the government, it isn’t just the logic, the science, and the information that will count, but the number of people who register with that opinion.

It is “just” three mountain lions that we’re fighting for, but it is more than that too. It is the right for animals to live their own lives. We argue for this all the time when we try to convince people to go vegan, and I think most of us sort of assume that the wild animals already have this freedom…freedom to live. Yet, that is far from the truth. The government likes to manage the wildlife just as much as they like to manage everything else. (This should be no surprise: deer, wolves, mute swans, pigeons, canadian geese, coyote, bear, seals, squirrels…just about every animal exists on the sufferance of people in power who make decisions about their lives.)

So it isn’t just mountain lions we’re fighting for, but all animals. How can we argue for “domestic” animals to have freedom if we can’t even guarantee it for wild animals?

Well, we clearly can and need to do both. It isn’t mutually exclusive.

Ron Kearns is the main reason I’ve kept up with everything going on with the Kofa Lions. He worked there for most of his career, he has a lot of contacts in the area, and one of those contacts supplied him with a great chart that shows the process, and the impact that this formal scoping period can have.

It isn’t often that they are required to listen to us. Of course there is a danger as well - our silence, if we stay silent, makes the voices of those who want the death of the mountain lions that much louder. To my mind, the letter writing for the scoping period is both an opportunity and an obligation.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has (finally) posted the pdf explaining the formal scoping period for the Mountain Lions on their website. The press release is also available, and there are additional links on that page that might be helpful to read.

If you want to write but aren’t sure where to start, or have any question on either the process or the science or whatever, please let me know and I’ll do whatever I can to help. You can read other things I’ve written about the Kofa Mountain Lions.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but the more letters that the government receives on behalf of the mountain lions, the more impact that point of view will have overall. It is just three mountain lions, you might be thinking, but it is more than that too. It is a chance to make a stand for wildlife, to make a statement that wildlife is no more there for our purposes than any other animal is.

You can visit http://www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges/arizona/kofa/ for additional background information.

Comments must be submitted in writing by May 24, 2008.
Email: KofaLionComments@fws.gov
SnailMail: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 356 W. 1st St., Yuma, AZ 85364

Some websites to look at for information on cougars (aka mountain lions aka pumas):
http://www.cougarnet.org/ (“Using Science To Understand Cougar Ecology”)
http://www.mountainlion.org/index1.asp
http://www.cougarfund.org

An article that discusses the importance of predators in maintaining biodiversity, written in readable science: Predator-Prey Relationships

Some issues I think are important to bring up:

• Biodiversity, and the importance of predators
• The lack of concrete knowledge of how much a mountain lion will actually eat
• The negative impact caused by human intrusion on sensitive areas
• Disease, especially that transmitted from domesticated sheep; this is impacted also by habitat pressure
• The refuge managers’ refusal to halt bighorn sheep hunting despite the lower-than-normal sheep numbers
• The refuge managers’ behavior in misleading the public about the current state of the sheep population, which grew by almost 20% from 2006-2007 (according to their own surveys) while all five mountain lions were still alive, and using the only the data from 2001-2006 (during which there was a decrease in sheep populations) to justify killing the mountain lions in late 2007 and early 2008.

Please also mention that you want an alternative to be considered…such as no hunting of mountain lions on Kofa NWR by agencies or hunters.

When it comes time for the other parts of this process, only alternatives presented during this formal scoping period will be considered. If we don’t suggest no hunting of mountain lions, who will?

Thanks to anyone who will write. Thanks to Mary for posting about this a couple days ago, and Ron for making sure I have been kept up to date on everything going on.

Picture of “K03″, killed earlier this month, picture given by the refuge officials to Daniel Patterson.

When I first started going to sanctuaries, the chickens were a mystery to me. I was somewhat wary of them - their movements were very unpredictable, and I was always worried that I was going to step on one. Actually, to some degree I do still worry about that.

I’d try to take pictures of them as much because I felt like I couldn’t neglect them when I was taking pictures of everything else (including buckets, mice ladders, and poop!), and so I’d try. I had tons of pics with blurry heads, and I felt like I mostly would get odd angles that would make them look sort of strange.

Being a shutterbug, I kept trying, and I also got to know the chickens more. I held chickens and learned to pick up the ones that like the attention. Babies came and I watched them grow up. I listened to people talk about them and to them who knew chickens.

And through a combination of the two - continuing to take pictures of them, and learning more about them - I found that my pictures of them improved. At least half the pictures I take of them are captured when they are holding their heads still. I don’t have to put effort into predicting their movements (as much as anyone’s movements can ever be predicted, anyway). And I really see their personality, and I think I’m able to capture it to some degree.

What I don’t know is whether others can see what I think I see. Birds, and their expressions, are so different from our own faces, so different from the faces of the cats and dogs we tend to grow up with, that I wonder if their personalities remain hidden to us until we start to learn their language.

Has anyone else had this experience, slowly learning what chickens (or other birds) are all about?

*updated to add the picture of the last Kofa lion that was killed, obviously before his death. picture courtesy of Daniel Patterson, who received the photo from USFWS Southwest Arizona NWR Complex Manager Mitch Ellis.  They would not release the “mortality” photo, which has some implications that do not reflect well on them.*

The state and federal groups have announced that the Kofa NWR lions have a one year reprieve from being hunted via radio collars. PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) put pressure on Kofa and the AGFD, which appears to have resulted in the Kofa NWR and AGFD’s announcement of the reprieve, though of course the refuge managers themselves deny that PEER had any influence at all on the decision. I find that hard to imagine.

From PEER’s article:

Arizona Game & Fish derives significant revenue from selling bighorn hunting tags and is concerned that cougar predation may be costing it potential revenue. The federal refuge also expends significant funds to kill cougars in the name of bighorn protection, yet refuge management still allows the annual hunting of more than ten bighorn rams on the Kofa NWR itself.

What a mass of contradictions that is! And it looks like it tells most of the $tory of the motivation of the AGFD.

What does this reprieve mean? It means that the AGFD and Kofa NWR will not kill the mountain lions on Kofa land for the next year, though they “might” continue to trap and collar them. Hunters are not supposed to use GPS to track and kill the lions, but they are still allowed to kill them off refuge land. I can’t help but to wonder whether there is some back room winking and nudging going on, since the Kofa management has been consistantly anti-predator in every document they produce and action they’ve taken. Not to mention in their concern for their revenue stream.

In the next year, Kofa will research to determine (to the best of their ability) what has been causing the decline in herd size of the Kofa Bighorn Sheep. In the most recent Yuma Sun article, they’re making it clear what outcome they expect. For anyone trained in science, you know that such bias going into a research project generally means you do a piss poor job of analyzing the data, and that the research procedure itself has a tendency to be flawed when you make no attempt to be unbiased. Why do I think that the AGFD and the Kofa management is biased? Because in the article, they are quoted as saying that they will spend the next year to determine what role the lions have played in the sheep herds.

They are broadcasting what they expect to find. I didn’t see any mention of the many other factors that will almost certainly have played a contributing role:

• drought (and thus reduction in resources available to the sheep),
• herd health (sheep are well known to be vulnerable to respiratory problems, which kofa nwr itself says is more prevalent during drought conditions, which would mean now),
• environmental pressure and destruction by humans, and
• other environmental factors that could contribute to low-fertility and/or high mortality of the young sheep.

One other tidbit is that sheep populations are going up. And that, folks, was between ‘06 and ‘07. Before 2 lions were killed.

Given the ever increasing amounts of poisons in the world, given the connection that environmental scientists have found between pollen amounts and carbon dioxide, given that ecology and population biology is never a simple equation with two variables, it seems to me that the answer to what is causing the herd decline is a complicated question that doesn’t lead itself to an easy answer. What exactly are the Kofa managers doing to examine the entire ecology, rather than just counting heads?

It isn’t that Kofa managers aren’t aware…at least, information taken from their website would lead me to believe that someone at Kofa was knowledgeable about this at one point:

Disease in bighorn sheep is most prevalent when animals are stressed and during severe drought. Multiple diseases may also combine to increase mortality. Bighorns seem particularly susceptible to respiratory problems like bacterial pneumonia. Pasturella, for example, can be carried by healthy domestic sheep and goats, but is deadly when transmitted to wild sheep. Scabies is another common disease easily transmitted to bighorns; it was responsible for a significant decline on San Andres NWR in 1978. Disease transmission from burros or horses to bighorn sheep has not been substantiated; however, isolated cases of transmission from cattle to bighorn sheep have been documented. Since the late 1800s, diseases transmitted by domestic sheep and goats have caused large, recurrent population-level declines in bighorn sheep throughout the western US. These declines have been well documented, and subsequent regulations restricting contact between domesticated and wild sheep have been enacted. It is imperative to keep any domestic sheep or goats well away from bighorn sheep range.

Chronic sinusitis is prevalent in bighorn sheep throughout Arizona. In severe cases, necrosis of the frontal bone and thinning of the braincase creates holes and abscessing in the brain, which is fatal. The leading theory for cause of this condition is bacterial infection secondary to necrotic bot fly larvae (Oestrus ovis), which are deposited in the nostrils of bighorn sheep. Evidence of chronic sinusitis has been common in the Kofa bighorn sheep herd, though it appears to be less prevalent now than during the 1980s and 1990s.

We already know how many sheep the hunters kill, as well as generally how many the lions have killed. The sheep herd dropped by almost 400 in the space of 2 years. We are to believe that the lions were killing 40 sheep per year, each? Let’s account for the hunters and make wild guesses as to the possible impacts of predation on the birth rate, and assume 20 sheep per year, by each of the 5 lions that had originally lived at Kofa, before two were killed in this past year. That still leaves us well below the 400 by which the herd dropped. If 20 per year is a normal amount for each lion, why are lions considered to be “offending” if they have killed two within six months?

Either four sheep per year is a more typical amount for each lion, in which case it is ludicrous to assign them blame for the reduction of the sheep herd size by 400, or Kofa management came up with a ridiculously low “allowed” meals on the part of the lions so that they could give a superficial appearance of not being anti-predator, and yet stacking the deck in favor of death to every lion on Kofa.

Ron has requested that we comment on the Yuma sun article and mark it as “recommended” to help keep this issue in people’s minds. You have to register in order to be able to comment, but anyone can “recommend” an article. Daniel Patterson has a quick blog post about this as well, with instructions on getting onto the mailing list to comment as part of the public process that will soon be started.

Last week there was a new arrival at Poplar Spring. Well, two - one is a young female turkey, a silver one, by the name of Ariel. She seems to be about six months old, and she’s a sweetie. Loves attention, even when the attention is that of Victor, the big man on campus, who tends to step on his girlfriends in lieu of being able to do anything more enticing. She didn’t seem to mind! You can see his wing feathers in the background. All the boys were displaying for Ariel, and even one of the other female turkeys!

There was also a new pig. I didn’t get a good picture, but she had something stuck in her nose to prevent rooting (digging up food from the ground), which was heartbreaking. She was found wandering, and she is quite skinny right now, which you’d expect from a pig that had an implant designed to prevent her from finding food. It is a bit of a mystery, the nose thing is quite unusual because most farmers (big farm or family farm) don’t actually let their pigs outside.

She is super friendly, that or just incredibly hungry. She’d come right up to the gate of the quarantined area of the pig barn and snuffle my hand. Sometimes she’d end up bumping the gate with her nose, and then she’d flinch. It made me want to cry. That poor baby! They have to increase her food very very slowly when pigs are that skinny, so even though she seemed really hungry, they have to be careful. The nose thing is embedded in such a way that it will require her to be under anesthesia to have it removed - it is just too painful any other way, there is no chance you can even touch that thing without causing her pain.

There was someone at the sanctuary filming this past weekend. Some of you might remember the video on youtube from Poplar Spring with the little boy, Ari, narrating? “Nowman is enowmous!” Very cute! Well, Chris, the videographer, was back getting a bunch of video, which she wants to use to make a series of 2 minute videos, which she’s going to publish in vodcast format. I meant to get her website, because it sounds great!

In case you missed it before, here’s the old video:

I found another video Chris did at Poplar Spring, this one is just 2 minutes of chickens and turkeys being their own selves!

I go through ebbs and flows where I am reading a lot of non-fiction or I am reading a lot of vampire fiction. (Don’t ask, I need a vice! Or, only ask if you want recommendations!) Having first been motivated by the upcoming anarchist bookfair in nyc of last weekend, and then fired up by the people, ideas, and event itself, I’ve been reading less of the vampire stuff and more of the thought-provoking stuff in the past couple weeks.

So my current or recent reads (no particular order):

• Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin
• Nowpopia by Chis Carlsson
• The Joy of Conflict Resolution by Gary Harper
• Social Economy And Communalism by Murray Bookchin
• From Yale to Jail by Dellinger
• Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

And a whole bunch of photography books that likely no one is interested in. Plus some stuff on buddhism, depression and meditation. Fun stuff! Oh, and code stuff, which likely is about as interesting as watching rocks grow to most people.

So the books on my bookshelf that are waiting for me to read makes a much longer list (thanks in large part to AK Press, who faithfully sends me books every month, and which I not as faithfully get to eventually):

• Durruti in the Spanish Revolution by Abel Paz
• Free Comrades by Kissack
• Granny Made Me an Anarchist: General Franco, The Angry Brigade, and Me by Stuart Christie
• Beyond Bullets by Boykoff
• Possibilities: Essays On Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire by David Graeber
• Marketing Social Change by Alan Andreasen
• Carbon Trading - a critial conversation on climate change, privatisation and power: development dialogue no 48, september 2006
• Bird Flu: A Virus of our own hatching by Michael Greger
• Rebel Alliances: The means and ends of contemporary British anarchisms by Benjamin Franks
• The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life by Georgy Katsiaficas
• Empty Cages by Tom Regan
• Speciesism by Joan Dunayer
• Che Gurevara and the Latin American Revolution by Manual “Barbarroja” Piñeiro

I have many more, such as “Rogue Economics” and “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded” that I definitely want to read. Probably “End Game” as well.

I can’t recommend, yet, the books I haven’t read, but for anyone interested in anarchism (who hasn’t already read a lot on it), I think that “Conquest of Bread” is a great book. For people interested, in general, in living sustainably and likely a bit outside the confines of wage-slavery, “Nowtopia” and “food not lawns” are great books, with “food not lawns” being (surprise) very focused on gardening. I have found both to be incredibly motivating. They definitely make me feel that if I am not happy with the way things are, then I should change what I have the most power over - which happens to be me and my life. So gardening, forming community and performing acts of mutual aid, these are the things I can do right now.

Other books that I think we should all read would include “Aftershock” and “The Joy of Conflict Resolution” (and that last one, maybe both, are books I’d recommend to everyone everywhere, not just activists, or people interested in AR or anarchism).

So that’s where I’m at in my reading at the moment. I have a lot of reading to get through - so much, in fact, that I often ignore those great heaping piles of books and reach for the fascinating world of vampires.

What are you reading? What would you recommend?

I went to the 2nd Annual Anarchist Bookfair in NYC this past weekend. I went last year as well, and it was interesting to see what had changed and what had stayed the same. Overall I got a lot more out of it - perhaps because we were more organized about it, and made sure to look ahead of time at the talks we’d want to go to, or maybe the talks themselves were better this year. It is hard to know, since of course we can only go to one talk at a time!

The talk that got me the most fired up was on on mutual aid.

I’d read “Conquest of Bread” by Kropotkin on the bus on the way up to NYC, and it was pretty much the perfect reading material to have in my head going into the talks at the bookfair. It is an incredibly practical book, addressing many of the common questions people have about anarchism. I found it very interesting, other than the discussion of animal exploitation, which I mostly skipped. He was writing in the late 1800’s, and he’d come a long way from his beginnings as a Russian aristocrat who owned people! We are in a position today where we’re starting from a point where the thought of ownership of humans makes us recoil in revulsion, and so it is natural for us to go further, see the connections between all forms of exploitation.

I always wonder about some of these influential anarchists of times past, Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin (to name two that stick out in my own mind) - all the connections they made, all the thought they put into it…I wonder if they’d have been able to see the connection with animal exploitation if they’d been alive today? It seems like most anarchists I meet are vegan, to the point that I actually expect it, and am rarely disappointed.

So the talk on mutual aid…it was absolutely incredible. There were five panelists, with a wide range of experiences. Most of them had a background in social work. The audience was filled with thoughtful people, many of whom had also had experience and/or education in social work. Everyone was interesting, and the issue of harm-reduction was something that got me thinking. But what I can’t get out of my mind is a collective that a small group of local anarchists had formed based entirely on the concept of mutual aid.

The Rock Dove Project is an anarchist project composed of a two-pronged network. This network aims to connect people in search of cheap/free health care (”seekers”) to health practitioners who offer cheap/free services and agree with our mission statement (”providers”).

As a collective, Rock Dove will facilitate the process by offering seekers access to a directory of participating providers, and forwarding service requests to providers who are looking for people to serve. See below for details regarding both aspects of the Project.

They network among themselves and help others find access to health care, and they have a whole-person view of health. Part of that is reflected in the way they make sure that they take care of themselves, first and foremost, to avoid burn-out. (I wanted to ask them if they’d read “Aftershock”!) They are pretty much the embodiment of “prefigurative” if you ask me! Everyone always says “be the change you want to see” and that’s exactly what they are doing.

So what is mutual aid?

It is about community, ethics, and being non-exploitative. It is about finding ways around the capitalist mindset and hopefully giving yourself some breathing room from the wage-slavery. Here’s their description of it:

The term “mutual aid” has been used in various ways over the past two centuries by everyone from political theorists to emergency workers.

However, when we use it, we are referring to as Wikipedia so aptly puts it “the economic concept of voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit.” In other words, it’s a much fairer and effective way of giving and receiving services and goods than using money. An example of how mutual aid can be used is if I walk Jane Schmane’s dog for an hour, in exchange for one session of acupuncture.

While we do not directly discourage Seekers from giving money in return for the services they receive from Providers, as it may be the most practical means of payment in any given situation, we do encourage practicing mutual aid, and not just in regards to the health services facilitated by this collective, but in as many aspects of life as possible. Rock Dove believes that by incorporating mutual aid increasingly into more instances in our lives, it will help to set the foundation for a freer and more just world.

It was fitting, then, to begin reading Nowtopia on the way home.

There are so many ways we can incorporate this into our lives. And you know what? It is almost the same thing as “building community.” Incidentally, the best way to reach and help people on an individual basis. My yoga teacher is already doing some of this in a very natural way. She’s exchanged massages for yoga classes. Maybe I’ll talk to her, see if she and others would be interested in a more formal network. I doubt they’d identify as anarchists, but mutual aid relies more on community and a desire to help others than it does on a political identification. It can easily transcend such flimsy boundaries.

It makes me think about one aspect of my dissatisfaction with some of the major animal “rights” groups. They encourage us to get on their email lists, to take action based on their alerts for their pet projects. And what I have learned is that I can take action until the end of time in support of them, but unless I am “a major supporter” in a financial sense, they won’t offer help in return.

And that’s crap, pure and simple.

Which only tells me what I already knew - it’s up to us, to the connections we make on a personal level and the community we form, to create change in the world.