ergi

i’ve been seeing a lot of posts about toms shoes lately

safespacenetwork:

chelshock:

and while it’s awesome that you’re able to give a child a pair of shoes every time you yourself buy a pair of shoes, there’s a better alternative out there that i think a lot of people don’t know about.

better looking, too.  there, i said it.  toms shoes are pretty unappealing, in my opinion.

anyway, the company i’m talking about is soleRebels.  the great thing about soleRebels is that their home base is in ethiopia.  not the united states or china or anywhere else that could mass-produce shoes, but in the country that the company is aiming to help.  the idea behind this is that it’s good to give someone something they need (shoes), but it’s better to give them a job to buy lots of things they need.

from kelsey timmerman, who originally drew my attention towards the company:

SoleRebels’ employees are paid about 300% more than other such workers in Ethiopia. All of the products that go into making a SoleRebels shoe are within a 60 mile radius of the city. As Bethlehem, the founder of SoleRebels, says, “We are green by heritage.”

one of the most interesting realizations about this company is that, while the shoes range from $17 to $60, they’re still generating enough revenue to pay the employees 300% of the standard in ethiopia.  the shoes are well-made and affordable, yet companies with much more expensive shoes are paying their employees much, much less.

the website also has a large section on their status as the only certified fair trade shoe company out there - an added bonus!

before ending this post, i do want to underscore the fact that i’m not trying to be anti-toms.  they’re doing a better job at being world-conscious than a lot of shoe companies out there, but i also think that if you’re going to buy their shoes to help people out, there’s another (better) alternative out there.

IFAT/WFTO is the ONLY global body that certifies companies as being FAIR TRADE. They prescribe 10 standards that Fair Trade companies and organizations must follow in their day-to-day work and carries out continues monitoring to ensure these standards are upheld.

Such as creating opportunities for the economically disadvantaged, the payment of fair wages promoting gender equity, transparency in business practices, promoting Fair Trade, dedication to healthy working conditions and a commitment to the highest levels of environmental practice.

SoleRebels is based on the revolutionary idea that to truly enjoy lasting development, developing nation producers MUST create, grow and control successful global brands and the equity developed in them, the very same formula that global brands in developed nations have so successfully deployed to build themselves and their countries.

They offer a wide variety of Vegan Products as well, for those who need te extra push.

(via fuckyeahsexeducation)

BAD, vegans, BAD.

velocicrafter:

veganmudblood:

Passionate about animal rights? BAD. You’re being single-issue!

Passionate about both human and nonhuman rights and apply an intersectional approach to your vegan advocacy? BAD. You’re placing human and nonhuman justice on equal footing, ick!

Seriously. How the fuck did you manage to forget that humans reign at the very top of the hierarchy? Didn’t you know that by dismantling that hierarchy, you’re depriving the human species of their rightful pedestal? Every second spent on improving the lives of other animals is a second WASTED, and you shit on the face of humanity with your sacrilege. 

BAD. 

Go eat a cheeseburger. And sit in the corner until you remember that you can never win. 

no really, are you goddamn kidding right now?

What is the point of you? What the fuck is your point?

If what you wrote above is your perception of what I’ve said about veganism, you are completely & perhaps willfully missing the part where I have a hard time taking veganism seriously as a “liberation front” when it exploits human beings who are largely of an ethnic background similar to mine while championing the rights of animals.

Let’s set aside your Euro-centric construct of “speciesism” for a moment & consider how racism—oppression of humans by other humans—impacts immigration & the agriculture & food production industry. Consider how racism allowed the United States to create trade policies that effectively destroyed the agriculture industry of Mexico—an industry run largely by brown people. People with heavy Indigenous heritage having their livelihood destroyed by lawmakers who were largely white. Let’s talk about how much of immigration from Mexico & Latin America now comprises these same people & how they’re exploited be the food industry. By the meat industry, yes, but also by the agriculture industry, where they receive less-than-minimum-wage to grow & harvest our food. These Human Beings have no guarantee of an income due to inconsistent work, no guarantee of even getting paid their meager wages for the work they do, usually no healthcare or paid time off for the grueling work they do. As much as the GOP talks about stemming immigration from Mexico (because let’s be real: they’re really only concerned about limiting brown migration into the US), these industries rely on the cheap labor provided by undocumented immigration.

You want to act like you’re “reducing impact” by not contributing to the meat industry, but it’s laughable that you think I’d believe this for two seconds when you make posts like this, this snarky treatise on “speciesism” to support the idea that you have any real concern for the humans who also work in the meat industry. They don’t have it much better than those who work in the agriculture industry, & I’d even argue they probably have it worse in many ways. But when you make posts like this, it’s clear your real focus is the cute fluffy aminuhls

Some of your lot talk about human trafficking & extortion abuses related to importing people/facilitating undocumented immigration for these workers, but that’s all fucking lip service coming from you. You’ll have to understand that I’m a bit more invested in seeing that my fellow Latin@s seen & treated as human beings before I can have the luxury—the privilege—of worrying about the way animals are treated in this industry—and it’s plain as day that the animals are truly your primary concern in this. This is fine. Really it is. As I’ve said approximately a billion times, a chaconne son propre, but don’t get snarky & goddamn condescending with me as though I’m not “doing it right” because I value my Companeros above the animals that I, quite frankly, have no moral dilemma in eating.

FINALLY, quit being such a goddamn racist shit. You wanna play it like you can be concerned about more than one thing, but I notice that while you have 53 pages of posts tagged “vegan”, you have a mere 6 tagged “racism” & one whole page of posts tagged “immigration”. So while your talk of “intersectionality” may be rousing & inspiring for your fellow navel-gazing white vegans, I hereby call bullshit & advise you to check your goddamn white privilege related to this issue & don’t fucking darken my doorstep again until you have something to say that is not dripping with said privilege.

Any white vegans following me who care to, please come collect your garbage, because I am done pretending to respect shitstains such as this.

The bolded, completely. idgaf what you choose to do with your private life, but when you cross the line in to condescension over my decision to fret over my fellow human beings, my people, mi raza and want to spout off about intersectionality and equality? I will not take that shit lying down. You have the privilege to invent things like speciesism because your people aren’t being systemically degraded and devalued and erased. There is less than a handful of vegans I have ever interacted with who approach this sort of thing with sensitivity and nuance and I am beyond grateful. But shit like this? Can fuck right off.

(via dammitcaleb-deactivated20130328)

vegan & vegetarian crusaders stay losing

velocicrafter:

muninandhugin:

[snip] Note, this is a reply to THIS.

Excuse my while I lol, vegankid. You actually think animals, factory farmed animals, eat vegetables? That they eat the same plants we eat? That’s adorable.

Factory farmed animals are fed primarily corn, supplemented with soy, oats, other grains, anti-biotics, and ground up bits of other animals. Yes, this is a disgusting practice. But not because people are eating animals. It’s because factory farms force animals to eat what they’re not meant to eat. The vast majority of the animals consumed by people eat cellulose, that which we as humans cannot digest. Cows and sheep eat grass, goats eat shrubbery, pigs eat roots, fungi and tubers and sometimes other animals, in the case of chickens they also will eat insects, grubs, and even other chickens. Only pigs eat close to what we eat. And none of these animals are meant to eat grains as the basis of their diet, if at all.

Grains are subsidized by the US government. They do not use much in the way of human labor. The vast majority of farms that produce the vast majority of our grains are run by a single person, or a few people. They use combines, tractors, giant fucking machines to harvest and process those grains. This is not the part of agribusiness that uses forced or migratory labor. Those are your fruits and vegetables.

All of agriculture is problematic, because it causes inequalities. Those with more land have surplus to sell, to buy more land, to raise prices of food, to push out people with less. Veg*nism is not the solution to human suffering. Saying grains are the solution is disingenuous at best, and is ecologically unsound. Mono crops and conventional agriculture destroy land and lower species diversity. It destroys cultures. It destroys people, most of whom are brown and black people.

Yes, factory farms are horrible to both workers and animals, but not eating animals will not change them. And what kind of argument would you have against people that hunt for food? Or raise their own animals for food? And yes, you can legally slaughter your own animals, you just can’t sell the meat unless you have a slaughterhouse do it for you and it’s inspected. But I’m not planning on selling food. Like you, I want to grow my own. Which includes meat. How are those animals suffering on organic, free range, whatever farms? How are the Maasai calculated into your argument? Or Mongolians? Or anyone who has a traditional pastoralist culture? Veg*nism is not suited to most of the world, or IMO any of it. It requires to much land devoted to a small handful of species. Raising animals for food leaves more room for other species than does a plowed field. And, as I already said, those animals eat what we can’t or what we don’t want to and are denser in calories and protein than the same weight of plant matter.

Take it from a recovered vegan, you have no idea what you’re talking about.

this is beautiful

(via dammitcaleb-deactivated20130328)

Oh it’s eating disorders week. 

I have suchhh a disordered relationship with food. A big reason I can’t be vegan is because it triggers my urge to restrict. I tried being vegan for the last half of 2011 and it was easily the most unhealthy thing I have done in my entire life. I became anemic, the consequences of that I am still suffering from and trying to rectify now, and I denied so much food in the name of veganism. In reality I was just trying to stop eating and I got so sick as a result. I missed the last two weeks of my final semester at school because I was so sick I couldn’t move. 

Honestly, it was when I was unable to donate blood because my RBC was so low that I knew I had to stop. So now I am just dealing with the binging side of my disorder but, tbh, I’m getting it under control and would sooner get everything I need out of the food I eat, even if it’s in excess.

Trauma tactics in “vegan rhetoric”

icaruscalling:

Okay. Rape of human animals gets a trigger warning. Mutilation of human animals gets a trigger warning. Graphic depictions of abuse, starvation, and exploitation of adult/child human animals all get trigger warnings. Because they are TRAUMATIC. Ya follow?

So if you’re vegan, please refrain from graphically describing these things in nonhuman animals. Or posting pictures of nonhuman animals in these situations. I get that you’re posting these descriptions and images because they are shocking and you want to shock people about what they’re eating/supporting and into doing the “right thing” and “going vegan”… But really you’re just posting traumatizing material and not considering the people you’re possibly hurting.

Yes. What is done to animals fucking sucks. But put it under a g-ddamn cut so no one is forced to see it if you do post it. That way they can decide if thats how they want to be exposed to your particular flavor of vegan rhetoric. Do you think I want to see mounds of dead animals or descriptions of rape scenarios? As a vegan or not, the answer is NO. As a vegan, it also pisses me off that you’re using scare tactics to get people to listen to you.

Making people feel sick or like vomiting is the Absolute. Worst. Motivator. No one is consenting to being conditioned like that.

And you expect me to enjoy my black bean soup after looking at your “arguments”? Pass the eye bleach.

A+ as always