I lost 0.8 pounds this week. Good, right? Except that I’ve gained about 30 since moving to Chicago. On the one hand, I’m fully frustrated with myself and my lack of focus. On the other hand, I’ve been busy and I’ve been learning a lot more about my body issues since gaining back some of this weight.

I have never been comfortable with my body. Even when I was at goal weight. I was more comfortable with wearing nicer clothes, but my actual body… not so much. I wouldn’t even be naked in the privacy of my own home, completely alone. When I went to sleep in the sweltering nights of summer, I would do so in a baggy t-shirt, a skirt, and a blanket covering me. A blanket always covered me. Let’s not even get started with my issues with sleeping with other people in the same room… college roommates, friends, and people I’ve dated can attest to this: I made sure the blanket covered me completely, save my head, at all times of the night. I didn’t want people to see my body when I had absolutely no control over it.

Since moving to Chicago, yes I’ve gained weight, but I’ve also been surrounded by body-positive people. People who are, in some ways, “body activists”. They promote healthy body image. They’re yelling to riot, not diet. They’re telling me that I’m amazing, even with the lumpy stomach.

I haven’t made great strides in terms of being in front of other people, but I can now deal with going to bed scantily dressed. If I’m alone. It is August, in Chicago, after all, and I don’t have a fan or air conditioner!

So now, I’m frustrated with my weight gain, not because it makes my body unsightly again, but because of the health implications. My father’s family has a scary history with breast cancer (my father died of it when I was 15, one aunt has lumps that aren’t malignant yet, and my other aunt just got diagnosed). Currently, I do everything I can to prevent getting breast cancer (vegan diet, exercise, no smoking, very light alcohol consumption, et cetera, et cetera)… except that I’m not at a healthy weight, and that is one of the main factors of getting it, especially with a family history.

And yet, I feel that if I tell my friends that I’m doing Weight Watchers again (which is a very healthy approach to a lifestyle of eating correctly), I feel that I’ll be judged for”being on a diet”. It’s not a diet. It’s a health thing. I want to be healthy. I don’t want breast cancer. I shouldn’t be judged for that.

Because I like who I am, I don’t have body issues, I just have family health issues.

1. Clean up, Chinese style.

2. That little place called Tibet, ever heard of it?

3. It’s all about huge corporations making money, which puts the hosting country in debt for decades.

4. Imposing beauty standards for seven year olds

5. No specific link, but just their overall record of human rights violations. Google it yourself.

So, um, don’t discuss the Olympics with me.

1. Vegetarians have a 20% lower rate of mortality from all causes (i.e. they live longer & don’t get sick as often)
2. Meat is full of traces of antibiotics, hormones, toxins produced by stress & pesticide residues that become concentrated from all the crops they have eaten
3. The world health organization recommends a diet low in saturated fat, sugar, salt & with plenty of fiber - exactly what you get on a vegan/vegetarian diet
4. Farmed animals contain up to 50% saturated fat in their bodies
5. Vegetarians have 24% reduced risk of getting heart disease & Vegans a 57% reduction (heart disease is the biggest killer in the UK accounting for 50% of deaths)
6. Obesity is rare in vegetarians, obesity is related to many diseases
7. Vegans & vegetarians have lower blood pressure & cholesterol levels - high levels are associated with heart disease, strokes & kidney failure
8. Vegetarians have a 50% reduced risk of dying of diabetes
9. Vegetarians have a 40% reduced level of cancer than the general population thought to be because they have a higher intake of vitamins A,C & E
10. Vegetarians have a reduced risk of developing gall & kidney stones
11. 80% of food poisoning is due to infected meat (feeces, bacteria etc.) after all meat is decomposing flesh - most of the rest is due to salmonella in eggs
12. Osteoporosis due to calcium loss from bones is mainly due to the sulfur content in meat & casein protein in milk that cause calcium to be lost in the urine - the countries with the highest meat & dairy consumption are those with the highest levels of brittle bones
13. 50% of people do not have the enzyme to digest milk properly & milk allergy is related to asthma & eczema
14. Meat eaters have double the rate of Alzheimer’s disease as Vegans & Vegetarians - researchers also think that Parkinson’s disease is also linked to meat eating
15. Egg yolk is a dense concentration of saturated fat & the white is high in albumin protein associated with leaching calcium into your urine. Butter is 80% saturated fat, cream is 40% saturated fat & cheese is 25-40% saturated fat
16. Meat eaters are two and a half times more likely to get bowel cancer than Vegetarians
17. The cling film used to wrap meat in supermarkets & butchers contains chemicals linked to falling sperm counts in men
18. Chinese people (living mainly on a vegetarian diet) consume 20% more calories than Americans but Americans are 20% fatter
19. Of 2,100,000 deaths in the USA in 1987, 1,500,000 were related to diet (i.e. meat & dairy)
20. Meat/Dairy centered diets are linked to many types of cancer, as well as heart ailments, diabetes, obesity, gallbladder disease, hypertension, and more deadly diseases and disorders.
21. The National Cancer Research Institute found that women who eat meat on a daily basis are almost 4 times more likely to get breast cancer than those women who eat little or no meat.
22. Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than plant foods; dairy products contain 5-1/2 times more pesticides than plant foods.
23. 15 million pounds of antibiotics are used in animal production every year- These drugs end up in your milk and meat.
24. 95-99 percent of toxic chemical residues in the American diet come from animal sources.
25. By reducing your consumption of meat, dairy products, and eggs by 50%, you reduce your risk of a heart attack by 45%. By following a pure vegetarian diet (no animal products at all) you reduce your risk by 90%.
26. Meat and dairy products raise the acid level in human blood, causing calcium to be excreted from the bones to restore the body’s natural pH balance. This calcium depletion results in osteoporosis. Contrary to the common belief that dairy products are necessary to prevent osteoporosis, dairy consumption actually increases the likeliness of this crippling disease.
27. About 30% of all pork products are contaminated with toxoplasmosis, a disease which is caused by parasites. It can be passed on to consumers.
28. The vegetarian diet is more likely to meet the government recommendations for fat, carbohydrate, and protein than a nonvegetarian diet. The government as well as many other organizations tell us to reduce our fat intake (especially saturated fat) and also to eat more grains, fruits, and vegetables. This is easy for a vegetarian!
29. On a meatless diet, you are less likely to get a bacterial infection such as E. coli, Campylobacter, and Salmonella.
30. Animals are able to feel pain just as we can!
31. About 7 billion farm animals die or are slaughtered each year in the U.S. for the production of flesh food.
32. There are virtually no laws against cruelty to animals raised for food in the U.S. The Animal Welfare Act, which governs the humane treatment of animals, excludes animals intended for food consumption.
33. Up to five hens are crowded into a cage with floor space hardly larger than a record-cover, for their entire life-time.
34. Many factory-farmed animals never see a blade of grass in their lifetime.
35. In the egg industry, male chicks are considered useless so are often thrown into a grinding machine- ALIVE!
36. Animals raised for food production are nearly always deprived of natural sexual, social, hygienic, and parental behaviors.
37. Reason for veal’s light color and tender texture: Veal calves are force-fed an iron-deficient, anemia-producing diet devoid of solid foods.
38. Bulls raised for meat-production are routinely castrated without any type of anesthesia or pain-killers.
39. The slaughtering process is inhumane. When the animals are stunned before they are slaughtered, it is not always reliable and the animals are in pain as they move towards their death.
40. For each quarter-pound fast food hamburger sold that came from cattle raised on former rainforest land, 55 square feet of rainforest was destroyed.
41. A lot more water is required in animal agriculture than in plant agriculture. It takes only about 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat and around 390 gallons to produce just one pound of beef. In fact, it takes less water to produce the food that a pure vegetarian needs for one year than to produce the food that a meat eater needs for a month.
42. Animal production requires a lot of fossil fuels. Fuels are needed to transport animal feed, to heat their housing, and to take the animals to slaughter, meat packing plants, and grocery stores. The burning of these fuels, as well as methane produced by the animals, is one cause of global warming.
43. Pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers used in the production of animals’ feed pollute land and water.
44. Many plants and animals become extinct due to the destruction of land.
45. 60 million people will starve to death this year - 60 million people could be adequately fed by the grain saved if Americans reduced their intake of meat by 10 percent.

I know, it’s been a while, again. At least I have a good excuse for my lack of updates: I’ve joined up with another radical cheerleading group while ADL and thus the Vegan Death Squad are on hiatus (long story, but we were supposed to be planning to put on a conference this summer and the university pulled the rug out from under us so now we have no conference and no plans for the summer). Even when we’re not in uniform performing cheers, the RCC (Radical Cheerleaders of Chicago) are everywhere! This picture is from the 5th anniversary of the Congress Hotel Strike last Thursday. It was organized by Unite Here! and they for some reason didn’t want the cheerleaders performing, but we came out of “uniform” and gave our support anyway, and got some people to join in with our shorter, pro-worker cheers.

Anyway, something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and meaning to write about for just as long, is how to define a person such as myself. Now, if you know me, you know that I don’t take much stock in definitions or labels. But they do come in handy when you’re trying to explain yourself and what you do. I could spend hours talking about the work that I do, and not even come close to being all-encompassing. I was out to dinner with a friend and I got to talking about the feminist work I did in college (with Women in Action, Hofstra’s feminist group that did have a couple men in it despite the name). He said that he didn’t like the word feminist because, although the concept includes everyone, the root of the word itself excludes 49% of the population.

I can see where he’s coming from with that, and at Hofstra I ran with a group of people who called ourselves “humanists” instead of feminists. But again, that excludes all the non-human animals that I fight for every day. That excludes the environment that I try to protect. Humanist concerns itself only with humans; I go way beyond that, as anyone who knows me would agree.

He said I should just call myself an activist. Which I am, but most people’s initial thoughts are just of anti-war activists (which I am), but not everything. And there are anti-choice activists, religious activists, conservative activists. Just because activism seems to be stronger on the left side of the spectrum doesn’t mean it’s not there on the right, and I don’t want to get confused with those people.

He said I should just say I’m not a speciesist. Which I’m not, but I also don’t like defining anything by way of negatives. Most people I know don’t go around saying “I’m not a homophobe” instead of “I’m SBNN” (or some other such phrase).

Is there a word to encompass an activist who does work for union, immigrant, anti-war, pro-choice, women, racism, queer, animal, poor, anti-corporate media, social anarchist, environment, homeless concerns?

Until someone comes up with something, I am simply Fuchsia.

(Or, as a side note, maybe that should be the word that defines all of that for future activists!)

Now, as I’ve said, I grew up on 60s music and culture, in the late 80s/90s.  Maybe I had a skewed view of things, but in my world, everyone was singing about peace and love and social justice. It was amazing. This was the stuff that had been popular. People talked about this stuff!

And then I learned about “modern” pop music. This was during the height of the boy band craze, mind you. Songs about dating and being heartbroken and dating someone else. I sat back and wondered, what happened to caring about important things? There had always been this type of songs, of course, but that was all there was anymore. Music is a powerful medium. Use it to reach out to people, to make a change. That’s what John Lennon did. The Beatles started out singing about ordinary love and ended up with John on the FBI watch list.

To this day, in the pop music culture, there’s nothing that remotely resembles a political stance. When did we lose our voice?

I took a step back from this question. I’ve never really been into the popular music; I’ve had my moments with Ace of Base and Spice Girls, and maybe TLC was the closest that came to being controversial subject matter. I remember when Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” became a hit. We skated to it at the roller rink. How many people were aware that they were anarchists, what that song was about? I didn’t even know at the time (hell, I didn’t know what anarchists were), but at least the core message stuck with me. I’m not sure most of my classmates could tell you, then or now, what that song was about. Their other stuff is amazing and full of political subjects, but of course it was the “least” political, the one that could easily be misinterpreted, that became the hit.

Somehow, through all of this, I started listening to music that meant something again. Only, the funny thing is, I didn’t recognize it at first. I liked the (International) Noise Conspiracy, Dropkick Murphys, and the Candyskins, but for the music, not the words. “Capitalism Stole My Virginity” was just a fun phrase. Unions? Give me bagpipes! At some point, my awareness of social issues blossomed, and around the same time I recognized the music for what it was. It’s amusing, really. The music didn’t make me aware, for some reason. Yet, it was what I had been yearning for.

Now, most of what I listen to is political in some way or another. I’m not just talking T(I)NC, Rise Against,  and Propagandhi (I admittedly didn’t get into them until much later, and really only because I wanted to explore John K. Samson’s work before the Weakerthans). I mean Patrick Wolf and his gender bending androgenous masterpieces. Placebo’s ballad of, not just resisting the cops, but turning the tables on them. The Dears with every single perfect song. “Me and Mia” and “Ana’s Song (Open Fire)” talking about the other side of eating disorders, the side that nobody else seems to talk about.

I’m noticing themes in songs I’ve loved for years. I never realized that Angry Salad’s “How Does It Feel to Kill” is about war (specifically Vietnam). James’ “Laid” was a fun song, but how did I manage to ignore such powerful lines like “Dressed me up in women’s clothes/Messed around with gender roles/Lined my eyes and call me pretty”? Even more recently, Kaiser Chief’s “I Predict a Riot”, about police brutality?

Now, I’m not saying that everything I listen to is political. I don’t think hellogoodbye has any merit on a political spectrum, and probably not Moxy Früvous either. Logan Whitehurst & the Junior Science Club definitely doesn’t. But I have a healthy balance.

And at the same time that I sit here and think, “How could I have possibly listened to these songs without realizing the meanings?” I know of people who, this day, listen to the most obvious of these, Rise Against and Dropkick Murphys and Sage Francis, without getting the message. What does it take to get the message through?

So the music isn’t lacking the political themes. You just have to look for it. Outside of pop music. I’m pretty sure that my mother, who lived through the Monkees heydey, can’t name any of their songs that are about political issues. They weren’t the “hits”.

There’s a whole underground music scene that’s full of politics. It’s a thriving community in Chicago. It just hasn’t made it out to the general public. Gaia forbid they actually think.

MusicLas reglas ????????online poker por el juego a Lowball no son tan diferente de las reglas de los otros juegos sin una. used to mean something. It was how stories and news were passed around, before most people were able/allowed to read and write. There were minstrels and bards, the storytellers. Today’s punks are just their reincarnations.

I don’t know, I was trying to explore my own relationship with music, why it’s constantly evolving to mean something even more to me all the time, and of course my thoughts got away with me. But there we go.

Activism is standing up for what you believe in.
It’s standing outside in 7 degree weather holding signs and yelling chants.
It’s marching through the streets.
It’s organized resistance.
It’s educational conferences of hundreds of people.

It’s also:
Educating people about the issues even if it’s one person at a time, in private conversations.
It’s showing people that you can live a relatively normal life without sacrificing your morals (even if that is by giving them vegan cupcakes– something they can relate to in a cruelty-free form).
It’s dancing around with pom poms.
It’s writing a message on your bag, where hundreds will see it every day.
It’s sticking by a friend even when they fail to see the double standards they live by, and trying to gently point them out.
It’s celebrating life and mourning death.
It’s changing your strategy for different types of people.
It’s letting people know where you stand.

Activism is getting people to think about the message any way you can.

(I may add to this later. I had more but forgot them with the rumbling of my stomach…)

I grew up on music from the 60s. If you know me at all, you know that I was obsessed with the Monkees. I still love them. But they were my life from when I was 12 until sometime in high school (when I discovered the Weakerthans, ha). I’m not talking the “Last Train to Clarksville” and “Daydream Believer” hits (although that was a pretty radical subject to have a pop song about back then), but their lesser known songs. “Mommy and Daddy” (especially the unreleased version). “Ditty Diego“. They were anti-war, pro-love, anti-conformity, and I wanted something like that.

Along with the other “Swooning Hippie Chicks”, I lamented the fact that we weren’t living in that magical period between 1967 and 1969 when everything was happening and the music was amazing. We devoured any old records we could get. We watched documentaries about the war and civil rights movement. We imagined being at Woodstock, the Isle of Wright festival, anywhere but here and now. We had the unpleasant experience of being born into a time and place where nothing happened.

Of course, we couldn’t have been more wrong. But I grew up in a very sheltered, small town where the big event was getting a stop light put in. Our one and only! So I wasn’t entirely exaggerating… but wouldn’t it have been nice if that had really been the case? That there were no social justice movements to participate in because everything really was perfect?

In high school, I became involved in the Gay/Straight Alliance. Once I knew that things such as gay existed. But I didn’t realize that there were state, national, and international conflicts about it. When I went to the Pride parades and conferences, I thought it was a celebration… not a tactic.

Same with women’s rights. Women were equal to men in my town; wasn’t it like that everywhere? When I went to college, I found out about the “real world”. First I took women’s studies classes but they focused on the history of the movement, which only perpetuated my thoughts that these issues were long past. But then I participated in the March for Women’s Lives and learned a lot through conferences and joining Women in Action (Hofstra’s student group). I was also active in Student Organization for Animal Rights (SOARs) but that was mostly social so I didn’t get involved in animal rights activism like I could have.

When I transferred to UMass, I was sadly way too busy with classes and working full time to devote any time at all to activism, and it fell by the wayside. Which I wish hadn’t happened, because Amherst has an amazing culture for it, but these things happen.

Then I came to Chicago. And everything came together. Ever heard of intersectionality? I had never had a term for it. I didn’t know that feminism, veganism, anti-racism, pro-queer, anti-war movements were all related. I just figured that the people I knew who were all involved in these movements were smart enough to see through each form of oppression for what it was.

I’m fulfilling my thirteen year old’s desires. I am an Activist. Forty years after 1968, we still have a hell of a lot of work to do.

Friday night, a friend found a pitbull puppy running around a neighborhood of Chicago. She took him in for the night, but he couldn’t stay there. So, he came to me on Saturday. Monday, he had to go back to her because of my landlord. In the meantime, the friend had become sick (I’m guessing unrelated) and was spiking a fever when she came to pick him up. Yep, guess who got sick. And then another friend got sick because she was with me most of this time.

Aside from that, having the puppy here was great! Okay, so trying to housetrain a puppy when the weather is a high of 3 degrees isn’t so great. But having an absolutely adorable, cuddly, playful, loveable puppy around? The best! I so fell in love. I have puppy fever now. Some people get baby fever when they’re around a lot of babies. I get puppy fever.

Ginny and Avocado didn’t react well to having him around, though. Avocado’s usually fine with dogs, Ginny takes a while to get used to them (and in general doesn’t like hyper dogs). Avocado’s reaction might have been because it’s been a while since he’s been around dogs, or he’s never been around an (unneutered especially) male dog, I don’t know. Eventually, I think, I’ll find the right dog to be a companion for them. Less hyper (but still playful because Avocado liked to play with Kali), and female apparently.

I miss Kali.

Anyway, the puppy story ended happy: the dog’s family called and they were reunited. And now all the activists are sick.

But until then… lots to do!

Comments are turned off right now because I’ve been getting almost all spam, so… yeah.

And… I’m out. Hopefully I’ll be back relatively soon!