The recent murder of Sonya Massey really underlines how accurate that is. Massey was fucking joking with the police. Everything was fine. They were there to help her. And then she made a joke the cop thought disrespected him and she was dead thirty seconds later.

It's so fucking sickening and it's exactly how abusive parents treat kids. You have to walk on eggshells 24-7 because there's no telling what will trigger a violent reaction in the abuser - and because the abuser is confident he'll suffer no consequences from his violence, he feels free to resort to violence at any opportunity.

Full disclosure: I don't have the time or patience to watch a thirty minute video, and perhaps the OOP discusses this point somewhere in the video. I don't know.

But I believe vegan activism doesn't require anti-capitalist activism. Or even opposition to capitalism in general.

I agree that capitalism is inherently anti-vegan. The logic of capitalism sees both animal bodies and human bodies as objects to be owned and used for their masters' profit.

I think it's more ideologically consistent for vegan activists to also oppose capitalist systems as a whole.

But vegan activism doesn't require ideological consistency. We're not trying to change the entire world economic system. We don't need to change the entire world economic system. If abolitionists could oppose slavery without opposing capitalism - and win - vegans can oppose the slavery of animals without opposing capitalism. Vegans can win victories and have protections for animals written into law without opposing capitalism. We can and we have.

And if you can be a vegan activist and still be a capitalist, you can certainly just be an ordinary vegan and still be a capitalist.

Frankly, absolute ideological consistency is for heroes in an Ayn Rand novel. Vegans can work with with anybody who puts the animals first. And anybody who puts the animals first can be a vegan.

What is the source of your quote? I can think of quite a few places where I'd want to share it 😆

You don't understand. That protest provoked an emotional reaction in me and I didn't like it. Responsible protests don't hurt people's feelings. They went too far.

Here in California, utility companies are "solving" this by instituting extremely high fees for the privilege of connecting your solar power to the grid. If I recall from the last time I ran the numbers, rooftop solar panels no longer make economic sense for the vast majority of residential customers - it costs more money to install me solar panels and pay the monthly connection fees then you'll save by producing energy over the lifetime of the solar panels.

Edit: I just googled and it looks like after public outcry the regulators pulled their really bad fee schedule to replace with a slightly less bad fee schedule. The system works!

Probably the one time in history PG&E tried to fix a problem ahead of time. 😆

Ironically, back then people my age were warning kids "don't trust anyone or anything you read on the Internet, don't give out any personal information to anyone".

Fast forward 25 years and my peers are quoting 8chan shitposts as fact and "investing" their life savings on crypto websites they heard about on Discord.

AOC is calling for protests. Equating protests to terrorism puts you in the ignoble company of the Iranian government, the Saudi monarchy, and the Georgia cops who charged protesters with felonies for distributing flyers.

And it eliminates the stigma of only the poor kids getting free lunches.

The stigma is the point.

Conservatives believe receiving charity should be shameful.

Because conservatives (and neoliberals) think poverty is a personal moral failure - if you're poor, it's not because society and capitalism and racism and structural inequality screwed you over, it's because you, personally, were lazy or wasted your money or broke the law or didn't work hard enough.

So if a child can't afford a school lunch, it's because their parents are bad people. And shaming that child with an obvious "free lunch" (I remember having a bright red card that I had to show in the cafeteria, and the lunch lady would sneer at me and loudly proclaim "here is your FREE LUNCH" and hand me a cheese sandwich and an apple when the other kids were getting pizza just to make sure everybody knew my parents were poor) teaches the child to be ashamed of their parents and be ashamed of their poverty so they'll work harder to avoid poverty as adults.

And if schools give every child free lunch, not only do they lose that "teaching opportunity", they teach children that food is a right and that everybody, no matter their economic status, should have enough to eat, which is a direct attack on the fundamental principles of capitalism and American society.

Go into a conservative space and tell them people have a right to food and shelter and medical care and watch them froth in rage.

Selective enforcement is the core of conservative law making.