Flop Sweat & Forgetting My Lines

haterina:

iamwhoiamandidontgiveadamn:

ianxvx:

krona:

fuckyeahsustainability:

michaelxvx:

shiftinconsciousness:

I read an article listing the cleanest fruits and vegetables to buy if you don’t want to buy organic, but don’t want a mouthful of chemicals. It explained how you can stay healthy and save a buck.  The article missed the point…

Buying organic isn’t about ‘me! me! me!’  Buying organic is about protecting farm workers and their families; it’s about keeping chemicals off the land and out of our water; it’s about protecting wildlife; it’s about saving rivers and oceans; it’s about clean rain and air; it’s about dismantling the giant chemical/gmo companies (like Monsanto and Dow ) that are destroying farmers around the world;  it’s about survival of the planet; it’s about the future of food; and it’s about future generations.

Some will complain, “But I can’t afford to buy organic”.  Cesar Chavez (founder of United Farm Workers and one of my heroes because he understood social justice as one interconnected movement) never made over $6000 in a year, never owned a home, and still he made organic and vegan choices.  I asked his granddaughter Julie Chavez Rodriguez how Cesar would respond to “But I can’t afford it”. Without skipping a beat, she replied, “He’d say, ‘You pay for it now, or you pay for it later.’”

Cesar understood that when you buy something you are supporting it, you are subsidizing it, you are saying, “More of the same, and do it in MY name!”

Buying chemical foods is making the worst food the most available food — and it’s killing people, the planet, and animals. It’s setting up a disastrous future (and present!) where real food will be a thing of the past.

This isn’t about ‘you’ or ‘me’… it is about us.  We’re all one.

Can’t afford to buy organic? We can’t afford NOT to.

 BAM!

Pretty Much. 

Except that you can’t always afford it, in time, awareness, access, or money.

I was raised by a single mother who worked constantly and still could not afford to put food on the table (let alone superveganwholehealth food) because for us rent/bills weren’t ‘priorities’ we could ignore, and we didn’t even have a car or bus access to drive to any health food stores - though I’d like to note that I was still ridiculously privileged compared to the majority of my community. I think the original commenter needs to check theirs.

There is much more behind people’s ability to secure access to healthy foods than income (which is itself heavily divorced from socio-economic class)

Do you have the transport, time and money to go to a store selling healthy/organic foods? Is there even a store selling organic foods in your area? Do you have the facilities, time and energy to cook wholefoods/veg? Are you physically and mentally able to do the above? Are you aware of what organic/healthy foods are? If yes to all of the above, then can you afford healthy/organic foods for you and your dependants? I don’t give a shit how you answer these questions, gentle tumblr reader, because there are a hell of a lot of people who would have to answer them differently because of their socio-economic class and circumstances. They would answer “You pay for it now, or you pay for it later” with “I can’t fucking pay for it now” - not because they want to pay for it later, but because they can’t pay for it now. “Can’t afford to buy organic? We can’t afford NOT to.” - well, no, we CAN’T AFFORD TO BUY ORGANIC YOU FUCK. What does that quote even mean? You can’t turn a phrase and suddenly make rainbows fly out of our asses. Turning the phrase does not turn the situation.

The grossest offence in this comment is the goddamn victim-blaming. If you are fed shit from birth by the economy/government/corporations/whatever then it’s somehow ‘your own fault’ and you are asking for “more of the same” - just like those in wage-slavery are asking for more wage-slavery, right, where if they actually didn’t like it they’d quit and starve to death on principle. The “worst food” is already the most available food. And this is not for the will of the people - often the most vulnerable - forced to eat it, what an absurd offensive and ignorant statement, but it is entirely down to this system, which is the only and complete beneficiary of our consequent suffering.

“[X] is about protecting farm workers and their families; it’s about keeping chemicals off the land and out of our water; it’s about protecting wildlife; it’s about saving rivers and oceans; it’s about clean rain and air; it’s about dismantling the giant chemical/gmo companies (like Monsanto and Dow ) that are destroying farmers around the world;  it’s about survival of the planet; it’s about the future of food; and it’s about future generations.”

Which are all great, noble, and essential objectives. I cannot fathom, however, how you have arrived at the conclusion that the only possible method of attaining them is impossible and irrelevant consumer choice. This system will devour the people and the planet until it is itself destroyed, because that’s what it does and grows from doing. We need to be thinking how we will manage that. And whatever we find, it will start with ‘not jettisoning the blame and responsibility onto the oppressed in order to absolve ourselves of agency and any possibility for real change’ (i.e. checking our goddamn privilege)

Oh, and ”how you can stay healthy and save a buck” can be quite important to some people, weirdly enough. 

good work, krona

Reblogged for commentary. 

Ever looked at the price of organic produce compared to regular produce? regular granny smith apple: 99cents/lb.  Organic granny smith apple: $1.79/lb.  These arent numbers I pulled out of my arse.  These are the prices at the store where I shop. For a single mother on WIC, which do you think is the better choice?  

Yeah organic is ideal for the planet, but to insist that everyone MUST live this way is to ignore the serious class problems in this country.  I’m glad for the people who get to engage in “green consumerism” (actually, not really cause it’s just another way consumers can buy back their conscious without actually doing anything), but the rest of us just CANT. 

ALL THE COMMENTARY

Reblogged for commentary. You know what would happen if I spent money on organic produce, as seen in the above photo (a variety of vegetables in a pile, with a hand-lettered sign saying, yes, “ORGANIC PRODUCE”)?

They would rot. And I would starve. Because as I have written about before, I am not capable of cooking, more often than not. And even if I were, organic stuff is expensive as fuck where I am, and I barely get through the month as it is.

Look, I really respect people who manage to live organically/veganly on thirty cents a day or whatever. Truly. But not everyone can.