You might have thought from reading my blog (okay – two former entries but they do make the point) that I would have chosen to focus my class project on something that had to do with animals – maybe the no-kill shelter, or our local Humane Society.  But frankly, I know myself too well.  I can tell you without a doubt that I am not the one who can face the cold, hard, sad facts of daily animal life in America and not either have a nervous breakdown or climb the nearest watchtower with a shiny, new, semi-automatic assault riffle strapped to my back.  Suffice it to say its just not a good fit.  So, after listening one morning to a guest speaker named Elke who worked for a shelter that served homeless families, I decided to work with them.

First Place Family Center is, I guess, a sort of typical homeless shelter, in what is in fact a better than typical, small sized American city (Eugene).  It’s in a not so perfect part of town, in an older than necessary three-story, cinderblock building lovingly painted cheery yellow.  The parking lot is deeply rutted and unpaved, which means muddy, water filled potholes the size of small ponds here in the Pacific Northwest, and there’s a semi-truck trailer permanently parked out in front by the street where people drop off donations.  First Place only serves families with children under 18, and each time I’ve been there there’s been a gaggle of moms and kids, sometimes dads too, hanging out in the family room just to the back of the front office.  The kids play and scream and cry like kids do, and the moms gossip, and scold, do laundry, fix food, check email, and watch TV like moms do with the only difference being that none of them has anywhere else to go.  But then really, First Place is a nice place to be.  There are mens’ and women’s shower rooms, washers and dryers, a food pantry, and a supply room filled with donated diapers, clothes and house-type items (when available).  They run a night shelter, and with the help of local churches in the area, find safe places for families to get short term housing while they figure out what to do next.  There’s even housing for the “vehicular homeless families” in the area (yes, it’s legal to raise kids in cars in Oregon).

But what really got me interested in donating my time to First Place was the work they do with low-income and homeless immigrant families.  The day that Elke came to talk to our class she mentioned that from last year to this, the shelter’s immigrant population had risen over 35%.  35%!  What’s more, she is the shelter’s only Spanish speaking employee and often the only one to help troubleshoot housing problems, medical needs, and education for this group.  Here was my link!  While I only speak a little Spanish, I am (hopefully) entering a Masters program in the Fall for Second Language Teaching.  Sure, I don’t have much experience teaching English officially, but I’ve been a volunteer English tutor with the community college for the past six months, and I’m completing a certification in Second Language Acquisition Training with my undergrad degree.  Good enough, I thought. And in fact it was.  After a brief conversation with Elke, I was good to go.  Almost immediately I began to put together my free English class, and Elke let as many of her Spanish speaking clients know about it as she could.

As of this writing I’ve completed one month of classes, two times a week.  Classes are held in the employee break room upstairs, which also serves as the supply cabinet and computer area.  My largest class has been three students.  My typical class 1.5 (three of my somewhat regular students bring their children who range in age from 18 months to 4 years). The proficiency level runs from very, very beginners to very, very beginning/intermediates, and I never know who’s going to be there.  For the first four classes Isabela was always there.  She’s a beginning/intermediate student who understands quite a bit of English, but can’t quite speak it (reminds me of my Spanish, actually).  But her car broke down, and I haven’t seen her for more than a week.  Caramina a very, very (enthusiastic) beginner showed up only once with her two-year old daughter Roberta, and Maria, her friend who’s at an intermediate level.  Maria was quieter and older than the rest of the students I’d had, and she explained that her understanding of English comes from working as a maid for the last 5 years.  Both women said they’d be back if Elizabeth, the one with the car, wasn’t offered double shifts.  I haven’t seen either one of them since.  Today was only Gloria, my newest student, who arrives early by bus with her son, Angelo, an 18 month-old baby boy who looks as delicious as any cream puff I’ve ever seen.  Gloria is a twenty-four year old mother of two from Mexico.  She attacks each lesson and worksheet I give her with total and complete concentration, correcting herself again and again until she gets things right.  She asks questions, writes herself notes in Spanish, and keeps all of her work from class so she can practice.  She, like the rest of my students, amazes me.  They are hard working, polite, and kind.  It doesn’t seem to matter to them that my Spanish is often terrible, that my lessons are unorganized or hard to follow, or that sometimes I have no idea how to answer their questions or explain why something is as it is.  Each time they arrive they are ready to learn, and each time they leave they say “Thank you” in English. It’s a pretty sweet set-up.

But teaching English is difficult, especially when you have almost no idea what you’re doing like I do.  I am continually (sometimes desperately) searching the web for free, usable ESL materials, or creating my own, only to find they work a whole lot better in my mind than in the classroom.  Sometimes my lessons are so lacking in structure and coherency that I think I ought to be ashamed to be doing what I’m doing.  But then not really, because basically as far as I can tell, I am the only one doing what I’m doing.  There are no other free English classes offered in Eugene.  I guess you might say, I have cornered el mercado.  Yippee and yikes come to mind.

To accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.   —    Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr.

I came across the documentary Earthlings somewhere on Face Book, which is sort of amazing considering I’ve been interested (some might say mildly obsessed) with animal issues for most of my life and had never heard of it.  Earthlings is the brainchild of a guy named Shaun Monson.  An animal lover like myself, his path to video began with his creation of a series of PSA’s for his local animal shelter in L.A.  The footage he shot there so moved him he committed himself to a six-year project to expose the suffering animals endure at the hands humans — including the suffering in factory farming, fur and leather production, vivisection, animal testing, hunting, sports, and entertainment.  It is a groundbreaking piece of work that has since been nicknamed the “vegan maker” by many who have viewed it.

To say this film is horrific is putting it mildly.  I have only been able to watch the trailer, which can easily be viewed at Shaun’s website earthlings.com, or his Face Book page (which has almost 20,000 fans).  I’m not new to shocking videos about animal abuse, but Earthlings is, well, a whole different animal.  Some of the images are so intensely painful I broke into uncontrollable sobs.  People on Shaun’s Facebook page report crying for days after watching the movie.  Many say they felt physically ill.  Some could only watch half of it, and most have sworn-off animal products forever.  The video is life changing, especially for people who think the whole vegetarian/vegan/PETA gig is just a bunch of bleeding hearts who can’t stand the idea of animals being killed.  If only that were the case.  Animals in the world are beaten, tortured, and butchered alive, not secretly in creepy small towns, but in licensed, regulated industries.

For me (and seriously this is the paragraph you might want to skip)  the most shocking image of the Earthlings trailer comes in a section of undercover footage of a Chinese fur farm.  It shows a worker standing on the body of what appears to be a fox.  The fox is alive and struggling, but the worker pays it no mind.  He efficiently makes a slice across the fox’s body near its hind quarters and then, with great effort, proceeds to pull its skin, fur and all, from its flesh.  Remember the fox is alive.  At one point, the flesh resists, but the strong, well trained worker puts a bit more muscle into it, and the job is soon complete.  The animal is thrown into a pile with others that have suffered its same fate, all skinless, many still alive.  The camera goes in for a close-up to show the fox’s bloodied, raw face, mouth agape and panting, wild eyes still blinking.  Where moments ago there was soft fur, now is only white fat, exposed muscle, and blood.

“Why do you watch stuff like that,” is often the comment I get when I mention, not in detail mind you but simply mention, the horror of these videos.  I posted the trailer of Earthlings on my Facebook page and I can say by the response I got, no one watched it.  The clip of the fox is currently what keeps me up at night.  It has replaced the clip of the calf born on a filthy feedlot.  It is literally moments old, wet and glistening with the birth cord still hanging from its body.  A worker waits for just a moment before walking up and grabbing the calf by one leg.  He drags its steaming, new body away through mounds of shit in the lot, it’s bawling mother trotting along behind.  You see, feedlots are no place for babies.  They are the fattening pens used in the last stages of beef production before slaughter.  The calf is unwanted.  The mother will soon be dead.

So why would I spend my time exposing myself to horrors I could easily avoid.  Why subject myself to things so intensely awful and so out of my control?  For me the answer comes so simply it renders these questions mute.  Looking away is not an option.  I believe in the connection between me and every other living thing on the planet, and in that connection lies an inherent responsibility to continually engage myself in the world in whatever way I can.  What’s more, this connection links me not only to the pain and suffering of all living things, but to the solutions as well.  Every choice I make has an impact on something in the world, and if I am not doing all I can to make a difference, I am as responsible for the problem as the man skinning the fox.  There is no turning away.  Once I  start telling myself that lie – the lie that says if I don’t see it, it’s not happening – I have removed myself not only from the problem, but from the solution as well.

The images of the fox and the calf keep me honest.  They remind me that I am no more and no less important than anything else. The raw, blinking eyes are mine.  The calf is mine, too, and  both have broken my heart wide open.

Soooo, let’s get right to it, shall we?  I am a huge, humongous proponent of animal rights.  I’ve been a vegetarian for several years and have recently amped that up and become vegan.  I don’t believe in the misuse of animals for anything – not food, sport, entertainment, clothing, science or medicine.  I believe in equal rights for all species – from worms to trees, mice to moss.  We, the self-absorbed human race, have no right to harm anything PERIOD.  But for years I’ve been somehow, and somewhat reluctantly, a fan of Temple Grandin.  Sort of.  I mean before I was vegetarian, I read her book called Thinking in Pictures and really loved it.  At the time I was just as horrified by what I knew of the factory farm industry as I am now, but hadn’t really gone through all the steps in my life to walk-my-talk as they say.  Back then, Temple Grandin made me feel hopeful and relieved.  Alas, someone doing something for the poor creatures on their way to slaughter.  Maybe things aren’t that bad after all, and I can eat my burger in peace.  But that was then, and this isn’t.  Now, I know that while Dr. Grandin may be easing some of the stress animals go through in their final hours, their final hours are only a very tiny part of the horror they endure their entire short lives.

As I listened to her talk, as details of carbon dioxide stunning and captive bolt stunning formed pictures in my mind, I couldn’t find the hope and the relief I’d somehow felt before.  In the space of an evening, Dr. Grandin’s work became questionable for me at best.  How is it that someone so knowledge of animal behavior and cognition can make factory farming and slaughterhouses her life’s work?  Isn’t she just a brighter side of a very dark problem?  Yes!  and no.  As my partner’s 12 year old daughter so thoughtfully explained, “It’s not like the world’s ever going to stop eating meat.  At least she’s doing something to make the animal’s lives better.”   She’s right and wrong at the same time.  Dr. Grandin’s work IS the bright side, and factory farming is absolutely wrong, period.  While I can see that what she does makes a difference, it does not take away the intense and insane horror that 40 billion (yes, I meant to type a b) factory farmed animals are subjected to in the United States alone.  The brutality, the neglect, the abuse, the pain.  Don’t believe me?  Go to You Tube and type in factory farming.  Or better yet, watch just the trailer of the documentary Earthlings. Or better yet, visit Dr. Grandin’s site www.grandin.com.  It’s all there, and it’s all very, very, very sad.