Kezia Jauron,
The Thinking Vegan
June 2017
Personally, my disability has made me far more conscious of yet further atrocities perpetrated by the American Bureaucrazy – and hence even more critical of it. It’s no accident or marketing ploy that Rebel Hell’s subtitle contains the words Disabled and Vegan. I attempt to demonstrate how prison is actually a stunningly accurate microcosm of the “Free World.” The discrimination and neglect I experienced in regard to my medical condition inside the razor-wire fences was almost identical to what I’ve been through outside, except completely out in the open and unambiguous in prison. This memoir highlights the seminal importance of language and words – what we choose to say, when and how and where, the context – and part of all that is how precisely we choose to advocate for those who have little to no voice.
Author and activist Jan Smitowicz’s recently released book
Rebel Hell:
Disabled Vegan Goes to Prison tracks his two years in an Illinois state
prison, and exposes some of the corruption and idiosyncrasy of the American
justice system. Following his first self-published animal rights-focused
work at ten years old, he went on to publication in Earth First! Journal,
Green Theory and Praxis Journal, Louisiana English Journal, and
The Animals’
Voice magazine. Aside from a vegan and prison survivor, Jan is a longtime
social justice activist, former undercover animal cruelty investigator,
Hurricane Katrina relief worker, and “proud father of a vasectomy.” He is
also the father of two novels, Orange Rain and Redwood Falls, and has a B.A.
in English Literature and Creative Writing from UC Irvine, one of Gary’s
alma maters.
We hooked up with Jan to discuss Rebel Hell and his work.
You’re known (to our readers, anyway) as an animal and earth rights
activist, but you were popped on a drug-related offense during a transport
you undertook for financial reasons. I think people will find it surprising
that you weren’t arrested for, say, freeing 700 minks or tree spiking. Can
you set that scene a little bit? I don’t want people to get the wrong
impression, that your prison stint was connected to your animal or eco
activism.
Well, the full story is more complex; it goes [far] beyond prosaic financial
reasons and into the realm of actual survival. I’ve been disabled with a
severe nerve pain condition since 2008, but got denied for Social Security
Disability twice – despite the support of all my doctors. The goal of Social
Security seems clear: not to help people who need help, but to find any way
possible to deny that help. In other words, a typical “Bureaucrazy,” as I
refer to them in the memoir; a social mechanism used to best control large
numbers of people [made necessary by overpopulation!], one that I rage
against thoroughly.
In the six months leading up to my fateful decision to accept that job
hauling medical-grade marijuana cross-country – for which I’d be paid three
times more money than I’d ever seen in my life – I struggled monetarily so
much that I had difficulty even procuring groceries! Having done undercover
animal cruelty investigations and other stuff, I’m supremely confident in my
ability to act unfazed in high-pressure situations. Accepting the job was an
easy choice.
I would like to point out, though, that I truly felt [and feel] my muling
was a good deed: getting organic plant-medicine to people who otherwise
might not be able to find it. Also, any time even one person substitutes
animal-tested pharmaceuticals with organic cannabis, the animals benefit to
some degree, right? And I surely helped hundreds of people do that, based on
sheer volume and probability alone. Finally, the specific “crime” I was
caught for may not’ve been directly related to animal liberation, but the
memoir I painstakingly wrenched forth from the situation damn sure is!
Let’s talk a bit about prison life as a vegan. We’ve heard from Walter Bond
and a few others who have done time, but we don’t get too deeply into the
experience of surviving (I won’t say “living”) vegan inside. There are ample
resources online on how to achieve a semblance of nourishment, but what
social impacts did you experience?
For you kids out there, those are records.
My being vegan only furthered the already-wide social chasm between
myself and most other prisoners [given how relatively educated and
politically experienced and well-read I am, et cetera]. Differences that
also include my white skin. Because – as I try desperately throughout the
book to examine and conclude why/how American prisons maintain their
stupendous racial disparities – black people comprise only about 15% of
Illinois’s civilian population, yet they make up some 60 percent of the
state’s prisons!
Anyway, in my experience, being vegan was actually one of my most
insignificant difficulties. AFTER the initial month, at least; I spent the
first two weeks in County Jail and then two more in a 24-hour-lockdown
supermax-type prison, where we festered in unthinkable misery waiting to be
transferred to a proper longterm facility. I shriveled down by 19 pounds
during that 27-day period – meaning I sloughed off two pounds every three
days. Once I survived that, though, it was a relative vegan-cakewalk. The
worst part was probably how I had to claim a relevant religion and meet with
the chaplain before I could start receiving the designated vegan tray. So
absurd: you couldn’t get it for health or ethical reasons, but only if this
or that antiquated fantasy-text supported it. Socially, guys seemed to view
vegetarianism and veganism as the behavior of either a total kook or a
religious zealot [if you can tell the difference], and therefore outside
their realm of true understanding. I did have profound, even life-changing
impacts on the few people I considered legit friends. One guy had his entire
worldview blasted apart when I helped open his eyes to the ghastly, horrific
world imposed upon animals by humans and our greed, gluttony, and sheer
numeric excess.
At least once that stands out to me, you liken the prison transfer
experience moving from cage to cage to factory farming, with the caveat that
animals who go through this are entirely innocent. I’m sure there is more
you can say on this, so, now’s your chance.
Every single day, 99.999 percent [if not more] of nonhuman animals live in
conditions more appalling than anything that’s ever happened at Abu Ghraib,
North Korean prison camps, and – yes – places like the Warsaw Ghetto and
Treblinka. As the great and heroic Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote
[paraphrasing for reasons of time and laziness]: To animals, all men are
Nazis; for them, it is an eternal Treblinka. At the core though, American
prisons and factory farms operate on the same basic principles – willfully,
even desperately disregarding the individuals’ personhood and then
“processing” as many of them as possible, as quickly and efficiently as
possible – no matter what abominable suffering it causes.
This also happens to be the entire industrial/bureaucratic model of
civilization in a nutshell, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Every
act of control and dominance is inseparably entangled. Which is why human
liberation is animal liberation is earth liberation [or is it the other way
around?].
You and I primarily connected through antinatalist circles because we are
both passionate about the impact of overpopulation on animals and the earth.
According to the very credible 2013 survey of vegans by M. Butterflies Katz
only 13 percent of us are now raising, or have successfully raised, vegan
children. At the other end of the spectrum, almost 39 percent of us are
childfree and plan to stay that way, while about 33 percent said they are
undecided about having children in the future. For those who are on the
fence – that 33 percent – help me sway them against breeding more humans,
and towards adoption if they feel moved to become a parent.
It should be the easiest thing in the world for vegans to understand: “Don’t
Breed or Buy While Shelter Animals Die” is more than equally applicable for
creating new humans. Maybe “Don’t Breed or Try While Adoptable Children
Cry”? Still trying to perfect that one.
Anyway, we have an ethical duty to reduce our collective harm on animals;
overpopulation [and consumption, as the two are inextricably linked] is
their worst enemy. Every new first-world human birthed is another acre of
wild land – animals’ homes – that gets bulldozed for housing, industry, and
agriculture. Plus there is of course no guarantee kids will stay vegan.
There’s a Facebook page called
Vegan Army Fails documenting countless
examples. Meanwhile, there are kids already here and yearning for a loving
forever home; 415,000 foster children in America alone. Adoption seems like
a sort of measuring stick for how much you truly love kids. You might even
save a child from ghastly situations of physical/sexual abuse! Do the math.
It’s not calculus, but basic arithmetic.
I might be one of those people you say should walk the plank but I’m not a
fan of recreational marijuana. As for medical marijuana, I’d like to see a
bigger emphasis on the “medical” part, but that speaks more to the current
permissive system in many states for self-diagnosing and self-dosing, and
speaks less to the medical value of the drug itself. And I beg for better
standards to measure impairment. For example in Washington state, fatal car
crashes caused by driving while high doubled after legalization. Can you
give a quick primer on marijuana laws, and for skeptics like me, do you see
ways this system can be improved?
There’s a very important problem here I want to address first: The
information in that link is questionable at best. Marijuana can stay in your
system for weeks, even months depending on usage. It’s not like alcohol,
where you can perform a breathalyzer or other test and find how much alcohol
is in a person’s system and thereby directly approximate the quantity
consumed that day, the amount of impairment in that moment. Alcohol and
marijuana are two wildly different drugs, and cannot be treated otherwise.
In any case, of course more fatal car crash drivers had weed in their system
– it’s legal and easily available there now! But as I demonstrated above,
having detectable marijuana in your system means little to nothing. I wonder
how many of those people with detectable pot were also drunk? Because if
they were, and I’d bet vital parts of my anatomy that a majority of them
were indeed, alcohol impairs most people in ways incomparable to marijuana.
Okay. So pot is illegal, and remains stigmatized, due in large part to the
perfervidly aggressive campaigns of 1920s and ’30s Americans driven to
hysteria by the sensationalist “Yellow Journalism” of William Randolph
Hearst’s newspaper empire. His fortune, not at all coincidentally, was also
built in part on the obliteration of ancient old-growth forests for the
timber – Hearst saw hemp, and by extension marijuana [read: the two are
variations of the same plant species, and back then “hemp” was the most
common term for cannabis in political discourse], as a direct threat to his
unimaginable fortune.
Enter Harry Anslinger, a racist scumbag moron of the “highest” order [NPI –
No Pun Intended]. He was the first commissioner of the U.S. Federal Bureau
of Narcotics, a spot he transitioned into straight from the Department of
Prohibition when that ended. Strangely, he’s on record as saying marijuana
is all but harmless – but then alcohol prohibition ceased and he needed a
new target. He changed his tune rather dramatically, saying pot was “More
hellish than heroin” and falsely linking it to 200 gruesome crimes. He also
placed large emphasis on the perception that weed was popular with blacks
and other minorities; in one article, he wrote, “Colored students at the
Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana]
and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result:
pregnancy.”
Marijuana and other drugs are utilized by the mangled insatiable maw of the
“Justice” System and Prison-Industrial Complex as a convenient mechanism – a
weapon – with which to target and incarcerate people of color, mostly black
men. I show this pretty damn conclusively in Rebel Hell, but for now I’ll
just provide two facts: [1] blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate,
but blacks are more likely several times over to be arrested and locked up
on nonviolent drug charges; [2] blacks receive far harsher punishments on
average for those same nonviolent drug crimes.
As far as the medical cannabis system goes, the DEA and lawmakers ultimately
deserve 100 percent of the blame for whatever problems exist therein. If
marijuana were legal and regulated like alcohol [or at the very least
decriminalized], most of these problems would evaporate. To be honest – even
though I’m disabled and drug abuse directly impacts my ability to smoothly
receive proper health care – I have no real issue with people who don’t
quite need pot medicinally, yet work the system to acquire cannabis cards.
Why? Because medical marijuana functions in part as a sort of stopgap
measure to counteract America’s bullshit drug policies and systemic racism;
I celebrate its existence for those reasons alone. They would be
justification enough for me.
But on top of all that, there are legit hordes of people with medical issues
who eschew animal-tested pharmaceuticals in favor of those lovely flower
buds. I assure you this is true. Like my wife’s father, who took
anti-seizure pills for 30 years but still had regular grand mal
episodes…until medical pot was legalized and he started growing/smoking it,
after which he had zero seizures for the final 15 years of his life. The
system has its flaws – just like every other system within our unsustainably
populated human world – but it’s a damn sight better than the alternative of
total prohibition. This society needs to get off its pseudo-puritanical trip
and let adults enjoy their bodies however they want as long as it doesn’t
harm others!
Given your past, do you ever butt heads with the straight-edge vegan
community? Do you have a ‘read’ on the SxE contingent vis-à-vis health,
activism, advocacy?
It’s happened. Not often though, I’d guess primarily because my wife and I
are misanthropes of the highest order [pun definitely intended], mostly
preferring the company of each other and our two perfect doggers to any
human – though we do utterly adore our handful of close friends, most if not
all of whom also partake in the devil’s lettuce. I have had many
straight-edge friends. I’ve protested with many others. The only problem I
have is that some of them can be absurdly dogmatic – looking down on you
just for enjoying the occasional intoxicant. It’s silly.
There were a few very very hardcore straight-edge people I protested
alongside quite often back when I first started about a decade ago; the
topic came up and I expressed my personal hatred for alcohol. But I’ve
always worn my bong on my sleeve, if you will [a conscious choice taken by
myself and other vegan friends to play a part in normalizing others to
marijuana usage]. Even though I totally agreed with them about alcohol, they
somehow saw me as a hypocrite because I didn’t eschew pot as well.
It comes down to this: Just leave adults alone about their personal choices!
We have bigger battles. Let’s fight those together first. The animals and
their planet don’t have time for petty human drama – let’s achieve some
serious shit for them, and then maybe our personal differences will matter a
little. Maybe.
Speaking of subcultures, let me call out the phrase “disabled vegan” in the
title of your book. Most readers know my husband has cerebral palsy and
while we haven’t talked a lot about ableism in the AR movement per se, we
have talked a lot about general body-shaming. It has even compelled Gary to
wonder if, given his physical limitations, body-shamers consider him a
liability to the cause because he lacks that “perfect, healthy vegan body.”
As another disabled vegan, what is your perspective?
First I just need to say that I love this question, and so appreciate your
asking it! My opinion is the animals need everything and everyone possible
on their side. If anybody thinks their body is best for veganism, I have two
suggestions for them: [1] Go liberate some animals if you’re so physically
gifted instead of sitting around stroking your ego; [2] Get fucked. “It
takes all kinds,” as a friend always says.
In fact, it’s pretty obvious to me that having every sort of body type
involved in animal rights is an overwhelmingly positive thing. Don’t we want
EVERYONE to be vegan? It’s like my dear personal friend Bob Linden of Go
Vegan Radio says [paraphrasing with my more creative words]: Americans seem
to gravitate toward obesity, so he wants to show that you can be vegan and
still keep the fat on.
Personally, my disability has made me far more conscious of yet further
atrocities perpetrated by the American Bureaucrazy – and hence even more
critical of it. It’s no accident or marketing ploy that Rebel Hell’s
subtitle contains the words Disabled and Vegan. I attempt to demonstrate how
prison is actually a stunningly accurate microcosm of the “Free World.” The
discrimination and neglect I experienced in regard to my medical condition
inside the razor-wire fences was almost identical to what I’ve been through
outside, except completely out in the open and unambiguous in prison. This
memoir highlights the seminal importance of language and words – what we
choose to say, when and how and where, the context – and part of all that is
how precisely we choose to advocate for those who have little to no voice.
People with severe disabilities – like me and several close Facebook friends
and [I imagine] like Gary – struggle just to get by on a daily basis, far
more than most people probably realize.
Social justice issues benefit greatly from having such people on board; we
prove that you can face monumental personal challenges yet nonetheless
thrive on a vegan diet [similar to gluten-free and soy-free vegans’
devotion]; even more significantly, we show how you can still advocate for
others’ rights while simultaneously fighting for your own rights – and even
survival! How is this anything other than a win-win?!
This isn’t necessarily connected to the book, but you’ve said your
experience volunteering after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was seminal
to your activism. Can you give us a glimpse into this?
Jan and Dogger Jamie
It was politically the first real thing I did for the sole sake of doing
something good and right. The situation there – its shocking poverty, the
near-nonpresence of federal aid even six months after the storm, and how it
all connected so clearly to the area’s black-majority population – unlocked
and opened the door to my political radicalization. We Common Ground
volunteers protested a property owner who was illegally and unethically
evicting tenants who’d been displaced by the storm. My very first protest.
Outside the bar owned by that slumlord where we protested, the National
Guard stood nearby holding M16s. They weren’t protecting local residents
from being illegally evicted, but they were protecting that rich guy’s
property! Another microcosm of American society.
It may sound strange, but in Rebel Hell I explain how my volunteering trips
to New Orleans after Katrina would’ve never happened if I hadn’t gone
vegetarian earlier that year [2005]. Becoming vegetarian gave me the courage
and self-confidence to do anything I set my mind to [which naturally
included going vegan in early 2006], no matter how ostensibly daunting.
Katrina fueled the decision to devote my life to activism.
We’ve got a link below to your website, but aside from that, how can readers
best support your work? Also, if there are any deep green, deep
antinatalist, or deep AR references you’d like people to know about, now’s
the chance to spill.
I desperately need the support of my peers if I’m ever gonna be able to take
my uncompromising messages to a larger, non-niche audience. Check out the
different titles I have available on Amazon [if you simply search
“smitowicz,” the only results are my material], post reviews on Amazon
and/or Goodreads, subscribe to my author newsletter via my website, and
[this one may be most important of all] spread the word! A groundswell of
grassroots support could elevate Rebel Hell into the stratosphere – where I
and many others believe it belongs.
In terms of other works, Terrorists or Freedom Fighters and Igniting a
Revolution – which are, respectively, animal liberation- and earth
liberation-related collections of essays by activists and/or academics,
edited by Steven Best and Anthony Nocella – are without question two of the
most critically important, necessary books out there. As activists, we need
to be much more well versed regarding movement history. How can people who
don’t know a lick about the history of animal rights form any sort of
respectable, informed opinion on strategy? If you don’t know about people
like Henry Spira, Rod Coronado, Marius Mason, Jeff “Free” Luers, and the
SHAC7, you’re doing the animals a disservice; you’re hindering your ability
to fully grasp the historical and potential efficacy of various tactics and
strategies. Green is the New Red by Will Potter, Free the Animals by Ingrid
Newkirk about the ALF, Endgame by Derrick Jensen, My Name is Chellis and I’m
in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning, and Flaming
Arrows by Rod Coronado are also way up high in importance. I also have a few
quick and little-known but very very critical movie recommendations, most if
not all of which can be found on YouTube: Lethal Medicine [still the best
documentary ever about animal testing], PickAxe from CrimethInc.,
Sharkwater, and Testify! Ecodefense and the Politics of Violence. Having
said that, I respectfully but vehemently implore you to read more – I
promise you can find the time if you try, and your life will be far better
for it.
For more from Jan, and to follow his blog, visit
http://jansmitowicz.com.
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