This is a great show! We feature an interview with Amie Breeze Harper about her Sistah Vegan Anthology. Amie is a Masters Student at Harvard University EXT. She is focusing her Master's Thesis research on a project called Cyberterritories of Whiteness: Language, 'Colorblind' Utopias, and Sistah Vegan Consciousness. Amie was motivated by the negative responses that a PeTA Campaign comparing slavery, women's suffrage and the Holocaust to animal oppression drew on an African American oriented message board. Amie felt that what she saw "wasn't offensive but was in fact captivating and thought provoking, inducing critical consciousness engagement in viewers to question their own normative practices." She decided to start interviewing black identified vegan females for an anthology that she hopes "will be an effective literary model that will show the Black community (as well as all people) the health and environmental/ecological benefits of strongly considering veganism as a practice that simultaneously resists institutionalized racism and other legacies of slavery and colonialism."
Our musical guest is Matana Roberts, a saxophonist and composer who tries to expose in her music the mystical roots and spiritual traditions of African American creative expression. Matana is a contributor to the Sistah Vegan Anthology.
We have an intro audio clip from the recent "blessing of the animals" at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Finally, we are interviewing Rocky Shepherd who runs a web site called Stop AETA. AETA is an acronym for the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act which is an abominable new legislation which was snuck through the US Senate just before they went on vacation and will go to the House of Representatives in November when they reconvene. This bill would make even the mildest non-violent protests into possible acts of "terrorism" punishable by severe jail sentences. Rocky gives us an overview of the act and ideas on how to stop this encroachment on our civil liberties and First Amendment rights before it is too late.