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Coffee Break In Anaheim

By Mickey Z.

30 July, 2012
World News Trust

“The fact is that we live in an extremely violent culture, and we all justify violence if it’s for what we believe in.” --Captain Paul Watson

On July 25, 2012, an NBCNews.com headline blared:

Shop windows smashed, fires reported as Anaheim protest turns violent

While shop windows do occasionally get smashed for a variety of reasons and there's a huge difference between a fire and a reported fire, the key words remain: "turns violent."

The tacit insinuation is that prior to windows possibly being smashed and fires being "reported," the situation in Anaheim had not been violent.

The six people shot -- five fatally -- this year by the Anaheim Police Department? Not violent.

Anaheim police officers shooting rubber bullets and releasing police dogs on unarmed civilians? Not violent.

A coffee shop window gets smashed? Look out now, things have finally turned violent.

Since this misinformation model should come as no surprise to anyone paying even an iota of attention and I've just recently covered corporate media behavior, I'm gonna take this opportunity to present a much wider, longer perspective.

From veteran activists to mainstream couch potatoes, non-violent dissent is typically revered and tossing a rock through a coffee shop window is deemed misguided and counterproductive, at best. Diversity of tactics is yet another topic I've recently discussed, so I'll also skip that and simply ask: How non-violent is your coffee break?

#OccupyContext
“The most violent element in society is ignorance.” --Emma Goldman

Anaheim is located in Orange County in the state of California. Humans have populated what we now call California since at least 17,000 BCE and those natives included some 500 distinct sub-tribes -- each consisting of 50 to 500 individual members. Up until the time of the first European contact, this region contained "the highest native American population density north of what is now Mexico."

Long before a modern human smashed the modern window of a modern coffee shop in 2012 Anaheim, the Tongva, Juaneño, and Luiseño Native American groups inhabited that general locale. In order to make way for the kind of progress that allows for civilized fun like rubber bullets and Disneyland, the native population was reduced by roughly 90 percent during the 19th century. (#genocide)

While 14 Southern California Indian Reservations were set aside by executive orders in 1891, Indians in both Orange and Los Angeles counties were excluded from land distributions "due in part to the value of coastal real estate." (#capitalism)

So, go ahead and stir all that into your cup of coffee and let me know if it's a touch too bitter for ya.

While you're at it, be sure to include a generous helping of the myriad eco-systems replaced by steel and concrete and some modern-day workplace exploitation and of course, there always the nature-killing materials and human-exploiting methods used to build and maintain the shop.

Perhaps the contractor hired undocumented and vastly underpaid workers who were not likely to balk at long hours, unsafe work conditions, and the lack of adherence to building codes and environmental regulations. (#freemarket)

If that's not enough carnage in your brew, let's consider the actual coffee in your destined-for-a-landfill cup.

Most coffee is not locally sourced and therefore traveled drastically more food miles and doesn't support local independent farms and roasters.

Most coffee is not shade grown which, as explained by the Northwest Shade Coffee Campaign, is coffee is "grown under a canopy of diverse species of shade trees, often on small farms using traditional techniques." As Grounds for Change reminds us: "By purchasing shade grown coffee, you send a message to coffee farmers that there is economic viability in returning to traditional methods of coffee cultivation."

Most coffee is not Fair Trade which refers to actively putting the concepts of "fair price, environmental sustainability, fair labor conditions, direct trade, democratic and transparent organizations, and community development” into everyday action. "Despite being the second most valuable commodity in the world after oil, there is significant human trafficking and exploitation in the coffee industry," writes Amanda Kloer, an editor with Change.org, and such conditions also happen in the United States. For example, Kaua'i Coffee, a Hawaii-based brand, was cited in 2011 for using six enslaved Thai workers on their plantation.

Most coffee is not organic, which would make it far more eco-friendly because it's "grown and processed without toxic chemicals, are cultivated and harvested in ways that protect sensitive ecosystems, and spare workers from exposure to harmful pesticides and herbicides."

Most coffee gets sugar added to it. Not only does sugar inflict violence upon those ingesting it (e.g. “The average person loses more than 90 percent of their immune function within 15 minutes of indulging in this poisonous substance,” says Walt Stoll, MD, a physician with a background in orthodox and complementary medicine. “This deficiency lasts for about two hours after the stress occurs.”), but the sugar industry is as rife with exploited workers as the coffee industry. Earlier this year, allegations of child labor and slave-like conditions by Rev. Christopher Hartley, a Roman Catholic priest and advocate for the rights of Dominican sugar workers, has prompted an investigation, which Hartley says will "demonstrate that not just the Dominican government is negligent but the United States as well because it buys 200,000 tons of sugar every year from Dominican growers despite deplorable conditions."

Most coffee gets cow's milk added to it. This is violent to the eco-system because it contributes to climate change. The dairy industry is an extension of the beef industry (used-up dairy cows are sent to the slaughterhouse after an average of four years, one-fifth their normal life expectancy), which means it plays a major role in creating 51 percent of greenhouse gases. (#factoryfarming)

As the folks at PETA describe, humans consuming cow's milk is violent to cows: "The 9 million cows living on dairy farms in the United States spend most of their lives in large sheds or on feces-caked mud lots, where disease is rampant. Cows raised for their milk are repeatedly impregnated. Their babies are taken away so that humans can drink the milk intended for the calves. When their exhausted bodies can no longer provide enough milk, they are sent to slaughter and ground up for hamburgers."

Cow's milk is also violent to the humans who drink it for far too many reasons to list here. For now, consider the toxic bovine brew of man-made ingredients like bio-engineered hormones, antibiotics (55 percent of U.S. antibiotics are fed to livestock), and pesticides -- all of which are bad for us and the environment.

Mic Check: Those who discuss violence/non-violence while chowing down off the global animal food (sic) industry need to re-examine their worldview -- big time.

#OccupyPerspective
"The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this." --Che Guevara

Reminder #1: The violence in Anaheim didn't begin with the protestors. The Blue Bloc is and has always been the most dangerous gang in town.

Reminder #2: Just about every cup of coffee you drink contains a thousand times more violence than can be found in the shattered shards of broken window glass.

While corporate media pundits, Wall Street-funded politicians, and self-righteous liberals posture about a rock that may or may not have been tossed through a coffee shop window, our dominant culture continues to rain down an unrelenting storm of violence.

Mic Check: Industrial civilization is built on and based on and functions on overt and covert violence. Any discussion of non-violence that ignores this reality is an exercise in deep denial.

Thus, I'd like to suggest that those who are authentically concerned about all life -- all species -- on Earth save their indignation and outrage for the global criminals who are poisoning our present and threatening our future.

Neither Obama nor Romney will even consider stopping the onslaught, the United Nations isn't gonna create change, and you won't find any worthwhile solutions being spewed forth by holy men of any denomination.

The answer, as always, begins with us choosing to think for ourselves, sharing our knowledge and skills, and taking immediate and sustained action. (#occupy)

Good first step: Spend a lot less time worrying about the state of coffee shop windows, and way more time occupying.

***

Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook

© WorldNewsTrust.com




 

 


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