Letter Got In - Other stuff

Hello,

So last friday my letter got in. They didn't change much, and it was practically how I submitted it. The only problem is the title, which they changed. Oh well...

You can read the letter here.

I got a lot of people that I know telling me that they read the letter. A couple of teachers and my friend and his parents read the letter, so ya, I think it was good! I kind of went for a bit of a different approach in this letter, in where I kind of didn't tell people that they should do an action like go vegan at the end. Instead I left it open ended, so that people can come to their own conclusions.

Anywhere, I've been swamped with school and somewhat with scholarship/university stuff....

I've tried doing a video with My brother a couple times, but it hasn't worked out well.... Oh well, It'll work soon.... I wanna make a really good one like Just Different, which by the way has continued getting really positive feedback! I also did another english assignment on animal liberation stuff, and I have a 3d surreal image thing for photography which I'm going to do on Animal Liberation... Will post when done...

Anyway,
thats all for now,
Peace...

In Defence Of Micheal Vick - Letter To The Editor

Hello anyone who reads this blog,

My Local newspaper recently printed this article about Michael Vicks first game after his release, with controversie over his dogfighting convictions. I decided to write a response to that article. It took me longer that I had originally thought, but now it's all done. I got someone to check it for me, and they said it was good. I sent it to the Letters To The Editor Section, I just hope it gets in. Heres the copy I sent in:

Letter To The Editor
Brendan Elworthy

In response to: http://news.therecord.com/article/615455

Re: Small group of animal rights activists protest Vick outside Coliseum, others show support

In Defence of Michael Vick

For Michael Vick, last Sunday's football game wasn't a good one; more attention was drawn to Vick's dog fighting history than to his team's loss.

In April 2007, Vick was convicted of holding illegal dog fighting activities; over 70 dogs were forced to fight in hostile conditions. Vick has consequently been under fire for his actions - last Sunday was no exception.

Dog fighting is indeed a socially unacceptable act. However, in defence of Vick, I feel that he should not be the target of such negative attention, nor should he have been convicted.

Vick's dogs must have experienced a variety of feelings while in the fights. Fear, exhaustion, terror, pain, physical dismemberment, and death were shared not just between Vick's dogs, but are experienced daily by farm animals at slaughter.

If we are to blame Vick, how are we not to blame ourselves? There is no difference between the way Vick's dogs and a farm chicken experience death; they both die in pain.

The only difference between pets and farmed animals is how we use them. Vick used his pets like farm animals, which begs the question: 'Why is using pets like farmed animals grounds for conviction at all?'

Brendan Elworthy
Kitchener

Besides that I've been busy with school and other stuff. I attended a Male Allie Against Sexual Violence workshop, was was pretty cool. This doesn't really relate to activist stuff, but I've been spending a lot of time applying to universities and scholarships - which has been ever so stressful.

Oh, also my brother is practically vegan! It's pretty cool, although he has to start eating more varieties of food. But ya, thats about all for now!

Peace out!

First oct post...

Soo...

It's been forever since I wrote a post... I really hate school, stress, not feeling well and feeling unmotivated/down/depressed kinda feeling... In short thats why I haven't blogged in a while... But life goes on...

I've done a couple actions since my last blog, but I forget them all. I know I leafletted a couple times, and I recently did a paper on how animal liberation is connected to human liberation. It was for english, and I had to make some distant connections to tie it in, but I thought "Hey why not" and I figure the more i write about this kind of issues the better I will be at arguing with them. I also did an rel assignment with animal liberation stuff...

But besides that I've been busy with school... I shouldn't have taken a some of my courses - boring and a lot of homework...

Anyway I'm gonna try to be uploading more. I keep saying I wanna get ayden more invovled, so we're gonna do some Youtube videos soon...I hope lol...

But I think thats all for now. Not really an exciting post, but oh well....

Cya's

Earthlings Film Screening

So...

I'm like super stressed right now. I have a big english test tomorrow, but I'm pretty well studied so I think I'll do ok. But I'm still stressed lol.

Anyway, today I and other activists held a video screening the video "Earthlings" at a local university. We had two showings, and it went pretty well both times. There wasn't much advertisement about the event, but we had a lot of people interested. During the second showing I had at least 5 or six people come up to me and be like "thats f*cked up". I gave them leaflets and answered their questions, which was pretty cool. But there was a lot more people that just kind of watched from a distance. I was going to put a picture in, but its not working for some reaon... mhhh.

Anyways, If you haven't seen Earthlings its a great movie - very informative and somewhat depressing. If you haven't viewed it, I highly encourage you to

http://vodpod.com/watch/1077559-earthlings-1hr-35-mins

So thats about all. ITs really late, I'm so fudged for my test....

Peace

Meeting And Video...

So....

I don't really have a lot to report in this blog post. I'm mostly posting this now because I want to have at least 8 posts for the month of sept lol.

Anyway, on Monday me and other activists had a students against animal cruelty meeting. In the meeting we basically just told students about other activitities (like a pot-luck I'm supposed to be at now, but I slept through the starting time =[ )and an earthlings screening, which I'm going to be helping with tomorrow. We also discussed activists assignments that people could do - like giving leaflets to people or putting up posters. The meeting went ok, except that attendence was low due poor weather.

Also, I made this video for for my Gr.12 catholic social justice course.... I know it's not the best, but it's pretty good considering the circumstances.... (not much time to do it in, and I was the only one in my group that did anything on the video and some of the other things we had to do, and I had other homework projects on top of that).

The video doesn't really have to do with Nonhuman Animal Rights, but it obviously has a lot to with human rights (Humans are animals to). We showed it in class today, and the reception was very positive - it was a lot better the other videos - in my opinion.

Anyway, I think thats all for now...

Peace!

Critical Mass + Leafletting

So,


On friday I and other activists/friends leafleted at another local highschool. It went pretty well, and someone asked to take some leaflets to share with others, which was pretty cool!


I also attended my citys Critical Mass Bike Ride. It was pretty cool. I'd never been to this bicycle celebration, but it was interesting. I also handed out leaflets to those attending the bike ride. It went pretty good too! Anyway, here are some pictures of the ride and leaflettng.

A Pretty Epic Shoot of me leafletting

Leafletting

After The Bike Ride

We Are Traffic!

The Streets Are Ours!

Jeez... I don't normally stay up this late, but I'm working on this video for a school project. It's about economic justice and has a social justice message, so I'm gonna post it up when I'm done... I'm getting tired though, so I may do it later...

Anyway, thats all for now...

Peace!

P.S. My "Just Different" viewings have drastically increased during this last week! I've gone from like 500 views to almost 1,000 in just one week! I'm going viral! well not really, but a youtuber commented on my video saying they were gonna share it everywhere. I'm gonna ask how they did it - cuz the attention span for that video is still the highest out of all my videos.

A quick note on leafleting and solidarity actions

So....


This is gonna be a quick note cuz it's late and I'm tired.

But the past couple days have been going pretty good in terms of school and activism (though I can ALWAYS do more). But some day this past week (I forgot which) I leafletted a local highschool with some fellow activsts. It went very well. And today I and others volunteered/helped out with a Take Back The Night event in my town. It went really well, and a fellow activist set up a Feminist For Animal Rights (with other Animal Issues also)display, which worked awesomely!

I have pictures, but I'm to lazy to upload them... I'll have more actions, plus a video up soon! But thats pretty much all for now...

Peace,
Brendan

Letter To Editor and Other Things

So....

I came across a letter in the local paper, and decided to write an editoral about it. It's been two months since my last one was published (they only accept one every two months), so I figured I'd write another. It's not quite done yet, I just have some editing still left to do. I'll update this post tomorrow with it. So ya lemme know what you think of the letter, when it's posted of course. And I'll post the article its responding to.

So besides that theres been a couple other activists things that have happened since last post. One day this week, (I can't remember which - school is making everything a blur and it doesn't help that I stay up to late and take 5 hours naps during the day), I attended a video screening of "Fast Food Nation". My fellow activist/friend was talking there before the video screening, and I was able to leaflet there, getting around 50 -60 leaflets. Even though I've seen the movie, it was a good event!

Also, in religion we were assigned projects that demonstrate catholic social justice teachings. My group was assigned economic justice, so I'm going to do a video on the negative aspects of the free market. I'd like to learn more about these issues, I have some knowledge, but its always better to know more about why something is bad. Speaking of knowledge and issues of economic systems though, i'm reading this really good fictional book on anarchy and capitalism called The Dispossed . I really like it because it presents the issues and theories in a way that doesn't bore the reader to death like some other philosophical/theoretical books out there.

But anyway, I think thats all for now. Sorry theres no pictures. I'm planning on doing some videos with ayden over the weekend, and getting my activism and my schoolwork more organized (and possibly my sleeping habits as well).

Peace,
Brendan

Toronto Veg Food Fair

So...

I went to the the toronto veg food fair this weekend and it was pretty cool. I got a bucket load of pictures and it was a pretty good experience. There was a lot of consumerist exhibits though - really random stuff like pots and pan vendors and like pretzels & pickel vendors. And there was an absence of animal booths - in fact there was really only like two or three animal booths. It was disheartening to say the least.

We leafletted a lot though, and got out around 3,000 leaflets. We didn't leaflet the second day though, but it we still got out to a bunch of people! Overall the fair was a good experience! Here are some photos!

We left at the ungodly hour of 7:00 in the morning

Banana Man!

They had some pretty cool rides at the fair! (Note: not really)

This was at the ridicously overpriced fruit stand.

Ayden, in one of his rare moments - quiet and thoughtful.

He wasn't really juggling. They all fell after photo - Poser =)

Long story short, I fell...

This is a picture of a bunch of pictures...

Ayden Leafletting at the harbourfront!

Besides the fair though, I've been feeling kind of down. I dunno why, but it may just because school has started again. I really don't like school, I had to do this group project for english and I ended up doing like 3 hours of work last night cuz the other members of my group didn't do anything....Besides that, I dunno, maybe its my allergies or something, but I'm just not feeling at the top of my game.

I still have a couple of things like video's and others that I plan on doing, I just haven't got around to it. I still haven't got around to the new design and the other stuff I mentioned previously either...

Anyway, guess that's all for now, I'm doing more activist stuff that I'll report on later this week....

Peace,
Brendan

P.S. I was adding tags to this post, and something very odd struck me. When you add tags to posts blogger finishs them for you if you have previously used this tag. I was trying to type in the word "Vegetarian" but blogger immediately switched to "Vegan".


This struck me as odd, because I don't remember reading to much literature that encouraged "Veganism" at the vegetarian festival. I'm pretty sure I have been somewhat of an absolutists in all my previous postings, and the fact that vegetarianism didn't kind of proves that. I just found that interesting...

Vegan Hip-Hop and Other stuff

Hello!

It's been a while since my last post, and lots has happened. I really want change my site url name, and possibly the layout to. I have a cool one that I'm try to get up sometime soon.

But I've started school..... and it basically stinks just as much as last year. I mean it's not horrible, I've got some pretty good classes - Catholic Social Justice is interesting to say the least. My teacher is pretty liberal, we even talked about capitalism and how Jesus probably wouldn't be in favor of capitalism... But if Jesus was half the guy that my teacher portrayed him as, I'm pretty sure he'd be a hardcore Marxist - except I don't think he'd be athiest (Communists generally are opposed to religion, and Jesus founded a religion - in case ya didn't know). LOL. Anyway, it's gonna be an interesting semester....

Oh, and last post I talked about how I had done an action that didn't go down so well. Well the part that didn't work out so well fixed itself! I had had a little run in with campus rules on posting posters, but everythings cool now!

And tonight I went to a political Hip Hop Show, it was pretty cool! Unfortunatly, I can't find the sites of the bands that played, but they were really awesome! We were gonna leaflet, but ther wasn't really enough people. Instead we gave them to the artists to take on tour - cuz he was vegan and he said he said he can use them in his hometown. My camera was being a real pain in the butt, and I was fooling with the settings a lot. I'm taking a photography this semester at school, so my pictures should improve. But in the meantime, here are some I took at the show.

Vegan/Activist Hip-Hop Artist

Another Vegan/Activist Hip-Hop Artist

A Picture of a chair that I thought looked cool =)

And I'm going to the veg food fair in Toronto this weekend. It should be pretty cool - me and some other activists are going to leaflet there!

So its late and I should go to bed now.....


Peace,
Brendan