I’m out of town this weekend, attending the Southern Human Rights Organizers Conference in Durham, North Carolina, as part of the Solidarity delegation. This afternoon we toured Duplin County, which has about 45 hogs per person. The environmental and health impacts of the CAFO’s (confined animal feeding operation) is just mind-boggling. Not to mention the fact that of the 522 hog farms, only two (you got that, two) are Black-owned. Keep in mind that the reason all these hog farms are here is because this is a majority Black and overwhelmingly poor county. And all these white farmers and white owned huge corporations know that chances are these poor Black people generally won’t complain. Disgusting.

But this here blog isn’t about CAFO’s, except that I have to say that I’m thrilled with my decision to rise Ruby as a vegetarian as much as possible. Not just because the meat is full of antibiotics, not just because the poor animals are abused at so many levels, not just because of the injuries for workers in meat processing plants, not just because of the impact on the environment, but now also because of the racialized impact it has on communities.

What I wanted to do is a quick post about Ruby’s surprise call to me this morning.

Our home phone has my cell on speed dial. Ruby thought she was playing, but she actually called me for real. At first I hear her “I’m pretending to be on the phone mama” script which goes like this: “Hello, okay, uh huh, okay, hmm, uh huh,” and so forth.

She didn’t skip a beat though when I chimed in.

- “Hi Ruby!”
- “Mama!”
- “I miss you Ruby, but I’ll see you soon.”
- “You’re at work. You coming home later?”
- “Yes, I’ll be home tomorrow.”
- “Okay. I’m putting on my pants and my tighty tights!” (running) “Bye!”

Not bad for her very first real conversation. We’ll have to work on her hanging up the phone, because she just put it down somewhere and I could hear her negotiating with David about the rest of her outfit.

PS. If you’re interested, the major issue with the CAFO’s is the waste. It gets stored in lagoons and then sprayed on the fields. Organic fertilizer they call it. Community members complain of living close to the spraying fields and receiving the spray on and in their houses, their bodies, and their clothes, depending on how the wind blows. The quantity of waste is toxic and seeps into the ground water through the lagoons and the spraying. People have higher incidences of cancer, asthma, and the smell is apparently horrendous.

The tour we got was thanks to the NC Environmental Justice Network. They’ve worked with academics on getting research on the impact, with community members on organizing protests, legislators to get heard and they’ve supported a decade-long ambitious organizing drive at the major huge meatpacking plant in NC, Smithfield (the workers voted for the union yesterday!).

One action they undertook a few years ago was to hold a two-day vigil in the state capital to raise awareness around this issue. They camped out around a makeshift hog farm. On the first day they brought in a small swimming pool and filled it with hog waste. This pissed off the state capital bosses and they told the group that they would be fined thousands of dollars if one single drop of the waste was spilled because it would force them to do a major hazardous waste cleanup. They were not happy to be reminded that 40 miles away this hazardous waste is called “organic fertilizer.”