Boulder Vegetable Rights Association - The Early Days (c.1994-1995)

BE KIND TO VEGETABLES!!! DON'T EAT THEM!!!

On Tuesday December 20th 1994 the Boulder Vegetable Rights Association held its organizational meeting. Topics of discussion included the need to increase public awareness that vegetables are living beings and that hurting them is cruel. One member noted that those who kill vegetables for food often take the flowers or seeds, as in the case of broccoli, so that thousands of young vegetable beings perish at the hand of an uncaring diner.

Here in Boulder, of all places, where people are opening their minds to new ways to live in harmony with the Earth and all of her forms of life, people should stand up for the rights of our friends in the vegetable garden. Millions of acres of land are converted from natural lands to farmlands, killing the native plants, adding carcinogenic pesticides and chemical fertilizers to the environment, and then used to grow plants to be slaughtered for grocery stores. Few people have witnessed the tomatoes being pulled off of their vines, or the lettuce getting their heads chopped off.

The Boulder Vegetable Rights Association plans to educate the public with videos showing the inhumane practices of the vegetable industry. We plan to do public speaking and distribute information to make as many people as possible aware of the companies and businesses that promote the killing of defenseless plants. Do your part today! Tell people at your workplace, school or public place that they should be aware of the lives of vegetables, that they should help prevent the pain and suffering caused to vegetables by big businesses trying to reap big profits, that they should examine their own lifestyle to try to reduce the use of products that require the killing of vegetables. THANK YOU!!!

You slaughter a tomato by killing it. It is a living thing. If you cut it off its vine it dies. Sure that will happen naturally someday on its own, but the same can be said of human beings, and that does not justify our ending anyone's life a little early.

If you require that a life form have a "mind" before you respect it or acknowledge it, then perhaps you should take a stroll through a forest or a greenhouse and see if you can sense the life forces in the living plants.

They may not be a mind, they may be closer to spirit, but they are there. Their reactions have been measured with scientific instruments. They react to music. They react to people being nice to them, talking to them, stroking them. They react dramatically to injury of a fellow plant. They even repeat this reaction when the injurer returns to the room, but not for others, so they have the ability to recognize an individual and remember events. Not with a mind, perhaps, but with whatever nature gave them. They do have a nervous system.

If you require a mind to be present before killing becomes a moral issue, then there are some people who might be a little nervous being around you.

The Boulder Vegetable Rights Association has held meetings, discussed these issues, disseminated information to the public through boulder.general and has been the subject of an article in the Daily Camera. The BVRA promotes awareness that vegetables are living things, and that killing them is cruel. Past posts available upon request. Join the BVRA ... as we continue to spread our message of tolerance towards flora everywhere.

This Monday, 2/1/95, we will be staging a day long protest march outside Healthy Habits restaurant in Boulder, and Alfalfa's in Boulder, in an attempt to dissuade them and their customers from their floricidal ways. We have massed dozens of plant tolerant protesters, and we are all willing to go to jail (or worse...) in order to stop the wanton destruction and killing that takes place so that overpaid yuppie scum can enjoy salads, and rip the hearts from live artichokes! We are sick of seeing otherwise healthy young vegetables ripped from the ground and steamed alive with a little butter. This type of vegist practice MUST STOP!

Our government does not condone the killing of humans for food, yet we subsidize the killing fields of Kansas and California, paying sick, twisted merchants of death to breed "hybrid" vegetables solely for the purpose of prematurely ending their lives. We are appalled at Dachau, yet in love with Dekalb. We were sickened by Cambodia, yet devour Corn Flakes. We are sickened by dozens of people being burned to death in Waco, but how many of us will, this very day, trap hundreds of unborn corn kernels into a microwave oven and burn them until they explode? We will use force, if necessary, in order to save the lives of pre-born potatoes (the so-called "new potatoes"), infant peas & carrots, and other unborn vegetables that are aborted daily. We make no bones about our dedication to this cause.

Join us in our crusade to make Boulder safe for *all* vegetables, not just the state legislature! Meet with us on Monday, at either location, and help us stir the pot of change! Colonel Lee Gyume BVRA -- | Equal Rights for Vegetables!! It's the American way!

... scientific studies established, nearly two decades ago, that plants have more "senses", and are capable of reacting in more ways, than had been understood. The clock is now running; we're out of excuses for the way we treat plants. There is, in fact, a very sinister continuum of beliefs about what it is OK to eat...from full-bore omnivores, to those who eat only non-red meat, to those who eat no animal with a "higher-order" nervous system (where "higher" is defined in the entirely selfish style of "more like ourselves"), to vegans who eat only plant-derived foods. Those who observe this continuum see moving away from carnivorism as moving to some moral higher ground, when in fact it's nothing but unbridled speciesism--justifying the moral choice of food based on increasing dissimilarity to our own species. How can the same folks who are so eager to "celebrate diversity" among the human race take such a species-centric view of the rest of the world? ... Our "healthy diets" have become a ritual of removing and devouring the reproductive organs of plants. Yes, that sounds unsavory, but that's the honest truth. And don't think the plants aren't aware of it.

... A single steer--a single living being--is slaughtered and creates hundreds of meals. But a single vegetable-eater may devour many formerly-living beings to make a meal. Where is the justification for so much death for a single meal? Speciesism again!

... There was a movement in Boulder to rectify this...I believe it was in the late 70's or early 80's that the Breathatarian movement flourished briefly in Boulder. Its main tenet, as you might infer from the name, was not to live by the killing of other living beings, but to survive on the goodness of the air alone. What a beautiful alternative -- not just to coexist with all other living beings, but because our biochemistry complements that of plants (in O2 vs CO2 exchange) to live synergistically, plants and humans providing each other with essential nutrition by the mere act of respiration! Alas, the Breathatarian movement was only a passing fad, now forgotten by most, and Boulder lost a chance to lead humans to a higher moral plane. The term "vegetable garden" itself has taken a sinister turn, meaning not a friendly living place that we provide for our particular plant friends, but rather a place where we fatten them for slaughter, sort of like a feed-lot for plants.

... please realize that there's more than just moral concerns here. Frankly, the plants are angry. At the BVRA meeting Darragh mentioned, there were more than a few very scared people. The BVRA meeting was to have been held after New Years, but increasing tensions dictated that it be moved to just before the Solstice so that BVRA could present plant representatives with a plan of action that would show real commitment to change in the coming plantyear.

Don't scoff. Remember how many of our medicines are donated by the plant kingdom. Don't think that temperate-zone plants are unaware of the rain- forest genocide. Next summer, when you seem to see more poison ivy and nettles than usual, when the roses seem thornier, understand that you're being warned again. The warnings have been coming all along; we've been ignoring them in spite of how obvious they've been.

Just one local example: cattle mutilations. You've heard the stories--a cow found mutilated, genitalia removed, out in a field by itself, no apparent reason, no tracks of predators, etc. You've heard the explanations, from the prosaic-but-wrong ("It died of natural causes and scavenging birds mutilated it") to the fantastic/silly ("Space aliens removed its organs to use in a galactic satanic ritual"). We've ignored the udderly obvious cause--the cow was out in a field, but not alone by any means--it was SURROUNDED BY PLANTS!! ... plants gone bad, deciding to take things into their own hands, giving us a warning-in-kind about our habits of mutilating plants and removing the reproductive organs.

The warning should have been clear enough: YOU COULD BE NEXT. So, yes, there are the moral issues ..., but there's a lot more to it than that. The plant kingdom is *not* helpless. Better think about it, or things could get ugly next summer.

• Designs are being considered for a "Sprouts Unlimited" T-shirt. Also a "Cukes Unlimited" T-shirt. Get yours in today!
• Plans to hold a tomato shooting contest in a field in Richardson, TX are of great concern to BVRA. Due to the recent anti-assault weapon legislation, no AK-47s will be involved, however any hunting of tomatoes with weapons is considered cruel by the VRA.
• Discussion at the latest VRA meeting included sponsorship of a new bill in the Colorado legislature to eliminate special rights for vegetarians. Some cities might try to support the vegetarian agenda by writing laws that would allow vegetarians to sue on the basis of discrimination if they should lose their job or their home.
• Some people have asked if the VRA is some kind of sick, twisted joke. No, the VRA is neither sick nor twisted. It also has a valid point to make. We stand by our belief that vegetables are living beings. We think it is good that people know about the concern that our organization is joke. Some organizations you have to belong to for years before you find out they are a joke.
• A proposal is being made for a membership drive. This would involve going to peoples houses, knocking on their doors and telling them how much better our viewpoint is then theirs. If they show any signs of disagreement, we will feel very sorry for them and will place them on our mailing list.
• An issue is being raised about whether or not it is morally correct to control pollination with plastic bags placed over the reproductive organs of fruit trees. We are starting conferences with religious leaders to determine this. ...

Remember, "Friends don't let friends eat wheat"!!!

The BVRA has very thoughtfully devised a 12-step program for recovering vegetarians, of which the essentials are these: