I haven't been here in a while. A few months, at least. I live in the United States and I think, unless you've been in a genuine coma, you likely know what my country is going through politically. I don't often mean to get political and truly, I never do, but I feel now more than ever that my therianthropy has a role in something important beyond my personal identity.
My non-working life is largely spent in the national refuges, parks, and reserves across my country. The workers that protect them have been fired.
The habitats of my theriotype and my kithtypes are constantly facing a threat from the 1% of billionaires who view the ocean, the forests, the prairies, the deserts, the arctics, the entire world as a resource to exploit to further their wealth without personal consequence. As if the ecosystem is not a home for billions, if not trillions, of voiceless, living beings.
Forests are being sliced down to produce more cash, line more pockets, make more room for un-needed infrastructure in the wake of a country already on fire from climate change that "doesn't exist".
The arctic is being drilled for oil until it is no longer habitable by the animals who rely on it, and people are fine with this because it does not personally effect them.
The waterfalls and rivers are running dry to use up their water resources with no considerations as to what that will cause or how it will impact things because "that's a problem for the future generation".
The lives of your friends are at stake, the people in our own community, even our family members because of people threatened by differences.
I am tired. I have no choice but to be complacent, but I have never felt more drawn to bite the hands that try to approach me with their cages and leashes and muzzles. As I sit on the beach or by the lake and see the trash accumulating and the rainbow sheen of leaking oil accumulating at the shore, I can't help but ask "what can I do?". I am sitting here in the now, watching this happen and keep wishing this was only a chapter in a history book, but it is not. This is reality.
I feel a sense of personal responsibility for maintaining what little I can for my home as an animal. This body has given me voice, a medium to share it, and the ability to take action as much as possible even if it is a microscopic in the wake of billionaire oligarchs.
If we bite their hands, they will use it as a reason to put us down and tighten our muzzles, but we can do something even within our cages. Please, safely go to protests when you can. Boycott large brands. Do not spend your money where possible on big chains or abusive corporations. Clean up your territories and preserve what little land we are allowed to call our own, even if it is small. Grow what you can. Flowers, trees, vegetables, herbs, fruits, plant them all for every bit of nature that we reclaim and expand upon is something they haven't taken. Group up in your communities and support each other. Sign petitions for our animals, for our environment, for our volunteers, for your friends. Speak out on your platforms. Make art, make videos, write posts, make signs, plaster posters in your neighborhoods, actively fight the censorship. Fight them in the ways they don't want us to fight them, and do not let them convince you that your actions are too small to make a difference. Any difference is better than no difference, and combined efforts make large waves. And most importantly...
They cannot take our ferality.
Do not let them euthanize you.
