Submit now to SAGE’s Young Environmental Writers Contest 2012!
Awards: First Prize: $500; Second Prize: $300; Third Prize: $200
One writer under 20 will receive a Special Mention.
All finalists will be published on SAGE Magazine’s website and considered for our annual print publication.
Judging: SAGE Magazine staff will select finalists. Finalists will be judged by a panel including some of the country’s foremost working writers and journalists, including:
Bill McKibben, Author, Educator, and Environmentalist
Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, Staff Writer
Steve Hawk, Sierra Magazine, Executive Editor; Surfer Magazine, Former Editor-in-Chief
Jon Mooallem, The New York Times Magazine, Contributor
Scott Dodd, OnEarth.org, Editor; Columbia School of Journalism, Adjunct Professor
Submission Fee: There is none! We are generously supported by a grant from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Submission Guidelines: Send us essays, short stories, memoirs, poetry, graphic novels, reporting, sky-writing–all forms of environmental writing accepted (including excerpts from longer works). Writers under 20 must include their age to be considered for special mention.
Eligibility: Open to all non-professional writers. All writing submitted to SAGE Magazine after 10/01/2011 will be automatically considered for the competition.
Fine Print: SAGE takes no rights to publication, meaning contest participants are free to submit and publish their work elsewhere. Editors will consult with winners to edit submissions for publication. SAGE reserves the right to declare a tie and to award only as many winners and finalists as are appropriate to the quality of work represented in the magazine.
Deadline: April 20th, Midnight, Eastern Standard Time
What does “non-professional” mean? How does it relate to the “young writers” part of the contest announcement?
SAGE wanted to encourage young environmental writers, but had trouble setting an age limit. Plus, we figured that if there was someone out there who wanted to start an environmental writing career later in life–well, that’s great too! Hence: while we assume most submissions will come from young writers, we decided to make “non-professional” the key eligibility requirement. Non-professional means that you have either not previously published for pay or that you are just starting a paid writing career. We will generally consider writers who have published a limited amount, but reserve the right to discretion on this matter.
Would you accept pieces that have been published elsewhere?
We can’t consider pieces to which other publications own rights, and we’re unlikely to consider a piece that has been published for pay (that would make you a professional writer–see above). However, we will generally consider pieces that have appeared in other campus publications.
In Africa, as in many societies, new technologies increasingly play a prominent role in the production and exchange of information. In spite of their limited penetration on the continent, new information technologies are beginning to have a noticeable effect on politics, activism, culture, entertainment and many other facets of public and private life. There is frequent usage of the Internet and of mobile devices, the rise of influential blogs and news sites, evidence of social media that are more than tools for self-presentation together with the overreliance of major newspapers, radio and television on websites for a broader and more diverse reach in ways that suggest a paradigm shift and the alteration of social values in communication practices today. Evolving media policies, attitudes and use patterns in Africa and the Global South remarkably indicate that the benefits of ICTs and New Media are not confined to the Global North alone.
Key questions, however, relate to how new forms of communication technologies have advanced or subverted social change in Africa. The purpose of this one-day conference is to bring together African scholars from diverse disciplines to collectively explore the thematic issue of the transforming role of ICTs and new media. We are concerned to bring to the fore sub-themes of changing production environments, shifts in funding mechanisms, the role of audiences/users, regulation debates and the ICTs’ potential for human development. Wikileaks have, for example, shown how African governments have struggled to maintain transparency and uphold their citizens’ right to information.
The Arab Spring and other manifestations of tension and struggle among governments, citizens and terrorists, call for debates on social transformation in the context of new media and ICTs. To address these and similar issues relating to the theorisation of the role and influence of new media technologies in Africa, we invite scholars to submit panel proposals and/ or abstracts in the following and related areas:
Theoretical and Conceptual Issues on New Media and Social Change
Citizen empowerment, Diasporas and new media
Social media for Social Change in Africa
Mediating history in a digital era
Human development and new ICTs
New media tools in politics, persuasion and electioneering
ICTs and Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Africa
Health Communication, ICTs and New Media in Africa
Old Media and New Media in Africa
Regulation of ICTs and new Media in Africa
Resistance, Activism and New Media Cultures in Africa
New Media Practices and Organisations in Africa
Journalism and Media Education in the Digital Age
From Audiences to Consumer-Producers
Mobile Phone Revolutions in Africa
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS
The conference organizers welcome abstracts that feature high quality conceptual papers, as well as qualitative and quantitative empirical research papers. Abstracts from individuals including graduate students are welcome.
The deadline for abstracts is Thursday 5 April 2012. Successful applicants will be notified by Monday 16 April 2012. Abstracts should be 300 words long. They must include the presenter's name, affiliation, email and postal address, together with the title of the paper. Please send abstracts to Helen Cohen at journalism@westminster.ac.uk
PROGRAMMES AND REGISTRATION
This one day conference will take place on Friday 15 June 2012. The fee for registration (which applies to all participants, including presenters) will be £95 with a concessionary rate of £45 for students, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments and administration costs. Registration will open in April 2012.
A $20 fee is required for each entry. Entries as defined as follows:
Poetry: You may submit up to six poems. (Poems should be submitted in one document with each poem on a separate page and each page/poem titled.)
Fiction: You may submit a story up to 20 pages.
Essay/Interview: You may submit an essay or an interview up to 20 pages.
All submissions must be made electronically.
Submit and enter here: http://tiferet.submishmash.com/submit | Specify the genre and pay your appropriate entry fee for each entry. Winners will be announced in Summer 2012.
2012 Judges
Non-Fiction: Lee Martin
Lee Martin is the Pulitzer Prize Finalist author of The Bright Forever and three other novels. He has also published two memoirs, From Our House and Turning Bones, and another memoir, Such a Life, is set to appear in 2012. His first book was the short story collection, The Least You Need To Know. He is the co-editor of Passing the Word: Writers on Their Mentors. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Poetry: Frances Richey
Frances Richey’s publications include two poetry collections; The Burning Point and The Warrior. She is the editor of a chapbook of poetry entitled Voices of the Guard, and a former poetry editor for Bellevue Literary Review. She lives and works in New York City.
Fiction: Floyd Skloot
Floyd Skloot’s most recent books are the poetry collection THESNOW’SMUSIC (LSU Press, 2008), the memoir THEWINKOFTHEZENITH: THESHAPINGOF A WRITER’S LIFE (U. of Nebraska Press, 2008/2011), and the short story collection CREAMOFKOHLRABI (Tupelo Press). He has won three Pushcart Prizes and his work has been included twice each in The Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, Best Spiritual Writing, and Best Food Writing anthologies. He lives in Portland, OR.
Zimmerman’s Weapon Illegal Due to Domestic Violence Restraining Order
“The lack of arrest doesn’t make sense to me.” … Jeb Bush
Federal Law: 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(8):
It is unlawful for a person who has a Protection Order (Florida’s Final Judgment of Injunction for Protection Against Domestic Violence meets federal definition of “Protection Order”) in effect against him/her to possess a firearm and/or ammunition, ship or transport same in interstate commerce, receive any which have been so shipped or transported, or have seized firearms returned.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and “stealth” Republican presidential front-runner is a supporter of the “Stand Your Ground” law, but yesterday admitted that he did not know why an arrest was not made in the case and further, that the broad-spanning law did not seem to cover George Zimmerman.
Speaking at an education panel at a Texas university, Bush said:
“This law does not apply to this particular circumstance… Stand your ground means stand your ground. It doesn’t mean chase after somebody who’s turned their back.”
An AP story filed from Washington reveals that a police video of Zimmerman showed no visible injuries whatsoever, debunking his story of having been “beaten half to death” by the much younger, smaller unarmed teen who begged for his life.
While walking to the store, Martin was on the phone with his girlfriend, whom he had been talking to for over 6½ hours throughout the day, the family’s attorney said, citing phone records. The girl, who did not want to be identified, said she told Martin to run, but he refused, the family attorney said.
“What are you stopping me for?” Martin asked a man later identified as neighborhood “watch captain” George Zimmerman, according to the girl.
“What are you doing around here?” Zimmerman asked in response.
The girl said she then got the impression that an altercation was taking place and that someone had pushed Martin, because the headset fell out of his ear, and the phone shut off.
Moments later, Martin was shot and killed. The details of what happened are still murky. Zimmerman has said through his legal adviser that he acted in self-defense after Martin attacked him. The family disputes that, and witness accounts vary. Fulton told CNN’s Piers Morgan that she believes Zimmerman “hunted my son like an animal.”
Florida requires a history of violence report for carry permit that would have included a violent brush with the cops.
A domestic violence charge is all it takes for the law for the cops to demand surrender of your guns. Did Zimmerman have a concealed weapons permit in 2005, and if he did, was he required to turn in his pistol and any other guns he had? Or did he get yet another pass on that one to go along side his get out of jail free card.
Then there’s the concealed weapons permit questionnaire. Did Zimmerman fill one of these out? Here’s some of the questions:
“Have you had adjudication of guilt withheld on any felony?” That could be a yes. I presume attacking a cop is a felony. But conviction was withheld when he entered a pretrial diversion program.
“Have you received a suspended sentence on any felony?” That could also be a yes.
Why isn’t anyone demanding that Zimmerman turn over his guns?
Zimmerman in 2005 when he was heavier
This is the most recent witness and the evidence is piling up. Why was Zimmerman stopping anyone? How do you stop someone without grabbing them, constituting assault and negating a self defense claim.
Do this, just walk up to any stranger, stop them and demand they tell you what they are doing. Even if you don’t kill them, you will end up in jail for stalking and assault.
If you are killed by them, they have self defense on their side. Funny thing, though, many Americans think rules should be different if your father is a judge or the person you stop is black.
We call such people “white supremacists” or “racists.” When they harm others, we call those acts “hate crimes.”
Earlier in the week police said they thought Zimmerman to be guilty of murder and had been stopped from arresting him based on a call from Tallahassee telling them to stay away “in an election year.”
Zimmerman’s brother describes details in the video below, the “swollen nose” while Zimmerman’s lawyer attacks the video for lack of sharpness.
All the while, background on a very strange family, a Supreme Court Magistrate for a father, acceptance to the Seminole County police academy but no record of attendance, though it was “Zimmerman’s dream job” speaks volumes of facts being withheld from the press. Now we are told that if we ask questions, journalists face arrest.
Zimmerman had a domestic restraining order against him which precluded him from, not just carrying a gun, put owning a weapon or even keeping one in his home. His only other prior problem was an arrest for assaulting a police officer which led to him entering an “anger management” program.
VT wishes to thank readers who tracked down Zimmerman’s background. From his “police academy” application:
An ABC affiliate in Florida posted a statement from Kristi Wright, with the Department of Legislative and Public Relations in Virginia, which read:
“Robert J. Zimmerman served as a full-time magistrate from 2000-2006. Please be advised that in Virginia magistrates are judicial officers, but they are not considered “judges” and do not possess trial jurisdiction. More detailed information on the role of the magistrate in Virginia is available on Virginia’s Judicial System Website.”
Whether that experience helped the elder Zimmerman assist his son out of the various prior legal scrapes he found himself in, including a charge of resisting arrest with violence in 2005 and a domestic violence charge, is unclear. Florida’s laws and Virginia’s are different.
But it does indicate that Robert Zimmerman was knowledgeable enough about the criminal justice system that he may have been a valuable resource for his son.
This appears to be the understatement of all time and raises many questions, as to corruption but also, as the police academy application was approved, why did George Zimmerman never attend?
George Zimmerman was fired from his job as an under-the-table security guard for “being too aggressive,” a former co-worker told the Daily News.
Zimmerman, at the center of a firestorm for shooting an unarmed black teenager a month ago, worked for two different agencies providing security to illegal house parties between 2001 and 2005, the former co-worker said.
“Usually he was just a cool guy. He liked to drink and hang with the women like the rest of us,” he said. “But it was like Jekyll and Hyde. When the dude snapped, he snapped.”
The source said Zimmerman, who made between $50 and $100 a night, was let go in 2005.
“He had a temper and he became a liability,” the man said. “One time this woman was acting a little out of control. She was drunk. George lost his cool and totally overreacted,” he said. “It was weird, because he was such a cool guy, but he got all nuts. He picked her up and threw her. It was pure rage. She twisted her ankle. Everyone was flipping out.”
The year 2005 was a bad one for Zimmerman: he was arrested for fighting with a cop trying to arrest his friend for underage drinking, and he and his ex-fiancée took out protective orders against each other.
The former co-worker, who is no longer in touch with Zimmerman, said he was shocked to hear what happened Feb. 26 in a gated community in Sanford, Fla.
“He definitely loved being in charge. He loved the power. Still, I could never see him killing someone. Never,” he said.
Zimmerman was freed based on overruling police at the scene by an order from Tallahassee originating from Norman Wolfzinger who had not interviewed Zimmerman or any evidence before making the decision.
It is not known if there is a relationship between the Zimmerman family and Wolfzinger, an Army Vietnam veteran. We have been unable to reach Wolfziner despite calls to his office.
Editor’s notes on ethnicity: Martin may be African American but originates in Spain and most Martin’s are of English background. Zimmerman can be German or German/Jewish. Wolfzinger is German, sometimes Jewish but generally of Mennonite background. In a better world, I would so much have enjoyed NOT making these explanations.
The case and the release of Zimmerman was entirely irregular. Police photos of Zimmerman, dozens were made with high resolution cameras, have been ordered withheld by Wolfzinger. However, the video below shows no injuries, no blood, only a man in hand cuffs clearly larger than the unarmed teen he had just killed.
Forensic reports on Zimmerman’s clothing, photos of the crime scene, blood spatter analysis and a detailed physical report of Zimmerman’s condition, although he received and required no medical attention of any kind, as reported by Sanford police, have been similarly withheld.
There is no examining physician of record for Zimmerman, no record of request for medical care, no police report indicating any injuries to Zimmerman but a statement made by Zimmerman that he had been injured, a statement that arresting officers found implausible and used as a basis for requesting his being held as Zimmerman, by their estimation had no injuries whatsoever though some press outlets have stated to the contrary.
Examinations of Martin show no injuries other than a bullet wound. There are no signs of defensive or offensive struggle, his hands utterly unmarked. This examination was done during his embalming and released to the press. There is no record thus far of any forensic examination of or postmortum examination to indicate either cause of death or to substantiate anything involved in the investigation.
After 30 days, withholding such vital information is a violation of Federal Law.
Zimmerman, Unhurt, Only Photo Not Withheld
From AP:
A new police surveillance video showing the killer of unarmed black teen sporting no obvious injuries despite claims of self-defence has heightened calls for the man’s arrest, with Trayvon Martin’s grief-stricken mother calling it “the icing on the cake.”
“Thank God for surveillance video,” Benjamin Crump, the lawyer for Martin’s family, told “CBS This Morning” on Thursday, “because obviously there was a conspiracy to cover up the truth and sweep Trayvon Martin’s death under the rug.”
Crump said the video refutes the claims of police and George Zimmerman that the 140-pound Martin, 17, beat him up so badly his nose was broken, and that he shot the boy in the chest in self-defence on a rainy Florida evening a month ago.
“This certainly doesn’t look like a man who police said had his nose broken and his head repeatedly smashed into the sidewalk,” he said.
Sybrina Fulton, Martin’s mother, said the video was yet further proof that Zimmerman’s story doesn’t add up.
“This video is the icing on the cake,” she said. “This is not the first part of the evidence that they have had. They have had the 911 tapes and they have also had witnesses. This video is clear evidence that there is some problem with this case and he needs to be arrested.”
In the video, Zimmerman’s head and face are clearly visible, and there appear to be no obvious signs of any external injuries. There’s also no evidence of blood on the front of his T-shirt, often the byproduct of a broken nose.
The Washington Post has released its own analysis stating that the Zimmerman story is “crumbling” as police on the scene had initially believed when they interviewed him. The real question is, how did the Chris Serinio, hundreds of miles away, get involved in a local felony charge and where did their authority, in actuality non-existent, come to play in ordering the release.
When Martin was examined, he had no marks on his hands, no blood, no signs of a struggle of any kind. There is absolutely no forensic evidence of any kind to back up any self defense claims and more than enough evidence to disprove claims of a broken nose and a lengthy fist fight which now appears to have been entirely made up by Zimmerman.
In fact, there is nothing to indicate anything other than an execution style slaying.
Zimmerman, according to the AP, was under a domestic protection order. No one under such an order can have weapons in their home, much less carry weapons. A domestic protection order, such as the one issued against Zimmerman, has nationwide standing in limiting, not only carry permits but purchase as well.
Zimmerman’s weapons possession was illegal.
Further interviews of neighbors indicate that Zimmerman had a reputation for racism and regularly targeted African American children of neighbors.
During the incident, both were on their mobile phones. Zimmerman was telling the police he was chasing someone trying to get away, using language easily construed as “racist” in nature.
Martin was on the phone with his girlfriend, telling her he was frightened and that someone was following him.
Crime scene photos and autopsy results have been withheld. The funeral director is the best evidence, that and the police video that will put Zimmerman in prison.
Our next question involves Chris Serino and how he got involved. It is said that orders to release Zimmerman and to overrule police originated with Norman Wolfzinger of the State’s Attorney office.
Previous references to Zimmerman as a “watch captain” of a non-existent group, perhaps a “watch private” or “watch corporal” have not been able to be confirmed.
As yet, no other members of Zimmerman’s watch, the one he told police he was captain of, seem to exist.
Why is there no information on Zimmerman’s family? The lack of press curiosity on one of the years biggest stories is deafening.
——————————
From AP:
New video tape in Trayvon Martin case challenges story from police, Zimmerman
WASHINGTON – A new police surveillance video showing the killer of unarmed black teen sporting no obvious injuries despite claims of self-defence has heightened calls for the man’s arrest, with Trayvon Martin’s grief-stricken mother calling it “the icing on the cake.”
“Thank God for surveillance video,” Benjamin Crump, the lawyer for Martin’s family, told “CBS This Morning” on Thursday, “because obviously there was a conspiracy to cover up the truth and sweep Trayvon Martin’s death under the rug.”
Crump said the video refutes the claims of police and George Zimmerman that the 140-pound Martin, 17, beat him up so badly his nose was broken, and that he shot the boy in the chest in self-defence on a rainy Florida evening a month ago.
“This certainly doesn’t look like a man who police said had his nose broken and his head repeatedly smashed into the sidewalk,” he said.
Sybrina Fulton, Martin’s mother, said the video was yet further proof that Zimmerman’s story doesn’t add up.
“This video is the icing on the cake,” she said. “This is not the first part of the evidence that they have had. They have had the 911 tapes and they have also had witnesses. This video is clear evidence that there is some problem with this case and he needs to be arrested.”
I’m here to explain why George Zimmerman is white.
This seems necessary given the confusion and anger with which some readers responded to my use of that word last week in this space to describe the man who shot an unarmed black teenager named Trayvon Martin to death last month in Sanford, Fla. One person wrote: “Mr. Zimmerman was Hispanic not White plez do your homework before writing your column!!!!”
But it is they who are wrong. There are two reasons. The short one is this:
“Hispanic” is not a race, but an ethnicity. As the U.S. Census Bureau puts it in its 2010 Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin, “People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be any race.”
The long reason begins with an understanding that the word in question — race — is a term both meaningful and yet, profoundly meaningless. It is meaningful in the sense that it provides a tool for tribalism and a means by which to organize our biases, fears, observations, social challenges and sundry cultural products. It is meaningless in the sense that, well . . . it has no meaning, that there exists no definition of “black” or “white” that carries any degree of scientific precision.
We are taught to believe the opposite, that “black” and “white” are self-evident and immutable. But I invite you to look up Walter White, the blond, blue-eyed “Negro” who once led the NAACP, or Gregory Howard Williams, the university president who didn’t even know he was black until he was 10 years old. Dig up the old Jet magazine story about a woman who gave birth to twins — one “black,” one “white.” And then think again. Race is a fraud, a cruel and stupid fraud.
The people who came here from Europe did not automatically consider themselves “white.” They identified as Irish, Hungarian, Italian, Jewish, Armenian. As David R. Roediger observes in his book,Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White, they were emphatically taught that “white” was the identity that conferred status and privilege and that it was defined by distance from, and antipathy toward, black. They were advised to avoid being friendly with blacks or else put their whiteness at risk.
Nor did Africans kidnapped into slavery think of themselves as “black.” They were Mandinkan, Fulani, Mende, Songhay, Wolof. “Black” was something imposed upon them as justification for slavery and other means of exploitation. As one historian puts it: Africans did not become slaves because they were black. They became black because they were enslaved.
Well into the 20th century, America recognized dozens of “races.” In that America, people we now regard as white — the Irishman, Conan O’Brien; the Armenian, Andre Agassi; the Jew, Jerry Seinfeld — could not have taken for granted that they would be seen that way. People like this had to become white, had to earn whiteness, a feat African Americans have found impossible to duplicate, no matter how many harsh chemicals they use on their hair and skin.
White, then, is not simply color, but privilege — not necessarily in the sense of wealth, but rather in the sense of having one’s personhood and individuality respected, a privilege so basic I doubt it registers with many whites as privilege at all. We’re talking about the privilege of being seen, of having your worth presumed, of receiving the benefit of the doubt and some human compassion, of being treated as if you matter.
Consider that, then consider the fair-skinned Hispanic man, George Zimmerman, who evidently stalked and killed an unarmed kid he wrongly thought was up to no good, yet was not arrested, nor even initially investigated. He said it was self-defense. Police took him at his word and sent him on his way.
Another innocent life has been taken unjustifiably! On March 21st off-duty police officer Dante Servin shot and killed innocent 22 yr. old Rekia Boyd with a claim that he was shooting at an individual whom he claimed pulled a weapon in a crowd of 60-70 people in a park. He approached and harrassed a crowd of people telling them to shut up and when he didnt get the response he wanted opened fire, shooting at least 5 rounds wounding the man that he said had a gun which tuned out to be a cell phone that he was on and hitting 22 yr. old Rekia Boyd in the head and killing her. THIS HAS TO STOP NOW!!! How many MORE lives have to be taken and justified with proofless claims of justification before we make the offenders (No matter what their status in the legal system is) face the same fate that anyone else would surely face if the roles were reversed??? WHAT DID REKIA DO?
Chicago Police Department finally admits
Rekia was innocent!
Rekia's campaign for justice is picking up steam! We have successfully put pressure on the Chicago police department through reaching out to any and every media outlet, social network. . .etc. On March 28th the Chicago police department finally admitted that Rekia was in fact an innocent bystander. This was the first time since her untimely death that our family has heard any variation of the 'This shooting was Justified' statement that superintendent Mc Carthy originally released. Even now, neither the Chicago police department or the outside agency that is investigating her death have reached out to Rekia's family and provided any explanation or apology for Rekia being murdered unjustifiably. Their admittance of her unjust murder only came through a phone call that a local news reporter made on behalf of our family. We have yet to even receive a formal statement with an explanation of the events that occured that tragic morning. We will not waiver until JUSTICE is WON!
Joan Morgan shares her thoughts on Black and Latina Feminism and the need for collaboration and an awareness of history in order to successfully challenge the war against women’s rights in America.
Hillary Crosley [Co-Founder and Editorial Director of Parlour Magazine]
As a Black woman and I think especially so as a Black British African woman who doesn’t go to Church as much as I should it’s difficult to find spaces that discuss womanhood in a manner I find liberating rather than limiting. This is one of the reasons why I wish I was in New York for the Women of Power Conference on Black and Latina Feminism presented by the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) and Parlour Magazine. I can relate to Hillary Crosley when she says growing up Feminism was natural. However, now I am older and I look at the African women who instilled these values in me I have observed a paradox. Although these women are independent and have no time for gender inequality there is still a desire to be affirmed by patriarchy and patriarchal institutions. The most obvious example of this is the relationship African women of my mothers generation have with marriage. For me the worth of marriage is as a facilitator of partnership not its function as affirming a woman’s worth. Anyone raised in an African house knows that for women marriage can often be seen as a rights of passage that indicates worth. If I was at the Women of Power Conference I would be interested in hearing opinions on artfully constructing female agency within traditionally patriarchal institutions, whether this be at home or at work.
Processed meats like hot dogs, baloney and chicken nuggets seem, on the surface, no less icky than pink slime. And here's why they could be even worse.
March 16, 2012
Photo Credit: courtesy of Beef Products Inc.
If there's one thing America can agree on, it's that "pink slime" is scary. The hamburger filler made from processed beef trimmings has been in use for decades, but now, thanks to social media-fueled campaigns and traditional media coverage from Fox News to MSNBC, we're suddenly terrified of the stuff. But is pink slime really any worse than pink cylinders like hot dogs, or yellow nuggets of mechanically separated poultry? Probably not. But it seems to represent a discussion that's time has come.
After having quietly graced pre-made beef patties in the U.S. since the early 1990s, pink slime hit the mainstream in the 2008 documentary Food, Inc. An exec from Beef Products Inc. (BPI), which makes the pink product officially known as Lean Finely Trimmed Beef (LFTB) proudly welcomed the cameras into his futuristic facility, and said the product is in 70 percent of America's pre-made burger patties.
Then, a 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times expose that reported BPI had been lowering the levels of ammonium hydroxide used to treat LFTB, in response to complaints about the product's strong ammonia smell. These reductions in treatment caused several batches of burger destined for school lunches to test positive for E. coli and Salmonella.
Since the Times story, public outcry has forced several fast food joints to quit using the stuff in burgers, and supermarkets are dropping products that contain LFTB. When it broke on March 5 that USDA's National School Lunch Program had just purchased seven million pounds of LFTB to mix with ground beef, the anti-slime forces rallied again. This isn't the first time USDA's school lunch program has purchased LFTB, but judging by the pushback it might be the last. Campaigns and industry counter-campaigns have been waged, petitions circulated, and innumerable Twitter hashtags generated, all in the name of pink slime.
Nobody without a financial interest in Beef Products Inc., could argue with a straight face that LFTB isn't kind of gross. But does that make it evil? Processed meats like hot dogs, baloney and chicken nuggets seem, on the surface, no less icky than pink slime.
Unlike LFTB, many nuggets and cylinders are made with mechanically separated meat. Chicken, turkey and pork carcasses, already picked clean of presentable cuts, are pushed through filtering machinery under high pressure, removing every last scrap of tissue. The resulting fragments are used in chicken nuggets, turkey and pork sausage, and many other processed meats.
Mechanically separated beef, on the other hand, is no longer approved for human consumption due to concerns that bovine spinal cord fluid could spread mad cow disease. The final bits of beef are recovered via other methods that, while highly mechanized, are less traumatic to the carcass, minimizing spinal fluid leakage.
So if you're averse to ingesting spinal fluid, beef-based pink slime is actually a better bet than chicken nuggets or hot dogs containing pork or poultry.
The biggest difference between LFTB and most other processed meats lies in how they are preserved. LFTB is dosed with ammonium hydroxide to raise the slime's pH high enough to kill bacteria. These ammonium levels are not close to being toxic, but they still smell and taste foul, tempting processors to go light on the treatment to make the product more palatable.
While LFTB is an ingredient for extending ground beef, the other forms of processed meat I've been comparing to are finished products, stable at refrigerator temperatures because they've been preserved by agents stronger than ammonium hydroxide. Some legal preservatives have been linked to cancer, and the World Cancer Research Fund has recommended that people avoid processed meats altogether.
While preservatives in processed meats are considered ingredients and thus require labeling, BPI has successfully argued that its ammonium hydroxide is a processing agent, not an ingredient, meaning it needn't be listed on the product label.
For something that isn't an ingredient, ammonium hydroxide has certainly made its presence felt. As the Times reported, blocks of LFTB had a heavy stench even when frozen, causing BPI to cut the treatment down to precariously low levels. To its credit, BPI has since improved its safety protocols and now leads the industry in testing for not just one, but all of the so-called Big Six strains of E. coli. Assuming BPI can control the bacteria in its product, what's left to hate?
Gerald Zirnstein, a former USDA inspector, coined the term "pink slime" in a 2002 email. But his chief complaint about the stuff, according to the Times story, isn't that it's dangerous, pink or slimy, but that it's misidentified. "I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef," he told the Times, "and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling." This is hardly damning criticism-it's like complaining that 2 percent milk is being labeled as whole milk. And LFTB is, in fact, pure beef, except for the ammonium hydroxide processing agent. So it kind of is ground beef, arguably.
Implicit in Zirnstein's comment is the assumption that the non-muscle beef tissue in LFTB is less nutritious than the muscle tissue in burger meat. But the tissues from which LFTB is made, including collagen, do in fact have nutritional value, as BPI rightly claims in its new website pinkslimeisamyth.com. Indeed, people pay a lot of money for collagen supplements in pill form. So, is pink slime any worse than pink cylinders, yellow nuggets, brown breakfast sausage patties, or any number of mystery meat products? Probably not. And for what it's worth, it isn't even slimy.
Given that nuggets and dogs contain preservatives that are more dangerous than the ammonium hydroxide in pink slime, pink slime could pose less of a threat than other processed meats. And for what it's worth, the non-beef, mechanically separated meat products present the added bonus of spinal fluid, which, if there were such thing as mad chicken or mad pig disease, would be a problem.
Even if pink slime is no more dangerous than a bunch of other products out there, it's nonetheless a timely opportunity to discuss the problems and realities of our industrial meat system. Given the recent bevy of state "ag-gag" bills-already signed in Iowa, and proposed in Utah and Illinois -- it appears battle lines are being drawn over the control of information meat processing. These ag-gag bills would make it illegal to secretly record what goes on in meat processors. The forces of anti-slime could provide a boost of energy in opposing these measures.
Personally, if I can't get good, intact meat tissue to eat, I'm happier and healthier eating none at all.
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Ari LeVaux writes a syndicated weekly food column, Flash in the Pan.
*This date [Wednesday, March 28, 1934] celebrates the formation of the Golden Gate Quartet in 1934. They were one of the founding Gospel singing groups in Black America.
The story of the Golden Gate Quartet begins in the early 1930’s at a barbershop in the Norfolk, Virginia suburb of Berkeley. Here owner A. C. "Eddie" Griffin, a tenor singer, and Robert "Peg" Ford, a one-legged bass vocalist, enlisted two Booker T. Washington High School glee club members, tenor Henry Owens and baritone Willie Johnson, to form a quartet singing gospel music in the new "jubilee" style that was beginning to sweep through Virginia churches.
Different from the older Alabama gospel tradition, with its trademark dependence on formal song structure and straight-ahead harmonies, Virginia’s gospel music was looser, and more rhythmic. Influenced by such varying sources as the pop group Mills Brothers, the swinging jazz of the Three Keys, and the emotional wailing of area pulpit preachers, jubilee singing was a bolder and exciting gospel music geared for the body and the soul. It was the youthful energy of jubilee that Griffin sought to strap up with Owens and Johnson in his group, and that indeed proved to be the case.
The quartet eventually gained enough recognition that, by 1935, they were regularly venturing into neighboring Virginia towns such as Richmond and Tidewater, and even into parts of the Carolinas, for personal appearances. By this time, Griffin’s modest ambitions had been more than fulfilled, and as he felt more certain about his haircutting business than a singing career, he retired from the quartet, replaced by Portsmouth tenor William Langford, a veteran of several area-singing groups. In the summer of 1936, as the ailing Ford began to miss more and more of the Gates’ growing number of engagements, Johnson, Owens, and Langford succeeded in talking the parents of 16-year old bass singer Orlandus Wilson (their favorite fill-in for Ford) into permitting their son to join the group as a permanent member.
With Wilson aboard, the look and sound of the group struck a new balance. Each of the four brought their own specific talent. Langford was a showy, melodramatic lead singer in the standard barbershop/pop mold, with a tremendous range that allowed him to easily slide from baritone all the way up to a falsetto soprano. Johnson, the most jazz-influenced of the group, had developed a grin-and-wink hipster narrative style the likes of which gospel music had never before seen. Owens, probably the best pure singer in the quartet, was a master at harmonic invention, allowing him to shuttle between Langford and Johnson’s leads as the arrangements warranted. And, Wilson, the bass singer, anchored the foursome’s songs with an intrinsic sense of timing and syncopation that allowed them to jump, glide, bounce, and swing.
Together, they were poised to set gospel music on its ear. Through regular appearances on radio programs in Columbia, SC and Charlotte, NC, and with performing dates in churches throughout Virginia and the Carolinas, the Golden Gate Quartet was, by the middle of 1937, the hottest gospel act around. That August, Eli Oberstein recorded the Gates in a field recording session at the Charlotte Hotel, and so primed was the group that they laid down fourteen tracks in two hours flat. The release of their debut 78, the signature song, Golden Gate Gospel Train, brought them immediate recognition, and the quartet’s highly successful recording career was on its way. That same year, the group made several appearances on NBC’s "Magic Key" variety program. In 1938 they played alongside Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Big Joe Turner, and James P. Johnson — at his history making "Spirituals To Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall.
That concert led to an engagement on a weekly radio show on CBS, as well as a long-term run at New York’s ultra-chic Cafe Society Club. This allowed them to be seen by all manners of celebrities, including the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt at his January 1941 inaugural gala at Constitution Hall. The Golden Gate Quartet made their final RCA-Victor recordings at a milestone June 1940 session with legendary folk singer Leadbelly. Not long thereafter, lead singer William Langford left the Gates to form a new group; the Southern Sons, and old friend Clyde Riddick took his place. The 1940s found the group making cameo appearances in a number of films, including Star-Spangled Rhythm, Hollywood Canteen, and A Song Is Born, and continuing to record (for Columbia and Mercury).
In 1948, Willie Johnson left, but the Gates were able to absorb the loss, as well as when Owens departed in 1950 to become a preacher. The group went through several more personnel changes during the early fifties, as rhythm ‘n’ blues and rock ‘n’ roll, became more popular in the U.S., but when they made their initial European tour in 1955, they found a new worldwide audience waiting for them. It is in Europe that they’ve primarily lived and worked for the last thirty-plus years.
Riddick and Wilson have anchored the top and bottom of the trademark Golden Gate Quartet sound, with second tenor Clyde Wright (a member on and off since 1954) and baritone Paul Brembly (a member since ‘71) rounding out the group’s current, and still extremely energetic, lineup.
Reference: Library of Congress 101 Independence Avenue S.E. Washington D.C. 20540
Though his recording career was quite brief, Donny Hathaway has continued to be one of the most influential soul artists of the last four decades. The longevity of and increase in his popularity is due in large part to the rare combination of gifts he possessed. He was a talented songwriter with the ability to write songs that provided, in a secular format, the depth of the most heartfelt Gospel music; and he was a remarkable song stylist who defined (or redefined) nearly every song he touched in his brief career. His death by an apparent suicide was news in 1979, but it has loomed ever larger since then, and one wonders whether his already strong influence on R&B would have been truly singular if he had lived through the entirety of his creative cycle...READ FULL BIOGRAPHY OF DONNY HATHAWAY.
And watch the Donny Hathaway episode of TV One's "Unsung," below:
