Just Is
A play about how caring people trying to facilitate some, "greater good"
can actually be agents of oppression.
This page was born out of my desire to share with others an insight that I had when I was fired from my position as a nutrition educator, at my member-owned natural foods coop after it began collaborating with local meat, dairy and egg producers to grow its selection of animal body parts and secretions.
The coop had originally been founded as a primarily vegetarian store. They invited me to teach in their culinary program after collaborating with me to host a talk by former cattle rancher-turned vegan, Howard Lyman. In the beginning, I was allowed to include information about the health, environmental and ethical harms of consuming animal products as part of the classes I taught there. But after several years they expanded their meat department and I was asked to not say anything disparaging of any products that the store sold. The situation hit a critical point after I went on the local farm tour and wrote critically about, The Happy Meat and Dairy of Kaw Valley which led to my being fired.
In the conversations I had with management leading up my termination, I was struck by how people I knew to be caring and justice-minded, could act so contrary to values they had previously stood for and I recognized some similarity to previous times in history. I realized then, that contrary to what I had always believed -- many human-caused injustices were not so much the result of tyrants, but rather of "good" people behaving in oppressive ways because they believed they were supporting something that justified it.
This inspired me to write my short one-act play, Just Is (ie "Justice") to help make this pattern more visible as a driver of oppressive policies. I believe we are all more vulnerable to being swept up into playing a role in it, than we realize.
My play got a staged reading at the 2024 Vegan Summerfest, in Johnstown Pa and it was filmed. Here is the 30 min video of that performance. Though it is on YouTube, you cannot find it via search engines, because I posted it as an "unlisted" video in order to spare viewers having to suffer through watching any ads. So if you like this video and want to post it to any social media or share the link to it with others in any way, I would be very appreciative.
You have two options for engaging this material -- you can either watch the video of the staged reading, or read the PDF of the script. I have posted both of those below.
The coop had originally been founded as a primarily vegetarian store. They invited me to teach in their culinary program after collaborating with me to host a talk by former cattle rancher-turned vegan, Howard Lyman. In the beginning, I was allowed to include information about the health, environmental and ethical harms of consuming animal products as part of the classes I taught there. But after several years they expanded their meat department and I was asked to not say anything disparaging of any products that the store sold. The situation hit a critical point after I went on the local farm tour and wrote critically about, The Happy Meat and Dairy of Kaw Valley which led to my being fired.
In the conversations I had with management leading up my termination, I was struck by how people I knew to be caring and justice-minded, could act so contrary to values they had previously stood for and I recognized some similarity to previous times in history. I realized then, that contrary to what I had always believed -- many human-caused injustices were not so much the result of tyrants, but rather of "good" people behaving in oppressive ways because they believed they were supporting something that justified it.
This inspired me to write my short one-act play, Just Is (ie "Justice") to help make this pattern more visible as a driver of oppressive policies. I believe we are all more vulnerable to being swept up into playing a role in it, than we realize.
My play got a staged reading at the 2024 Vegan Summerfest, in Johnstown Pa and it was filmed. Here is the 30 min video of that performance. Though it is on YouTube, you cannot find it via search engines, because I posted it as an "unlisted" video in order to spare viewers having to suffer through watching any ads. So if you like this video and want to post it to any social media or share the link to it with others in any way, I would be very appreciative.
You have two options for engaging this material -- you can either watch the video of the staged reading, or read the PDF of the script. I have posted both of those below.
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Here is a little flyer I made up to promote the performance at Summerfest:
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Video of Just Is
Script of Just Is
And if you are curious to know more of the back story of this play, a great place to start is with this post of mine:
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And here are a few more images from the staged reading:
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