How Much Can a Banana Cost? 

A price, such as a rent or wage, that remains

fixed, recurring and agreed on for a long

period of time eventually becomes a ghost. 

The agreed upon amount no longer exists in any

real way even as your boss still pays the number.

The number is no longer the same. Each time you pay

your landlord the number, the number invisibly

changes, becomes less the number you stated

when you started paying. Just stating your wage,

after a year or two, becomes a kind of nostalgia,

a lie you tell yourself about the distance

between yourself and the past. Worse, 

the number becomes a lie the market

tells you about the distance between

yourself and the past. Worse, the real

marker between yourself and the past;

the dead; have no mention in this equation, 

just the infinitesimal and invisibly mounting

lied about number. The best part; eventually 

you cannot understand any number in the world, 

because your frame of reference for the cost of

an hour or a day or fifteen hundred square feet is twenty

years ago, two thousand miles away, and one day 

you find yourself ...

Christopher Eubanks is a social justice advocate, public speaker, and nonprofit director dedicated to doing advocacy work to promote vegan ethics. He is the founder of Apex Advocacy and helped to co-organize Atlanta’s first ever animal rights march. We spoke to him about his work organizing animal welfare activists of color and fighting both white supremacy and animal exploitation at the same time. 

CA: You are trying to specifically focus on building a community of BIPOC animal activists. Do you think animal welfare activism has had a "whiteness" problem and why is that?

Eubanks: I think the world largely operates under a white supremacist culture and it impacts much of our everyday lives. When we look at who controls the majority of the world’s wealth, who’s in positions of power in the most powerful countries, who has access to the best healthcare, etc., it leans toward the benefit of cis white males, which empowers white supremacy. So I think animal welfare, much like most aspects of our society, falls under the larger umbrella of being a product of white supremacy.

There are incredible people of color around the world doing advocacy and amazing organizations not led by white people doing great work for animal welfare. But the general landscape of the animal welfare space is shaped by the rules of white supremacy, which impacts what types of work get funded, who gets access to ...

Investigative journalist Will Potter is the author of Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable, which illuminates the “frightening truth about animal agriculture’s role in accelerating climate collapse” and “shows how the authoritarian measures being taken to maintain control over this key aspect of the global food supply chain are directly linked to the proliferation and empowerment of far-right militias.”  

CA: What aspects of our food system are kept hidden from public view?

Potter: Factory farming is dependent on secrecy. This is how 99 percent of animal products reach American consumers—nearly 10 billion animals raised for food in the United States every year. Over the last 100 years, consumers have grown increasingly removed from farms and food. When we need something, we just go to the grocery store. Most people are unaware of the radical changes in the food system, and have never witnessed the standard industry practices of factory farms: animals crammed by the tens of thousands into windowless sheds, mutilated without pain relief, or slaughtered at breakneck line speeds. But it’s not just animal suffering that’s concealed. ...

Monica Chen is the executive director of the New Roots Institute, which educates high school and college students on the impacts of factory farming and supports them as they become advocates for a just and sustainable food system.  

CA: You’re focused on educating young people about factory farming. What have you found out about what works?

Chen:  Effectively meeting students where they are means asking questions, listening, and leading with curiosity rather than judgment. Our fellows inspire their peers to think critically about the connections between industrial animal agriculture and key issues that affect all of us, like climate change, human rights, and public health. When students can explore their own perspectives and connect the topic to issues they already care about, we see deeper engagement and lasting interest.

Humor is essential, and our “Rotten Truth” series is a testament to that! Also, facts alone are not enough. Facts land best when they are clear, credible, and paired with visuals and stories that make them stick. 

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Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla of the Shrimp Welfare Project argues that when we think about animal cruelty, we need to think about shrimp. “Shrimp?!” you may ask. Yes, shrimp. Let’s let him make the case. We asked Andrés to explain as succinctly as possible why he thinks we need to expand our perspective, looking not just at pigs, cows, and chickens, but at these humble crustaceans.

CA: What’s the one-sentence case for caring about shrimp?

Zorrilla:   Shrimps make up the largest population of farmed animals, they feel pain, their suffering is widespread yet preventable, and small changes can improve billions of lives each year.

CA: Alright, let’s break that down a bit. 

For over 60 years, the Hunt Saboteurs Association in the U.K. has been working to thwart the practice of fox hunting through direct action:“sabbing” hunts so that hunters cannot successfully kill foxes. The organization’s press officer, Rowan Hughes, spoke to Current Affairs about why, when it comes to lasting change, "actions are everything."

Q: Could you tell us a bit about hunting culture in the U.K. and the controversy over it?

Rowan Hughes:  The hunting community is very hierarchical, and historically those with money, land, and power have been involved in hunting. This makes it very hard to challenge, as hunts often have links with high ranking police, people within the court system etc. Hunting of this sort is very much a rural “sport” for the landed gentry, though not everyone involved is affluent, and it comes with a lot of pomp and pageantry.  Nowadays, there is less wealth involved, but hunters hold onto the memory of being landed gentry who nobody had the power to oppose, and often trespass on farm land and do not respect the wishes of local communities if they do not support hunting. A lot of the controversy comes from the fact that it is a “sport” and foxes are raised, and encouraged by hunts to keep their numbers up so they are available to be hunted, as well as the absolute cruelty of ...