Every Second is a 9-11 Attack on the Animals

The eyes of the world were transfixed on the fiery ruins of the World Trade Center collapsing into rubble, as thousands of people were dead or dying. Meanwhile, in an average slaughterhouse, far more pigs, chickens, turkeys, or cattle were killed that same moment in other terrorist acts. One act of terrorism was extraordinary, illegal, and immoral while the other was routine, legal, and perfectly acceptable to the minds of most people. 9-11 was a tragedy of the first order, and received nonstop media coverage, but every second is a 9-11 attack on the animals, an assault that transpires under the cover of indifference and unfolds in a far more prolonged, torturous, and barbaric manner. Dare one make a comparison between human and animal suffering? ~ Steven Best

New York

(Office and Attack)

To Fernando Vela

Beneath all the statistics
there is a drop of duck’s blood.
Beneath all the columns
there is a drop of sailor’s blood.
Beneath all the totals, a river of warm blood;
a river that goes singing,
past the bedrooms of the suburbs,
and the river is silver, cement, or wind
in the lying daybreak of New York.
The mountains exist, I know that.
And the lenses ground for wisdom,
I know that. But I have not come to see the sky,
the blood that sweeps the machines to the waterfalls,
and the spirit on the cobra’s tongue.
Every day they kill in New York
ducks, four million,
pigs, five million,
pigeons, two thousand, for the enjoyment of dying men,
cows, one million,
lambs, one million,
roosters, two million,
who turn the sky to small splinters.
You may as well sob filing a razor blade
or assassinate dogs in the hallucinated foxhunts,
as try to stop in the dawnlight
the endless trains carrying milk,
the endless trains carrying blood,
and the trains carrying roses in chains
for those in the field of perfume.
The ducks and the pigeons
and the hogs and the lambs
lay their drops of blood down
underneath all the statistics;
and the terrible bawling of the packed-in cattle
fills the valley with suffering
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.
I attack all those persons
who know nothing of the other half,
the half who cannot be saved,
who raise their cement mountains,
in which the hearts of the small
animals no one thinks of are beating,
and from which we will all fall
during the final holiday of the drills.
I spit in your face.
The other half hears me,
as they go on eating, urinating, flying in their purity
like the children of janitors
who carry delicate sticks
to the holes where the antennas
of the insects are rusting.
This is not hell, it is a street.
This is not death, it is a fruit-stand.
There is a whole world of crushed rivers and unachievable distances
in the paw of a cat crushed by a car,
and I hear the song of the worm
in the heart of so many girls.
Rust, rotting, trembling earth.
And you are earth, swimming through the figures of the office.
What shall I do, set my landscapes in order?
Set in place the lovers who will afterwards be photographs,
Who will be bits of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, I won’t; I attack,
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast the sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.

~ Federico García Lorca, from Poeta en Nueva York (1929-1930)

The Spanish Civil was began in 1936 and García Lorca was seen by the right-wing forces as an enemy. The author hid from the soldiers but he was eventually found. An eyewitness has told that he was taken out of a Civil Government building by guards and Falangists belonging to the 'Black Squad'. García Lorca was shot in Granada on August 19/20 of 1936 without trial. The circumstances of his death are still shrouded in mystery. He was buried in a grave that he had been forced top dig for himself. Accroding to some sources, he had to be finished off by a coup de grâce. One of his assassins later boasted, that he shot "two bullets into his arse for being a queer". Most probably, García Lorca wrote under pressure his last words on a note for a member of the 'Black Squad': "Father, please give this man a donation of 1000 pesetas for the Army." Don Federico, his father, carried the note in his wallet for the following years. He died in voluntary exile in New York.

CROPPED ~ SEE FULL IMAGE

Sue Coe, Triumph of Fundamentalism, 2004, mixed media drawing on white Strathmore Bristol board, 8 1/2" x 12 3/8" (21.5 x 31.5 cm).