SalemChickens.com

We have not discussed this as a group or taken a position on it yet, but I hope that my comrades in Willamette Reds and the Communist Party here in Oregon support the right of people in Salem to keep a few chickens in their yards as pets and for eggs. The "chicken question" has not loomed large on the left since the days of FDR.

This issue isn't going away. A few months ago people were laughing about it, but it keeps coming up in the press and at Salem city council meetings. As the economic crisis deepens, as food prices climb and as Salem expands there is more pressure to redefine ourselves. Are we urban or rural? Are we going to make room for diversity and enable it or not? Are we going to give in to agribusiness and an increasingly alienating urban environment managed by corporate interests or develop other models? What can an urban environment look like and sound like? Who owns and controls that environment?

The folks at SalemChickens.com are talking about these questions in roundabout ways and are part of the urban chicken movement. This is an important social struggle limited only by our ability to approach it with the attention and seriousness it deserves.

Let's win on keeping the chickens and not stop there. Why can't we also allow a few goats and sheep in Salem's larger yards and city parks? Have communal cow, horse and llama pastures? Give public space over for bee keeping and bird and bat habitats? Start reversing, even in some small way, that capitalist push that began five centuries ago with the seizures of common lands and the dispossession of the peasants and artisans?

The gun lobby just won a victory for their side by attaching a whacko clause in the credit card industry reform package that will allow some people to carry loaded weapons in national parks where state law allows this. It's a giveaway to the right and the liberals who did not stand in opposition will some day regret it: the right is forecasting an increase in crime, they believe that more guns and vigilantism will prevent crime and they are implying that the government will need to be resisted or overthrown by force. The conservative subtext here is all about racist mob violence and the liberals know it.

The urban chicken movement provides one small part of the alternative. It pushes us to think about peaceful uses for private and public spaces and how we use and view urban space in nonviolent ways.

What if we had attached urban chicken language to, say, the order sending the Guard to Iraq and Afghanistan? The right would have been outraged.

Let's look at this chicken question in as broad a context as possible. We should win this struggle.