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R. Kelly was convicted. Are we finally listening to Black women?

For the dozens of survivors who came forward, the R. Kelly verdict was three decades in the making: After a six-week trial, the R&B singer was found guilty on Monday on nine counts of sex trafficking and racketeering. The 54-year-old musician, long accused of disturbing allegations of sexual abuse and harassment, was being held accountable.
“Thank God they got it right this time,” Stephanie Edwards, who tried for 20 years to convince the world that R. Kelly raped her niece, told <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/09/interview-sparkle-on-r-kellys-guilty-verdict.html">The Cut</a>.
It took the jury just nine hours to deliberate after prosecutors, with the help of 45 witnesses, untangled a web of abuse that targeted Black women and girls as young as 13 and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/nyregion/r-kelly-trial-underage-assault.html">teenage boys</a>. The harrowing stories of these survivors — and their bravery to share them — helped lead to the R&B superstar’s conviction after years of evasion.
One woman testified that R. Kelly gave her herpes when she was 16 and he was 42. Another shared how Kelly locked her in a room for days without food to eventually wake up having been drugged and raped. Others on the stand told of Kelly forcing them to get abortions, demanding they have sex with other women who were locked up in his studio, coercing them to have sex and perform sexual acts under the threat of a gun, and obsessively recording much of the abuse on video.
The verdict, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/nyregion/metoo-black-women-r-kelly-conviction.html">many</a> <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/9/28/22699128/black-women-long-overdue-justice-r-kelly-verdict">say</a>, is evidence that a cultural tide has turned after years of activism. Since the Me Too movement took off in 2017, Kelly’s reckoning has been a major milestone in the music industry and the first high-profile case in which the majority of the victims were Black women and girls. These survivors had to fight especially hard <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/25/17248084/r-kelly-sexual-misconduct-allegations-timeline">to have their stories be heard and taken seriously</a>.
Allegations go back as far as 1996, when a young woman filed a lawsuit against Kelly, saying she was underage when he initiated sex with her; in 2001, another young woman did the same. A year later, police indicted Kelly on 21 counts of child pornography after an anonymous source sent a sex tape to the Chicago Police Department. When the case went to trial in 2008, jurors were not convinced by the video evidence that showed Kelly sexually abusing what appeared to be a young Black girl, and Kelly was acquitted of the child pornography charges.
In the years since, activists — from Me Too founder Tarana Burke to the women behind the #MuteRKelly social media campaign — have worked hard to cultivate a climate that brings attention to Black survivors. The <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/1/30/18192932/lifetime-surviving-r-kelly-documentary-sexual-abuse">explosive Lifetime documentary series</a> Surviving R. Kelly further brought allegations against the singer to light.
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<figcaption>Family members of survivor Jocelyn Savage attend the trial in the racketeering and sex trafficking case against R. Kelly in Brooklyn, New York, on August 18.</figcaption>
<cite>Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images</cite></figure>
Only time will tell if Kelly’s conviction will be an outlier, or if it means that Black women and girls are truly being recognized and taken seriously in discussions about sexual abuse and assault. Much like Harvey Weinstein, who in February 2020 <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/11/21174920/harvey-weinstein-sentence-23-years">was sentenced to 23 years in prison</a> for third-degree rape and first-degree criminal sexual acts, Kelly’s list of abuses is egregious, excessive, and damning. But there are signs that Me Too fatigue has set in, with the public less interested in following abuse cases, and Kelly’s music still remains popular on streaming platforms. Some who have long followed the allegations see the verdict as a step forward for the country’s most vulnerable survivors — but they note that there’s still a long way to go to change the reality that <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/about/newsletter/2020/02/black-women-sexual-assault">one in four Black girls will be sexually abused before age 18</a>, according to the American Psychological Association (APA).
“It’s remarkable the level at which one has to prey upon Black girls and women for there to be this kind of recognition,” Treva Lindsey, a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Ohio State University, told Vox. “It took three decades of allegations, a docuseries, a #MuteRKelly campaign, and more to even produce the moment that we’re in. But the systems that enabled Kelly are still intact.”
The world where R. Kelly was able to evade authorities for years looks a bit different from the world in which he was finally convicted this week.
In 1994, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22621692/aaliyah-death-20-year-anniversary-r-kelly-trial">Kelly illegally married R&B singer Aaliyah</a> when she was just 15 years old. When news of their relationship broke, it was mostly discussed as a misguided choice made by a mentor and protégé “in love,” not one of abuser and victim. In the recent trial, however, Aaliyah was noted as Jane Doe No. 1, with a witness testifying that he saw Kelly having sex with Aaliyah when she was 13 or 14.
What made more headlines than the illegal marriage, though, was what many called Kelly’s “sex tape.” In June 2002, the self-titled <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/why-r-kelly-calls-himself-pied-piper">Pied Piper</a> was charged with 21 counts of making child pornography that featured oral sex, intercourse, and urination. The video in question had been widely copied and sold, earning a place in the cultural discourse with comedians joking about golden showers and Kelly’s kinks. It took six years for the case to make it to trial, where Kelly was found not guilty on all counts. Jurors concluded that they could not determine that the girl on the 27-minute tape was a minor. While the trial focused on this one sex tape, there were <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/25/17248084/r-kelly-sexual-misconduct-allegations-timeline">several allegations against Kelly</a> by this time.
Between “the tape” and his first trial, Kelly only grew in popularity with <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2004-02-03-0402030022-story.html">an NAACP Image Award nomination</a> in 2004 and the release of his cult classic hip hopera, “Trapped in the Closet,” the following year. When <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/arts/music/14kell.html">Kelly was exonerated in 2008</a>, he left the courthouse with his hand on his heart as he walked by fans with the “flicker of a smile” on his face, the New York Times wrote.
Back then, the 14 witnesses at Kelly’s trial weren’t believed, or at least weren’t believed enough by the jurors (nine men and three women) to convict him. Kelly’s defense team called the witnesses liars and extortionists and even compared one of them to the devil. Kelly’s lawyers made their entire defense about gold-digging women, since one of the witnesses <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/arts/music/14kell.html">admitting to stealing a $20,000 Rolex</a> from the musician. The jury explained that the lack of testimony from the victim created “grayness” in the case.
During Kelly’s 2021 trial, a defense team tried once again to paint women who testified against Kelly as promiscuous and desperate for fame, but the effort didn’t stick — more survivors came forward, and there had been a years-long movement of supporters behind the women this time around that had worked to uncover Kelly’s alleged intricate criminal enterprise and shine a light on a culture that enables predators.
The #MuteRKelly campaign, founded in 2017, brought greater attention to the longstanding allegations against Kelly, urging individuals, radio stations, and music venues to stop playing his music or hosting his live performances. The movement’s founders, Kenyette Barnes and Oronike Odeleye, two Black women, believed it was time for Black communities to take a stand against R. Kelly by not supporting his music career — less streaming and album sales meant less money for the lawyers and networks that prolonged the abuse.
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<figcaption>Demonstrators gather near R. Kelly’s former recording studio in Chicago on January 9, 2019, following the release of the Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly.</figcaption>
<cite>Max Herman/NurPhoto via Getty Images</cite></figure>
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<figcaption>The #MuteRKelly campaign, founded in 2017 by Kenyette Barnes and Oronike Odeleye, brought greater attention to the longstanding allegations against the R&B singer.</figcaption>
<cite>Scott Olson/Getty Images</cite></figure>
That same year, music writer <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/6/5/18652167/r-kelly-jim-derogatis-interview-soulless">Jim DeRogatis</a>, who originally broke the story of allegations against Kelly and had been chronicling the allegations against Kelly since 2000, published a BuzzFeed <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jimderogatis/parents-told-police-r-kelly-is-keeping-women-in-a-cult">feature</a> detailing information about a “cult” of young women that Kelly maintained. Just four months later, decades of sexual assault and harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein surfaced, launching the Me Too movement to heights activists never believed would happen. For a moment, it seemed as though Kelly’s victims could ride this wave — people tried to vocalize the decades of horror the R&B singer wrought — but <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/7/21/16008230/r-kelly-surviving-sex-cult-abuse-john-legend-chance-the-rapper">their stories weren’t amplified</a> in the way others survivors’ were.
It took another push for Kelly’s victims to get some attention: The six-part Lifetime docuseries <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/1/30/18192932/lifetime-surviving-r-kelly-documentary-sexual-abuse">Surviving R. Kelly</a>, directed by dream hampton and released in early 2019, featured several accusers describing their experiences with Kelly and seemed to finally break the weight of silence that had settled in. In the six hours of television testimony, survivors, allies, and advocates laid out the most comprehensive look yet at Kelly’s abuse, making it difficult for people to look away. After the series aired, Kelly was dropped by his record company and later charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and sex trafficking.
“What’s striking is that the trial revealed an even broader scope of victimization that he perpetrated than the docuseries alluded to,” Candice Norcott, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago who was a featured expert in the Lifetime docuseries, told Vox. “There was still more that was revealed, like the scope of gender identities that he targeted.”
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<figcaption>R. Kelly arrives for a hearing on sexual abuse charges alongside his defense team in Chicago, Illinois, on June 26, 2019.</figcaption>
<cite>Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images</cite></figure>
Monday’s verdict, after decades of accusations and activism, shows that change is happening, albeit very slowly. One of the biggest critiques at the height of Me Too — which was started by Burke, a Black activist, around 2007 before surging in the wake of the Weinstein story — was that it left out marginalized women, particularly Black women. It only received widespread recognition after actress Alyssa Milano <a href="https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/919659438700670976">tweeted</a> out the phrase 10 years later and captured stories of abuse that women in Hollywood experienced. Most of the stories that garnered attention centered on white women; meanwhile, <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/about/newsletter/2020/02/black-women-sexual-assault">more than 20 percent of Black women are raped</a> during their lives, according to the APA, a higher percentage than women overall, and for every Black woman who reports rape, at least <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/about/newsletter/2020/02/black-women-sexual-assault">15 Black women</a> do not.
The unique discrimination that Black women face as a result of misogynoir — the combination of anti-Black racism and misogyny — makes it <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-black-women-sexual-assault-20170828-story.html">harder for Black women to report campus sexual assaults</a>, for example, even at majority-Black institutions. Activists have helped bring these realities to the fore in recent years, and Americans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/12/while-most-americans-say-talking-about-racism-slavery-is-good-society-survey-reveals-deep-divides/">have become more receptive</a> to understanding systemic oppression. The fact that jurors at Kelly’s 2021 trial believed the Black women who testified against him, especially given that the women are not famous or wealthy, is significant.
Still, Lindsey pointed out, survivors can’t help but feel a loss for not being believed for so long. “The verdict finally offers a clear indictment, not only of R. Kelly, of course, but of all the enablers and systems that had to be in place to allow that to proceed,” Lindsey said. “But for Black women and girls, and especially those who are the survivors of sexual violence, it’s not comforting to know that it took three decades of allegations for people to say, ‘Perhaps this was terrible.’”
It is yet to be seen whether this trial and verdict will encourage society to listen to and believe Black women and girls going forward.
There are multiple reasons Kelly’s case may be an outlier. For one, Kelly’s behavior was monstrous in terms of its flagrancy, frequency, and longevity. That isn’t the norm for sexual violence for the average victim, Lindsey said. Kelly was a rich and powerful man, with a network of enablers; he was known to scout teenage girls and commit his abuses in plain sight. His crimes also included some especially foul details — one woman testified that Kelly forced her to smear feces on her face and put them in her mouth. For another, it’s <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/legal-system-has-failed-black-girls-women-and-non">well-documented</a> that Black women and girls are less likely to be seen as victims, or to be believed and supported when they report abuse.
In fact, there are a number of Black women who have accused high-profile men of sexual abuse whose accounts still deserve serious attention. Jennifer Hough — the woman whom Kenneth Petty, Nicki Minaj’s husband, was convicted of attempting to rape — has said that Petty, Minaj, and their fans have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/arts/music/nicki-minaj-kenneth-petty-lawsuit.html">pressured her to recant her story of the sexual assault</a>. The <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/05/9835456/who-are-russell-simmons-20-accusers-on-the-record">20 women</a> who have <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/russell-simmons-sexual-assault-allegations-a-timeline-202515/">accused hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons</a> of sexual misconduct face an uphill battle as Simmons denies the allegations with the hashtag #NotMe. And those stories have made the news because the accused men are famous — but what about those who’ve faced sexual violence at the hands of non-famous men?
“These instances [with Petty and Simmons] tell us we aren’t necessarily somewhere new with how we tackle sexual violence against Black women and girls,” said Lindsey. “There’s still a way that we are willing to villainize and demonize them for their behavior without actually reckoning with the pervasiveness of sexual violence.”
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1632978526_1080_78418" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22887335,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/C9iVB7CQafEoMQcoEJXq1OdJHeI=/0x0:3000x2000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PsCEpDMQS1mMD1FYJHz2-m3NJVk=/0x0:3000x2000/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eRKwnCp7YU-pWowFb53Y8-qNxEs=/0x0:3000x2000/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Ytw9kc9pVTZBllPq-kFScihAuxU=/0x0:3000x2000/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tCPAtq3sLPKBKwrGmf0JQOwWQ18=/0x0:3000x2000/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/L59yKigzD_QVF8rQWHrxlHxZyJM=/0x0:3000x2000/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GKROxgUZoCjv4z2nK22h7aJ6Czo=/0x0:3000x2000/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/STkObRCBgbISVa2IoFnFhdzvjeI=/0x0:3000x2000/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jkXYynH_vsjnvIq7qU-uwXch0no=/0x0:3000x2000/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3000" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Sk4CMEXDS9Hnp0K2hnYB_tIard8=/0x0:3000x2000/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/scfxSvpUCJ1H5NvGz6XITuH262Y=/0x0:3000x2000/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/83nDchZtQHeO2lXO3o45gnDvCqA=/0x0:3000x2000/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/j_AQXdGTifw2l2qHULSD0u3q3AQ=/0x0:3000x2000/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5lfMatL-JVk7QWLeszmHXaocsPs=/0x0:3000x2000/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XaG5Oui6q1QE7DDX9AmdInE7Q70=/0x0:3000x2000/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jVgnw5DoSDSWqck3BTUdk06xrZY=/0x0:3000x2000/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0UXzFJn153N5Fd58KtUQPAmNg0Q=/0x0:3000x2000/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-BXJ5OVPezbLLi34lCXtx5fsyPk=/0x0:3000x2000/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MCUF0rhyoSvVQE6zffDeTmUf61M=/0x0:3000x2000/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3000x2000):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887335/GettyImages_643178752.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Twenty women have accused Russell Simmons of sexual misconduct.</figcaption>
<cite>Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images</cite></figure>
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1632978526_5856_78419" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22887336,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DoHJNXmPv7foXrOXNnNAA2AYU24=/0x0:2191x1461/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tvty11cDnYzW28029Ygmebu_-3Q=/0x0:2191x1461/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/i6aveE7hY5IZMVeTEgfoXUXvMTE=/0x0:2191x1461/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a-1uH5rPMEcpAlLZC9juEhrKfAM=/0x0:2191x1461/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mF4LX2Cryltvc9nxOfmX6D9gGfw=/0x0:2191x1461/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bGQiqG4S0JW6cyZ8K_8T2S_nl_4=/0x0:2191x1461/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fT0t3YaCi-RwyIgv-5DVAx_SjgQ=/0x0:2191x1461/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5PGF30evlmE4-NjTu6Kd5zJB4YQ=/0x0:2191x1461/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eMUfXDwqGqO5Mc7GAbUEkDkf0GE=/0x0:2191x1461/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="2191" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LoV9OIGPipeoEUi485f5ynL_itw=/0x0:2191x1461/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Tmo02Um917nEmCIoLETuiGE2pds=/0x0:2191x1461/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cPzkNiand1d3KIZKyrN6-db1ifM=/0x0:2191x1461/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jgRMZ-Mc3L-tQMwPO7G2KUH9tYw=/0x0:2191x1461/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/o6I7TQZzAVXdormn7NHnaTD75cM=/0x0:2191x1461/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ii1FlnzjnW8S-MnGzLPdHdwhkhw=/0x0:2191x1461/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ckuWACd4mgDqhhNQtIWYGFxOXaA=/0x0:2191x1461/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_gB7DtiwefkIRDQ065A4_5hgmbU=/0x0:2191x1461/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/88rHWLJUJ_aYunInzyvIbkCdRAc=/0x0:2191x1461/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KnDvzpfHD9xDnYNCDDXB8Kz03S4=/0x0:2191x1461/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:2191x1461):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887336/GettyImages_1326349998.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>Bill Cosby (second from left) arrives home alongside his attorney and spokespeople after being released from prison on June 30, 2021.</figcaption>
<cite>Michael Abbott/Getty Images</cite></figure>
There are also other factors that signal a larger, overall Me Too fatigue. Though some dedicated viewers tuned in to Kelly’s 2021 trial daily, posting recaps in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/670245790309186">Facebook groups</a> or devoting entire <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/thePLAINESTjane/videos">YouTube series</a> to analyzing the case, social media attention to the six-week trial was markedly low. When the Weinstein allegations first came out in October 2017, the hashtag #MeToo <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/10/16/me-too-alyssa-milano-urged-assault-victims-to-tweet-in-solidarity-the-response-was-massive/">was used 200,000 times</a>, and 80,000 people were talking about the movement on Facebook. By the time the jury reached a verdict in the R. Kelly trial, #MeToo was hardly being used; meanwhile, one of the top R. Kelly hashtags was #FreeRKelly.
“I had to kind of search it out a little to find information from the trial,” Lindsey said. “I know there were news sites keeping a daily record, and Black news outlets were pretty good about regular updates, but I did not see that same kind of investment that we saw with the Harvey Weinstein case, in terms of public lure. And this is perhaps one of the most intricate, complex, and just damning cases of serial sexual predation we’ve probably seen in quite some time, but you wouldn’t know that from the news.”
Norcott also noted having to dig for news pertaining to Kelly’s trial. “There was the context of <a href="https://www.vox.com/22684204/gabby-petito-missing-updates-internet-web-sleuthing">[Instagrammer Gabby Petito’s] story emerging and getting so much attention</a> while this trial was underway. It’s important to pay attention to how and why that happened.”
As Spencer Kornhaber noted in the Atlantic, it’s also important to understand that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/r-kelly-guilty-conviction/620229/">Kelly was convicted not of rape or sexual assault</a>, but of sex trafficking and racketeering, a charge notoriously linked to the mafia. This strategy was a workaround for sexual abuse allegations that had reached the statute of limitations, with the prosecution opting instead to show how Kelly constructed a grand scheme of abuse that involved dozens of enablers. That prosecutors chose this approach also highlights how hard it is to get a sexual assault conviction against a powerful man.
Then there is Kelly’s popularity as a musician. Though the debate of separating the art from the artist has persisted for ages, there will always be people who are not concerned about consuming the art of an abuser. Just this month, Drake <a href="https://variety.com/2021/music/news/drake-r-kelly-songwriting-tsu-certified-lover-boy-sample-1235057256/">released an album featuring a song credit</a> from Kelly. After Surviving R. Kelly aired, streams of Kelly’s music <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/01/220898/surviving-r-kelly-spotify-streaming-increase">shot up</a> <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xyneg/r-kelly-spotify-streams-increase">on Spotify</a>; he currently has 4.9 million monthly listeners. By this point, people have already made up their minds as to whether they will continue to play “Ignition (remix)” or stop listening to it altogether, and Kelly’s guilty verdict is unlikely to affect their decision.
“There’s a way that a lot of us are grappling with our role as enablers, and as part of rape culture, that also keeps us much more timid in our responses and our investment in the verdict,” Lindsey said.
Ultimately, activists want the long-overdue R. Kelly verdict to underscore how challenging it is for survivors to tell their stories — and that’s why it’s important that they’re heard, especially Black women and children, who are often some of the most vulnerable. People may be exhausted by Me Too, but the work to dismantle a culture that enables abuse is nowhere near done. “What I hope comes out of this is more messages about accountability and fewer messages about doubt, shame, and the persecution of survivors who decide to come forward,” Norcott said.
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vox R. Kelly was convicted. Are we finally listening to Black women?

For the dozens of survivors who came forward, the R. Kelly verdict was three decades in the making: After a six-week trial, the R&B sing...

Why 4 companies control the beef industry

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W1JWTBh-99paq0x1AIJnfjDKG88=/0x38:1920x1043/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22887857/VDC_XEP_045_cattleranchers_clean.jpg" /></div>
Cattle auctions happen every day throughout the US; they serve a crucial purpose for the cattle markets. Inside one of these auctions, like the one we profile in St. Onge, South Dakota, you can see how a competitive market functions. There are multiple producers and buyers competing for a commodity, which results in a value, or price, for that commodity.
But over the past 40 years, the meatpacking sector — made up of the companies that buy and slaughter cattle for consumption — has undergone a dramatic degree of corporate consolidation. In the 1980s, the US relaxed its approach to antitrust enforcement, one tool the government uses to rein in market concentration. Today, <a href="https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/PSDAnnualReport2019.pdf">only four companies process 85 percent</a> of all the cattle produced in the US.
Cattle ranchers say this is affecting their ability to compete for good prices and make a living. This is one way industrialized agriculture is making it difficult for independent farmers and ranchers to stay in business in America.
For this story, we contacted Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS for comment. We only received a response from Tyson; a representative shared testimony from one of the company’s executives at a recent Senate hearing. We included that in this video, and the <a href="https://www.tysonfoods.com/news/news-releases/2021/7/fresh-meats-leader-testifies-about-beef-industry-senate-hearing">full transcript is here</a>.
This is the first episode of a series we are producing with the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect">Future Perfect</a> team at Vox, a group that explores big problems and the big ideas that can tackle them. We are calling this season The Human Cost of Meat, and future episodes will explore other ways industrial meat production has transformed the lives of people who consume meat, work in the meat industry, or live near a factory farm.
You can find this video and all of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA">Vox’s videos on YouTube</a>.
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vox Why 4 companies control the beef industry

Cattle auctions happen every day throughout the US; they serve a crucial purpose for the cattle markets. Inside one of these auctions, like...

The worst horrors of factory farming could soon be phased out in Europe

The confinement of farmed animals in excessively small cages and crates has long been a trademark of our industrialized food system. There’s been progress here and there — several countries and about a dozen US states have banned cage confinement to varying degrees, and increasingly, food corporations are ridding the practice from supply chains.
Still, the problem is pervasive, and most of the world’s <a href="https://uepcertified.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Caged-UEP-Guidelines_17.pdf">egg-laying hens</a> — about 6.5 billion — and tens of millions of female breeding pigs, or sows, remain in cages.
But this summer, Europe took a bold move to break away from this status quo, putting forward essentially the most ambitious plan ever by any government to end the cruel practice.
The European Commission — the executive branch of the European Union — <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_3297">announced</a> in June a ban on cages for a number of animals, including egg-laying hens, female breeding pigs, calves raised for veal, rabbits, ducks, and geese, by 2027. The plan would cover <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/231961/'End%20the%20Cage%20Age'%20report,%20October%202020.pdf">hundreds of millions</a> of farmed animals raised in 27 countries. It puts Europe on track to implement the world’s most progressive animal welfare reforms within the decade. If ultimately enacted, it could turn out to be a pivot point in the decades-long fight to ease animal suffering.
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The plan is the culmination of a massive <a href="https://www.endthecageage.eu/">three-year effort</a> by animal welfare groups, initiated by Compassion in World Farming, an anti-factory farming charity. The groups gathered over a million signatures from European citizens in support of the cage ban, which prompted the European Commission to make a formal reply, in which it expressed support for the measure and agreed to finalize a plan for a cage ban by the end of 2023.
For this proposal to be implemented into law, it will have to pass through two other bodies of the European Union — the European Parliament and European Council — both of which could weaken it.
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<figcaption>Female breeding pigs, or sows, at a pig farm in France. Although the European Union largely phased out the extreme confinement of sows in “gestation crates” in 2013, pork producers are still allowed to use the enclosures for the first four weeks of the sows’ pregnancies.</figcaption>
<cite>Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg via Getty Images</cite></figure>
The European Council, which is made up of the 27 EU heads of states, will be particularly hard to sway, with <a href="https://mailchi.mp/dcf7ce409e9d/an-end-to-cages-in-europe?e=1b4d7d52d9">some members</a> already claiming that the deadline to phase out cages is unrealistic. Meat lobbying groups are also devising strategies to delay the timeline, calling for more research, impact assessments, and a longer phaseout.
“These investments can easily cost hundreds of thousands of euros, if not millions ... we are talking about major investments that you simply cannot just decide on how to go forward, on your decision,” said Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general of Copa and Cogeca, an organization representing farmers and agricultural cooperatives across Europe, to <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2021/06/10/european-parliament-overwhelmingly-backs-ban-on-caged-animal-farming">Euronews</a>.
Advocates also worry the ban might only apply to animals raised in the EU, meaning the law could be skirted by simply importing meat and eggs from caged animals.
Still, for the moment, things are looking good. In May, the European Parliament passed a <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/B-9-2021-0296_EN.html">resolution</a> in favor of the cage ban. Some European commissioners have also been remarkably receptive to improving farm animal welfare, with Janusz Wojciechowski, EU commissioner for agriculture, going so far as to <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_3297">say</a>, “A sustainable food system cannot exist without high animal welfare standards.”
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<figcaption>EU Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski has been an unlikely, yet instrumental, supporter of banning cages for farm animals across the continent. Here, he talks to media about the launch of the “EU Organic Day.”</figcaption>
<cite>Thierry Monasse/Getty Images</cite></figure>
And the fact remains that the plan’s very existence is a major sign of advancement for animal welfare. “It is the greatest unique piece of progress for farmed animals I have seen in my lifetime,” says Leah Garcés, who formerly worked on animal welfare campaigns in Europe and is now the president of Mercy for Animals, an international animal rights nonprofit based in California.
To be sure, the continent-wide cage ban won’t usher in utopian farming conditions. But it underscores just how far Europe has come in reversing some of its more inhumane farming practices — and raises the prospect of similar progress elsewhere in the world.
The landmark EU cage ban proposal is being pushed forward against the backdrop of a yearslong march toward progress on animal welfare on the continent.
For decades, the EU has been ahead of the US on animal welfare: Factory farms in the EU tend to be smaller and less intensive than in the US, meaning that a greater proportion of farmed animals, including egg-laying hens and female breeding pigs, are reared in cage-free systems and generally subject to higher animal welfare standards.
That doesn’t mean that all animals in Europe are out on idyllic green pastures — far from it. EU animal farming is highly industrialized, and increasingly so. According to a <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Small_and_large_farms_in_the_EU_-_statistics_from_the_farm_structure_survey&oldid=406560">2016 survey</a> by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, very large farms account for around 70 percent of animals reared in the EU, where they are kept in highly confined spaces and may be subject to <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32009R1099">cruel</a> stunning methods at the slaughterhouse, like using electrical water baths for poultry and suffocating pigs with high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, small and medium farms that generally adopt higher animal welfare standards in the EU have been <a href="https://www.foodandwatereurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Factoryfarms_110920_web.pdf">disappearing</a> rapidly in the past 15 years.
But a series of reforms has also improved conditions for farmed animals across the continent.
The most significant reform took place in 1999, when the <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/B-7-2010-0706_EN.html">EU passed a directive</a> eliminating battery cages, enclosures that confine egg-laying hens so tightly they are unable to fully open their wings for up to two years. The directive, which went into effect in 2012, didn’t ban cages for hens altogether — some egg producers simply switched to bigger cages — but it was a major milestone that reduced suffering for hundreds of millions of animals.
In the past two decades, the EU also passed laws to partially ban veal crates and limit the confinement of female sows in <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-7-2013-000321_EN.html?redirect#:~:text=Since%201%20January%202013%2C%20in,the%20week%20before%20giving%20birth.">gestation crates</a> — small metal enclosures that prevent the pigs from being able to turn around. (Pork producers can still use crates during the first four weeks of pregnancy and the week before giving birth.)
Adding to this momentum, some EU countries have gone above and beyond: Austria, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Luxembourg have banned the use of hen cages (though some of these bans have yet to take effect). Sweden and Norway have eliminated the use of gestation crates, and Germany will phase them out by 2028. Starting in 2022 in France, all shell eggs — the kind sold in cartons at the grocery store — must come from cage-free hens.
Most of these countries aren’t big producers, so their collective efforts will mitigate only some of the animal cruelty inflicted by factory farming. But these moves still illustrate a significant alignment in values and political will to reduce animal suffering on the continent. And at least a part of why this momentum exists stems from broad, aspirational EU directives that have guided member states on animal welfare since the ’60s.
Europe has passed directives to ensure farmers <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:31974L0577">render certain species unconscious</a> before slaughter, which was later replaced with a more stringent <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32009R1099">regulation</a> that includes training requirements for handlers and more; a convention that mandated a farmed animal’s “<a href="https://ec.europa.eu/food/system/files/2016-10/aw_european_convention_protection_animals_en.pdf">physiological and ethological needs</a>” be met; and a law that <a href="http://publications.europa.eu/resource/cellar/b907d098-0134-4f62-97cb-8969abd9fd4d.0005.01/DOC_1">recognized the animals’ sentience</a>.
Nowadays, animal welfare in Europe is underpinned by <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/animal-welfare_en">five freedoms</a> based on the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/food/system/files/2016-10/aw_european_convention_protection_animals_en.pdf">European Convention for the Protection of Animals Kept for Farming Purposes</a>: freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury, and disease; freedom to express normal and natural behavior; and freedom from fear and distress.
To be clear, these directives are broad and vague enough for meat, dairy, and egg producers to be able to technically abide by them while still engaging in cruel practices, said Alice Di Concetto, a lecturer in European animal law at the University of Sorbonne in Paris and founder of the consultancy Animal Law Europe.
Despite the five freedoms, Europe’s billions of farmed animals are still clearly subjected to pain, injury, disease, fear, and distress, and are often unable to express normal and natural behavior. The European Commission doesn’t have a strong mechanism to enforce these policies: It can start infringement procedures and audit member states, but according to Di Concetto, these processes are both rare and hardly meaningful if the standards themselves are so low.
Still, experts say that having these directives as goalposts has served the EU in at least striving for stronger animal welfare protections.
In addition to the cage ban, advocates and policymakers have initiated other important measures in recent years. Last May, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/germany-bans-male-chick-culling-from-2022/a-57603148">Germany pledged</a> to ban the cruel and wasteful practice of <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22374193/eggs-chickens-animal-welfare-culling">killing day-old male chicks</a> by 2022. Two months later, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-bans-crushing-gassing-male-chicks-2022-2021-07-18/">France followed suit</a>. Recently, France, Germany, and <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/germany-france-call-on-eu-countries-to-also-ban-culling-of-male-chicks/">five other countries</a> called for an end to male chick culling across the EU, which would spare <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2018-006133_EN.html">over 300 million chicks annually</a>.
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<figcaption>Recently hatched chicks fall off the end of a conveyor belt at an egg hatchery in Russia. Each year, approximately 6 billion day-old male chicks are culled — 300 million of which are in the EU. Some European countries have begun to ban the practice.</figcaption>
<cite>Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images</cite></figure>
And this month, the <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210910IPR11926/meps-demand-eu-action-plan-to-end-the-use-of-animals-in-research-and-testing">European Parliament voted</a> in favor of devising a plan to end animal testing for medical research and other purposes, and increase funding for the development of advanced non-animal testing methods.
The United States has also instituted some animal welfare laws over the past several decades, but they largely deny protections for farmed animals.
The <a href="https://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/animal-welfare-act">1966 Animal Welfare Act</a>, for instance, a federal law that is considered the basis of animal welfare legislation in the United States, explicitly excludes farmed animals (along with animals commonly used in medical research, like fish, birds, rats, and mice). Similarly, the <a href="https://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/humane-methods-slaughter-act#:~:text=Originally%20passed%20in%201958,%20the,in%20USDA%20inspected%20slaughter%20plants.">1958 Humane Methods of Slaughter Act</a>, which sets standards for how animals are handled at slaughter plants, omits chickens and other birds — like Europe’s slaughter directive — meaning that about <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production">9 billion chickens</a> are missed by this law every year. (Plus, it’s <a href="https://awionline.org/content/new-report-examines-humane-slaughter-enforcement-federal-state-level">weakly enforced</a>.)
And while anti-cruelty laws exist at the state level, <a href="https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/FA-AWI-LegalProtections-AnimalsonFarms-110714.pdf">most exempt common industry practices</a>, which enables meat and egg producers to continue employing cruel farming practices. What’s more: Any gains these laws have made have been dwarfed by the explosive rise in factory farming, cage confinement, and meat consumption of the past few decades.
Today, about 30 percent of US hens are cage-free. About 30 percent of US sows are mostly crate-free, but not entirely — pork producers still confine them for 30 to 40 days between pregnancies. The share of cage-free animals will increase on January 1, 2022, when <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22576044/prop-12-california-eggs-pork-bacon-veal-animal-welfare-law-gestation-crates-battery-cages">California’s anti-cage law</a> goes into effect, but even after that, the US will still lag well behind the EU when it comes to farmed animal welfare.
It’s difficult to tease out exactly why the EU and some of its member countries have been more proactive than the US to pass farm animal welfare laws, but one factor could be simply that Europe’s animal welfare movement is more mature than the US’s.
One of Europe’s first animal welfare laws dates back to 1822 in England: the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act. Two years later, the supporters of the law formed what is now known as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and it wasn’t until 42 years later that an equivalent animal welfare society was established in the US — the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or ASPCA. The European anti-factory farming movement <a href="https://www.animallaw.info/article/detailed-discussion-european-animal-welfare-laws-2003-present-explaining-downturn#s9">developed in the 1960s</a>, a decade before the US’s.
To date, European commissioners have also <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/why-lobbying-in-america-is-different/">tended to be more independent</a> and less invested in upholding the status quo, at least compared to US policymakers. That’s certainly the case with Wojciechowski, the European commissioner for agriculture, who openly tweets in favor of animal welfare and recently <a href="https://twitter.com/jwojc/status/1406123045077630977">reminded industrial farmers</a> that “animals are not machines.” Meanwhile, Stella Kyriakides, European commissioner for health and food safety, has <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_3297">said</a>, “I am determined to ensure that the EU remains at the forefront of animal welfare on the global stage and that we deliver on societal expectations.”
In contrast, USDA Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was a lobbyist for the dairy industry and has certainly <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22166303/gov-tom-vilsack-cabinet-picks-agriculture">not been a vocal champion of animal welfare</a>.
Even before the proposal for the EU cage ban, member states were already on a clear path to eliminating caging. Around <a href="https://left.eu/end-the-cage-age-eu-must-ban-caging-of-animals-by-2027/">half of all eggs</a> in Europe already come from cage-free hens, in part because of country cage bans, but also because advocacy groups have successfully lobbied <a href="https://chickenwatch.org/progress-tracker/">over 1,100</a> grocers, restaurants, and food companies to eliminate cages from their supply chains.
This momentum has created an economic incentive for egg producers to join what is quickly turning into a profitable market targeted at more consumers. By investing in cage-free systems now, experts say, European farmers will face less competition from other farmers both inside the EU and in other areas still reliant on the cruelest methods — perhaps the strongest argument that the EU’s animal welfare standards should apply to imported meat and eggs as well.
At first, farmers using cage-free systems may be at a competitive disadvantage, but as the industry moves away from cage confinement — and especially if the EU-wide ban passes — cage-free producers will have already adapted to new modes of production and invested in the necessary equipment.
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<figcaption>A cage-free egg farm in Spain. Europe is on track to ban cages for egg-laying hens and breeding sows across the continent by as early as 2027.</figcaption>
<cite>Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images</cite></figure>
It will also force other countries like the US to adapt to these standards in order to sell to Europe, which would be a powerful driver of animal welfare more globally, says César Rodríguez Garavito, a director of the Center of Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University, who also works on animal rights law. Likewise, EU meat and egg exports will indirectly raise standards in other countries.
Ensuring the EU cage ban applies to eggs and meat produced within the continent and elsewhere is a major priority for advocates — and the agricultural industry. “We think that the EU must ensure the reciprocity of standards between imports and products produced in Europe,” Copa and Cogeca Secretary-General Pekka Pesonen told me in a statement. “An EU policy of double standards will have a devastating impact.”
In the US, activists have little to no power to shape policies at the federal level. Most of the movement’s resources have been allocated to pass state laws, whether through ballot initiatives or legislatures, or to lobby corporations to adopt voluntary farm animal welfare standards. And maybe that’s okay.
In the EU, activists built up to their cage ban by passing laws in many countries before going for a big, continental push. That could be what works in the US, too — after all, <a href="https://www.aspca.org/improving-laws-animals/public-policy/farm-animal-confinement-bans">14 states</a> have already passed cage bans. If a sufficient number of states do this, maybe, down the road, the US could reach a “tipping point” where it will be possible to pass a federal cage ban.
“We need to get to a point where there are enough states that are on board, that you’ve got a critical mass of states that are beneficiaries of this,” says Garcés, the animal welfare activist.
The US is headed there, thanks to the 14 state cage bans that have passed, and advocates successfully lobbying corporations to ban cages from supply chains. In 2015, only 6 percent of US hens were cage-free. Now, over <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22331708/eggs-cages-chickens-hens-meat-poultry">30 percent are</a>. And as noted above, around one-third of US sows are crate-free for most of their lives.
Getting to a critical mass that would make a federal ban feasible, however, will not be easy. There’s no clear path forward — at least in the near future — to banning the production and sale of eggs from caged hens in the top five egg-producing states, or in some of the more densely populated states (besides California). The same goes for pork from confined sows. Those realities, combined with the powerful meat lobby and the US’s limited federal political mechanisms to enact meaningful change — will make this an uphill battle. Still, with the EU taking this step forward, it might be only a matter of time before others, including the US, will follow suit.
Jonathan Moens is a freelance journalist based in Rome. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, National Geographic, and Undark.
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source <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22698265/europe-cage-ban-animal-welfare-eggs-pork-united-states">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22698265/europe-cage-ban-animal-welfare-eggs-pork-united-states</a>

vox The worst horrors of factory farming could soon be phased out in Europe

The confinement of farmed animals in excessively small cages and crates has long been a trademark of our industrialized food system. There’s...

Japanese Nationalism And Militarism Are Not Going Away, But Will Only Intensify

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://shoebat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/japan-article-thumbnail.jpg" /></div>
By Theodore Shoebat 
In September of 2020, Japan commenced its largest set of military exercises since 1993, in order to scare the Chinese and prepare its soldiers to defend the country’s islands, especially the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which both Japan and China have been contesting over for years. Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi stated:
<blockquote readability="10">
“In order to respond effectively to various situations, including attacks on the islands, it is essential that the necessary forces are deployed quickly and extensively, depending on the situation”
</blockquote>
The exercises will last from September to November and will involve 100,000 soldiers,20,000 vehicles, in addition to 120 aircraft and private ships. Amongst Japan’s goals is to expand its military strength and capabilities. It has been doing this by getting state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jets and converting warships to aircraft so that they can carry such fighter jets. Japan is also building new destroyers, submarines and missiles. All of this is being done as a military policy against the Chinese.
As Kishi told CNN: “Against Chinese action to Senkaku Islands (called the Diaoyu Islands in China) and other parts of the East China Sea … we have to demonstrate that the government of Japan is resolutely defending our territory with the greater number of Japanese coast guard vessels than that of China”. The adamancy that Japan has for these uninhabited islands is just as strong as it is in China. The two stubborn countries both refuse to back down on their claim, but since not a single soul is living in these islands, then what is the purpose of all such tensions? It has nothing to do with these large rocks in the sea and everything to do with power — power over the seas, hegemony over maritime territory and resources and the leverage to scare away one’s neighbors. In 2020, China’s Foreign Ministry declared: “The Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands are an inherent part of China’s territory, and it is our inherent right to carry out patrols and law enforcement activities in these waters”. By having patrol ships moving around the islands and expanding laws that give its coast guard expanded power, China is imposing itself in the area and thus conveying a message of power.
According to Japanese authorities, the Chinese Coast Guard has maneuvered its vessels into Japanese territorial waters (or within 12 nautical miles of Japanese land) a total of 88 times between Japanese 1st and the end of August of 2021. This is being done as a show of will of Chinese geopolitical power over this maritime territory. In the words of Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King’s College in London: “Exercising coastal state rights is an important step in corroborating sovereignty through practice”. Japan knows this, hence why Nobuo Kishi stated: “There are actions that continue to challenge an integral part of Japan’s sovereign territory.” Both countries are vying for domination in the East China Sea, and in such an atmosphere of animosity and national egoism, the prospect of war is raised quite high.
Tensions between China and Japan do not just revolve around the Senkaku Islands, but Taiwan as well. China considers Taiwan to be its territory. In order to maintain peace, the United States entertains this idea as part of standard policy. Thus, while the US does not officially recognize Taiwan as Chinese territory, it will publicly acknowledge the “One China” narrative that deems Taiwan as under the authority of Beijing. Japan does not recognize Taiwan as being under China and has expressed a willingness to push the Chinese away from the island nation.
In July of 2021, Japan released its annual defence white paper in which it stated that “stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security.” By “stabilizing” Japan means repulsing any presence of the Chinese military out of Taiwanese territory. Will China listen? Only if it wants to give up its territorial claims in which case it would give more power to Japan; for if China relinquishes a position it will only be refilled by the other greatest power of Asia — Japan. Since both sides are obstinate, and there are no signs of either side abating their positions, then there is no sign of future peace. Thus, war in the Far East is inevitable.
Kishi has stated that the Taiwan controversy should be seen with “a sense of crisis.” If the situation is to be deemed as a crisis, then how could there be peace in the future. The political atmosphere of East Asia is filled with hazardous gas that only needs the lighting of one match to fully erupt in a conflagration of flames. Taiwan is at the center of a water access way for Japanese imports, or as Kishi explains: “What’s happening in Taiwan is directly linked to Japan … Ninety percent of energy that Japan uses is imported through the areas around Taiwan”. Such a lifeline for Japan’s economy will thus be fiercely combated for. What is a military exercise but a preparation for war? What is Japan doing, having 100,000 troops training for battle, but preparing them to fight their Asian neighbor?
Nobuo Kishi declared that Japan is prepared to defend the Senkaku Islands by “matching any Chinese threat ship for ship, and beyond” if necessary. What is this but an expression of tension, and a sign that warfare in the future should not surprise us? Neither Japan nor China have oil, and the area around the Senkaku is an important lane for importing oil for both countries. As is common in warfare, import routes become the thing over which nations kill one another. Moreover, it is believed that the area around the Senkaku are rich with oil, something that both Japan and China could use to be energy independent, and thus why such a place is being sought after by both of these countries and why the they’re both expressing the prospect of going to war over these giant rocks on the sea.
In the militarist agenda of Japan lies a religious aspiration, one rooted in a paganism that springs from far antiquity: the Shinto religion that once dominated the imperial cult of the Japanese government but that today lingers behind the curtains. The Japanese government under the Liberal Democratic Party just elected as its new prime minister Fumiko Kishida. Kishida is a member of the ultra-nationalist cult Nippon Kaigi, which wants to revive Japan’s imperialist religion of the emperor and the worship of the sun-goddess, Amatersu.
This political cult is a racialist pagan organization that holds the Japanese race as superior since (as it believes) it has a divine origin from the goddess Amaterasu. In the words of scholar Andrew Weiss, the cult believes “in the unique spiritual superiority of the Japanese people and the religious importance of the Emperor.” This heritage is held in Japanese as banseiikkei, and is believed to be the source of the Japanese kokutai or “national body.” What the umma is to Islam, the kokutai is to Japanese pagans. This cult believes that in order to preserve the kokutai, the worship of the emperor — with all of its ritual — must be observed, and the Japanese people must worship at the main Amaterasu shrine in Ise (known as the Ise Jingu Shrine).
Nippon Kaigi was founded in 1997 as a merging of two groups: Nippon wo Mamoru Kai (the Committee to Protect Japan) the ranks of which greatly consisted of Shinto shrine leadership, and Nippon wo Mamoru Kokumin Kaigi (Citizens’ Meeting to Protect Japan) which consisted mainly of Right-wing business leaders and public intellectuals. The goal of the new organization was to squash the growing Leftism and Communism in Japan and to revive the imperial cult of the Emperor and the sun goddess Amaterasu.
Today, these Right-wing nationalists see their fight against China as a continuation of the founding purpose of Nippon Kaigi, and that is the war against Communism. In this struggle with the enemies of Japan, these nationalists see the restoration of Japanese traditional religion as a way by which to combat the forces against Japan and to protect the culture and thus Japanese identity. One of the policy goals of Nippon Kaigi is “Moving the Japan of tomorrow towards its beautiful traditional character.” In this aspiration of moving Japan to a traditional involves both religion and militarism.
Truly, in the ideology of Japanese nationalism, religion and militarism are inseparable. Central within the movement of Japanese nationalism is the continuation of worship in the Yasukuni Shrine. In this temple it is believed that the spirits of deceased Japanese soldiers are enshrined as gods. Japanese politicians, including Shinzo Abe himself (who is also a part of the Nippon Kaigi cult), have visited this shrine, which is to the joy of nationalists and to the spite of the Chinese. The reason for this controversy is that it is not just mere soldiers who are deified in this shrine, but class A war criminals (“Class A” is defined as “crimes against peace”). It was also Shinzo Abe who pushed for changing the Japanese Constitution to allow military involvement in war.
Nationalists see the changing of the Constitution and the revival of traditionalism (such as visiting the Yasukuni shrine) as essential for the kokutai in that it promotes kunizukuri or “nation building.” The nationalist cause of altering the constitution and reviving traditionalism is connected by them with the Shinto myth of Japan’s mythological origins, in which the god Okuninushi creates Japan and gives it to the descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu, the royal family — the Japanese imperial line. Thus, it is the divine right of the Japanese people to return to militarism and the worship of the gods, and this should not be impeded by foreign forces such as the United States or China. This ideology of Japan’s divine origin in the movement to change the country’s constitution was seen in 2012 when the Liberal Democratic Party put together a draft constitution extolling Japan as a country that “receives an Emperor [from the gods]” and has “pride in country and hometown,” and establishes the Constitution as a means of protecting the “good traditions” of Japan.
The Nippon Kaigi are typical of a politically traditionalist movement: accusations of warcrimes are Western and Chinese Communist propaganda, and if there were any atrocities then we should overlook them because it was the way of the times, a part of war within the standards of that era; the Japanese invasion of other Asian countries was not a war for conquest and genocide, but one of liberation of the Western imperialists, a war of the East against the conquering West. Traditionalism, in the paradigm of the cult, is a return to the pagan roots of Japan, with its Zen Buddhist callousness and the indiscriminate obedience to an emperor who the whole world must bow down to. In the paradigm of the Japanese traditionalist cult, Japan must rescind whatever apologies it made in the past for atrocities it committed during the war (specifically the 1995 Maruyama Statement and 1993 Kono Statement). The fact that Kishida belongs to the Nippon Kaigi, and the fact Japan is speaking of possible war with China, tells us that Japanese policy towards militarism and nationalism is not going to change but will only intensify.
 
 
source <a href="https://shoebat.com/2021/09/29/japanese-nationalism-and-militarism-are-not-going-away-but-will-only-intensify/">https://shoebat.com/2021/09/29/japanese-nationalism-and-militarism-are-not-going-away-but-will-only-intensify/</a>

armageddon Japanese Nationalism And Militarism Are Not Going Away, But Will Only Intensify

By Theodore Shoebat In September of 2020, Japan commenced its largest set of military exercises since 1993, in order to scare the Chinese ...