✭

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Drained water from places suffering from drought for absolute pennies.

Made African mothers dependent on their milk formula, which they gave for free, until their milk dried up. Then they required them to purchase it, mothers could not afford it, mixed in too little to fulfill nutrient needs, and mixed it with polluted water. Children died.

Used slavery to produce their cocoa.

Pushed for water to be considered a “want” not a “need” and is at the forefront of arguments that water is not a human right.

Poisoned Chinese infants with melamine in their milk formula.

Demanded Ethiopia pay a debt owed to Nestle, during a FAMINE.

Price-fixed food items.

Contributed to deforestation for their cocoa farming.

The worst thing is, Nestle owns TONS of other brands, making it difficult to avoid for certain products.

We don’t have any of the large predators we used to (black bears, mountain lions, or gray wolves) but still retain large deer populations. If nothing is removing animals, they’ll quickly overload the carrying capacity of the environment and have massive losses to starvation and disease that can also pass on to livestock. Human hunters replace the large predators that our landscape can no longer support.

It’s kinder to euthanize an un-releasable hawk rather than try to find it a permanent home with humans. Wildlife rehabs have extremely limited space and resources and are usually run entirely on donated money and volunteer time. Only a few are large and stable enough to care for permanent residents long-term, and those spots are few and far between.

An invasive species poses a danger to threatened native wildlife. I will admit- Australian possums are adorable. But not in New Zealand, where they’re an invasive species that eats the eggs of ground-dwelling birds that previously had no such predators. The landowners I worked with replanting native bush, all native Maori, had no qualms about setting the dogs on them.