Letter: Stop threats against local sustainability school | Mountain Xpress

Unfortunately, the horror has begun again. The vegans have raised their battle flags against Wild Abundance, Asheville’s local permaculture, natural-building and primitive-skills school. The abusive nightmare that we survived last fall with our newborn has returned with even more “fire and fury” [See “Let Live Coalition Vs. Wild Abundance: Vegan Activists Rally Against a Local Permaculture School,” Xpress online post, Nov. 23, 2016].

While on vacation on Oct. 11, we answered the phone to an aggressive middle-aged voice, “Hello you f***ing beast. You need your throat slit, don’t you, you and all your hippie friends.” That was followed by several calls of people asking if they could hire us for assassination attempts. In case you are wondering, Wild Abundance doesn’t have a relationship to Dick Cheney, Blackwater or any other privatized mercenary armies.

I am not going to list here all the profane, offensive and hateful name-calling that we experience through email and phone calls daily. Most of it is simply immature and annoying. Although it is scary when we answer phone calls in the middle of the night and hear nothing but creepy breathing noises. And it is disturbing and heartbreaking when people wish we get cancer or harmful diseases upon our 1-year-old. This must stop. Really. Please.

Food ethics is extremely complicated. There are so many choices and many unintended consequences of living on an overpopulated planet full of destructive industrial food practices. I am not interested in debating all the complexities of food ethics here. We believe people are going to eat meat, and it can be a sacred process. Omnivores deserve to have the opportunity to learn empowering DIY skills and experience a prayerful ritual context of how to take animal (and plant) life.

Just like last year, the class will go on. We will not succumb to bullying.

If you are a responsible, mature vegan, please consider focusing your energy toward obvious targets like factory farms and try calming down your more aggressive friends who might be harassing and threatening us.

If you are a local foodie, farmer, homesteader, or caring and proud citizen of WNC, please consider showing your support for Wild Abundance. We will be hosting a positive, empathic and educational counterprotest at the Vance Monument on Oct. 26 at 6 p.m., in response to a series of public demonstrations against us.

— Frank Salzano
Wild Abundance
Weaverville