Category: Articles

The US is not in control of Iraq, thanks to overwhelming resistance. Contrary to US claims, the insurgency is primarily Iraqi, enjoys wide societal support, spans religious and ethnic lines, and is only growing stronger. As Iraqis struggle to make ending the occupation a key issue in the upcoming elections, people wonder if the elections will actually resemble anything mildly democratic. Iraq is one mess the US made but cannot clean up; the US is the mess.

The US may be winning battles, but it is losing the war. Every time the US destroys a city — the mosques, random homes, hospitals — more resistance fighters stand up. With the hearts and minds battle lost long ago, US strategists want overstretched US troops to continue random carnage and destruction in search of “terrorists.” But it’s the US commanders who are committing the war crimes. The ruling class interests fueling the war — the desire to control not only the oil reserves but also the Chinese and European economies dependent on the same stock — won’t give up. The US strategy for control works only when everybody’s playing the same game, imperial capitalism. The Iraqi people aren’t playing this game; they’re not being proper pawns, in fact they’re shoving Improvised Explosive Devices up the butts of the US. The US strategy is failing.

Who is this resistance? An inventory of groups from Sept. 19, 2004 published in the Baghdad paper Al Zawra lists three main Sunni coalitions, two Shi’ite militias, and nine groups tactically based on kidnappings. Four of the latter are specifically associated with Al-Queda, like Zarqawi’s cell which has become the recent terrorist darling of the US media. The kidnappers do not enjoy as much popular support as the other groups: “Without a shred of evidence, Bush, Blair, and [Iraqi president] Iyad Allawi’s quisling regime shamelessly declare that they are only pursuing the Jordanian kidnapper Zarqawi and other ‘foreign terrorists,’“ writes Sami Ramadani in the Saudi Arabia-based Arab News. “The people of Falluja, their leaders, negotiators and resistance fighters have always denounced Zarqawi and argued that such gangs have been encouraged to undermine the resistance.”

Although the US media repeatedly has said the resistance is the work of Saddam’s Ba’ath party, sources differ on the strength of these ties. Several of the smaller Sunni factions are opposed to Saddam, while groups that are explicitly Ba’athist reportedly are involved in supplying weapons and financing the operations, rather than actual fighting. Sunni groups tend to use offensive, guerrilla warfare tactics of attacking when the enemy is weak and then slipping away. Sunni Muslims, who comprise 20% of the Iraqi population but were in power with Saddam, may lose significant influence if an elected government reflects the 60% Shi’ite majority.

The main arm of Shi’ite resistance is young fundamentalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia of poor urban youth. Shi’ite leaders, particularly the head cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, generally have not directly targeted the occupation. Al-Sadr did criticize the occupation and his group repeatedly has been targeted by US forces, starting with the closing of his newspaper and culminating in a violent fight and cease-fire in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf at the end of August.

Unifying the resistance

In a context where the traditional internal divisions can only aid the US, several groups are working to unify the resistance. Muslim scholars emphasized avoiding sectarian conflict as they issued a fatwa (religious edict) November 20, calling resistance to occupation forces a religious duty for all Muslims. “Iraq today is targeted by a serious conspiracy that aims at destroying its social structure, even if it remains as one state. This would be by stirring up sectarian and ethnic strife and augmenting the points of disagreement. Religious and national duty requires that such differences be renounced. Everybody should be united to expel the occupation and build a unified Iraq for all its population,” said the statement from the International Federation of Muslim Scholars. They condemned hostage-taking, attacks on media and humanitarian workers, and said prisoners of war should be treated well.

The widely-supported Iraq National Foundation Congress sponsors joint Sunni-Shia prayers, a key force in the 1920 revolution that ended colonial British rule. Established in July of this year, the group brings leftists, Kurds, and Christians together with pre-Saddam Ba’athists and members of powerful Sunni and Shia cleric associations. Although the Congress does not reject armed resistance, it advocates peaceful resistance instead of fundamentalist militias like Al-Sadr’s. In an interview with The Guardian (UK), Congress spokesman Wamidh Nadhmi said the real division in Iraq is not between Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shia, or secular and religious, but between “the pro-occupation camp and the anti-occupation camp. The pro-occupation people are either completely affiliated to the US and Britain, in effect puppets, or they saw no way to overthrow Saddam without occupation. Unfortunately, the pro-occupation people tend not to distinguish between resistance and terrorism, or between anti-occupation civil society and those who use violence.” Sheik Jawad al-Khalisi, general secretary of the Congress, points out, “The media focus on violence, and the generally positive foreign coverage of the efforts of Ayad Allawi’s new government “to defeat the insurgency,” has created a false impression that the government’s opponents use only force, and those who support peace support the government, and so the occupation.”

The resistance is not limited to extremist fringes of society, as US media coverage suggests. It includes Arab nationalists, Muslim mujahideen, and Iraqis not particularly religious but “outraged to see their country’s resources robbed while they live in slums, drink water mixed with sewage and have no say in the political process,” Haifa Zangana writes in The Guardian. Thousands of people demonstrated across Iraq in support of Falluja, a city that never fully submitted to either colonial British rule or to Saddam’s regime.

“Iraqis are not focused on whether things would be better had the invasion not happened. What they want to know is how and when the manifestly unsafe world they face every day… is going to change. They also constantly argue whether the presence of foreign forces makes it better or worse,” notes The Guardian’s Jonathan Steele.

Radical Islamic cleric Al-Sadr has earned wide support not for his religious views per se, but because he has been repeatedly targeted by the US. The continual rampage by US troops appears to be pushing public opinion towards fundamentalism: February polls reported only 21% of Iraqis wanting an Islamic state, up to 70% by August. These polls didn’t make the important distinction between a radical and a moderate Islamic state, but the trend is clear. According to Sheikh Khalisi, “Iraqis are looking for security, and can be seduced by hope. Extreme dictatorships are always formed in a context when nations seek stability. It happened when the shah took power in Iran, with Ataturk in Turkey, and Saddam Hussein here.”

Elections

Groups like the Iraq National Federation Congress would like the elections set [as of press date] for January 30 for 275 National Assembly members to focus on ending the occupation. Key players in the election span the country’s religious and ethnic groups, and the potential for a representative democracy exists. But CIA tampering seems imminent. Ahmed Chelabi, the old Pentagon favorite, has been befriending Shia power structures and may end up in the new government even though he is not respected by many Iraqis.

“Bush and Blair are terrified of the Iraqi people voting for anti-occupation leaders. They will accept nothing sh
ort of the legitimization, through sham elections supervised by the occupation authorities, of an Allawi-style puppet regime,” writes Sami Ramandani. “How much more should the Iraqi people be subjected to for Bush and Blair to have their ‘democratically’ chosen puppets installed in Baghdad?”

A wide variety of Iraqi organizations are calling for a boycott of the elections, while an equally wide assortment of groups are running candidate lists. The US press says the boycott merely reflects minority Sunni fear that they will lose power to a Shia-dominated government — but boycotting groups say legitimate elections are impossible under US occupation. As of press date, it appears possible that elections will be postponed in the hope that security can be improved, although if the occupation continues, it is hard to see how that could happen. Two senior Sunni clerics were mysteriously assassinated in early November after their organization called for the boycott — an organization actually created by US-led forces after Saddam’s ousting to fill an anticipated Sunni power vacuum, according to al-Jazeera.

The solution is extremely complicated. The US expects ethnic and religious groups with a centuries-old history of conflict to unite graciously and form a ‘representative democracy’ — with massive slaughter and carnage committed by US troops glowing rosily in the background. The US has created a gaping wound in Iraq; continued foreign military presence can only exacerbate the situation. The United States should pull out immediately and let the Iraqis pick up the pieces from Saddam themselves.

Apparently the US enjoys staring down the throat of a fourth world war, as neocon Frank Gaffney, one of the Project for a New American Century crew, speculates grandly. Everytime Bush mentions bombing Iran, the prospect of regional war increases. The US government likes having a war on, because it’s a grand excuse for all sorts of civil liberties clampdowns and defense spending. Crisis stimulates capital. But the truth is the US does not have enough troops to fight more than one major war at once. A draft is unlikely, imperial inclinations and rumors aside; the poverty draft is working well enough. An official draft would bring the war home to the middle classes, potentially sparking the kind of sixties-style anti-war movement that could stop the war.

What if there was armed resistance on US soil like that in Iraq? Iraqi people want an end to violence; many people there just want to get on with their lives with some degree of safety and stability. People in the US, particularly the middle and aspiring middle classes, have the ability to just get on with their lives, even as the government here creates a disastrous mess elsewhere. A recent CNN/USA Today poll reports almost half the people in the US think it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq. What are these 125 million people doing to stop the war?

Anti-war people can’t be stymied by the gross destruction, or by the mind-boggling complexities of the occupation. We don’t know how to stop the US government, but neither do they know what they’re doing. They didn’t plan the war well, and they don’t know how to counter the strong and creative resistance in Iraq. Yet they plow ahead, dogmatically following capitalism’s edict to build a puppet democracy on a foundation of dead Iraqi bodies. Unlike government bureaucrats, we don’t have to numbly stumble along in our daily lives, because we have a million people and therefore a million ways to resist the war. Just like there’s not one group masterminding the resistance in Iraq, there’s not a blueprint for the anti-war movement here at home, so we should stop looking for it and follow our own hearts and minds. If we turn up the volume, doing all we can to stop the occupation within the context of our daily lives, the resistance here will be so varied and unpredictable that it will be the definition of political instability.

Ultimately, the US can bomb the shit out of Iraq only as long as troops there cooperate and things remain stabilized — paralyzed — stateside. The troops are voting with their feet; of 4,000 reservists recently called to serve, 1,800 filed lawsuits against the military, and 700 simply didn’t show up. A National Guard unit recently refused its mission. When will we wake up here at home?

A call for diversionary tactics

In the wake of the election, wingnuts – already teetering on the fringes of reality – have got our work cut out for us. If in fact we now face the prospect of a Christian fundamentalist assault on abortion, gays, birth control – probably alcohol, drugs and porn, too, if they get a chance – then it’s high time to begin a counter-offensive — the best defense is a good offense!

Folks on the extreme fringes have a crucial role right now — which is to be on the extreme fringe and keep the political spectrum as wide as possible. The right-wing would like to move the debate ever further to the right – so that fringe issues and in fact fringe reality doesn’t even exist. If this happens, what are now the moderate issues could become the far-out end of the political continuum.

For example, Bush is believed to have used the gay marriage issue to help him win the election. We have to keep in mind that gay marriage is essentially an attempt by the more mainstream wing of the gay movement to assimilate into the mainstream – to be entitled to everything “normal” people are entitled to. That is cool and a worthy goal – but on the fringes, we have to recognize that winning gay marriage isn’t the radical forefront – having polyamorous, gender traitorous orgies in the streets is more like it. Right now, mainstream civil rights groups are talking about how they’re going to avoid pressing demands for gay marriage for the moment, because the movement for gay marriage is creating a perfect wedge issue. That is a calculation by responsible folks – many of whom have “activist” jobs with non-profits. Out on the fringes, reality looks a little different – those Christians would be begging gays to have nice, monogamous, suburban lives if they realized the alternative options for queer chaos. If gay marriage is a threat to het marriage, doesn’t polyamorous sexual chaos represent an even greater threat?

If you want equal rights for gays to be “normal” people, then the offensive strategy is to fight for the freaks. If you want to stay on the defensive, then do what the moderates do – pull gay marriage off the table because it might offend the Christian right, and see if you can work on subtle changes to the tax code or whatever to provide more space for folks in civil unions.

The same theory works for most issues – Earth First! or the Earth Liberation Front define the fringes of the environmental movement while the Sierra Club engineers sensible compromises that usually leave the earth worse off. Playing defense is always going to get us the crumbs. The Christian right didn’t win the last election by playing defense – they fought for what they actually wanted. The fringe is always tiny and marginalized, and usually has influence far beyond its apparent marginalization. Those of us on the fringe have to remember that as millions of Kerry voters sink into a post-election depression — we have to avoid catching their negative energy.

Radicals in America have a lot to learn from the rebels in Iraq. When you’re battling an empire, a lot of times it’s not the best idea to launch a frontal assault on heavily armed troops. Instead, the guerrilla looks for weak spots, looks to distract the enemy from it’s main goal, looks to move in the shadows until the crucial moment. Being a radical in America, we share a common struggle with the rebels in Iraq – we reject the brutal American empire and its occupation of our homes. But conditions are not precisely the same — conditions are totally inappropriate for tiny bands of youth to “go underground” and take up small arms in the USA. That may sound romantic to a few people, but a romantic suicide doesn’t help anyone. However, the root of guerrilla tactics still apply – we need to pick fights that favor our spontaneity, flexibility, the element of surprise and our other strengths and avoid battles on terrain chosen by the rulers.

When a baby wants to play with a hot fire place poker, you try to distract the baby with something a little safer, like a rattle. The right wing wants to spend the next four years going after abortion, gays and women. The fringe has an opportunity to distract them and force them to waste their energy instead of using their time effectively. So like the guerrillas in Iraq, who launched an uprising in Mosul while US forces invaded Falluja, as wingnuts we ought to be figuring out diversionary attacks that we can mount against religious fundamentalists, rather than spending the next four years in a defensive mode trying to preserve a mainstream status quo.

I’ve been trying to think of actions designed to be so outrageous that the right-wing would be forced to drop what they want to do to stop them. Even if such actions don’t work as diversions, they can help keep the political field broad and let freaks everywhere know that we’re not alone, and we’re not going away!

But figuring out appropriate actions is hard when the stakes are high and your main strengths are humor and being a total freak — you don’t want to just have a really outrageous Sodomy in the Streets (SITS) party while the US empire is shooting civilians in Iraq. My friend thinks we could disrupt reality by going around the country planting marijuana seedballs so pot would start growing everywhere like the weed it is. Cute idea, but let’s be serious.

Another idea I had right after the election was to mount a campaign of Bible Burning. Remember a few years ago when the political establishment had to drop what it was doing to try to stop flag burning? For some reason this totally symbolic act by a tiny number of wingnuts drove the political establishment nuts. So I was thinking, if flag burning drives ‘em crazy, how about Bible burning? But I think this is probably not a great tactic for a few reasons: it’s scary and negative, evoking images of Nazi book burnings, it ignores the liberatory threads of some religious folks, and it only highlights what we’re against, not what we can be for. I do like it because it could be an insane diversionary tactic – wouldn’t it be great if church groups spent time banning bible burning instead of banning abortion? We need to be creative, but also be thoughtful and not allow our own fear and prejudices to lead us into our own intolerant actions. Intolerance is a far greater threat to the fringe than to the mainstream.

Because we’re in the belly of the beast here in the U$A, we have a crucial role – determination and even some discipline are in order. We have to use all means at hand in the struggle – a wide variety of tactics gives us the best chance to discover what will work.

After turning it over in my mind for the past few weeks, I have to admit that I have no idea what kind of actions we need to be up to, but I’m pretty sure we need to try some new things. The night after the election, the usual suspects gathered on Mission Street in San Francisco to protest, but this response seemed weak and somehow inappropriate. We shouldn’t stop protesting and resisting, of course, but couldn’t we be a little less ritualistic? If we have rallies and protests to lift our spirits, act in solidarity with peace and freedom loving people outside the USA, and show that there are alternatives to the grim drumbeat of war and capitalism, that is great. But our protests need to serve our own purposes — traditional protests seem less relevant at the moment.

I think the best hope is for lots of people all over to think of some new ideas and try some freak experiments — and then report the results to everyone else. Decentralization and diversity are strengths in uncertain times. Seize the moment and let your freak flag fly!

In order to create a bridge between self-determining individuals and community people need family. Whomever it’s comprised of; whether the ties are blood or choice, we are shaped and supported throughout our whole lives by family.

I struggle with the family aspect of being an anarchist precisely most of the family I have are not radicals. The people who would bail me out of jail or visit me everyday in the hospital or cook me dinner if I had a baby don’t understand anti-capitalist libertarianism. But I love them, and must somehow bridge myself into my community with this “foreign” family.

How do I do this? I find more people within my community to take on those roles. I put more of myself into my affinity groups than just the work that needs to be done. I double up on role models, so that I have my grandfather of blood and my grandfather of radical faerie empowerment.

A century ago in the States, family was several generations thick, several degrees of cousins wide and capable of adopting orphans, “godchildren” and unmarried friends. With the rise of industrial labor, families changed as they moved to find work. Developers created single family housing for the masses, and the suburbs were born. From the fifties onward, media and the economy have impressed that the fam is just ma, pa, your siblings and the dog. Moral conservatives who fight for a return to “family values” are responding to this degeneration of support networks. They just offer alternatives unpalatable to many queer, open or radical people.

Anarchist family, for me, is the multigenerational network of people who support, teach, challenge, love, encourage, rely on and accompany us through parts or all of our lives. We make a family of our hearts when our blood kin–by death, distance or dysfunction–can’t be with us. In short, who would you cry with?

I have heard people lament over the imbalance of generations within anarchism, within every scene. People note that we lack a connected community of older (like, post-menopausal) radicals who can offer wisdom and tactics, as well as children with whom we practice our consensus and commitment to self-determination. Yes, radicals have kids and yes, radicals are grandparents but our movements are still youth centered. Communities of mature radicals won’t intersect completely with communities of younger radicals—socially or politically—so we must find other ground to meet on. We can appreciate the experience and company of people at a different stage of life without needing to be the same. If we generally lack role models and youth we foster, how are we to improve our practice of anarchism with each generation?

The healthiest forms of non blood anarchist family I’ve seen are collective houses that intentionally interweave their lives. Besides having physical space to gather, houses have the informal contact that make intimacy possible and support easier to ask for. It can be easier to break out of loneliness when you’ve only got to go downstairs to dinner.

Outside of houses, long-term collectives are the anarchist structure best suited to “family building.” We had a big transformation last year at Slingshot, when we finally spent more time hanging out than working on the paper. When life’s serious shit descended on several of us, it wasn’t awkward to ask for support. In fact, it would have been awkward not to ask for support. That was when I knew that my family had grown.

By no means do anarchists have a monopoly on chosen families. Churches, unions and social clubs have taken the place of blood family, especially in the twentieth century. A family can be created by any group with affinity, given that it satisfies certain needs. First, people must be held together by a purpose. In blood families, it can be as simple as obligation, but it can be complex. People must have incentive to care for one another, and the care must be reciprocal. Often, we are cared for by family in our youth and then return that love later on when the people who foster us get older. There must also be space and time for regular intersection and a culture to hand down. Families have stories of origin, and of the joys and sufferings shared, as well as a reason why they are unique and important. The stories may change, but they must be passed on.

The public debate on family doesn’t address our need for support in the face of economic or emotional privation. When the religious right talk about “family values” and “preserving family,” the overtones of sexism and heterosexism make debating that much more difficult. However, addressing the fears about love and support are simple. If a family is held together by patriarchy and guilt, it probably isn’t satisfying to be a part of. We can never be obliged to love and we can never regulate true family. We will find a way to be ourselves within our blood families or we will find families that love us as we are or we will do both. Maybe so many people pass through radical scenes but settle for boring jobs and weekends mowing the lawn because there is no family ready-made to be had around here, just the ingredients for one tailor-made. They fall prey to the mainstream narrative that family is a little nuclear clique. We must each choose (mutually) our mentors, our teachers, our sibling-peers and the people we will encourage in turn.

Let your redefinition of family be a step toward a more radical world. Invite fellow radicals closer, and share, in small ways at first, anarchism with your existing family. Think about what culture your families have given you and what you want to pass on. We need to hand different stories and values to the next generation, and first we must make them family.

I wanted to write about family because of my twelve cousins. We played and feasted together every Sunday until I was twelve. They taught me fun, cooperation, mischief, solidarity, and love. And though we now gather only once every few years, they are people who know me beneath the skin and love me still. It’s never hard to come back together. I find relief knowing that they are in the world, and hopefully it is mutual.

Slingshot is an independent, volunteer-run, more-often-than-quarterly radical newspaper published in the East Bay since 1988.

You’ll notice that this issue is slightly shorter than usual — only 12 pages. Slingshot has been publishing more often (every two months) and our distribution keeps improving, but one critical deficiency has been good articles to publish. We get a lot of submissions, but almost all of them are rants, which isn’t really what we’re looking for. What we need is hard-hitting, well researched and carefully reasoned articles that address the critical political situation we’re in. Between the war, the increasing tide of right-wing religious intolerance, prisons and the continuing environmental crisis, radical media like this paper are important. We want it to be as well written and relevant as possible. If you’re thinking of writing something, the article “Media that inspires action” on this page contains a few ideas about the kind of articles we would like to see. Send something or call us.

A lot of heavy shit is going on in the world right now, and while we were creating this issue, some of us felt a kind of personal/ political crisis because we couldn’t seem to figure out how to publish the kind of powerful, radical response to these events that we had hoped for. So this is our best shot. Given all the death and destruction going on right now — not to mention Bush’s reelection — you’ll probably join us in finding this issue a bit fluffy. But we’re happy that at least it isn’t negative or depressing. And some of the articles, after a lot of editing and revisions, are turning out really great.

Part of the reason this issue felt like a crisis to some of us is that creating Slingshot is a cathartic personal and political process. When scary political stuff happens — the war in Iraq, 9-11, domestic political crackdown — it is easy to feel totally powerless. But then we remember “oh yeah, at least we have a paper so we can respond!”

By writing our Slingshot articles, we try to work through the political situation in our minds and regain our sense of courage and pragmatic optimism. We spell out our vision for a different world. While we can’t always realize this vision right now, a lot of times putting it on paper makes it clear that we are living little pieces of that vision all the time without realizing it — that change is happening and that we’re participating in the struggle everyday. We recognize that we’re far from powerless and that we’re not alone. We hope you’ll join us in this process of searching, writing, inspiration and ultimately, action.

This issue marks the return of Spanish translation pages, which took a vacation last issue. A huge thanks to the numerous translators who made this possible on short notice and under stressful conditions. Including the Spanish translations is extremely challenging — we dream of having a more consistent and stable translation committee that could make the Spanish pages a routine part of our process, instead of a mini-crisis that gets repeated each issue.

As always, editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of collective members. We welcome debate, constructive criticism and discussion.

Hi there Sling Shot folks,

I’m eagerly awaiting my very own copy of the 2005 Slingshot Organizer. A friend of mine got an organizer early, and showed me the section on Emergency Contraception. I was really excited to see that you included this information, since it is one of my personal favorite medical topics. I did notice that some of your information was debatable if not inaccurate, and I wanted to let you know.

In the section on the pharmaceutical forms of emergency contraception (EC), there were two things that I noted:

• You state that EC prevents implantation of a fertilized egg. Actually, we don’t know exactly how EC works – it may prevent sperm from moving through the uterus to the tubes, it may prevent ovulation or fertilization directly, or it may prevent implantation. Some people take these distinctions very seriously – they make the difference between EC being an acceptable form of contraception, or an unacceptable form of early abortion. Because you only mention the prevention of implantation, some people may not use EC based on their political or religious beliefs.
• You state that anyone who has contraindications to using oral contraceptives should not use EC. Actually, since EC is only used once, and does not expose a woman to long-term hormones, the ONLY generally accepted contraindication to using EC is current pregnancy.
• Finally, there is a great EC resource available, at “1-888-not2late” – people can learn of health care providers in their area who will prescribe EC.

Thanks again for including EC info in the Slingshot Organizer – it is really important information that can make a huge difference in people’s lives. If you ever want/need a medical consultant or reviewer I’d be more than happy to help out. I am a family physician MD, newby herbalist and street medic. In solidarity, eowyn rieke

Slingshot response: We’re grateful for the update on ways to get EC and when you can take it. We believe that all forms of safe birth control are acceptable and that only a woman (with her doctor) can decide what’s right for her. All the ways EC may work prevent implantation, which is when an abortion becomes medically necessary. Thanks for your input!

A message on the Slingshot voicemail box . . .

hey who wrote the roadkill [inaudible – article?] The same people who drive the cars are the same people with eyeballs in their head that got their license because they’re eyeballs work and they’re the same people who are looking at the beast. You actually do computers and you don’t do cars? What the fuck is wrong with you people?! [phone slammed down]

Dear Slingshot:

I need to throw in an alternate response to the previous Slingshot article on road kill. I am a vegetarian and an animal lover and the idea that I could see a dead critter as my next pair of pants is too much. I have worked for years to buck myself up enough to remove sweet smashed and bloodied beings from the middle of the road, off the manmade surface — the death strip — back to the earth where they can decompose and go back into it, as the closed circle always does. It is hard but it’s an opportunity to apologize to them for my part, to pay respect to their sweet bunny souls, and to save other critters. Very often other animals will be killed because they are smelling or eating the critter in the road. It’s the very least I can do, being a human after all. But doing the very least just won’t do!

— Bunny lover