We hope you'll find this blog an educational, entertaining, and inspiring source of information, whether you're recently undead, a long-time member of the differently animated, or a still-living friend of your fallen, yet risen again, brethren. Everyone with an interest in zombie rights is welcome!
Andrew Lincoln says fighting zombies on The Walking Dead meant he had quite a few disturbing days on set.
“Pretty much every day I was shocked and surprised,” the actor admitted in Beverly Hills. “When you’re asked to smear yourself in blood and drape a small colon around your neck, I mean that’s not your everyday job really!”
Laughing, he added: “There were times when even I was like, ‘Really? Are we going to get away with this?’ and it all made the cut.”
…
Andrew said fans of the show can expect “more of the same” in Season Two.
“Hopefully we’re going to play to strengths, keep pushing the boundaries of taste and horror and humour, hopefully pushing the characters to their limits and seeing how they react.”
The ZRC thinks they passed the boundaries of ‘taste’ a long, long time ago. I wonder what they’d consider to be going too far? Because I’ve read farther in the comics than they’ve gone in the show, though I know the two are somewhat divergent, and.. it gets worse, believe it or not.
But still, Lincoln’s concerns here are clearly more for his career and his time than the Zombies he works so hard to slander for a lucrative paycheck. Oh, what would he do if some awful, bloody and defamatory scene didn’t make the cut? I mean, he struggles so hard to convey his character while draped with intestines, what’s it all for if not every precious second of film ends up released?
I know from experience that not all actors are this shallow. Lincoln’s myopia and ignorance of the suffering of a broad group of people he maligns for cash is just stunning and egregious.
I’ve been doing a lot of Madison related stuff here on the blog lately, and have received, shall we say, polite criticism for drifting off the main topic a bit, so I think it would be useful to outline precisely why the current struggle here in Wisconsin matters for Zombies and for the Zombie Rights Movement itself.
1) Human Rights are Zombie Rights
I’ve mentioned this before on the blog, but the right to, say, form a trade union, or peaceably assemble and petition your government for redress of grievances, are basic human liberties enshrined in law and the Western tradition. Denying them is a violation of human rights, and Zombies, being human, are thus injured just as much as the Living when these actions are taken.
2) Union Rights are Zombie Rights
It is important to remember that Zombies are natural movement builders, and that their movements are also looked upon with scorn and distrust by society and authority figures. Of course, Zombie groups aren’t usually described as ‘unions’ by our biased press; typically, the word they use is ‘horde’. Nevertheless, what is a Zombie ‘horde’ if not a union? Zombies in such groups agitate for better food, Unliving conditions, personal safety and the right to hold their government accountable. (Often, in the movies, this government is represented by either a gun-toting Southern sheriff or Tom Savini) If the right to participate in a union is removed, how can Zombies hope to protect their own populist groups? Can a horde-banning bill be far behind?
3) When Police Overreach, Zombies Always Suffer
Think about it this way: in an Anti-Zombie movie, comic, book, what have you, is it ever a good thing when the authorities show up? Is it even typically a good thing for the Survivors? No, and the reason is simple: an overly active and self-important authority system is inherently bad for Zombies, the political underclass, outsiders or, eventually, anyone not in the movement itself. By standing up against police brutality today, we stand up for the future safety of Zombies in general.
The specific provisions of the bill(s) are offensive to the Differently Animated as well. The Budget ‘Repair’ bill and the Walker budget, as well as related legislative initiatives, contain numerous troubling provisions aside from Union Busting. Below are some of our lowlights of recent actions taken here in Wisconsin.
4) The Walker Administration Wants to Disenfranchise the Zombie Voter
We’ve talked about this one before at the ZRC blog pretty extensively. Basically, Walker wants to make it almost impossible for those without stable long-term residences leading up to an election to vote. His intended targets are students and poor urban voters, most likely, though vicious Anti-Zombie prejudice is not out of the question. At any rate, these vote suppression tactics harm Zombies.
5) Walker’s Plan to Gut Medicaid Hurts Zombies, Refuses to Pay for their Resurrections
Gruesome as this is, it gets worse. Nowhere in this budget is there a request to pay for Zombie-related resurrection services, even though the Governor intends to kill people with his policies!
Folks, hardworking mad scientists and Voodoo Practitioners like Baron Mardi deserve to be fairly compensated for their work. Not all Zombies naturally resurrect themselves, despite the movie mythology. If the Governor is going to create vast swathes of death the least he can do is compensate those who will be tasked with cleaning up after and mitigating the damage done by his policies, the hardworking Zombie makers of the world. But of course, he does not; perhaps mad scientists are a demographic that leans toward the Democratic Party?
6) Wisconsin GOP Plan to Allow Contaminated Drinking Water Risks a ‘Crazies’ Outbreak for Which Zombies Will Be Blamed
(An example of the tragic way such an outbreak would be treated by both the media and government)
3. DANGEROUS DRINKING WATER: Republican lawmakers have introduced bills in both the Senate and the House which would repeal a rule requiring municipal governments to disinfect their water. Conservatives have said that the clean water rule — which went into effect in December — is simply too expensive. Yet the rule only affects 12 percent of municipalities and the price may be worth it. In 1993, 104 people died and 400,000 fell sick when the Milwaukee water supply became infected. Even two decades later, the Environmental Protection Agency Advisory Board notes that 13 percent of acute gastro-intestinal illnesses in municipalities that don’t disinfect their water supplies are the result of dirty water. Municipalities can keep their water clean for as low as $10,000 per well — but apparently for the Wisconsin GOP that is too high a price to pay to keep citizens safe from deadly microorganisms.
One big unstated risk here is that the subsequent outbreak of, say, a highly contagious aggression altering condition like the one found in ‘The Crazies’ will negatively affect Living-Zombie relations. I mean, just look at how things turn out for the people in ‘The Crazies’, hunted down and exterminated by their own government rather than treated. Did anyone think that a little counseling might be better than an army crackdown? Of course not. The ‘Crazies’ look too much like Zombies to the Army, so they have to go. Once again we get a military response to a situation requiring social work, the adjustment to a profoundly altered state of being, and once again we can find a key root of that prejudice in George Romero’s work. And what happens after such a crackdown in the name of public health? People conflate the situation with existing Zombie populations. That’s not even considering the active debate over whether affected populations (ala these movies or 28 Days Later) are even Zombies to begin with, though the ZRC takes an expansive view and tries to represent everyone who is Differently Animated.
Zombification, or Crazification here if you like, should be conducted under rigorous and controlled circumstances by a well trained and compensated professional (see #5 above), not via mass contamination of our drinking water to save a few bucks. Not just because it’s crass and wrong, but because Zombies will catch the blame for any mishaps involved in such an event.
The preceding items have just been a sample, but I hope they help illustrate the cause for ZRC’s concerns and involvement with this emerging social justice movement and the crisis it is in response to. We remain completely and utterly dedicated to The Cause, but especially in these times we have to, in the name of solidarity, sometimes reach slightly outside of our comfort zone to work on behalf of our clients.
We therefore thank you again for your patience and understanding, and will strive to bring as much news in the traditional ZRC vein as possible to the blog as well in the future. I apologize for any shortcomings in the recent past.
I guess the people at Telltale Games know their target audience pretty well, having released scant details on the upcoming Walking Dead series of episode games save that they will be graphically violent:
“It’s very early on in the process, but I’m looking at story points and I think they’re going to make some announcements on that stuff very soon, and hopefully have some screenshots pretty quickly,” said Kirkman.
…
As for the nature of the games’ content, the Eisner winning writer confirmed that the videogames will not shy away from showing the glorious zombie violence that fans have come to love from the comics and TV series.
”Yeah, I don’t think we can avoid (making it graphic) with something like this. I would expect that kind of stuff,” he said.
Now, we’ve talked about this episodic game concept here before at the ZRC, and it is indeed a good parallel for the process of reading the Walking Dead comic itself, capturing the intermittent and disjointed, protracted storyline that takes ages, bordering on epochs of real world time to come to any sort of resolution. Very heady stuff, marrying concept to storyline that way. Have they considered, however, an MMO? I mean, nothing is more repetitive and mercenary in its vicious extraction of cash than a massively multiplayer game. Plus, having an enormous cast of interchangeable and indistinguishable players is a spot-on recreation of the Walking Dead’s enormous ensemble cast, and by tricking, err, recruiting gamers around the world into filling these roles you can avoid having to create software that could pass a Turing test. It’s win-win.
You know, except for the Zombies, and for human decency.
It’s sad that this has to be pointed out, but, as someone interested in the long-term health of various social justice movements, both those directly stemming from the ZRC’s core mission and those conducted in solidarity, I have to do so:
When the police use force to remove someone against their will, that is violence. When they do so outside of the context of a legal arrest, it is indefensible and *lawless* violence. This is not an activity that is worthy of praise in a democratic society. If a crime has been committed, the public deserves to have that crime prosecuted and the evidence heard in a fair and open legal proceeding, even putting aside the rights of the accused. If no crime has been committed then a police officer has no authority or business laying a hand on a citizen. This is a binary situation; either an arrest, an orderly and legally prescribed procedure, is warranted, or no action is warranted at all. It is not mercy, or kindness, or being ‘Wisconsin Nice’ to drag innocent people out by their arms, legs, clothes, against their will, rather than place them into the legal system in an orderly and controlled manner.
I know for a fact that some of the protesters who chose to be removed yesterday did so precisely to protest this illegal police behavior. I also know that many of those of us who slept over in the Capitol did so in the full knowledge that we would face arrest, and were prepared to enter the legal system to make our case. This was of course denied in favor of violence against non-violent demonstrators.
And yet, still, you see, and hear, and can argue with those who defend police officers as they commit crimes and violence to avoid, for whatever ill-advised reason, the oversight of the criminal justice system. Is it to keep the number of arrests reported in the media artificially low? Is it to avoid attracting attention to a populist uprising? Is it out of some misguided sense that having a criminal record automatically makes you a bad person, some Puritanical notion that any offense against the state is a black mark on one’s soul, regardless of context?
I can’t say, and won’t speak for the officers who did the terrible things I witnessed yesterday. I will simply say that it was wrong, and they were wrong, and the people who defended them for following orders were wrong, and remain so. I have embedded, immediately below, two videos of the Capitol Police mistreating and even injuring non-violent protesters in the course of their ‘duties’. In the first, after dropping a man they were dragging out by force due to another officer blocking their path, the police severely manhandle and injure him, breaking his glasses and injuring his face. In the second, they actively refuse to provide medical attention to a protester they had just removed and who was apparently unresponsive. Later the individual, whose name I did not know, recovered to some extent and was communicative. At the time, I had to worry I might be watching a man die after police brutality.
It is also worth noting that the Capitol Police in particular have been disrespectful of the law and justice in other ways. I have documented with video that they held the Capitol closed well into business hours so they could conduct their little forced removal of protesters. They denied entry to the Capitol to members of the press, who reported having to climb in windows or sneak in through various means, and I witnessed personally the police denying members of the press with current credentials access to the Assembly during the removal procedure. What were they afraid of being documented by a third party? One has to wonder, though not too hard, considering what I did manage to get on video myself. I even witnessed Democratic Assembly reps stating that they had been denied entry as well, and had to sneak into the building via the windows of their Democratic colleagues on the first floor.
Below is the first of several videos documenting the Capitol Police holding the Capitol closed, despite having fully staffed and operational metal detector checkpoints ready for operation for hours. I started wanting to leave about 7 am. At that time, the checkpoints were fully operational. I confirmed they were not open last at about 9:20 by speaking with officers at both locations. I also witnessed Chief Tubbs arrive at the still closed building around 8:50 am. Not to open it; that did not happen. Instead, apparently, he came to oversee the violent removal of peaceful demonstrators. He, and the men under his command, had a legal obligation to open the Capitol, a duty to perform, one they chose, actively, not to perform in favor of violence in favor of the Governor and his policies, despite providing assurances the night before that they would follow the law and open the building in the morning, in an attempt to trick those of us who wanted to stay the night into leaving. Remember that when someone praises Tubbs or his men. Remember that treachery when anyone calls those who occupy their Capitol ‘criminals’ or questions the need to occupy the building in the first place.
In conclusion, the events of March 10th at the Madison Capitol should be remembered not just as the day that our Republican-dominated legislature abdicated its responsibility to provide some measure of justice and stability to Wisconsin’s citizens, going so far as to use illegal parliamentary tricks and outright lies to pass legislation. It should also be remembered as the day a distinct minority faction of Wisconsin’s law enforcement community decided that violence to further a political objective was acceptable, that the police acting to create policy outside of the law and outside of the courts was acceptable.
They were wrong. History should record that they were wrong, record their names and deceits and the violence they committed yesterday. Sadly, I expect few will remember the events of March 10th, though they may well be the first indicators of a very dark period of history of violent political repression in the state of Wisconsin.
(My mood after this whole mess can be summed up by this photo)
Last night, after hearing about the highly unusual, extremely dubiously legal trickery being used to attack Wisconsin workers and the universal human right to form a union, I went down to the Capitol for some first hand reporting.
What I saw there was both heartening and tragic. The support on the street was amazing, with cards honking and protesters having ‘stormed’ the Capitol. For the record, I got in through an open second floor door. Not much in the way of storming. I walked in.
I eventually joined the group of protesters who seized and held the entrance to the Assembly for the evening. Honestly, I fully expected to be arrested at some point. In fact, if our police had been more professional, I would have been. More on that in a moment.
Eventually, as they often have in recent weeks, the Capitol police backed down rather than force a confrontation, and I spent a long and very uncomfortable night on the floor there in front of the Assembly. Around 7 am I went downstairs; the building, by judge’s order, was supposed to open at 8am, and the vote was scheduled for 11 am. I was going to leave when the building opened, go home to take some medicine and get a shower, then come back.
Instead the Capitol Police decided to once again urinate all over a legal court order and refused to open the building. I waited for over 90 minutes, then made my way back upstairs, only to be refused entry to the area I had slept over in, in front of the Assembly, by armed and very unhappy looking cops, mostly Capitol police.
(This is what fascism looks like)
Yes, Chief Tubbs was there. Yes, he presided over violating the law repeatedly and grievously all morning. He is *not* to be trusted. He is a liar and a criminal. I’ll write more about that in a subsequent post.
Then I unfortunately bore witness to a truly awful scene as the Capitol Police and officers from a few counties around the state, plus one inept DNR officer, decided to remove, by force, by *violence* in fact, the protesters I spent the night with in front of the Assembly.
(injuries and chaos abounded as the police ineptly removed rather than arrested protesters. Video to follow)
See, they had both the means and the equipment (soft cuffs) to arrest them/us. They didn’t want that, however. Perhaps because it would come out in court that they had been illegally holding the building hostage for almost two hours at that point, who can say. Instead of an orderly arrest process, which the protesters were prepared for, with ACLU numbers at the ready, they used violence to simply remove their enemies, the citizens of Wisconsin.
It was a debacle and an utter disgrace, and a complete insult to all the actual law enforcement professionals here in Wisconsin as well. To see violence and mayhem inflicted on students, on injured vets and old people, was shocking and repulsive. Every single officer who participated in this offense to reason and honor should bear this shame for the rest of their lives. Today I saw an injured vet hauled out on his bad leg, clearly in pain. I saw another older veteran dragged out by a chaotic scrum of abusive cops who broke his glasses and busted his nose. I saw an old man tossed like a sack of potatoes, and I saw nonviolent protesters, assaulted, bruised and crying in their own Capitol building. I also saw defenders of the police arguing that it wasn’t their fault, that they were just following orders.
As if that has flown since Nuremburg.
(A protester in apparent medical distress was denied access to a doctor or medic by the police, who were annoyed that he had passively resisted)
If anyone out there is embarking upon any legal proceedings against the Capitol police, the other cops, the DOA or Chief Tubbs specifically, I make all our video and pictures, as well as my own personal testimony, readily available. Prison time would be a useful corrective for this tyranny.
After they abused my fellow citizens and stole their rights, I left the building. Outside, as one would expect, a massive crowd was being kept from entering the building in force, although once the coup upstairs was complete they did allow a trickle of protesters inside. As opposed to the hours from 8 to about 10 am when they did not do so at all.
(outside tens of thousands wait for their chance to eventually enter their Capitol, when and if it’s convenient for Chief Tubbs)
(the only response for Walker; for his cronies, I suggest indictments.)
Had some ZRC computer issues that ate up a big chunk of my day today. Yes, I run a good anti-virus/anti-malware program (Avast!), and yes, it’s always on, and yes, it auto-updates. Still got a Trojan.
Sigh.
But hey, everything’s cleaned off now, and I get back online to find out that the whole world’s gone mad and the Republicans decided to violate the Wisconsin Constitution, U.S. Constitution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads in part:
Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
And yes, the United States did adopt that. Not that Walker cares if he’s violating state, national and international law; it’s probably a source of pride, actually.
The ZRC will get back on this shortly, and I think we’re going to issue some press releases too. Stay tuned.
Yeah yeah, I know it was a dream sequence, and clearly over the top at that, but we still have to deal with the fact that, in our society, it’s still considered acceptable for a doctor to, say, unload round after round from a pump action shotgun into Zombies rather than treat them as human beings, let alone patients.
It’s true that the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ sequence plays with the tropes of the genre quite a bit, including the ludicrous reaction of bodies to shotgun shells, which send them careening though the air. Hasn’t anyone in an action movie heard of Newton’s Third Law? If the blast from a shotgun was powerful enough to send the person being struck reeling, then it would impart the same force upon the person firing it, unless somehow dissipated.
(Some guns do dissipate their recoil forces somewhat by, say, diverting the gas generated by the gunpowder)
I can assure you, I’ve fired a few guns in my day (at soda cans, not the Differently Animated), and the recoil is significant, but not even a tin can, which merely weighs a few ounces, goes flying quite like *that*. Action movies, and the Anti-Zombie ones among them, need to go back to Physics 101.
Given the flip remarks, the semi-demonic appearance of the ‘Zombies’ and the spooky atmosphere of the decaying hospital, I think this House segment leans more toward Euro-Zombie bashing or splattery Raimi slapstick than mainstream American tropes. Is that a reference to the character’s international upbringing, a coincidence, or perhaps a side effect of wanting to tap into an Evil Dead/demonic flavor of the Differently Animated. Ash is also a smarty-pants sarcastic jerk, after all.
At any rate, the clip is offensive and disturbing. Doctors should have a cooperative and compassionate relationship with the Differently Animated, not an adversarial one. Zombies are people too, and, occasionally, might even be patients too. We should expect medical practitioners, even fictional ones, to keep this in mind.
Shame on you, Dr. House, even though you don’t exist. Shame.
While the new permitting/rally system downtown is being hashed out, things have quieted a bit. Next Saturday is slated to be an *enormous* rally, with farmers converging on the Capitol from around the state. In the meantime, apparently the DOA is up to its old tricks, trying to suppress democracy with trickery.
We went downtown on Monday, had a very regrettable lunch at Flavor of India that later made both the art director and myself sick, and then realized we couldn’t get into the Capitol because I had once again put a half inch swiss army knife on my lanyard and wasn’t willing to surrender it to the cops again. I really do resent having my personal effects sorted and catalogued like a criminal going into county just to visit my own government. So we took a few pictures and went back home. Then today got sidelined with the art director in particular feeling ill.
Lesson learned: do not eat at Flavor of India. Seriously. Don’t do it.
I’ve finally gotten around to working on our convention schedule. Honestly, this whole Madison being the center of the social justice movement thing presents some unique challenges and opportunities for us. The ZRC can get some good protest practice in, and we get to spread our message to a lot of people without leaving our home town. On the other hand, we don’t get to interact nearly as much with the very people who most influence the national discussion about Zombies, the creative personalities we’ve had such success talking with at conventions and so forth.
I imagine we’ll go to several of those over the spring and summer though. In the meantime, although I’ve volunteered to help with the recall, nobody’s contacted me, so I guess they have enough signature gatherers for now.
Below I’ll embed some of the handful of pictures I took on Monday, mostly of a neat art installation put up near the Capitol. The set for Monday is here, the collection of all pictures to date is here, and the ZRC’s Youtube channel, which is full to bursting with protest videos, is here. Enjoy!
(This is a neat interactive/collaborative art project up near the Capitol on Monday)
(You take string from this bucket and…)
(Add your own loop to the set already present. Solidarity, see? Interesting.)
