Street Trash (1987)
Eliot has been a leftist activist in the Pacific Northwest and proponent of armed self-defense since the 1990s.
He said his philosophy is informed by his early experience as an activist in Seattle.
“It was just sort of the standard procedure that you should know about labor history, you should know about working-class issues,” he said. “And it would be expected that you would also know how to use a rifle.”
Eliot said spontaneous violence is a serious concern at demonstrations like the Women’s March. He pointed to the white supremacist who stabbed two men on a Portland train in 2017 and the neo-Nazi who killed someone when he drove his car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville.
This is probably my favorite piece of lost animation. I wasn’t planning to get something like this so soon after Peg but I had never even considered that I could even own something from this. I was doing a search to make a post about the short itself on my blog, but then on a whim I was like ‘huh, lemme check ebay, just to see’ and there was the fucking cel. I’ve been debating over this for days but ya’ll, I love coyotes, I love a good story, and I love animation. I had to make sure the story of this cel was told.
The Coyote’s Lament aired on March 5th, 1961 on Walt Disney Presents. It was a 45 minute episode consisting of a few shorts featuring ‘Grandpappy’ Bent-Tail and Bent-Tail Jr., with a lovely and catchy song about the persecution coyotes suffered through due to western expansion and their relationships with dogs (Pluto) and humans.
What’s so interesting is this was push from Walt Disney himself about ecological awareness in the 60′s about coyotes. An animal that today is still persecuted and senselessly hunted as pests and vermin. The ONLY reason I knew about this short was because I randomly tuned on Disney Channel at like 2am when I was kid. I remember watching the whole thing and loved the song. I was super young, so the fact I remembered this well enough to find the episode online later is nothing short of crazy. It was rehashed as Disney’s Coyote Tales in 1991, with a re-dub by Jim Cummings, which is even harder to find.
However, the story ends here. The short was never re-released and the only copies left are either on VHS or Lazerdisc. I fear without the very few uploads online (many of which have been taken down over the years) this would be lost unless for SOME reason Disney decided to remaster the original footage (that screenshot is the highest resolution I can find). I made a post about this short 7 years ago on this blog, but I didn’t have a big following at the time and the video I used has since been deleted. I literally was like ‘well this is an ideal time to talk about old/lost animal animation now that I can tell more people about it’ and then just happened to find the cel.
I’ll make a separate post with the song, but that’s the history behind the cel. As someone who loves and studies coyotes, this is such a heart-warming, charming, rare piece of pro-coyote media, and I’m really glad I can share the story with you all.
Also fun fact: though I’m not sure if The Coyote’s Lament was the first use of the sound effect, there’s a part where Junior barks, and that same bark was later used in 101 Dalmatians :)
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t California’s gun laws stem from the Black Panther Party trying to protect their neighborhoods by arming themselves?
So the California and The US Government, spun a narrative of how, guns are bad in the hands of these dangerous folks in the city, it’s not just hunting! It’s a danger to the community! Which resulted in The Mulford Act of 1967, no longer allowing the public to carry loaded arms in California.
Being that it was the Black Panther Party being targeted the NRA and Reagan supported California’s endeavors in restrictive gun laws.
Like I’m pretty sure most of the laws yall support california for … came out of them being Just The Worst Racists.
This should tell you something about why gun control in the united states will never actually stop the people you want them to stop.
Yall constantly point to things like armed white supremacists being pleasantly greeted in political spaces, and then ask why peaceful black protestors are arrested…
And then, the thing that boggles my mind is, you will still think our gun laws will ever impact anyone other than the marginalized of our society.
US gun laws have always been about keeping down those already down, in this case, keeping down black communities protecting themselves from racist white cops.
If the law sounds progressive … and congress will likely pass it? Maybe think a little more critically about it and realize why they’re considering it.
