On February 17, don’t go to work – go fursuiting for a General Strike in the USA.
by Patch O'Furr
Furry buddies--let me make a point real quick.
— The Wombat Resists (@UrsulaV) January 29, 2017
Marches are about visibility.
Fursuits are real damn visible.
Political Animals.
What does Furry have to do with politics? Nothing. Or a lot. (Kinda like kink). It’s up to you. Maybe you just like talking-animal media. Or maybe you like media that’s inseparable from a culture that’s cracking apart.
This group is about talking animals, but it’s made of people, and we don’t exist in a vacuum. (The vacuum is just there to pick up all the shedding.) So for those who care… Let’s recap some previous stories that relate to this, then see what’s up now.
Start with the San Francisco Bay Area. It has the world’s most dense population of furries, and it’s the epicenter for a rent crisis. That big trend hit the local group when their premiere monthly event, Frolic furry dance was pushed out of it’s home.
Across the bay, on the day Frolic restarted, the Ghost Ship warehouse fire killed 36 fellow party goers at an electronic music show. It instigated a national purge of underground cultural spaces. This blog is written from one of those spaces, and narrowly escaped being forced out in a wave of evictions. Economic class issues are personal here.
Go back to 2012 and the East Coast. Money, sex and politics crashed into furry fandom in a mini-scandal of “fake news” with the New Jersey FurBQ Hoax. Looking back now, you might see some of the sparks that turned into 2017’s political dumpster fire. I’m talking about the way the group was split up by dishonesty and xenophobia, and manipulated as pawns for politics.
Furries got scapegoated for having a harmless party. It made me say: “Fun is serious business because it has to do with liberties.”
There’s some examples of how furries have long experience with fake news, they can be vulnerable as a subculture, and they can share a common cause with other marginal communities. (Don’t forget their sizeable queer membership.) You don’t have to agree about politics, but there are good reasons to pay attention. From anti-mask laws, to anti-LGBT legislation and anti-kink moral panic, furries will be part of many fights to come.
Recently, I posted “
Don’t overlook more cool books! Dogpatch Press’s own star guest poster, Fred Patten, has 
(Patch O’Furr:) Furries love plush like a fat kid loves cake. My friends do, anyways. That’s how I met Amy Brown, a non-furry crafter who specializes in plush objects on Etsy. I heard that she enjoyed commissions for fursuit props. It makes me happy when furries make friends like that! Amy mentioned weirder commissions, and that made me invite her to tell some juicy stories. (Mmm… carrot juice for everybunny).
Mascots and costuming have been around forever. But furries are doing something new. They don’t just play with generic icons from myths and media. They add original fursonas and custom craft for everyone. It makes a subculture with personal expression beyond anything else.
The SF Bay Area is getting so only the wealthiest can afford to live there. It’s one of the worst places for gentrification and rising costs forcing out culture. The pressure has hit The Stud, a historic gay bar and subcultural landmark that welcomes freaks and artists like no other place.