Consolidating our advantages

I think the art of talking about this subject is in looking vulnerable enough not to seem like a tank in the rose beds. Even though we can’t stand the ugly torturing of animals for meat and such we must respect a different point of view, well, accept it anyway. If that’s difficult then at least we must be sensitive to the ‘differences between us’ - they know we aren’t erudite professors and we know we want to talk. How to communicate-without-preaching, though ...
We may strike lucky and get one or two questions asked. And that will make us feel as though we’re being taken seriously - someone asks a question, we answer ... But, not content with that, we volunteer information which hasn’t been asked for ... and then we go on too long even when their eyes have glazed over. Think dork, think bore at party, think vegan chatting to omnivore about animals.
One day all the questions will be asked and it will all come out in the open. But for now, that’s not likely. Global warming, environmental concerns, health issues - so much on people’s minds these days. Food issues and especially animal food issues are pushed onto the back burner.
For us it’s frustrating to see the connections, to know the solutions to some of these major problems and yet have to wait. It’s devastating that millions more animals will have to suffer and die while we wait. But until the time is right and lots of people are ready to come round we have to keep remembering that nothing is wasted - this is the period for consolidating our position and getting our own heads into the right space. For us it’s a planning period so that when the time comes we’ll be effective - we’ll not be quick to aggress and we’ll know we can press people without there being the least trace of anger.
Angry reactions are so deeply associated with the violence in our society that an angry activist is an ugly activist - we’ll achieve the very opposite of what we want. Instead we have to find an alternative way. Use this high emotion to build determination. Right now some of us are failing simply because ‘the omnivore’ is not yet ready, and we fail too because we keep wanting good feedback all the time. We might need to get used to no positive feedback, until we understand the scale of the change we’re after; to know it’s a bigger change to take place than ever before.
To recap: animals are slaves and we’re here to stop that. Angry we might be, even very angry, but determined activists are in it for the long haul. We don’t need to fly a flag or keep hitting people with “the truth”. Our job isn’t to bore or lecture or get religious - when we go on about being vegan we hope people will go home and consider things we’ve said. Truth is that we’ll make them feel so uncomfortable, they’ll go home and open the fridge for a sludgy, creamy, sweet treat to make them feel better. To help them forget us.
When omnivores do agree with us they’ll often do it in the hope of shutting us up. The more praise they shower on us (we like being admired for the ‘stand’ we’re making) the more they hope to calm us down, to make us see that we’ve gone ‘too far’.
Whether for a good cause or a selfish one, the more we want admiration the less we’ll get it. When we seem to impress people with our ‘spiel’ (shocking people with facts or health scares) we may not be impressing them at all. Their feed back is just politeness. People won’t become vegan just to be polite