Move to Activism

1223:

Animal activists make it their business to look where others don’t look.  Many years ago, after I was advised to take a closer look at things, everything changed for me.  What I saw made me realise I’d been living in ignorance. It turned me vegan.  “If only others knew about this”, I said to myself, and I believed that others, once they knew, would obviously react as I did.

I was sure that others would be outraged enough to change their eating habits and their attitudes to ‘food’ animals, enough to boycott the Industry’s evil products.  But I was wrong.  When graphic footage was shown at prime time on TV, there must have been millions of people watching, so imagine the shock I got when there was NO surge of compassion, no Letters to the Editor, no exposé.  It got me wondering about people, particularly about all those responsible parents, elected politicians, appointed preachers and qualified teachers.  Why weren’t they revising their scripts?  Why weren’t they speaking up?  Why hadn’t I been told about any of this?  First, I got angry, and then I became very sad.  My belief in my world was crumbling, all those people I’d trusted to do what was right had let me down, and let down everybody who trusted them.

Now, some decades later, I’m still wondering who these people are, people with responsible positions in our society.  Why aren’t they teaching young people what they themselves must obviously know about?  It’s all common knowledge now, it’s not as if they missed that first news programme, because there have been many others since, showing graphic details of the routine cruelty and exploitation of animals on farms.  Perhaps it’s  because they are themselves part of the war against animals, perhaps they don’t want to know, or more particularly don’t want the kids to know.  Because if the young people found out that they’d been duped over this, it would reflect badly on the very people they trusted to tell them the truth.

As I moved into adulthood, or at least into a state of independence (shopping for food and clothing, cooking my own meals, etc), I began to focus on the job in hand.  The shock had passed, and now my gorge rose, and I was determined to make it my business to join with others who felt as I did, and expose the whole rotten business.

But I wanted our activism to work.  I was moving on from blaming ‘those who didn’t tell us’, because I started to realise there were just too many ‘out there’ who wanted to keep it all under wraps.  I realised that to be an effective activist for the animals, I’d need to give up the blame game.  No time to waste.  Simply draw up a simple instruction protocol and expect others to challenge it.

If adult people are acting like children, pretending not to know what to do, then perhaps we must tell them very simply how they ought to act: see how the pig is forced to live, and then drop pork; see how the battery system operates, and then drop eggs; see what goes on at the abattoir, then stop eating everything ‘with a face’.

         

This is a simple but powerful idea - imagining the face.  We might take a look at the face of an animal. If you’ve ever seen an animal at the abattoir, being led into the execution chamber, its face is unforgettable.  And from the face, the sounds - the sound she makes in her despair, with the machinery groaning alongside her, the harsh voices of humans around her, these are the saddest sounds.  What you see and hear in these places is gut wrenching.

When I first saw it, it was enough to stop me in my tracks, make me check my habits, make me boycott, make me plant-base all my food and move on to activism.  At first, and for some time afterwards for me, it was a huge project, changing my food habits, then shoes and then certain articles of clothing.  And once I’d established the whole vegan ‘thing’ for myself, I looked out with fresh eyes at the animal cruelty and realised I’d left behind my need to be ‘fitting-in’ with other people - I had now lost faith in human nature, and that began to replace my anger and sadness and started to fuel my activism.  And later even that changed, because I began to see why, however bad things are, however disgusted at others’ behaviour we may be, that we should never give up on human nature. We should never stop seeing the potential in people.  Many of us have changed. Many others will change.  To give up on everyone would be the ultimate sadness.

We only have ourselves to set the standards for our activism, and on that standard rests the success or failure of our goal to liberate animals.  We’d better be very sure we’re not using all this as an excuse to vent our anger.  We’d better be certain it’s not about getting our revenge on the people we’ve lost faith in, because that will never help the animals to be liberated.