Public Speaking 2

I think it’s important to tell it like it is, not pretend that becoming an activist for animals or taking on a vegan lifestyle is very easy or too difficult. Honesty about this particular matter is appreciated – to get an idea about what one might be letting oneself into. Whoever we are talking to, whether it be meat eaters about their shopping choices or farmers about their animals, or teachers or students about veganism, everything we say should eventually come back to our relationship with animals (and we all have a strong connection with them whether we eat them or try to protect them). For our part, vegans need to talk about animals as if we want to come to know them, as we would a human. In that way we can talk about animals as if they are different to us but equal to us, in terms of their deserving a right to a life.
Most people don’t think too much about animals, and here we are, at a public event, talking about them as if they really mattered. How do we bring a listening audience round to this attitude? I think we can get them to respond to our line of thinking, by never speaking down to them and by giving them the green light to interrupt what we are saying, to recount their own stories and give their own opinions. If we let them ask questions we make our talk less of a lecture and more of an open discussion. And this needn’t continue indefinitely but at least, at some stage in the talk, it gives people listening the impression that the speaker is keen to listen as well as to be the speaker. It may be a hall full of people but the atmosphere should be one of a group of people sitting around a table discussing – because this is an intimate subject, full of contentious issues and a subject crucial to the future of us all.