Going public

When activists start hurling abuse in public it works wonders, in the short term. It unifies our fellow protesters, it makes us feel good, and sometimes it’s brave - if we look scary enough it might strike fear into people’s hearts. But unless we are willing to continually escalate the violence of this sort of protest it loses its power and eventually fizzles out. Big talk and threats can only promise what can’t be delivered.
Whilst not wishing to sound obnoxious about it, the aim of any animal rights protest should be to please and win over. Our main aim should be to set an example that others can identify with. The sort of people we are, warts and all, are people simply trying to live non-violently. If any one is moving towards veganism, even if only in their thoughts, they are beginning to identify with the people they see who seem to be gravitating towards a non-violent way of thinking and pulling away from ‘hard nose’ attitudes.
If we are already established vegans we may, at some stage, want to ‘go public’. We may want to make a huge fuss to prevent veganism being misrepresented and to stop us being so easily ignored. But the general public will ignore us completely given half a chance. Any excuse will do when it comes to avoiding the dreaded animal rights advocate.
It’s made all the more difficult for us because we can’t catch people’s attention. We no longer bump into people on street corners and converse with them on serious matters. There are no passers-by to talk to, nowhere we can ‘address the public’. Most people lead such private lives – we go from home to car to work to car to home, so we live in a cocoon. No one meets the stranger, and so no new ideas circulate unless through the sanitised media. In the main, people no longer go searching for new or radical ideas because no one wants any extra aggravation on top of the pressures facing them already. So, how in the first place do vegans make a connection and then prove we genuinely want to inform and, when there are differences of opinion, bridge the gulf in a non-threatening way? How do we convince people we only want to help improve their lives? Perhaps we do it simply by our manner.