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 either easy or 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 everyone of us has a strong connection with them whether by eating them or protecting them). For our part, vegans need to talk about animals as if they were sovereign individuals, as irreplaceable as one of our own. They are equal to us in their deserving a right to a life, just as we believe we are.
Most people don’t think too much about animals until they hear of an event where animal rights is the focus. When they go they show they’re interested. Maybe interested in the yummy vegan food that’s going to there, maybe for some really useful health tips, but amongst them are those who want to be in touch with the spirit of animal liberation. These are the ones who most deserve a good presentation from us.
Here we are. At a public event. We’re talking about animals as if they really mattered. How do we transfer this attitude? Perhaps best by transferring the very same serious, caring feeling over to those who really matter to whom we’re talking. Obviously we never talk down to them. In fact we should be giving them the green light to interrupt, recount their own stories, give their own opinions … if we (so called ‘speaker’) let them participate we make our talk less of a lecture and more of a 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. It may be a hall full of people but there needs to be created by the speaker an atmosphere of sitting around the kitchen table – because this is an intimate subject which we all have to learn HOW to speak calmly about, full of contentious issues, a subject crucial to the future, for all of us.