Move to Activism

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Animal activists make it their business to look where others don’t look. When I looked everything changed for me. What I saw turned me vegan, and I knew others would be like me. They’d be outraged enough to change their eating habits and attitudes to ‘food’-animals, enough to boycott the Industry’s products. But I was wrong. What a shock I got when I saw NO surge of compassion. It made me wonder about people, particularly about parents, politicians, preachers and teachers. Why hadn’t they told me? Then I got angry. Then sad.
Now some decades later I’m wondering why they aren’t telling the kids of today. It’s all common knowledge now, it’s not as if they don’t know. It’s just that they don’t want to know. They don’t want the kids to know either because it would reflect badly on them.
As I moved into adulthood, or at least into a state of independence (cooking my own meals), I began to focus on the job in hand. The shock was gone and I was moving on from blaming ‘those who didn’t tell us’. Activism isn’t about blame. I realise we’ve all got blood on our hands, so bugger blame! Move on. Be pro-active ... no time to waste. Look where others don’t look. Don’t procrastinate - see how the pig is forced to live, drop pork; see the battery system operating, drop eggs; see an abattoir, drop everything that has a face.
As adults with free choice we may look ... look at the face of an animal! If you’ve ever seen an animal at the abattoir, being led into the execution chamber, it’s unforgettable. The noise from her, her despair, the machinery groaning alongside her. It’s one diabolical scene, 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.
And what is activism?
For some time for me it was a huge enough project in itself, changing my food habits but later, when diet was resolved and shoes and clothes sorted out, I looked further and saw something sadder than even the animal cruelty. It was my own loss of faith in human nature, and that, not anger, has fuelled my activism ever since. Giving up on human nature, not seeing the potential in people, is ultimately sad.