22,601,071 members doing good!
about our ads
share your passions, stories, inspirations, and more
Solidarity message for all vegan activists
Mar 4, 2008
This really moved me so I wanted to share it...............

We received this e-mail to the Vegan Outreach Adopt-A-College mailing list last week, and it has been invaluable in maintaining hope and inspiration among activists. I hope you will all read it, and be moved by it, and TAKE ACTION.

For the liberation of ALL beings,
jenna
------

02.27.2008
Robert Morris College
175 WV -- Wayne Hsiung

So I witnessed a death two days ago. I am trying my best to get that image out of my mind, but i'm going to write about it here, in the hopes that writing will be a catharsis.

An hour or so before I was planning to head out to leaflet, a friend of mine, dan dunbar, who I hadn't seen in many months, called me up and said that he had spotted a stalled transport truck.... with a downed dairy cow inside. He had a camera and was taking pictures, but a large tow truck had arrived, and he was afraid that they might move to another location to "deal" with the problem. I drove out to meet him.

I arrived to witness a grisly scene. A poor girl was collapsed on the ground inside the truck (which had large holes that we could see through), in a 3-inch-deep cesspool of feces and urine. You could see her wide, terrified eyes staring into nothingness, and her entire body quivering ever so slightly. But she was making no sounds. The other cows had trampled all over her broken body; she had bloody wounds and lesions that were clearly visible, in bright red, through the filth. Her udder was swollen to many times its normal size. We noticed a ghastly sliver of flesh on a gate mechanism above her. (It was later suggested to us that this might have been her tongue. Cows tend to lick the sides of the truck, in search of moisture, but when it's a frozen mechanized gate that you are licking, that can lead to tragic consequences...)

As we stood witnessing this terrifying scene, the truck driver sat in his car, on the phone, no doubt cursing his misfortune, to have two broken "machines" (the truck, and the cow) on the same trip. The other cows had already been removed to another truck, which left our poor friend, perhaps fortunately, alone in her quiet torment....

We all know, in the abstract, about the billions of individuals suffering and dying all around us. We all have seen footage and images from the concentration camps we euphemistically describe as "farms." But nothing is quite so impactful as seeing an innocent die before your eyes. I've witnessed the tortuous death of an innocent victim a few times before, and that is a few times too many.

It simply HAS to stop.

My friends, this is the enemy. The fear, the pain, the utter desolation... our non-human brethren have done nothing to deserve such a terrible fate. And yet that fate is cruelly forced upon them, over and over and over again... an endless procession of torment and death, a procession that sometimes may seem invincible to change or progress.

But whenever i lose hope for this movement, whenever I am feeling overwhelmed by the weight of the oppression all around us, I just look around me a bit more carefully. And when I look a bit more carefully, I see something different and even beautiful. I see the inspired stream of emails coming in from the VO list; I see a few dozen people standing on a frozen chicago street, calling forcefully for animal liberation; I see a passerby's pained expression of empathy when she stops briefly to look at a sign. And when I see these things, I see that our enemy CAN be defeated, that the Holocaust raging all around us CAN be stopped, and that our vision of a just and peaceful world for all animals CAN become a reality.

Our poor friend died that day, on the filthy floor of a bloody transportation truck. We witnessed her body go cold, and her eyes stop moving. Her entire life had been enslaved and twisted by violence and prejudice. But I think that, despite her cruel death, she had moments of peace and joy. The sweet smell of a new and unexpected food, the gentle touch of a rare worker who had not been desensitized to pervasive industrial cruelty, or the fresh taste of cool water on a hot summer day. Of course, much of her life was torment. That cannot be denied. But because of people like you, and because of brave activists all over the world, from chicago to amsterdam to moscow, her torment will not be forgotten. And some day soon, those few moments of peace and joy, that our poor friend experienced ever so fleetingly, will no longer be just moments...

All of these thoughts were sifting through my mind a couple days ago, as I headed out to leaflet, a couple hours later than I had expected. My mood was somber. I could still visualize, and indeed feel, the terror in my poor friend's eyes, as she wallowed, slowly dying, in torment and filth. And when I arrived, I looked around: I was alone on a cold Chicago street.

But I didn't feel alone. Becuase I thought of the hundreds of activists on this very list, the thousands who have come to fur free friday in chicago, and the MILLIONS all over the world who have spoken and stood for the rights of oppressed classes, in a centuries-long struggle for equality, justice, and freedom.

All of you inspire me. All of you give me strength. All of you give me hope. And for all of our superficial disagreements and differences, for all of our human pettiness and peccadilloes, the common vision and passion we share, of a just and peaceful world for ALL of us on this planet, makes me glad and proud to call each and every one of you a friend, a friend in the fight for liberation.

As to the leafleting itself? The traffic was low at Robert Morris College. I don't remember any interactions of note, perhaps because I wasn't my usual town-crier self. But at a moment when I should have been drowning in despair over the suffering i had witnessed, isolated on a cold street, facing an oblivious or outright hostile public, I did not feel despair.

I felt hope and kinship. And I have all of you to thank for that.

There will come a day when the animals are all free. I don't know if it will happen sooner or later, but I have no doubt that it will come. And when that day comes, the world will look back on our times, gratefully, for the brave work that you do, for your passion to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves, and most of all, for your hope... your hope in a movement where it was so easy to wallow in despair.

But this email has now gotten much longer than I had anticipated. So let me conclude with a quote by an activist much braver and better than myself:

"I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long...because THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE IS LONG, BUT IT BENDS TOWARD JUSTICE."

If you are ever in despair or frustration, remember those words. Dr. King was right about his movement, and he will be right, too, about ours.

Wayne
(1) | () | | send green star | flag as inappropriate
Visibility: Everyone
Tags: , , , , ,
Posted: Mar 4, 2008 2:56pm
I would go veggie, BUT...
Nov 5, 2007
I don’t know what one is.

There are a lot of interpretations of what a veggie diet is… so let’s set the record straight: A vegetarian simply doesn’t eat any dead animals or bits taken from them. That means no meat, poultry (chicken, turkey, duck), fish or other water animals (prawns, crabs, shrimps) or disgusting things such as gelatine from hooves and bones and animal fat.
A strict vegetarian also does not eat dairy, eggs, honey wear or use anything from or tested on animals and these are often referred to as Vegans.

I only eat chicken and fish…

Well done! You’re already thinking along the right lines! But we bet you didn’t know that chickens are the most abused farmed animals? Kept in gross conditions, 850 million of them are killed every year in the UK. And fish have feelings too! It’s not even open to argument that they suffer terribly when they’re caught. And healthy? Only if you think that deadly poisons such as PCBs, dioxin and mercury are healthy because most fish now contain low levels of them from pollution. Overfishing is hoovering the oceans empty and wiping out the animals that depend on fish.

We have animal welfare laws so it can’t be cruel.

Oh yes it can – and is! Most animals raised for meat are kept in disgusting conditions inside factory farms, never seeing daylight, sun or rain. Pigs killed for meat live only five or six months but it takes a battery of drugs to keep them alive. From birth until death they’re given powerful antibiotics in a desperate attempt to control the diseases that run rife in the filth of factory farms – drugs which have helped create superbugs that now threaten us all. Chicken rearing is the most intensified and automated type of animal production there is. Chicks are crammed into foul smelling windowless sheds - often 40,000 in each. The baby birds are bred to grow too fast and are pumped full of drugs to reach slaughter size in just 41 days. When they are killed the birds eyes are still blue and they cheep - chicks in an obese adult body. Most birds become crippled as their legs cannot support their body weight. Turkeys are almost all factory farmed - as are ducks - water birds that never get to swim or fly in their short, sad lives.


Fearne Cotton
TV presenter
“I have been veggie since the age of 12. I had seen a programme on live animal transportation which made me have the idea initially. Me and my mum started the same day and it's just so easy - Mum cooks amazing veggie food and you wouldn't know the difference between veggie food or meat, my dad hasn't got a clue what he's eating and is practically an involuntary veggie!”


John Feldmann
Lead singer and guitarist for US pop punk sensations Goldfinger
“I can look at all my companion animals without guilt knowing that my lif e is not dependant on their suffering. And us veggies taste better!”
If I turned vegetarian wouldn’t my health suffer?
No, it’s likely to improve. A diet packed with animal products is high in cholesterol and saturated fat and can contribute to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes, obesity and other diseases. Doesn’t seem quite so appealing now, does it? ANYONE can be healthy by eating a wide variety of vegetarian foods. Try it and you’ll notice the difference in no time!

My friends will think I’m weird…

Oh come on! They can find a dozen reasons to think you’re weird if they want to. Being veggie is something to be proud of – you don’t need to apologise. Cutting suffering out of your life shows you can think for yourself – and there’s nothing weird about that. That’s strong. Most people who take the mickey out of being vegetarian know nothing about it. Go on, tell ‘em – talk to them. And if you need any help answering the questions they’re bound to throw at you, check out the Viva! website -www.viva.org.uk - with its guide to dealing with dimwits.

I don’t know what to eat!

You can eat all the things you eat now – burgers, bangers, pizzas, fish fingers, chilli, nuggets, curry and so on – but veggie versions without a trace of a dead animal. And there are thousands of new and exciting foods to discover as well! Going veggie opens up a whole world.

We need meat to feed the world

No – it’s just the opposite! Eating meat helps to cause world starvation because there’s just not enough land for all the animals. Most of what they eat isn’t turned into meat, it’s turned into poo – wasteful or what? To feed everyone on the kind of meat diet we eat in the rich West, we’d need four planet Earths! Livestock take up too much land, use too much water and cause the trashing of rainforests, wildlife, cause acid rain, global warming and water pollution. So if you care about people or the planet - go veggie!

What difference does one person make?

More of a difference than you might think. The average Brit meat eater, throughout their life, chomp their waythrough 4 cattle, 18 pigs, 23 sheep and lambs, 1158 chickens, 39 turkeys, 28 ducks, 1 rabbit, 1 goose and 2750 fish. That is a lot of lives saved by going vegetarian, don’t you reckon?

The only question you should really be asking yourself is ‘why not go veggie!’
meat
(1) | () | | send green star | flag as inappropriate
Visibility: Everyone
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted: Nov 5, 2007 5:53am
Native Americans weren't hunters
Feb 14, 2007

Native Americans

Vegans often hear comments about Native Americans living off of the land and being in harmony with nature. According to Native American historian Rita Laws, however, the majority of Natives ate very little to no meat. Choctaw, Mayan, Osage, Aztec, Pawnee, Zapotec, Mandans, Wichitas, Arikaras, Caddoans, Cherokee, Creek and Chicksaw lived largely vegan lifestyles. After all, Natives did teach infiltrating Europeans how to crop the land that was eventually stolen from them, not how to kill animals. Cattle-ranching cowboys, who displaced Natives by stealing land for cattle, drove Natives to hunt and eat meat.

Horrifying stories of Lame Deer or Chief Seattle praying over murdered animals displays their primitive understanding of compassion and decency. Many Natives refuse to accept this fact because they are meat-eaters themselves, and would rather blindly defend their heritage instead of acknowledging the wrongful acts of their ancestors. There is no honor in defending cruelty, however. I was born Jewish and won't hesitate to condemn rich, pretentious Jewish women who own fur coats because they stupidly believe it's a status symbol. Compassion and decency are far more valuable than heritage.

http://www.adaptt.org/veganism.php#
(0) | () | | send green star | flag as inappropriate
Visibility: Everyone
Tags: , , , ,
Posted: Feb 14, 2007 2:53am
Its time...
Dec 21, 2006
Focus: Animal Welfare
Action Request: Think About
Location: United States
..To make a difference..

WATCH AND LEARN

GO VEGAN! If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem....
(0) | () | | send green star | flag as inappropriate
Visibility: Everyone
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted: Dec 21, 2006 1:14pm

 
 
 
Content and comments expressed here are the opinions of Care2 users and not necessarily that of Care2.com or its affiliates.

Author

Alf I.
female, age 103, single
London, NU, United Kingdom
Shares by Type:
All (292) | Blog (135) | Alert (143) | Top 10 List (1) | Poll (1) | Message (12)

Showing shares tagged with: vegan [show all]
ads keep care2 free
SHARES FROM ALF'S NETWORK
Jun
9
(0 comments  |  discussions )
God have mercy on us who do not understand the Power and Glory of Love.  God have mercy on us who do not understand we are meant to be free.  God have mercy on us who do not believe there is hope.  God have mercy on us who are sufferin...
Jun
5
by Tom G.
(1 comments  |  discussions )
I have retired from  running the missing children web sights after giving so many years devotion.I have asked Scarlett who has supported me for a long time to take over the running and i wish her the very best for the future.
Jun
1
(0 comments  |  discussions )
The principles of healing are the same from individual to individual, but everyone's needs are a little bit different.  This is YOUR life we're talking about!What a person's heredity is indicates their tendency (not a forgone conclusion) to need...
May
25
(0 comments  |  discussions )
We are creating a sacred space together at Essentials of Life Holistic Enrichment Center.  We have been joining together to make repairs, do the creative work of painting and decorating, and now we're working on beautifying the grounds and then ...
May
24
(0 comments  |  discussions )
SPRING!  It's been springing up all over the place!  Dandelions, clover, plantain and other valuable herbs all over the yard, birds singing, sweet smells in the air, everything turning so green and the blossoms on the trees coming in bloom...
May
23
(0 comments  |  discussions )
We all know that we're expected to be on our best behavior at church, but do we really know why that is?  Shouldn't we be on our best behavior all of the time?  Is behaving as if we're something we're not when we're not being a hypocrite wh...
May
15
(0 comments  |  discussions )
When I think of the word, "Mother," many things come into my mind.  My own sweet mother, of course, who to me, will always be the perfect embodiment of motherhood.  I think, too, of myself, for I am the mother of three, the step-mother ...
May
12
(0 comments  |  discussions )
Dear Friends - please accept my sincere apologies for n ot answering any of your msgs and kind thoughts. Unfortunately I lost my password and have been unable to get into my account for ages - probably with all the moving house etc., but you were all ...
May
9
(0 comments  |  discussions )
The largest genocide in human history happened where? Most people would answer Germany, and the Jewish Holocaust. Actually though, the largest genocide happened in the USA, with the native American Indians, with estimates of 19 million to 100 millio...
May
8
(0 comments  |  0 discussions )
Official Nuclear Radiation Study; Tokyo University Hayno, R.S., et al (2013) Internal Radiocesium Contamination of Adults and Children 7 to 20 Months After the Fukushima NPP Accident as Measured by Extensive Whole-Body-Counter Surveys, Proc. Jpn....

Copyright © 2013 Care2.com, inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved