By Leslie Goldberg
For five minutes, maybe three minutes, I’m not sure exactly, — animal rights activists stopped the world.
Today as cars backed up on Geary Street in San Francisco and as other cars were blocked from leaving a big downtown underground parking lot, over 100 protesters from the animal rights organization DxE formed a large circle in the street. Wearing blue T-shirts and white bloody masks, we held signs with pictures of animals and signs reading, “WHO WILL THEY KILL TODAY?”
For those few moments people stopped, looked and heard a magnificent choir of full-throated voices rising to the heavens chanting:
“ONE STRUGGLE ONE FIGHT”
“HUMAN FREEDOM ANIMAL RIGHTS”
“THEIR LIVES”
“NOT OURS”
“THEIR BABIES”
“NOT OURS”
“THEIR SKIN”
“NOT OURS”
“THEIR FLESH”
“NOT OURS”
“THEIR MILK”
“NOT OURS”
I felt my voice strong and my feet solid on the ground. Finally I was up off my knees. You see, for six years I’ve been either silent or begging, pleading, cajoling, even joking in an effort to persuade people to give up the murderous habit of using animals for food, entertainment, shoes, clothing and research. It hasn’t worked.
There is a smaller percentage of vegans today than in 1999. Part of the reason our numbers have decreased instead of grown is a wildly successful advertising ploy/scam by the animal foods industry called “Humanely-Raised,” “Cage-Free,” “Organically Grown” and “Free-Range.”
Out on Geary, the drivers were getting angrier and angrier, laying on their horns.
Eventually the protest in the street stopped and we moved to continue our Direct Action on the sidewalk. I never knew that the front of Macy’s could be a sacred space, but today it was. With the masks now off we stood silently outside the automatic doors of the store: witnesses to the unimaginable suffering that is going on every minute of every day in research laboratories, on fur farms, in slaughterhouses and on farms which raise animals for food.
Nine billion land animals are killed every year in the United States for food.
Clutching shopping bags, a lot of people scurried past us. Others just stood and stared as we resumed chanting. Others snickered, but even a street musician’s upbeat (and loud) electric guitar playing right next to us couldn’t dent the solemnity or the gravity of our witnessing or obscure the magnitude of the worldwide “Eternal Treblinka” endured by animals on this earth.
We’re not going away until every animal is free from suffering.
– A Vicious Vegan blog post –