For Animals.

None of us chooses the body we are born into. We cannot choose the tone of our skin or what our features look like, we are all different from each other. But surely by now we have learnt that the only thing that really matters is that we are all people. Inside each of us there is the same light, which makes us unique, and which defines us as someone, rather than something. All of us are here today because we know that the same light shines from within every non-human animal as well. All animals, regardless of the species they are born into, are not commodities but individuals, like us. We all feel pleasure, and pain. Comfort, and fear. Love and grief. Every human, pig, fish, ant, and everyone in between. We are all someone. We are all earthlings. 

However, because the human species has more advanced intelligence, we have power over all other species. Our position of power gives us the responsibility to act as guardians over other animals, to protect and care for those who are more vulnerable than ourselves. Instead, we take advantage of other animals’ vulnerability. We consider them to be inferior and we use our power to commodify, to exploit, and to systematically kill other animals to satisfy our own desires. We give them numbers instead of names. We refer to them as “stock”, reducing them to mere units of production within industries that are built on their suffering and ultimately their deaths. 

The suffering we inflict upon other species is beyond what most of us could imagine. We confine them in cages where they lose their minds from the mental and physical torture of it. We force females to go through the ordeal of pregnancy and labour over and over, and when they give birth, we do the worst thing one could possibly do to a mother, we take her children away. We pull fishes from the ocean in their millions and leave them to slowly suffocate in agony. In the slaughterhouses we have created in every single country on earth we kill animals of all kinds, despite the undeniable fear in their eyes, despite their screams of pain, despite their desperate attempts to escape. All because of our unjustified belief that we are superior, that because they are a different species their lives do not matter. We seem to have forgotten that even though other animals exist in bodies which are different to ours, each of them values their life every bit as much as we value ours. For how long will they continue to suffer and die because of us?

Animal exploitation is directly caused by farmers, by companies, and by consumers, however they are not the only ones responsible. The exploitation of animals is also caused by everyone who does nothing to bring an end to it. Being silent in the face of injustice is contributing to the injustice itself. Because silence gives consent. Silence is complicity. Silence permits the atrocities to continue. So even though as vegans we no longer actively contribute to animal cruelty, we are responsible for putting a stop to it. The animals’ only hope for justice doesn’t just lie with their abusers to stop abusing them, it lies with us, the bystander, to intervene and save them through our activism. The more active we are, the harder we fight, the more lives we will save. So the only question is, how hard will we fight? 

The animal abusing industries we wish to dismantle are incomprehensible in their size. And the human supremacy which supports them is deeply ingrained in our collective mentality. Even though every individual has great impact, it will never be enough to achieve total animal liberation, unless we work together. The animals cannot afford us to be active only as single individuals or in many small separate groups. We have to work as one united force, and when we do this, we will become unstoppable. When we all come together with animal rights as our single driving purpose then I truly believe we will be able to succeed in abolishing human supremacy and all the industries which currently exploit our fellow earthlings. As Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has”.

Finally I’d like to say a few words to the animals. To all of the beautiful, unique, precious individuals who have suffered and lost their lives at the hands of our species, we are truly, truly, sorry. We know that your suffering and your deaths go unnoticed by the majority of people. But all of us here want you to know that we do think of you. We know you are suffering. We see for who you are, not commodities but individuals, who did not deserve the pain, the fear, the violence you were subjected to, who did not deserve to be killed. We will not stop fighting in your memory and to prevent future beings from suffering as you did. You will always remain in our minds and in our hearts, driving us to do more, to fight harder. You are not forgotten, you are not insignificant – by all of us here, you are loved.