Ag Gag bill 156

Transparency.

Everyone wants it. In every layer of society we insist on it: governments, boardrooms, companies, charitable organizations, even ingredients on packages. We want this information so we can make informed and bi-partisan decisions on what we want to purchase, ingest, and otherwise use in our daily lives.

We want to know if that outfit was sewn by sweatshops in India or by free trade employees. We want to know if the car we purchase supports our economy and our labourers. We want to know if our energy is sustainable, if the choices our politicians are making is reflective of our beliefs, if our purchases are doing damage to our environment. We have a right to spend our hard-earned salaries on what we want based on our individual consciences and preferences; and we have a right to know the effects, both long-term and short, on our world. And nobody – not even the Prime Minister – is exempt!

Oh wait…no… there is one group which feels they are exempt from transparency; who feel what goes on behind closed doors should stay behind closed doors, refusing to be accountable to the public – that same public who is expected to purchase and consume their products like automatons, never asking questions, never learning the truth, just following along believing the pretty propaganda put forth by their media machine.

Yep, I’m talking about Big Agriculture. Big Ag, as it’s fondly referred to by those immersed in its gloomy shade.

In November 2019, as published by the Animal Protection Party of Canada, Alberta introduced Bill 29, the Trespass Statutes (Protecting Law-Abiding Property Owners) Amendment. This bill passed extremely quickly, in response to complaints by Big Ag regarding a couple of earlier events, where activists peacefully occupied a hog farm, and later a turkey farm, and bore witness to the despicable conditions and treatment of the animals housed there, going so far as to video tape and then expose it publicly. The resulting hue and cry was tremendous, as Canadians rose up in horror at the reality of where and how their food is produced. Big Ag was not impressed.

And why would they be? If it wasn’t for those meddling activists, (Scooby Doo much?) their routine would have continued unabated, with animals being cruelly raised and treated and sold to unsuspecting consumers, whilst filling Big Ag’s already over-extended wallet. And consumers, unaware of the facts, would sheepily continued to purchase said products and hand over their hard earned funds right into the fat, greasy palms of the business.

In Toronto, meanwhile, Riding-Regency Beef Packing plant was shut down in September of 2019, due to activists exposing the horrific and unhygienic conditions therein, and inhumane treatment of the animals shipped there. Multiple recalls of tainted meat sealed the deal.

Those darned activists again!

Now, December 2019, Ontario Big Ag is following in Alberta’s footsteps. Bill 156 has been introduced. This bill would see anyone convicted of trespassing at a farm or slaughterhouse face a fine of up to $25,000. It would also outlaw picketing, demonstrating, or otherwise interfering with vehicles in transit to or from said premises. And perhaps more importantly of all, it would criminalize entering those businesses under cover: potential whistleblowers would face serious charges for entering the farm or slaughterhouse under “false pretenses”.

That is some heavy shit, peeps. And I just have to think what is Big Ag afraid of? What are they trying to hide? Because surely, if all was copasetic, there would be no reason to implement Bill 156.

I‘ve been to those demonstrations, peeps. We don’t impede their business. We simply hold signs and try to educate the public. At the Save Movement Vigils, we simply offer water to the pigs in transport, who have been in the truck often for days with no food or water, in either sub zero temperatures or scorching heat. We stay clear of the front of moving trucks and try really hard to not let our emotions get the better of us when we hear the screaming of the pigs as they are gassed. That being said, I’m sure there is the odd activist who let’s their heart lead their head at these events, but for the most part, they are peaceful demonstrations intended to let the public know just what is going on in these places.

More importantly, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees us the right to civil disobedience and peaceful protest. Big Ag has NO RIGHT AT ALL TO IMPEDE OUR CANADIAN CHARTER RIGHTS. But they think they do…

Basically, Big Ag doesn’t want anyone to know what goes on inside their farms and slaughterhouses.

Why? Because if we knew, we might, as compassionate and thinking humans, boycott their products to hold them accountable for their atrocities, and they would lose money. Right now, the system they have in place has been in practice for long enough for them to have it down pat: low output, high revenue. The animals are commodities, simple as that. If one piglet dies, oh well there are seven more. Just leave it there to rot with its siblings because moving it costs money in that someone has to go in there and retrieve it and dispose of it. May as well wait til the piglets are grown enough (17 days or so) to be removed from their mother, and get rid of it then with all the feces and other detritus. The mother will be sent to a place to be forcibly inseminated again, and again, and again, and the current batch of babies will go to be fed hormones and gmo grains and antibiotics (for their infections which are not treated because it involves some extra work) in order for them to reach adult size in six months, upon which time they will be shipped for slaughter. It’s a compact system that requires very little effort for maximum remuneration and they don’t want to change that – and having their practices exposed by whistleblowers will surely cause that to happen.

And so they have come up with a plan: Bill 156.

A Bill to silence those who are trying to speak for those who cannot.

This is a dangerous precedent, peeps. You think it’s minor because it’s “just animals” but let me tell you, once one aspect of our lives is gagged, expect a whole lot more to come rolling in. Pro-Choice? They’ll have a Bill for that. Gender discrimination? They’ll have a bill for that. Mental Health issues? They’ll have a Bill for that.

And what about the public’s “Right to Rescue”? How can we exercise that right if we can’t access the venues wherein those needing to be rescued reside? What about a child needing to be rescued? With Bill 156, technically, no one could secretly expose abusers anymore.

Whether you are an animal activist or not, vegan or omnivore, YOU CAN’T LET THIS BILL BE PASSED! You must speak up and oppose this Bill, or you won’t be able to speak up and be heard about anything else. Big Ag isn’t the only huge conglomerate out there trying to hide behind their goldspun images. Find a loophole for one, and you open the door to a whole gaggle of loopholes intent on silencing dissenters. Imagine silencing Martin Luther King Jr.? Or William Lyon Mackenzie? Or Susan B. Anthony? Or Emmeline Pankhurst?

You mustn’t be fooled into thinking this battle is only for vegans and Animal Rights Activists. This battle is for you and your children and your children’s children.

You want to know what you eat? How it’s processed? What you wear? Where it comes from? How it’s made? STOP BILL 156

Autumn Peltier

“We can’t eat money or drink oil,” says 15-year-old Autumn Peltier, of Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada.

Autumn Peltier speaking with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about water rights

I gotta say, peeps, this one confounds me the most. How in the fuck can a country like Canada, founded on the great mosaic concept of inclusion, priding ourselves on an excellent universal healthcare system and liberal mindset, how in the fuck can we have pockets of people in substantial-sized communities without clean running water?

Boil water advisories are for third world countries, not for a prosperous and politically safe country like ours. Yet, we have, on any given day, upwards of 170 boil water advisories in over 100 First Nations in Canada.

Greta Thunberg took the world by storm in the last year, reaching an apex this summer as so many people worldwide took to the streets with climate change demonstrations and protests.

Peltier, by contrast, has quietly stepped lightly into the political forums to spread her message. No less important, after all, in terms of saving our planet, just with less fanfare, less force, less blitzkrieg, dare I say. Rather like water, gently lapping against a shoreline, making inroads peacefully, subtly eroding the crumbling bank, and gently making her mark.

I like her. I like her a lot.

She talks about water the way I think about it: like it’s a living force connecting all beings, a fundamental and foundational creature with the spirit of all living beings enshrouded in it, connecting us all to this life and the next. Water is perfection. Water is a basic need. We come from water, we are made up of water. Water is the life force of all earth’s growth and sustainability. If we don’t have clean water, quite simply, nothing else we do will save us.

Yet Peltier is rendered imperceptible as Thunberg proclaims her message loud and clear, thundering over us in a cacophony of “how dare you’s” and glaring looks.

Thunberg obviously has a machine behind her, driving her, navigating her, guiding her into position. Peltier is relying on her spirit – hers and her ancestors spirits – to further her progress.

This isn’t a competition. Both girls carry much needed messages to us, just different deliveries. But I urge you to turn up the volume of Peltier, because her message is our lifeforce.

Peltier posed the question, “All across these lands, we know somewhere where someone can’t drink the water. Why so many, and why have they gone without for so long?” Exactly! We have copper pipes, we have the technology, we have the manpower. Somebody just fucking open the wallet and and turn the spigot, ffs!

Nobody in this country should be without clean water. There is absolutely no excuse for it. None. Any excuses you throw at me, I will just toss over my shoulder, and I don’t care how legit they sound. We have the funds, we have the wherewithal, just fucking do it. The government can buy stickers for gas pumps – why not plumb clean water into our First Nations communities? Buck a beer? How about a glass of clean water instead?

“Nothing can live without water, if we don’t act now there will come a time when we will be fighting for those last barrels of water, once that’s gone we can’t eat or drink money or oil. Then what will you do?” – Autumn Peltier

My Travels in Poverty

Since my day spent, in part, with the street people of Toronto, I have been reflecting back to other poverty I have witnessed in my travels.

In Alabama, I saw the folks who lived in the “little pink houses” of which John Mellencamp wrote in his song “Little Pink Houses (for you and me)”, but those folks, although at or below the poverty line, are not the ones that stick in my mind. What comes to mind in the southern U.S. are the government trailer parks with line after line of dingy white trailers housed with multiple families (mostly African American) situated on dusty dirt behind chain link fences, as if incarcerated. Their children ran barefoot and often pantsless (whether by choice or not I can’t say – it was brutally hot, and I know I like to be pantsless at home!) The elderly sat on upturned buckets or ratty lawn chairs keeping watch on the shrieking shenanigans of bare butt children and frenzied dogs, leaping after them. Occasionally, a scarfed grandma would be seen sweeping the ground at the foot of the trailer door, in a never ending attempt to clean away the grime and dust.

I’d never seen poor like that before. Oh wait – yes, yes I had!

In more northern climes, in my own country, many years ago as a youth, I remember travelling through a couple of Indian Reserves. It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz movie, when it starts off black and white and suddenly changes to techni-colour, only this was the other way around. My travels through started off in full vibrant colour and gradually faded into black and white the deeper I got into the Res.

The houses became more dilapidated until every house I saw was no more than wood pieces hammered together. Some were old trailers with extensions built from cardboard, steel and wood. I could see no options for indoor plumbing, electricity, or phones. I kept thinking where do they keep their food if they don’t have electricity for a fridge? It never entered my head I should be thinking “what food?”. I was so young at the time, the reality escaped me.

Did you know that even today, in 2019, just over 600 First Nation communities in Canada and “at any given time one in five of these communities are under a boil water advisory.” What? they have to boil their water prior to consumption? In Canada, in 2019?? What the actual fuck, peeps!

And did you know some of these Reserves are mere minutes away from your neighbourhood? How is it possible you have potable water and half hour from you a whole community does not? How is it possible this has not been addressed by our Canadian standards? Potable water is a RIGHT as laid down in 2010 by the United Nations General Assembly. This is Canada, ffs! How can some people not have clean drinking water?

Then, many years later, I travelled to India for work for six weeks. Yes, India! Me! I know! I am actually so happy I went, now, although at the time I was fraught with every anxiety under the sun (and more, I was also living with dickhead at the time). There I saw a different kind of poverty.

this was situated next to the building in my neighbourhood

It was the same, but different.

I mean, poor is poor right? You’d think…

Firstly, I soon figured out you could tell have’s from have not’s by their shoes – or lack thereof. Those with money had shoes; the poor had bare feet. It didn’t matter whether they were working or beggars, if they were poor, they went everywhere in bare feet. Even to work. Even if their job was construction, chopping wood, climbing scaffolds, whatever. Unless you were required to wear a uniform for your job, if you were poor, you had bare feet.

I saw construction workers on scaffolds four or five stories high, painting, hammering, and they had no tie offs, no hard hats, no shoes. The scaffold was pieced together bamboo hand-tied with rope, perilously propped against the walls, not the fancy schmancy metal poles with locking mechanisms we have here. I saw construction workers digging foundations for huge mega-apartments side by side with back-hoes, with no shoes, no hard hats, and using sticks and hand-tied shovels to dig.

It was an insurance claim waiting to happen. But guess what, they didn’t have insurance either! If someone lost a foot, or fell off a scaffold and could no longer work, they became beggars. I saw one beggar with his arm broken in three places, healed incorrectly, and he showed us that was his reason for begging, and not working. He had no shoes. He was a beggar but he looked exactly like the working poor there. Hmmm.

this was upscale, but it was right next to the shanties pictured above

The homes these folks lived in were built of corrugated metal, and pieces of wood, propped up against a million-dollar condominium side by side. On the same street. The juxtaposition amazed me. Here, we have “areas” of town which evolve into luxury, middle class, and poor. There, rich and poor was side by side. There were no “poor” areas. They were mixed together like curry-flavoured Bits-and-Bites.

So you could walk down the street, visit shops, see gorgeous hotels, and then come upon a smattering of muddy hovels, with sari-strewn electrical lines, women making paratha, a high-class mall, a skyscraper tech company, and a line of bodegas with dirt floors and stray dogs. Then there might be a Hindu temple, with flowing palm trees and brightly dressed ladies in saris, sweeping the ground around it with tea leaves, bent over double, and not wearing shoes.

this lady did the laundry for my apartment building. it was all done under this shanty outside the property on the street

And they smiled. Always. I would walk by and they would gesture for me to take their picture, with big smiles, they would pose in front of their street sweeper or temple or while they were ironing the clothing of the guests at the hotel across the road. They smiled.

They got their water from a local reservoir. It was not drinkable for us, but that is what they used for cooking, drinking, bathing, and washing. They had to carry it in buckets and bowls. Sometimes they balanced the jars of water on their heads and walked. I kid you not. Just like in the movies.

But whenever I asked to take a picture, they smiled, with or without teeth. It was lovely. It made me really happy to take their picture, like I was doing them a favour. I thought about this a lot, afterwards.

Why wouldn’t they be sad? Disgruntled? Jealous? I mean, right next door was a beautiful pink condo, obviously filled with people wearing shoes. I think somehow, even though they knew they were poor, even though they could see wealthy folks beside them, it never entered their head that there was anything wrong with the status quo. That it could, and maybe should, be different. It was just accepted as how it was, and they seemed happy.  One of my colleagues told me it was because they knew people who were worse off and they were just happy not to be in that pickle.

I don’t know. I don’t have an explanation for it. I just know whenever I felt anxious, or down while I was there, I went for a walk and took pictures, and this always cheered me up.

When I left, I left a few pairs of my shoes in my apartment for anyone who needed them.

They were crocs. I don’t think they minded. 🙂

 

 

A Summer Night in the City

I currently live in the ‘burbs, but once upon a time, I lived in the big city: Toronto. I really love it in Toronto. For someone who hates big crowds, this is an anomaly, but then I have never pretended to be anything other than myself: weird.

I actually love the diversity in people and in shops. Where else can you get vegan pizza sitting next to Ali’s Grocery and Cigarettes next to Hong’s Gift Shop next to Satan’s Eye Tattoos next to Mme. Dupont’s Ballet for Girls? I mean, come on, peeps.

So my forays into the city now are pretty special – and fun. Usually I go to see my girl, Moon, but this time, I went with my friend, Joanne, and her daughter, Tatiana. We had a fun day planned, including having some lunch out and a walking tour of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, (fucking blisters ahhhh) a landmark 200 acres in the heart of Toronto. Joanne also wanted to bring along some food and water to spend some time helping out the “homeless” downtown. Beyond giving some change, an occasional Timmie’s card or bag of dogfood (for the dogs) I haven’t really had much contact with the disenfranchised folks of the street.

not my photo

It was an eye-opener, peeps.

I kind of took a back seat to the whole thing, letting Joanne take the lead in approaching “likely looking” people (and let me tell you, the likely looking people may not be what you think they are). I handed out the pies and smiled a lot, cause, you know, anxious and shit. They were wonderful: friendly, happy to see us, grateful for the food and water. It felt good.

That was the day time.

We still had food left after our tour and decided to go back to the Yonge Street area where there seemed quite a few street people congregating after dark. Of course, in Toronto, it’s not really dark, it’s lit up like a carnival, but it was night and a whole different type of street person was taking up the prime spots.

Cue doomsday music crescendo.

Gone were the chubby little Romanian ladies in babushkas with their little signs; in their place were addicts, gun shot victims, hookers and alcoholics, with dealers and cops peppered in and around them.

I mean, I’ve been downtown at night before. I knew these people were there. But this was the first time I actually spoke to and interacted with any of them.

At first I was nervous. The scene before me was like something out of a TV show. Not Brooklyn 99, I can assure you. These people were no “Doug Judys”. The scene was more like Law & Order or even Mad Max: City Nights. (That could be a thing, peeps! Screen play anyone??)

So we went about and among them, handing out pies and Joanne’s homemade healthy date and nut balls, filling up water bottles, and chatting about them: their life, their situation, their feelings.

Yes, many were drunk or stoned. There were a couple of sex workers, a gun shot victim (shot in the ankle, hand and leg… not sure how that happened).

There were some smooth looking, man-bun wearing, slim square-toed shoe-sporting city slickers hopping in and out among them all, dealing drugs, under the watchful eye of a uniformed policeman. I guess the amounts were not enough to warrant a reaction or maybe it was understood this was home turf for these people, and what goes on at home is private. I don’t know. It seemed very weird to me, but I realize this was not the black and white world we live in, where we always have a comfy bed, good food, and wifi. This was a world of shadows, greys and blacks, cold cement, grit-riddled food, and rats. (Yes I saw a few, running behind where the action was).

I gotta say, though, I was impressed. I’ve known Joanne a very long time; I have always known her to be a kind person, who is truly interested in people. She is one of the few people I know who actually listen whens someone rambles on about stuff, she questions them and shows honest interest in them and what they have to say. ,

So we met a murderer (a real live one!) and his girlfriend, both Natives, and felt our hearts break as the fellow talked about his grown daughter with tears in his eyes (he was charged with murder after he defended his daughter from being raped); we learned the woman had a college certificate. They were not stupid, useless or bad. They were drinking alcohol disguised as koolaid in their water bottles, so I assume the drinking contributed to their situation. They had 2 large bags full of all their worldly possessions, and their “home” was a doorway big enough for the both of them, the sidewalk around them strewn with shards of glass and litter.

And around us, people in Armani and Ralph Lauren went about their business, bypassing the street people in their translucent houses.

We spent a couple of hours in all, sharing food, talking, laughing and even crying with these folks. They are people, just like us. They have children, just like us. They have feelings, just like us. They don’t want to be out on the street, but there is nowhere else for them to go.

On the streets it’s fairly warm, there are always bodies to cram up against for warmth; there’s food (not what we call food, but they get by), they have friends, colleagues, like-minded folks who “get” them, not look down on them; they have their addictions supplied, same as us. They have eyes to see – and they see much more than we give them credit for; they understand the reality of their world and what “we” think of it, but it’s their world, they own it, and they don’t own much else.

Now I am not a religious person, but all I kept thinking as I walked those city streets on this summer night was “but for the grace of god, go I….”

And that’s really the truth, peeps.

 

Tweet Tweet!

Peeps, I just created a Twitter account. Apparently, that’s where all the cool kids go to connect and get noticed in their fields and build their brand.

Since I am trying to build my followers, I thought that seemed like a good thing to do with my blog. If you are interested I’m @BadpuppyBlogs.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, are the basic three; the mirepoix of social media. Just like in a recipe, if you don’t have these three as the basis for your brand, you will not have the fundamental groundwork to be successful. So they say.

I’d had a Twitter account before, and I could never get on top of it. I was lost in all the @s and hashtags and everything moved so quickly, I simply couldn’t keep up with it. It seemed all everyone did was share sports stories or push their brand exclusively. It didn’t interest me, and sure as hell didn’t absorb me, so after a few months I just thought what the fuck, and deleted it.

But supposedly, the more social media platforms you join the better, and it seems EVERYBODY is tweeting crap all over the place. Twitter is proven to be a direct, speedy, and effective way to say your piece and get noticed – if you have the right followers and are following the right people. You see, if you have a list of Joe-Blow buddies on your Twitter, you are basically going to be spouting off your astute meanderings and witty repartee to the people you are already spouting off to on Facebook. They are going to get sick of you and unfollow you, turning your already meagre list of followers into a mere skeleton of non-involved, disinterested rabble.

So I read up on shit, peeps, did some studying of marketing in this online world, and I found a new word: ENGAGEMENT. Not the ring kind, (been there, done that, not all it’s cracked up to be) but the kind where you insert yourself into a tweet with an intelligent statement or humourous retort and trigger others’ response to you. In this way, you put yourself out there for followers to fall in love with your bon mot, then follow you and hopefully “retweet” you to all of their followers and so the movement continues. THAT is how you gain followers and gain popularity.

So I signed in and immediately followed a few significant-to-me organizations: some animal justice accounts, a couple of news accounts, and I started “engaging”.

Low and behold, I got one follower almost right away, someone I did not know, but their handle was very similar to mine. However, it turns out, they are the “first and largest collection of Gay Male Adult Erotica” so that’s something! As the night wore on, one of my comments was getting liked over and over again, (not by Gay-Erotica Guy) even retweeted. I actually had one person comment that what I said should be made into a T-shirt!

Come on, peeps, that’s fucking amazing! Me!! Coining a phrase for a T-shirt that goes viral on Twitter. And that was only my first day.

Screen shot of my notifications. Champ Titty Sprinkles’ comment was eloquent too, don’t you think?

I will reveal to you my Twitter-famous comment here: “Everything about #ford is offensive”.

That’s it. That’s all. But what a response! Thank god Ford is a dick or my comment might not have gone over the way it did; it might have simply been absorbed into the flux and flow of multiple tweets, into the black Twitter hole of anonymity, and my first experience on Twitter would not have been so exciting.

I’m hooked now, though, peeps.

I mean, I know it will take some time, but I’m really looking forward to interjecting my thoughts in places they wouldn’t otherwise get noticed. I mean how many people can brag they are being followed by the “first and largest collection of Gay Male Adult Erotica” @Badpuppy?

Pffff not too many, I should think.

 

National Animal Rights Day March

It’s my one year “veggie-versary”! Yayyyy me! One year ago August 25 (my daughter’s birthday) I made a commitment to eat plant-based for compassionate and health reasons, and I have loved every minute of it. A whole new world opened up for me!

The world of animal activism.  

I did a lot of research while transitioning from vegetarian to vegan and it only took a few weeks for me to have one of those electric shock moments when I realized the horrific images of animals being slaughtered and abused was the same meat in the stores. That same meat that looks so innocuous and inert was, only days earlier, a living, breathing, sentient creature. An animal capable of feeling love, happiness, sadness, and pain. Like…..holy shit like my dog! My pet! My family! Even my freakin’ betta fish have soul, as I watch them cavort playfully, stalk predatorily, and interact with me for food.

All those years I ate meat, I was eating another living being. The connection was made and it was an abomination. I had been a pseudo-cannibal. Gross. And even worse, cruel.

I typically haven’t a cruel bone in my body; I cried at the Ugly Duckling cartoon, ffs – AS AN ADULT! So this truth hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks, with a couple of boulders thrown in just because.

But what could I do about it?

I became an activist. It started with Facebook: sharing posts about compassion, plant-based eating, and even the dreaded animal abuse articles (not many of those, as I’d rather teach and share with good news and positive energies to show a better way than clobber my friends, whom I love, with blood and guts). Then I joined some groups, Toronto Pig Save,  and I went to some vigils  

I spoke with Earthling Ed and James Aspey at one of these vigils, and was inspired by their messages. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Well not true: I wanted to be a writer, but there’s no money in that unless you produce a best seller, so in terms of a career, a vocation, a calling, I never really had a goal.

Until now.

At age 58, I am an animal activist and a blogger/writer. There’s no money in that either, but I don’t care now. My kids are grown up; I’m not interested in the rat race of commercialism; I don’t want a lot of stuff, just the necessities. So this is the perfect vocation for me!

So on my veggie-versary, I attended the National Animal Rights March in Toronto, Ontario. I attended with new friends I met on Facebook who were also travelling alone. We met up on the subway and marched along with a thousand other vegans and compassionate people, including children. 

It was an amazing event. It was powerful, gut wrenching, and emotional but so energizing at the same time. There was drumming, an organic pounding I felt deep in my being which gave me strength from somewhere inside; chanting which kept us focussed on why we were there and I knew what I was doing was right and good, as did we all. 

I was inspired by families, parents and children alike, wearing t-shirts and walking with their signs, holding hands in solidarity. Their strength was in their convictions that they are contributing to changing the world and making it better for all living beings. The children may actually see that transpire, although sadly, those of our age may not. 

People on the sidelines waved to us, cheered with us, filmed us, or ignored us. Far more connected with us than didn’t. I could see it in their faces as they stood quietly watching our procession; they read the signs, they looked at our faces, and I could see and feel their thoughts questioning reality. A seed was planted. It will sprout. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it is a strong seed, planted with love and compassion, watered with the tears of slaughtered animals and caring people, so it has no choice but to grow. That is life. That is reality.

I’m back home now, cloistered with my dog, my kittens and my four mean fish, my adventure is over. Hang on – no it’s not over! The abominations of animal slaughter, animal cruelty, factory farming, genetic modifications, animal testing are still taking place.

As the rally chant said: “We are unstoppable; Another world is possible!”