This summer, hundreds of animal rights activists marched in silence through the streets of Vancouver. Our message: Animals are individuals who value their lives. They deserve respect and freedom from harm. They’re being exploited for human desires and everyone should be paying attention.
We conveyed our message without speaking by holding and displaying informational signs and by giving out pamphlets to the public.
What I loved about this march was the focus on the animals, and the messages we shared with the public without making physical noise. We illustrated our internal mourning for their suffering. I could feel that our silence energetically contributed to portraying our peaceful intentions for the world.
We were joined by international animal rights activist James Aspey, who entered this movement over 5 years ago with a 365 day vow of silence for animals. James spends a lot of time working on self-reflection and introspection through meditation in his personal life and I believe this is a huge asset to his work for animals.
Much of James’ success in his approach to outreach conversations can be attributed to his ability to listen. The time he spends not speaking with others is meaningful and contributes to how much they reflect on the topic of animal rights in their time with him.
Personally, in comparison to events that involve more talking and/or shouting, I found it less emotionally draining to participate in this action.
While there is a time and place and need for a huge variety of styles of activism, I think that using silence as a tool more often could be beneficial to everyone involved - relieving some of the mental health struggles of activists, being well-received by our intended audience and even possibly making animal liberation a reality sooner.
In terms of intersectionality, this type of activism not only includes and reaches both the extroverts and introverts of the world, but it also welcomes humans with speaking and hearing impairments, too.
Alongside the Roaring Silence march, some forms of silent activism that I regularly enjoy participating in are chalking and wearing vegan apparel. I’d love to hear yours, too, and to start a discussion on how we can continue to use silence as a tool to achieving sustainable activism and animal liberation - protecting both the human and non-human animals of the world!