Fragment from Effective Advocacy of Animal Rights
by Bruce Friedrich
www.goveg.com
Finally we have to remember the little things, like wearing buttons and T-shirts and putting bumper stickers on our cars. Everyone with a car should have one or two animal rights bumper stickers on it. Animals never get a rest; it’s the least we can do to put a bumper sticker on our car. If you don’t want a permanent bumper sticker, you can get a sheet magnet at a hardware store, put your bumper stickers on it, and cut them out. I have magnetic bumper stickers that I take with me when I travel to put on my rental car, which I love, because they’re nice, new cars, and they become a mobile billboard for animal rights. The manager of PETA’s Vegan Campaign was first introduced to the ethical implications of eating meat when she saw a “Meat Is Murder” bumper sticker in a classmate’s locker in high school. She began to question why she ate meat, and two years later, she became vegan. A little thing made a big difference!
Beyond that, when we go out, we should always wear a button or a T-shirt and bring some literature. You can be sure that if I have my backpack—which I usually do—I have a stack of vegetarian starter kits and “Chew on This” DVDs.
PETA has great “Ask me why I’m vegan” buttons and little vegetarian business cards that make the case for vegetarianism very succinctly, and we’ll send you as many as you can use to carry with you and give to people. You can always have a few of these or other more in-depth pieces of literature in your pocket or backpack for whenever the subject arises.
You can also spread the word in other, almost effortless, ways. If you’re in a health-food store or a sympathetic bookstore, you can often talk to the management about sticking PETA’s free vegetarian starter kit stickers on its pay phones. A lot of diners, stores, and organizations have bulletin boards, too, and you can just tack these sorts of things up. Carry the stickers at all times, and tack up three or four of them on top of one another whenever you have the chance so that people can tear them off and call.
These are just a few effective but simple things you can do that can make a major difference for animals—you convert one person to veganism, and you’ve saved thousands of animals. People see the bumper sticker or your “Ask Me Why I’m Vegan” T-shirt, and you have the card and can hand it to them and talk to them about that issue. Every time a new person thinks about animal rights or thinks, “Hey, they look pretty normal, and they advocate animal rights,” that’s a victory for animals. If you currently walk around in Boston Red Sox or Metallica T-shirts, replace them with “Ask Me Why I’m Vegan” or “I Am Not a Nugget” T-shirts, and be an animal advocate each time you step outside the door.