Ana María Aboglio.
Traducido por Elizabeth Aldam.
When the exposure of something denounced as an act of injustice must tacitly set forth the very notion of its existence, those who expose it constitute an amalgam inevitably fringed by the said injustice not acknowledged as such. Customs -ethics- and norms express their vouching for the mentioned injustice in a profuse and lengthy manner. The doors to institutionalized harm and indifference are always open when the house is built having the “animal -object”as a resource. They show their condition as such when they are given a function as bodies to be consumed or turned into consumers.
Abolitionist-liberationist activism –taking both terms without a strict conceptualization– , that shows the face of the Other, the one whose face has been disowned, perturbs in its apparent stillness. As there is no inmediate claim instigating a reinstatement as in social protests there exists a risk to be understood as a purely individualistic proposal. Still, neither the logic of its exposure nor the urgency of the situation admit being conjugated sometime in the future. Nor can they be grasped if not set within a deep eco-social change. Minoritary activism, excessive only when compared with the vastness of animal slavery, sprouts from that Silent Speech written in the cry for help of those lacking political voice to defend their own standing. Whatever the protest may be, it will never fail to meet a call for liberation from oppression, suffering and death.
Expressed in the difficult synthesis outlined by poster, flyer or flag alike, the message opens itself to alteration inasmuch as to reflexive questioning, to distortion as to clarifying extension. Its joining other texts, be these printed or carefully handwritten, clarifies and deepens it.
The existence of questions can be supposed in the hurrying passerby, perceived in the one asking for flyers, imagined in the average citizen, that one circumscribed in the minimalistic ethics reaching out in case of cruelty or extreme abuse. Abuse and cruelty penalized leniently, underestimated due to the acceptance of their second place behind humans and gagged by judicial interpretations. Questions can be guessed even in gestures, smiles and inexpressive glances.
The irruption of a group of activists can shake the present human right to use other animals when this group manages to grant presence to the animals in question. When it represents them.
It has the possibility to wound insensitive reason –Reason– reminding that oppression is allowed but not mandatory. Responsibility for the Other becomes completely ours. His, yours, mine. The roots of Veganism are growing in that fissure.
The more liberated from its spokesman, the more will the idea find a reception devoid of disturbance. The fissure will widen, the rhizome expand and the plant sprout. Thus must the irruption be to produce such impact. Having an activist free from himself as a specific person, perceiving the rhythm of his peers and joining them in action, the message is empowered, widened and deepened. It trascends its individuality, even the one telling his doings and sayings as a defender individually considered. In such moments this activist focuses on solidary pre-occupation about those for whom he calls for a change of thought and relationship. This is perhaps the biggest achievement of a group whose objective is not to grow as an institution but to make ideas grow, questioning the existing institutions of exploitation. It is not easy –though it may look simple– to carry a poster. Curiously, this subsumption to the philosophy of the group this activist represents frees him from the many pastimes offered to the Ego nowadays, pastimes that contribute so much to the present condition of non human animals.