Friends and Enemies: Which should be kept closer?
Am I the only one who sometimes wishes PETA was not the major representative for the veg cause? After dealing with a lot of questions, and a few confrontations, over the past few months for the tour and the booking of it, I came to realize that the mainstream perception of veg folk is not the best.
I’m not saying PETA is completely to blame for all of this, but I do wonder every now and then whether or not I would have better luck talking to a random stranger about why I’m vegan if I did not have to first contest with their perceptions of “us.”
I wanted to talk a little bit more about their recent campaign video, which suggests that the Inuit people of Canada were nothing but club carrying savages hellbent on the blood of a cute baby seal, but it seems I can not easily find it. Is it possible that they realized that attacking a culture and group of people that have lived off the land for so much longer than most of us here in North America was a bad way to go about protesting something? I’d like to think so, but given that they’re suggesting we boycott Canadian maple syrup to try and get the point across to the government about the seal hunt makes it seem like PETA may not be so concerned with hurting one group or another to reach their goal.
Honestly, how does possibly eliminating the jobs of so many people involved in the maple syrup industry lead to sympathy for a cause that is only connected to them because they are living in the same nation? If you want people to be sympathetic for what you are trying to do, you should at least be sympathetic to them to some regard. I know if PETA took away my livelihood to feed my family and pay the bills, I would not be the first to jump on their bandwagon.
But here I am, a vegan, which apparently means I’m a PETA-lover. I just wish I did not feel like I was fighting against them more than I am fighting with them.
