Today we met in the town where I do most of my activist work, Europe's vivisection capital, Cambridge. Cambridge University houses numerous laboratories with many different species including primates and sheep who are tortured every second of their lives. Just recentlyAstra Zeneca was granted building permission for their new headquarters which will also imprisons animals. Behind most walls in this town there is a screaming soul that needs rescuing.
If you know the UK animal rights scene, you will know that the Cambridge AR chapter is probably the most (in)famous one. We are the longest-standing AR group, running since the 70s. But recently we have been struggling to identify our own politics, this being the reason for me almost not participating in this wonderful day. I am glad I did, and only because of my amazing Anti-Speciesist Women's Group.
And because I feel that today, as during most days in animal rights, we celebrate the wrong people and create the wrong heroes, I want to use this space to honour the people who did not get acknowledged today, be it through applause, laughter, words of gratitude or encouragement.
This is for all the women and non-binary folk (not just in Cambridge, but everywhere), who were present today. Who baked cakes. Who volunteered at stalls. Who marched along in a crowd of people they didn't know or didn't like. Who introduced themselves. Who made themselves vulnerable. Who screamed their lungs out to let everybody know that 'there's no excuse for animal abuse'. For those who held a megaphone and those who messed up the easiest chant on the planet time and time again. For those who exposed their bare faces to the police. And especially for those who held the most thoughtful and intelligent speeches and did not receive the time and recognition their male comrades did.
This is for Sophie Hill, who if I had heroines, would be one of them. A woman who singlehandedly took on Cambridge University and the vivisection industry as a student, and a veterinarian who knows the true value of science.
Watch and spread her speech here (it contains the most poignant last sentence).
I am so proud to have been able to march and scream along with some of the strongest women on this planet, to listen to their speeches and to bear witness to the atrocities hidden behind Cambridge's walls together with them.
We won't let the kyriarchs of this world feed off our solidarity!
Until all are free.
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