Listening to speeches in Whitworth Park |
Yesterday I joined hundreds of fellow activists for the annual World Day for Animals In Laboratories march and rally, this year held in Manchester.
The group I went with arrived sometime just after midday, joining the large gathering in Whitworth park, where there were various stalls with vegan food, campaign materials, t-shirts etc, and the speeches - and some poetry. After these the march left the park, down Oxford Road. At first, there didn't seem to be much chanting, but soon enough those with megaphones were leading us with shouts of "No more torture, no more lies - Every six seconds, an animal dies" and "Close down the animal labs!"
As we reached Manchester University, the chant turned to "Shame, shame, shame on you!" Manchester Univiersity are one of many Univiersities in the country who carry out animal experiments. A two minutes' silence was held to remember all of the animals who have been killed because of vivisection, and to think about all of those millions of animals still suffering in labs right now.
After the silence, the march continued through Manchester, with protesters banging on drums, blowing whistles, shouting down megaphones, or chanting the various anti-vivisection chants.
Around two hours after we set off from Whitworth Park, we arrived in Albert Square. There were more speeches. Listening to information about the torture inflicted on animals is heartbreaking, but we need to be armed with these details if we're to get the largely apathetic public, as well as politicians and scientists, to realise that vivisection is cruel and unnecessary.
This was the first World Day march I've been on. We got our message out there - after all, how could the thousands of shoppers we marched by ignore our placards, leaflets, banners, costumes and chanting?! But, of course, we don't leave it here. We simply can't forget the animals' suffering. We must keep campaigning with activities such as more demos, info stalls, leafletting and letter writing.
We must do what we can for the animals.