Vegan Meetings

I have had such a brilliant past few days! Until Wednesday, would you believe it - I had never met another real life vegan, apart from Dan, my boyfriend, but we went vegan together so he has nothing new to offer me, in the nicest way possible - haha!

So after being inspired by people like Veganelder to get off my ass and do more for our furry friends, I got in contact with a few fellow vegans on Facebook who told me about a public meeting that was being held on Wednesday to discuss plans for a Beagle breeding facility (for use in medical testing) which is planning to open near where I live.

I arrived and noticed there was tea and coffee on offer, I couldn't see any milk and then I spied a carton of non dairy stuff and instantly I knew I'd found myself a bunch of like minded people.

The speakers were absolutely brilliant, so inspiring and full of amazing information that really opened my eyes about vivisection. I've started to write another post to summarise what I've learned, and I'll share that soon. What I loved most was that they were extremely intelligent intellectuals, ex doctors and surgeons, don't you just love having those people on our side?! They relied on facts and while they also felt passionately and some of them clearly were very emotional about the plight of our beloved animals, (a few tears were shed) they reminded us all to focus on the evidence that we can prove is not based on opinion as a way to get our message heard and make real change. Very enlightening. I know if I want to spread our message this is exactly what I have to do. There's no point ranting to people about how cute animals are and how against speciesism I am, that's just my opinion. The way to get them to listen is to provide facts. And now I'm starting to gather quite the collection of them to support my views.

Two of my favourite 'speakers' took pride of place at the front of the room, and sat patiently as a reminder to us all who we are fighting for. It was so cute, I noticed that they made noises at some very opportune moments during the speeches, it was as if they knew we were talking about helping their friends :-)

What snooty little posers :-)

At the end of the meeting some people stuck around and I had the fortune of meeting this wonderful group of activists.

It's so exciting and motivating to be around people who care. We're all keeping in touch and will be getting involved in various protests and outreach. In fact, Paris and I actually stopped at a butchers and fishmongers on the way home and stuck some PETA stickers on their doors, teehee. Sshh, don't tell anyone.

Then last night I went to an event ran by the local vegan group, which I've only just discovered too! We all went to the local vegetarian restaurant and ate a feast of Persian vegan food. The food was fabulous and I scoffed the best chocolate cake known to man. I tried to get a picture but it was too dark, booo.

While there we noticed one of the ladies at the table was also at the meeting the previous night so we exchanged emails and she is very active with animal rights so hopefully she has some things I can help out with too.

Thank you so much to those of you who suggest I join a vegan group, it is absolutely the best thing I could have done, and I'm just delighted to have met such wonderful people. I had no idea there were so many of us hiding in my little city!

I'm literally fizzing with excitement at the people I've met and the things they've taught me that already I could fill a book! Don't worry this manic post is almost over and I won't bombard you with it all at once, but expect lots of excited future posts!

Yayyy! Happy happy happy :-)