This is a story of passage. Not the only major transformation door I went through in my life, just the latest. My name is Sorin. Born in Romania and immigrated to Canada when I was 13, I have been a Software Engineer for the past twelve years. I was advised to take this job by my father due partly to my capacities and my faults, and I was attracted to it by the money and status it conferred. It might help for context to add that in 2015 I became a vegan after reading the book “Altruism” by Matthieu Ricard and that shortly after I became an Animal Justice activist. Those are stories for another day.
I’m not the main actor in this story.
They are.
Those actors who are always in the background, hidden and obscured. I’m gonna try to put them in the spotlight for once. I’m afraid I won’t give them the place they deserve, because this is my story, told by me, about their passing from life to death, and my passing, as a witness, into another state where no witnessing of anything will ever be the same.
My boss caught me at work posting on Facebook about an action of Extinction Rebellion Ottawa / Animal Rebellion Ottawa at the Brazilian Embassy, about the Amazon fires. Called into his office, I looked him straight in the eye and told him I was taking five days off to go to Toronto.
It had begun.
It all started with the idea of a five-day hunger strike in Toronto to stop the construction of a new slaughterhouse. I was afraid to take days off. I was afraid not to eat and I was afraid to spend five days without my partners. A person whom I respected very much told me to go, I felt that the animals needed me and, above all, the rebellion had begun, outside, with the birth of the Animal Rebellion, and in my heart.
I left Ottawa in the middle of the night after a weekend of activism in Montreal. Fearing for my health, my loving partner made my last salad. I didn’t want to eat it because the hunger strike was supposed to have started. However, I am not a dogmatic individual and, annoyed by the four-hour drive from Ottawa to Toronto, I confess that I ate it. It was my last solid food for the next five days. I arrived just before sunrise and discovered that our camp was located near the Maple Leaf chicken slaughterhouse. One of the tents had already been set on fire! An unfortunate soul, another victim of our toxic capitalist system, had made this place his home and took our presence there as an intrusion. There was panic among the activists. I went to bed wondering if I was going to burn alive, while hearing the saws from the slaughterhouse coming into action from time to time.
The first day, the trucks started coming in. I glanced inside, like everyone else, curious to see the chickens and trying to give them some kind of comfort by my presence, not knowing exactly how. What I saw broke my heart, tore my soul apart and made me break into tears.
Hundreds of them are stacked on top of each other. Scared and confused, they look at me and try to understand if they should expect from me more suffering or help. I could only give them my tears and my awareness. The recognition that they are the true owners of the chicken wings that we cannot give up. The chicken wings I ate. I looked at these individuals I used to buy headless, put in the oven and eat and crumbled on the ground crying. This is the post I made on Facebook that day.
I beg you to look at their pictures and remember them. Remember them, for they are now all dead. The saws have gone into action. Their bodies have all been cut into pieces. They were processed, cooked and by now eaten. For the rest of the week I’ve been watching the trucks come in, hearing the saws kill them and cut them, helpless and desperate. I couldn’t do anything, not even save a single one, despite my deep desire (and capacity) to smash those plastic cages and release them, give them any kind of freedom and any kind of life they could have with their own agency, finding their own path… because anything was better than the fate expecting them behind those cruel walls.
On the second day, we walked for a few minutes to the cow slaughterhouse. I say cows, but I mean babies. They’re only a few months old. I’m probably still a speciesist, emotionally and unconsciously, because at this stage the pain is even greater. Their huge eyes fixed on me, I know they don’t want to die, I see their fear, I feel their pain. The truck is covered with manure, and so are they. We don’t have a chance to say goodbye to them for long, the truck is moving, regardless of our bodies trying to buy them a few more minutes of miserable life by blocking the path. We have to let them go, the death machine must go on. I look into the slaughterhouse and actually see them becoming body parts through the windows. I’m told it’s a kosher place, so their throats have to be cut and they have to bleed to death. I am told about the filmed images of them struggling on the floor and suffering with their necks sawed off. I cry and cry and cry. I still cry now as I remember these moments. I am asked if this is the first time I have been to a vigil of cows, as if it was an honour to be there without crying, and I am being given many more details about their fate. Finally, I see their skins still bleeding and warm, being thrown into a large container, one after the other. I am emotionally and mentally exhausted, and with my last strength, I make this post on Facebook.
On the third day of hell, we go to the pig slaughterhouse, about an hour’s drive from the base camp. This is by far the worst, these trucks would not have stopped at all, without our intervention. The activists had to block the road at the risk of their lives to give the pigs water and say one last goodbye. By chance the police are present, because it is clear that otherwise they would have crushed us.
I didn’t post anything on Facebook that day. I haven’t told what happened until now. I couldn’t, I didn’t have the strength. Maybe I let them down until today, maybe I should have been stronger and told their story before. During the two hours I was there, I saw more than eight trucks. Hundreds of people were killed within a few meters of me. I had to witness a real massacre with calm and patience.
Pigs look and act exactly like dogs, with pointed or floppy ears, just like puppies. Their eyes are blue or brown, just like us humans. I look at their bodies, damaged by abuse, and it hurts me just to think about what they have endured. Their mouths are open, thirsty from the hours spent in the truck. I think of the irony and the fact that we could get a ticket for leaving a dog in a car. I am surprised that they do not fear us! They come to see me and willingly accept the water offered, and are happy to receive one last farewell caress. I remember reading that pigs are as intelligent (if not more) and sociable as dogs, and I think of Draco, our canine friend, who also likes to be petted and I imagine him there, ready to die – what is the difference?
I said goodbye to them, silently, with no more tears in my eyes. The tears are gone, as is my empathy. Whatever feelings remain, it is no longer personally painful. My ability to feel mental or emotional pain seems to have ceased. I deeply and sincerely wish their pain would stop, but I no longer feel the pain. Maybe after three days without food I have gone crazy, maybe it is mental exhaustion, maybe it is compassion. It is as if I have just died inside. Secretly and silently I stopped being me and became them. It was with them that I died that day, and since that day, I continue to suffer with them, and unfortunately, to be reborn with them and suffer constantly in an eternal cycle, because they suffer. I am now them, and they are me. This is my story, and yet this is their story, this is your story, this is our story. All have become one.
Buddhists say that “suffering exists, but not the one who suffers”. Sentient beings of the same consciousness, all transformed into one. That day, I lived it. And I swore on that day that I would do everything I could to stop their suffering, because their suffering is mine and that suffering is yours, and one day you will know that it is, and like me, you will stop cannibalizing yourself, eating your own body and hurting yourself. On that day, you will work like me to alleviate all the suffering in the world. On that day, you will be like me, and I will be you, and we will be one. And until that day, I will remind you, from this body in which I am, or their body, or your own body that suffers, or the body of someone else you know and love who suffers, I will continue to remind you gently, that you suffer, and that I suffer, that there is no difference between your suffering, or my suffering, or their suffering and more importantly, that through that suffering, we are one.
About a week after the five-day hunger strike, I quit my job. I think I got my soul back. The collective soul of the collective consciousness.Since then, I travel, when I can, and I let the winds of Turtle Island take me wherever they want to take me.Wherever I am, and wherever I am, I will light the fires of rebellion – Extinction Rebellion for our planet, Animal Rebellion for all sentient beings, but also, a rebellion of our consciousness, the individual consciousness, transformed into collective consciousness.
