The Animal-Free Manifesto written as an historical document by Sharon Lee Davies-Tight, The Animal-Free Chef
People usually change themselves by seeing what they like in others and pursuing it. Or by digging deep into one’s reality and the realities that surround them, motivating that change. Throwing paint on people or screaming obscenities or shaming or humiliating those you want to convert, hinders rather than helps the cause of animal rights. That’s my view based on my experience.
What are those rights that we keep talking about but not defining properly? Animal rights. What about those rights?
Do animals have a Bill of Rights? Are their concerns, needs and demands written into the constitutions of nations? No.
The Constitution of the United States of America speaks only of men, not women or children. Animal protection laws are scantily scattered and rarely have actionable consequences attached. Animal rights activists/advocates can’t even rescue a tortured animal without the rescue person(s) being criminally charged, tried and convicted and sentenced. That’s how barbaric societies remain even in 2023.
What happened to the process, in the evolution of civilization? Humans stalled out. When we as humans see another human being tortured do we have a right to rescue? What would happen? Would the rescuers be charged with a crime? Has anyone besides the military seen someone tortured? What would it do to the psyche of the intruder witnessing such heinous acts of depravity against another living, breathing, suffering creature?
Torture, whether conducted against the human animal or any other animal is usually done out of sight, in private, in secret. Why? Because it’s so heinous that it would elicit a strong emotional response. A trigger response. Understandably so. Against our will it would be difficult not to respond, difficult not to do something, anything, to free that suffering animal from the bondage of their torturers.
As difficult as it may be to stand down, the activist needs to in this world of prison-happy politicians by setting the example to the world that they are better off not eating or otherwise abusing/exploiting harmless, helpless creatures to the benefit of the torturers.
If you’re angry all the time, though justifiably so, nobody whether consuming animals or not wants to be around you. People want to be around those who bring them up rather than down. You already know this, simply by living a life that’s yours.
No other animal on the planet, besides humans, are afforded that right. The right to exist free from enslavement, torture and slaughter. There are an estimated five to ten million different species on the planet, of which we are one, only one. Over two million already have been described. The others will be in time.
One wonders who those others will be, what they’ll look like, where they live, how they survive. It’s beginning to look like humans may, if they keep looking, happen upon a species so intelligent that they can and will outsmart and outwit the human species hands down at every turn in every category. What will they do to us, the humans who continue to abuse and exploit over two million different species of animals? How will they treat us?
It could be that they’ll treat humans with the same penchant to destroy human life as we humans exhibit to all other species, even within our own. Maybe they already have a plan to rescue the other five to ten million species, who would be at high risk of enslavement, torture and slaughter by the human species.
Maybe that life form will look like a highly evolved viral killing machine. What then? I don’t think we anticipate any form being more intelligent than ourselves. But species after species tell a different story. Maybe this world will be wiped clean of the human animal for doing such a terrible job of preserving our only homeland.
Be on the look out. These yet to be identified species may be here to rescue the activists from the angry, prison-happy politicians. Remember that prison-happy politician phrase. Use it appropriately. Slaughterhouses and animal farms are prisons and the world has a lot of them, in every country, every region. Humans have institutionalized the enslavement, torture and slaughter of every known species on the planet.
Raise your war-weary heads and dance that dance of success, if only in your mind, that you achieve every single day by merely saying no to discrimination, enslavement, torture and slaughter. Every day you change the world for the better by what you eat or otherwise consume or use.
Every single day you change the world for the better by not eating or otherwise using and consuming animals and animal products. You make those decisions for you, not everyone else. You know that saying in the Movie Harry Meets Sally? She fakes an orgasm in a diner and an onlooker in another booth points to Sally when the waitress approaches to take her order and says, ‘I’ll have whatever she’s having’.
Although that was done in a sexual context, it can be applied to any circumstance. Onlookers, when they saw her pleasure wanted to eat whatever she was eating that made her so happy.
Fake it if you have to. You can do it. I know you can, because I do it every day in every way. It’s an act that is real, but I’m still acting. Humans, all humans, are natural born actors. We instinctively and intuitively act – privately and publicly. Just don’t go too far off the grid. Keeping the ‘real’ in the act is your specialty as a human. Embrace it.
Listen to a song you like. Do a few crunches or squeezes. Feel the pump in your muscles. Be alert to your surroundings. Walk tall with purpose.
Although we live in a rapidly changing world, we as humans haven’t changed all that much. Skin colors have changed into a multitude of shades of pink, brown, white and black, more due to cross-ethnic mating than climate. The slow to change human, who is your canvas, can actually work in favor of the activist.
The humans with whom you interact aren’t much different from your grandparents. That is a source of comfort. How do you get your grandparents (in your mind) to actually taste an animal-free dish with no animal products?
For starters it better taste good. Grandparents can be finicky about what they consume and so can you be finicky about what you consume. There’s very little real difference there. Don’t let age get in the way. Eat your animal-free dishes in front of them, savoring, enjoying every bite. At some point they’ll want a taste to see what all those moans are about.
At family gatherings bring one or more animal-free dishes, then share your lifestyle through the food without preaching the bad side of where theirs came from. You already know what that is. Nobody likes being preached to by peers or family or friends. You don’t either. Have a taste-testing. Make it interesting.
If you are totally confident in the choices you made and continue to make, then it will shine through those bright eyes of yours no matter how war-weary you become. When you think you’re failing or the world is failing you, remember the animals will always need you to be there for them, but in a way that suits you. Not all activists or advocates are the same, so design yourself showcasing your strengths.
Imagine the power of one species who can control five to ten million other species. Use that power in you to protect the others from the continuous reign of terror raining down on them. A never-ending holocaust.
Back to food. I propose a plan for restaurants. Two connecting plans actually.
1- If a restaurant fails to provide you with substantial animal-free dishes, then you will be allowed by law to bring your own food and drink, paying a five dollar cover charge per person. Very few places have sufficient animal-free offerings. A fruit bowl is not animal-free. It’s fruit. So cook your dish at home and tag it along with the crowd and enjoy your time with family and friends. Get this done soon. Restaurants will welcome the added business and the patron pays for the table setting – five dollars per person. You don’t need a kitchen staff. The chefs of the world took too many liberties with the safety of patrons.
2- Restaurants are going out of business at an alarming rate. Many are still operating on ‘fumes’, and losing their shirts to the pandemic and the inflation that followed. Owners and operators can’t continue to sustain their losses and the governments can’t continue to reimburse restaurants throughout the world for their lack of business. It’s like paying farmers not to grow crops that aren’t needed. We can’t keep paying restaurants to stay open at low profit margins.
So what to do. Everybody likes a picnic. Since the food at most establishments is at risk of injuring an already fragile populace due to poor quality control, shut down the kitchens for food. Rent out tables. You still need servers to set the table and bring the water and napkins and beverages. Five dollars a head. Half price for children under twelve years old.
Convert kitchens not people. No cooking in the kitchen until the quality improves and they’re all animal-free by decree. It’s called BRING YOUR OWN FOOD.
Beyond your connection to your cause, know that my soul is wide open to your animal-free needs. Spill your guts out to me in your mind, one soul to another – a multitude of souls interconnecting.
Cry or laugh but DO NOT DESPAIR. It’s a vast universe. Although humans evolve slowly, change just as often comes quickly. Be there when it does – heart, mind, soul – raise your head or bow it, hug yourself and know that I’m hugging you back.
Keep marching on as you achieve one victory after another – like a string of beads threaded with the soul of life, unbreakable, unimpeachable, uncorruptible. That’s you. That’s why you were chosen to set the example – who better to do it?
You were specifically chosen to set the example and the pace through changing yourself into your own likeness. I love you, I love you, I love you. You’ve been given a priceless gift. Use it generously and wisely. You’re it.
Trust in your own personal God. Dictate the terms. Be fair – not like cutting the slaughter rate in half over a hundred years to appease the enslavers, torturers and slaughters.
Stalling doesn’t get you anywhere but nowhere.
Learn your own lessons and let others learn their own. You don’t need to tear people down and rebuild them in your design. They know what their lessons are; that’s their journey not yours. Setting a powerful, happy example is the best of activism.
Many animal rights activists get paid who eat animals. They’re not convincing, because they don’t live the life; instead they live the lie.
Converting people, like an addict needs to stay clean and sober, shouldn’t be the goal. You made them do it and they will resent it. Setting the powerful example produces change in you and everybody notices.
Know that on social media the animal-abusing industries are everywhere acting like someone they are not. Intelligence agencies in all major countries do the same thing – spy and manipulate, for the purpose of instilling doubt and fear into the populace.
1). They don’t want you to ever stop eating the animal meat that they claim gives you your power disguised in a multitude of nuances and strategies to knock you off kilter. Intelligence agencies from every major country do the same. No one in government positions anywhere on earth wants to give up the cash cows, cash lambs, cash pigs, cash chickens and on and on for any reason. That’s why they keep talking about measures to reduce the threats to all life on the planet, but then stall out. It’s not enough; they’re waiting too long; they don’t want to lose on their investments.
2). Even if animal meat/milk/egg etc. were determined by strict adherence to scientific procedures to be injurious to all who consume them, governments would still be telling you to keep at it, so they can keep enjoying the profits at your expense, and the expense of all those they slaughter.
3). As long as they’re spying anyway, give them something to remember. Impress them with your life, knowledge and commitment. Show them something worthwhile – something they can’t forget even if they tried. Let them see or hear a startling view – yours.
4). When you wake up to yourself and the torture that even the most hardened minds turn from, you already know that they know. You don’t have to convince them. If you can’t stop eating animals unless the world stops with you, then you’re not an activist or advocate.
5). Present your best most astute and humble-without-bleeding self.
You can do it. I know you can do it, because I do it and I’m no greater nor lesser than you.
I love you, I love you, I love you. When I die, I’ll still love you and be there working with you along with all the souls who want change without sacrifice – absent war.
I’m the Animal-Free Chef. I define me and my life. You define you and yours. That’s my power and your power, different but all essential.
I’ve been at this for fifty-one years since 1972 in one form or another. I know of what I speak. No one could have predicted the leaps and bounds of small successes turning into larger successes, seemingly without much effort expended.
Fast paced is what we need to look at and embrace. There will be a multitude of disappointments. Feel each one, the pain, the horror, knowing all along that it’s necessary that we enable ourselves to feel and appreciate the losses that propel us to greater achievements.
There’s no room for vindictiveness – it takes too much energy and time, and energy and time are our most precious commodities which cannot be wasted on getting people back. Engaging in such tactics slows up the entire mission to stop the terror in every farm, factory, slaughterhouse, in every home, school, religious gathering, in the workplace and entertainment venues.
6). Never forget where you came from. You were an enemy to the animals before you woke up to reality and decided to change it.
You just keep being who you are so when someone lost reaches for something beyond themselves, you’ll be there setting the example and letting them know that everything is going to be okay. You are the proof of it.
Leave the light on. Light up all your posts. If you didn’t get a response, since there’s no way to tell if someone saw it unless they liked it, then like it yourself. Quite possibly they were read without you knowing it. Don’t throw it in the trash. Light up a hundred of them on every Facebook account – all across the planet. Everyone on Facebook lights up their own posts. Light up your own posts and you will get the attention you want. It has to be a massive effort to achieve impact. And all you have to do is like one hundred of your own posts.
Pick a twenty-four hour period and send out the message along with THE ANIMAL-FREE CHEF MANIFESTO.
You can fight with whomever you choose, but doing so doesn’t satisfy long term. If you need to keep getting that fix to stay satisfied, then dump it as a strategy.
You make the choices for you. You met all the criteria and possess all the qualifications to succeed at what you do. You have the integrity, the knowledge, the courage, calm, confidence and compassion required in the amounts that suit you each individually.
7). The tenacity, ambition and unwavering commitment to succeed is written all over your soul. You already demonstrated that by the choices you made.
Remember to keep the lights on your posts with a like or whatever. Light up Facebook all at once, like the biggest wave on the planet.
After you read this, share it to your profile page or timeline.
Every vegan, animal-freer, plant-based, vegetarian, those considering it, those interested, just turn all those lights on. Make Facebook and the governments of the world know you’ve landed and we are the voices for those used and abused at the pleasure of presidents, kings, queens, rich, poor, every gender, ethnicity, age.
We all made a huge mistake and now we’re going to right that mistake by setting a perfect example of our best selves. Yes there is such a thing as perfection and it exists in the realm of animal-free by setting the example that prejudice, discrimination, enslavement, torture and slaughter are not viable options for surviving and thriving.
Did you ever think that there would be a totally vegan Burger King restaurant in our lifetime? Or a grocery store the size of Whole Foods completely animal-free?
We’re right in the middle of history in the making. Your calm through every crisis prior to these momentous occasions, your fortitude made it happen. Celebrate yourselves, individually and collectively, then get back to it!
It’s what you do best. Remember to talk to your personal God. Set the terms then adjust as needed. You spun the wheels in motion, now keep them moving forward by being the best example of loveliness and strength as you know you can be.
8). Use the word ‘SUFFER’ over and over again in all your writings. Every human identifies with that term unlike ‘sentient being’ with which nobody identifies.
THE ANIMAL-FREE CHEF MANIFESTO
You wrote it, through me through your example – and mine – combined.
Together the animals we revere and serve who deserve care not abuse and suffering, become one in spirit so large and influential that the world stood in awe.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your efforts to achieve change that could not, would not have happened without your courage, charm and example.
All of you who refused to consume animals and animal products are responsible for this continuing success.
The world is your stage and you’re on it. Show the world how to free those enslaved, tortured and destined for slaughter by the example you set. You can do it, I know you can. Why? Because I bore witness to it. You are the reason I never hang up.
Thank you for your devotion to a noble and just PEACE among humans and all species. The animals showed us the way, now we walk in their footsteps.
Light up the world.
Each human animal is as worthy as the animals who suffer at our hands, on our watch.
The culture and tradition of animal consumption and abuse will not continue unabated and there will be no PEACE until every slaughterhouse, animal farm, large and small is shuttered forever. We need to examine our perverse actions toward other animals and change the direction to an amicable and mutually respectful one.
9). BLOOD HOLOCAUST
We have the results of a holocaust in the meat department of every supermarket in the world.
We snuff out callously and viciously the lives of other creatures for our own pleasure and gratification.
And we’re untouched as we stroke the loins and marvel at the cut.
All my senses, with all that I learn, tell me it is wrong.
But how do I argue against years of blind, unquestioned tradition?
I have heard the screams. And felt the terror.
I invite you to do the same.
~ Chef Sharon Davies-Tight
PROMISES MADE FOR KEEPING
God grant me the strength to fight through argument those who terrorize me and others, no matter who they be.
God grant me discipline in my everyday life, so that every day I may accomplish a new task that requires that discipline.
God grant me courage to fight oppression, bombs and prejudice with the fire and love of your soft or sternly spoken words through my pen.
I will protest arrogance by winning for losing, with humility.
I will protest evil in every person’s heart, by mending that which another has broken.
I will protest hatred by loving those who hate me.
I will fight in small ways for rightness, because someone who fights big has few supporters.
I will no doubt be scorned and rejected for my efforts, but in the end, the scorn will have been worth the result.
I will be the stepping stone for others. And one day, they will become the stones upon which others step, in continuing the quest for peace through nonviolence and nonviolent response.
When my work on this earth is done, I will fight in a life beyond this life to accomplish in another dimension that which I was blocked from accomplishing in this one.
I have made a pact with a God whom others, in their ignorance, and through their thirst for domination through eating the blood, call the devil. But, I know that I am – today and everyday – my God.
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