Imagine Peace: It Starts on Your Plate

By Published On: 22 September 2014Last Updated: 17 January 2017

We will never live in peace as long as animals, human and non-human, are exploited. Lennon, and millions like him, may be dreamers, but in order for us to join him and for the world to be as one, it's imperative that we accept this and work to change it.

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Imagine Peace: It Starts on Your Plate

By Daria Zeoli, Editorialist

S eptember 21 marked the 30th Annual International Day of Peace. Yoko Ono contributed John Lennon’s “Imagine” to be played on this day. If you’ve read my bio here on YDV, you’ve probably deduced that I’m a John Lennon fan. You may have even seen me at Strawberry Fields over the years, congregating with other people in the only way that makes me feel remotely comfortable; coming together for music.

I cannot hear the word “peace” these days without thinking that it begins on the plate. It’s a quote that appears on the front of a shirt I have from Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, and in the nearly five years that I’ve been vegan, it’s been a truth that I find hard to believe never occurred to me before.

“Imagine all the people, living life in peace.” What chance at peace do we have when violence and exploitation are so ingrained in who we are?

Let me give you an example. On Sunday, I posted to my Facebook page. I wanted to include a link to the “Imagine” video. When I clicked over to YouTube, an ad played prior to the song: an ad for beer, entitled “The Butcher.” A knife being sharpened. A slab of meat. Then a table full of dead body parts… animal body parts. I clicked off after that, thinking of the irony of the situation.

If you’ve been reading Ad Nauseam, our series on animal exploitation in commercials and other advertisements, you know that I think this type of thing is common and that we’ve become desensitized to it as a society. But it was a real eye-opener to see the everyday violence that runs rampant everywhere else preceding one of John Lennon’s most well-known songs, the one his widow donated for Peace Day.

We will never live in peace as long as animals, human and non-human, are exploited. Lennon, and millions like him, may be dreamers, but in order for us to join him and for the world to be as one, it’s imperative that we accept this and work to change it.

Photo credit: Jen Montgomery via Flickr

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HELLO! I'm KD Angle-Traegner.

Writer, activist, and founder of Four Urban Paws Sanctuary. I’m on a mission to help people live a vegan life. Read more about KD…

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