A comfort zone is something that allows someone to avoid seeing or hearing anything unpleasant. Staying in your comfort zone means not doing anything to stop disgustingly sad and horrific things from being done to others—and then nothing changes. Yet we all know that the disgustingly sad and horrific things being done to our fellow animals must be stopped. So what can we do?
Watch the video below to learn why always staying in your comfort zone harms animals:
Is going to a protest comfortable? Try it, and you’ll find it’s no big deal.
Is going into a lab with a camera hidden under your coat comfortable? Hardly!
Is going to jail because you rescued an animal from a factory farm comfortable? No.
Were ACT UP members comfortable lying in front of traffic to wake people up about the AIDS crisis? Was Rosa Parks comfortable on that bus? No!
So where does PETA stand on comfort zones?
All social movements have a responsibility to shake people out of their comfort zones.
—Ingrid Newkirk, PETA President
As animal defenders, if we’re too uncomfortable to shake ourselves and others out of our comfort zones, we’re allowing horrible things to happen to millions of individuals, each one like you and me:
- Some will be kicked and prodded into a slaughterhouse, where they’ll endure hideously frightening and painful deaths.
- Others will be skinned alive and made into a purse.
- Babies will be torn away from their frantic mothers.
- Electrodes will be implanted in the brains of some.
PETA friend Wayne Hsiung of Direct Action Everywhere has some wise words for everyone who wants to end violent oppression:
What’s required is to maximize the best part of us—call it the light in our hearts: our desire to give aid to the afflicted.
—Wayne Hsiung, Cofounder of Direct Action Everywhere
Activist Lauren Gazzola adds this:
The only way to de-normalize violence is to normalize a challenge to it.
—Lauren Gazzola, animal rights activist
PETA couldn’t agree more.
Animals Need Your Help
Let’s find a million ways to challenge violence and end speciesism—let’s get uncomfortable, and let’s get going!
