The time has finally come. It’s been two years since I was charged with eight felony charges for rescuing animals from criminal animal abuse. And towards the end of this month, we will be going to our preliminary hearing.
As I prepare to go to court, I am thinking about this perpetual system of violence and abuse which allows animals to be commodified and exploited in the most brutal and unimaginable ways. And I want to expose the enemy which permits this degradation, objectification, and brutalization of innocent life to continue.
This enemy is a paradigm and an ideology. This enemy is the illusion of separation. An illusion that allows us to see nonhuman animals as ‘others’ and systemically colonize their lands, their bodies, and their habitats for the profit of greedy corporations.
This illusion is so powerful that it has invisibly shaped modern life while going unquestioned. We live lives that are so disconnected from nature, from animals, from each other, and from ourselves that we forget a simple and undeniable truth: interconnectedness in us is all we have.
Activist and author, Vandana Shiva says, “Separation is violence and an illusion. The rule of the 1% is based on the illusion of separation from the earth and from society. It is an illusion, a construct, an assumption built by the powerful, the dominant, to colonize, conquer, exploit, divide, and rule over other beings and other humans. Separation is violence.”
So let’s shatter this illusion. We can do so by bringing to light the truth which cannot be separated from our realities. The truth is that we need to fight for the interconnectedness of all life.
Whether it’s from the walls of a jail cell or on the streets, the powers cannot take this away from us. They may try to separate us by threats of throwing us in prison but even then, they will not succeed.
They cannot separate me from the animals they brutalize, I am an animal. We are all animals.
They can isolate us and throw us in prison, but they cannot separate us from those of us who are fighting for a better world. We are connected through invisible strings of justice and liberation that bind us beyond this physical realm.
They cannot separate us from the universe, we are the universe. Within us are everything and everyone. But within us is the conviction and power of truth which is the shard to shatter this deceptive illusion of separation.
Priya Sawhney