News
Page 8
Street Roots • May 26-June 1,2017
Street Roots • May 26-June 1, 2017
News
Page 9
‘Hie
animals
cant
wait’
How one Portland
woman has dedicated
her life to saving
animals from slaughter
“Once I learned the
truth o f the
multibillion dollar
meat and dairy
industry, I couldn’t
keep eating animals
and live with myself.’’
- Dani Rukin
BY ELIZABETH BUELOW
packages were once living beings - before
they get here, they’ve been imprisoned,
mutilated and violently killed.” Her voice
ani Rukin’s legs are a little shaky as
never breaks; her resolve seems to gain
she approaches the front doors of a
momentum with each word she speaks.
Safeway in Southeast Portland. She
Eventually, a manager approaches - an
glances down at the sign in her hand - a
apologetic blonde woman who encourages
picture of a bloated pig carcass covered in
Rukin to stay and shop, but asserts she
mud, captioned: “It’s Not Food, It’s Violence”
cannot continue to record video. Rukin will
- to draw on the strength of her purpose.
later reveal that a manager always shows up
She cuts through the crowded supermarket
“within five minutes, usually faster.” The
until she arrives in the refrigerated meat
meeting ends politely enough, but on Rukin’s
section, filled with the neatly packaged
way out, she holds her sign up defiantly,
product that Rukin is there to stand against
shouting “It’s not meat, it’s violence,” to the
She positions herself in the middle, blocking
cans lined along an empty aisle. As she
a small section, facing outward and begins to
departs through the sliding doors, people can
speak. Her voice is strong and she projects;
be heard clapping in the background.
only if you’re listening carefully can you hear
This is not the first time Rukin has done
the slight waver, the tiny tremor of fear. She
what is referred to as a “supermarket
speaks in clear sentences, with no script,
speakout” - she’s become a bit of a seasoned
beginning with: “A year ago, I stopped eating
expert, but said that each time, “I’m scared,
animals. I’m just here to share my
very scared. But I say screw the fear and do it
experience.” A fellow activist stands by,
anyway. The animals can’t wait. Compared to
recording the whole thing with an iPhone.
what they go through, I can experience a
She goes on for a solid three minutes.
little discomfort and fear.”
People pass by with a curious ear but mostly
Nothing too bad happened this time, but in
ignore her. One man approaches with a smirk
the past, Rukin has experienced the range
and reaches for the ribeyes that she stands in
you’d expect to find in a grocery store - the
front of. A voice comes on the loudspeaker
ones who troll her by calling her a “he;” the
paging a manager to the meat section. Still,
ones who say “mmm, bacon,” the ones who
Rukin continues. “Every one of these
yell and make fun. “One guy got aggressive
STAFF W R IT E R
D
P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F D A N I R U K IN
Rukin doing street activism with the international animal rights organization,
Anonymous for the Voiceless.
one time in the parking lot and tried to take
my phone,” she recalled. But there are the
good ones too, the ones who call her a hero
and give her a discreet thumbs up. Rukin
knows she probably won’t convert anyone to
quit meat on the spot; her purpose is to use
the meat section as a platform to speak
against the horrors of animal agriculture, and
to let shoppers know that there are
alternatives to meat in their grocery stores.
“Everyone is asleep,” she claimed. “I want
to wake them up, to disrupt.”
Rukin is a disrupter, and she has joined
forces with nonviolent animal rights activists
in Portland and around the country to shed
light on an issue that, in her opinion, people
are blind to.
“People don’t make the connection,” she
said. “They can eat a steak while petting their
dog.” At 56 years old, she looks 10 years
younger, with a short haircut and chirpy,
melodic voice. She has energy like a laser
beam trying to shoot right through you. Her
vegan journey began a year and a half ago,
with an imprisoned elephant named Kavaan.
In her mission to free this lonely elephant in
Pakistan, she began to “make the
connection.”
That connection - the word she most
frequently uses when describing her activism
- is now the thing that drives Rukin’s life.
Rukin get’s cozy
with some o f the
residents at Farm
Sanctuary, a
rescue, education,
and advocacy
center for animals
in Los Angeles.
PH O TO COURTESY OF
D A N I R U K IN
“It’s this realization of something deep
down that you’ve always known - that
animals are sentient beings who want to
live, and we have been conditioned with
propaganda to think the way we treat
them is normal and acceptable. It isn’t. If
people knew how these defenseless
beings were treated. Paul McCartney said,
‘If slaughterhouses had glass walls,
everyone would be a vegetarian.’”
The world, it seems, is beginning to
arrive organically to this message, albeit
slowly and selectively. Animal rights
causes spring up and quickly earn the ire
of the public, from SeaWorld’s downward
spiral to the cancellation of the Ringling
Brothers centuries-old circus and the
killing of a beloved lion, Cecil, by an
American dentist in Africa. The modern
era has produced groundbreaking
documentaries and journalism that propel
campaigns and petitions to end the
suffering of (some) animals (see
“Blackfish” or “The Cove”).
Additionally, the relatively new
realization that animal agriculture is a
leading cause of climate change is
creating a coalition of activists to stand up
to animal exploitation (You can read more
online about “Cowspiracy”). Indeed,
environmental groups have begun adding
meat reduction to their platforms in an
effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions,
albeit with caution. When Rukin and other
animal rights activists set up at the March
for Science on Earth Day, people were
angry, feeling as if their message was
being coopted. “The minute they saw our
signs, they’d look away. Some of them
even yelled at us for hijacking their
mission,” she said with an astonished
laugh. “You can’t call yourself an
environmentalist and eat animals.”
Even with the realization that meat
consumption is harmful to the
environment and, obviously, to animals,
the truth is a tough pill to swallow in a
society that has been reared in a
carnivorous culture.
Bala Seshasayee, an engineer in
Portland and an animal rights activist,
puts it another way: “It’s so widespread
that we don’t even think about it. It’s hard
to come to terms with the fact that you’re
contributing to cruelty.”
He goes on: “Everyone wants to think
of themselves as a good person - we are
the hero in the movie in dur heads. When
we hear information that makes us the
villain, it’s easier to dismiss it and keep
watching the movie.”
Seshasayee and Rukin work the circuit
in Portland to disrupt, to change peoples’
perceptions of eating animals. They do
outreach events, pass out leaflets, talk to
people, write “Go Vegan” in chalk on the
sidewalks. The going is not always easy.
“People in my life just dropped and
dropped. Good friends stopped talking to
me, avoided me, unfollowed me or
unfriended me on Facebook, saying ‘I love
animals, I just can’t look at this,’” Dani
recounts. “Whereas, to me, I was saying
that I love animals so I must look at this.
Therein lies the difference.”
Her lightbulb moment, her moment of
connection, has led her around the
country, to the home of musician and
vegan Moby in California, to animal rights
conventions and grocery stores along the
way. She shares all her activism, including
vegan recipes, on her Facebook page, and
it’s easy to see why people may have
unfollowed her. Her posts are often
provocative and sometimes graphic. Some
are undercover videos of factory farms,
others are from so-called Animal Saves,
wherein activists stand outside a
slaughterhouse to bear witness to the
pigs and cows that are on their way to
certain death. They give the animals
water and kindness, as well as shoot
extensive, gut-wrenching video footage.
Rukin’s captions, once she uploads the
videos to her Facebook page, usually say
something along the lines of: “If you can’t
look at this, how can you eat it?”
Recently, Rukin and fellow protestors
took their activism to the streets of local
Portland restaurants on Valentine’s Day,
when she knew couples would be enjoying
their romantic dinners. While standing
outside the famous Beast Restaurant off
Northeast Killingsworth Street. Rukin and
her group of renegades were introduced
to head chef Naomi Pomeroy when she
went out to address them. Their
discussion was polite, as always, Pomeroy
even posted a message of thanks on
Rukin’s Facebook page the following day,
promising to consider some alternatives.
“She was truly engaged and cared about
our right to speak out,” Rukin said of
Pomeroy. That is the kind of civil
discourse Rukin is after - waking people
up, forcing them to examine the truth
behind what they eat. Once they begin to
see, she said, “It’s like dominos falling.”
As more people are turning toward
veganism for the first time, usually with a
skeptical eye, Rukin will be there. This is
the fight of her life.
“It wasn’t enough for me to not eat
them - I am a person who stands up for
what’s right, for social justice. Not eating
animals is a matter of justice. Oppression
is oppression.”