Not actually, but I have before and it's an exhilarating experience. You should try it.
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SAVE THE WHALE, pt. DEUX
Dolphins!
you love them!
but, did you know that in a single town
in Japan 23,000 are killed each year?
HELP SAVE THEM
yes, you can help!
We Can Do It Together!
Educate Yourself.
Watch The Cove.
Go on, google it.
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I'm going to Sea World on Sunday and will attempt to hand out fliers with the above words on it to the good-intentioned visitors of that godforsaken place. I don't know how long I'll last, but I'll try.
I'm doing it all because I watched the documentary The Cove.
It was hard to watch but instilled in me a desire to do something about the horrible massacre of dolphins going on in places like Japan. Not only are around 23,000 being killed each year and either sold to the Japanese people (disguised as whale meat because people won't buy dolphin meat because it contains toxic levels of mercury), or fed in school lunches to thier children (thankfully in the town of Taiji, this has stopped), but the ones who aren't killed are hand-picked, bought for over $100,000 and sent to Sea World and the like around the world to live a miserable life in captivity. Sea World and other dolphinariums have gone to great lengths to keep this unknown, because if their patron animal lovers knew, they probably wouldn't support them.
So this is where I'm starting, passing out posters. It may not seem to be much but perhaps if my efforts are successful in only one case, that person may go on to be as vehement about this issue as I am and pass it on to others.
That reminds me:
Watching the documentary caused me to reflect on the activism of those in my generation, people born from roughly 1978-1990, as well as those who came before us, like our hippie parents.
The hero of The Cove is Richard O'Barry, one of the first well-known dolphin trainers in the world. He's an ex-hippie, or in reality, still a hippie, referring to the one's who were politically active and accomplished great feats of change throughout thier era, and he's my fuckin' hero. Today, it seems as though most of those who are still fighting for a cause are the hippies. Back then, they believed that they could "change shit, man", and change shit they certainly did.
Has the majority of my generation, the young adults being handed the torch, copped out by having the attitude, "someone else is taking care of it"? Our blasé attitude about life and society, our abnormally severe worship of celebrities, fashion, and young and beautiful people, our "shoe-gaze" and "emo" music, our alternate-reality role-playing computer games, our cyber-relationships, our lack of community, our lack of familial bond, our belief that when we grow up we're all going to become celebrities and rockstars -- all indicitive of a generation of low self-esteem.
As good-intentioned as we might be, there is certainly trouble if we don't start getting angry about shit again. When I told a couple of my friends about my trip to Sea World, I got a slingshot of negativity. "You won't last a minute", or "what's the point? People aren't going to listen to you". Yeah, maybe most of them won't, but maybe one person will. What's better? Doing nothing? I disagree.
It's like Ric O'Barry says in the movie,
"if we can't stop this, what can we stop?".
