Daryl Hannah’s Encouraging Words and more from 2014 VegFest (video)
(Crystal A. Proxmire, April 14, 2014)
Video #1 – oc115.com exclusive interview and segment of presentation:
Video #2 – full presentation
When Daryl Hannah spoke at VegMichigan’s VegFest in Novi on April 13, she did not stand at a podium and lecture the crowd about what they should or should not do. Instead the prolific actress agreed to do a question and answer session with VegMichigan President Paul Krause, taking a more casual and sincere approach to answering questions about her decision not to eat animals as well as the many other causes that she stands up for.
The theme was not about what she had done, but about inspiring others.
“Even though speaking in front of people is not in my nature, I’m very shy, like dorkily awkward, I feel that there’s something more important than my butterflies in my stomach or the thought that I making a fool of myself,” Hannah said. “There are more important things especially in these times of crisis we all need to rise above and elevate our better selves, and get out there and speak out for what ever moves us. Whatever we are passionate and compassionate about.
“Everybody has a unique gift that only they connect to and share with the world. And it’s incumbent upon us all to do that. To reach down and think about what it is that moves us, that we specifically are connected to, What talents we have to bring out and to share them in order to motivate your neighbors, your relatives, your friends, your community, whoever you can motivate to make this world a better place.”
Hannah recalled an experience compelled her to be vegetarian. She had been in a parking lot of a restaurant as a young girl. “I notice this Mack truck full of baby calves and they were just so cute, and I remember this one that I completely bonded with. I was just kissing it and she was kissing me and I just fell in love,” she said. “the truck driver came out, and I’m like eleven years old right, so I’m like ‘excuse me Sir, what is this one’s name?” And he goes ‘Veal. Tomorrow morning at seven.’
‘That really was the motivating force. At that point I didn’t even decide actually, it was that I lost the ability to disassociate the food on my plate from the creature it had been.”
Hannah shunned the word ‘activist” because it implied someone outside of the norm, when in fact anyone with a concern should stand up, simply as a human being.
One problem Hannah sees in normalizing ‘activist” experiences is the corporatization of the media and politics. She decried the recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations unlimited financial influence in elections. “We no longer live in a democracy,” she said. “We live in corporatetocracy.”
In an exclusive interview after the presentation, Hannah talked about the need for people to get together and to share information.
“We can get information by sharing it with each other now we have so many tool at our disposal about sharing information we’ve never had before. Of course all the social media and Internet. But I also think human beings, eyeballs to eyeballs, is the best way. And experience too. Like take people, bring them out to your community garden, bring them out to participate in an action of some sort so that people can get engaged because you learn more from that experience than you do from a lot of jibber jabber.”
VegFest itself packed the Suburban Collection Expo Center, with thousands of people checking out vegetarian and vegan products from local vendors. Speakers included Hannah, former Detroit Piston John Salley and local health guru Dr. Joel Kahn. Plus there were plenty of recipe demos, fun activities for the kids, and a chance for people to talk to experts in nutrition and animal-free diets.
Learn more at http://vegmichigan.org.