Joaquin Phoenix Oscar 2020 acceptance speech

Joaquin Phoenix boldly used his acceptance speech while accepting his first Oscar at the Academy Awards on FEB 9 2020, to talk about animal rights. specifically against the cruelty of the dairy industry.

The speech

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Hi. stop. hi.

God, I'm full of so much gratitude tight now. and i do not feel elevated above any of my fellow nominees, or anyone in this room; because we share the same love, the love of film. and this form of expression has given me the most extraordinary life. i don't know what i will be without it.

but i think the greatest gift that it's given me, and many of us in this room, is the opportunity to use our voice for the voiceless.

I've been thinking a lot about some of the distressing issues that we are facing collectively, and i think at times we feel, or we made to feel, that we champion different causes. but for me, i see commonality.

i think, whether we're talking gender-inequality, or racism, or queer-rights, or indigenous-rights, or animal-rights; we are talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about a fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, or one species has the right to dominate, control and use and exploit another with impunity.

applause

I think that we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world, and many of us, what we’re guilty of is an egocentric worldview, the belief that we’re the center of the universe, We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources, We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. And then we take her milk, that’s intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. and i think we fear the idea of personal change, because we think that we have to sacrifice something, to give something up. but human-beings at our best, are so inventive and creative and ingenious; and i think that when we use love and compassion, as our guiding principles, we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and to the environment.

applause

now, I've been a...

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