Tens of thousands of commuters were made late to work this morning by a well-planned protest by vegans wishing to raise awareness for agricultural practices within Australia.
Hundreds of protesters took over the crossroads outside Flinders station next to Federation Square effectively blocking all trams and traffic heading into or out of the city. More than 11 tram lines were disrupted by the protest.
#BREAKING Vegan protestors have brought the Flinders Street and Swanston Street intersection to a standstill in Melbourne.#AusNews #veganhttps://t.co/rPVfPFb5Lc
— 7News Yahoo7 (@Y7News) April 7, 2019
Several protesters chained themselves to each other and to vehicles onto which messaging was displayed.
Hundreds down to a small group at vegan protest on Flinders Street in Melbourne @SBSNews pic.twitter.com/lg6seVVwI2
— Abby Dinham (@abbydinham) April 8, 2019
After 3 hours of peaceful protest, police removed all of the protesters and normal traffic has since been restored.
Reactions to the protest by the Melbourne community have been mainly negative.
Could the vegans please get organised and hire a proper PR firm to promote their cause? Surely there are more effective strategies to get people on side than plugging up Flinders Street during peak hour?
— Alice Clarke (@Alicedkc) April 7, 2019
Flinders Street protesters do you really think you’ve helped? Look at the majority of the comments. It doesn’t seem like you’ve helped, you’ve pissed off a lot of people. You could have all just made a shitload of vegan cupcakes and handed them out instead.
— Rodney Todd (@Rodney_Todd) April 8, 2019
All this vegan protest at Swanston and Flinders Street this morning is doing is making me want to have an egg and bacon roll more for lunch. pic.twitter.com/lB8c0ggR86
— Peter Phoebe (@EatDrinkCricket) April 7, 2019
Several signs at the protest promoted a documentary released in 2018 called Dominion. Here is the trailer for the documentary:
You can watch the full documentary here: https://www.dominionmovement.com/
