Supporting the TEN

Martin, Sabina, Leo, Elmar, Kevin, Felix, Jan, Christoph, Chris and Jürgen

About the Ten Read more here...(Pictures, Biogs, statements and letters from the detainees)

Writing to the Ten Read more here...(Info on emails, letters, sample text etc)

Additional Ideas
Have a group of your friends sign a message together for the Ten
The next time you are going to be seeing a group of animal welfare worker friends, take ten greeting cards, ten postcards or ten A4 sheets of paper along. Put a friendly message at the top of each and/or a cheerful drawing and invite those present to sign.

Put the signed letters/cards in envelopes. Write the name of the detainee in pencil on the outside of each envelope, your name and address on the back and send the lot in a larger envelope to the Austrian Vegan Society for forwarding (see address here).


Collect some pro-animal rights cartoons
Photocopy them and mail them off to the detainees along with your cards and/or letters: see Vegan Society address here
N.B. Please don’t send other things like food, CDs, books, or T-shirts – the prisoners are only allowed to receive letters, that is written pieces of paper.


Write an “open letter” to the detainees
E-mail it to info[at]vegan.at (replace [at] with @) for forwarding to them and then send a copy to your local or national media with a cover letter explaining the context. Post it also on any websites you can.


Print out a black-and-white or colour A4-sized sign It could say something like

SOLIDARITÄT
Martin, Sabina, Leo, Elmar, Kevin, Felix, Jan, Christoph, Chris und Jürgen:
IHR SEID NICHT ALLEIN!
You are not alone!

Sign your name(s) in big coloured letters at the bottom or all around the central words. Photocopy it or print it out ten times and mail it off to the Vegan Society (address here) in one big envelope. (You can use a copy as a small poster at a solidarity demonstration.)

For a ready-to-print-out copy of this A4 solidarity sign (in a choice of German, English, French and Spanish), click here.
For a ready-to-print-out copy of a simple “hearts” sign, click here.


Send a ‘solidarity photo’ of yourself
Hold up in front of you one of the two the A4-sized signs described above and have someone photograph you close up. Print the photo out on A4 paper ten times (if the sign turns out legibly) with a message under it and mail it off to the detainees via the Vegan Society (see address here). Send a copy to us as well, and we'll put it up on the website!
For a sample photo, click here.

Send a photo of a solidarity demonstration
Print out ten times on A4 paper a photo of a solidarity demonstration in which you have participated/porganised, first inserting a short description of your demo –when, where, what. Mail it to the detainees c/o the Vegan Society, Vegane Gesellschaft Österreich, Waidhausen Strasse 13/1, 1140 Vienna, Austria.
For a sample, click here. For demos taking place all over the world see here


Invite your friends to write to the Ten
Explain the situation to your friends and invite them to write messages of support.
For a suitable letter, click here.
If your friends are not fluent in English or German and you fear that they will therefore hesitate to write to the Ten, prepare a basic message for them in English or German, with a translation, and then give them a choice of additional sentences to insert.
N.B. For those who respond to your call and let you know they have done so, take the time to thank them yourself and also to draw their attention to this message of thanks from Austria:
http://www.vgt.at/presse/news/2008/news20080710_1_en.php


Send reports to the Ten
Identify someone within your own group to write informal reports on what you are doing to support the Ten and mail the reports to them along with your messages of moral support and comfort. This will surely be a source of great encouragement for them. Remember, though: write nothing that could hurt you or our ten friends.


Invite your association to write a letter of support
Write a message of moral support under the letterhead of an organisation in which you are active (with your president’s or coordinator’s permission, of course) and then collect signatures from the members by e-mail.
Either print it out ten times and send it to the detainees by post c/o the Vegan Society of Austria or e-mail just one copy for the Vegan Society to print out ten times.

If you think of any additional ways to express moral support for our ten friends, please write to Diana at diana.dc[at]wanadoo.fr with copy to Buteo at buteoups[at]yahoo.fr (replace [at] with @)

If you would like to share any posters you make, we would be delighted to be able to make them available too.

Thanks for caring!