Enewsletter
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Enewsletter • December 23, 2009 | ||||||||||||||
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This
donation is to acknowledge the
person who passed out leaflets on the Temple
University campus in the summer of 2008. I was
inspired to start eating vegan then, a choice
I feel good about every day. Here
is my donation to the matching.
It really is basic: The more people who receive
a booklet, the more lives are saved.
The Facts Speak for Themselves: You Are Changing the World!
The past few months have seen a lot of great news! Vegan Outreach recently distributed our 11 millionth booklet! And everywhere, people are talking about factory farming, the downsides of meat, and the benefits of vegetarianism. From new ballot initiatives and legislation, to Meatless Mondays in schools, to investigations of brutality and exposés on E. coli, to Time’s cover story “The Real Cost of Cheap Food,” more and more people are considering their food choices. The effects are incredible: a new poll indicates more than a million new vegetarians a year! As Vegan Outreach’s Adopt a College leafleting campaign continues to reach thousands and thousands of new people every single week, change is growing! In their latest poll of 100,000 college students, Aramark (a major food service company) found that fully 30 percent of students said that it was “very important” to them to have vegetarian food options on campus. This is up four points in just two years! The more people know, the more people choose veg! Since agribusiness won’t bring the public to their factory farms and slaughterhouses, we’ll keep bringing the truth to the public! Your donation will fund immediate action for the animals by helping us continue to provide new people with persuasive reasons for making compassionate choices. So far, hundreds and hundreds of dedicated individuals have contributed more than $70,000 towards the matching challenge. But we need your help today to put the entire $180,000 to work for the animals! You can use a credit card to make a secure donation online, or send a check or money order to:
Vegan Outreach | POB 30865 | Tucson, AZ 85751 Please be a part of the progress: make the gift that keeps on giving – you’ll be glad you did! For the animals, P.S. Your contribution today is critical, and will directly determine how many new people are reached – and how many new vegetarians there are – in 2010. Please take the opportunity to be a part of this efficient, effective, focused outreach and have your donation doubled, dollar for dollar, today! Thank you so much!
Notes from Our MembersThank
you for handing me this booklet –
it has opened my eyes. As I was reading it,
I decided that I want to become a vegan. I see
that there is a wide variety of vegan foods
that I did not know about. Keep doing what you are doing and opening
the eyes of people about what is happening to these animals.
Lots
of good interactions today at
the University of Nebraska – Lincoln.
After having read the booklet, one guy commented,
“There’s some disturbing (stuff) in there.”
One girl stopped to tell me that the booklet
had inspired her to go back to being vegan.
One girl said, “Oh yay, you guys are here
again!” She said she hardly ate any meat,
but was worried about protein. I gave her some
advice and a Guide
for nutrition info. She left saying, “Keep
showing people what’s going on.” Positive
responses at Lehman College, including,
“Wow, this is really important. It’s so
messed up because the animals can’t speak up
for themselves.” The
Revolve Tour (a Christian event
aimed at teenage girls) was, once again, awesome
to leaflet. I targeted the young people I came
across, but one of the women I accidentally
leafleted came over to me a few minutes later
(with her daughter) and said, “This is
evil, evil, evil!!” I was worried she was
mad at me for distributing veg info, but she
actually wanted to know where to shop. The booklet,
she said, made her realize why she shouldn’t
be eating meat. We talked for a little while
and I gave her a Guide
and a local veg dining guide.
At Cal
Poly Pomona, one girl said we
should just try to change the laws. “But
think about how many more vegetarians there
are today than just 10 years ago,” I told
her. I think we are still a civilization in
its infancy and the dark ages are only now starting
to come to an end. Equal access to things like
education and health care are only barely becoming
realities, for women, for minorities, and for
the poor. And we still send great armies to
kill “enemies” in faraway places,
and they us. And as far as our treatment of
animals is concerned, the word horrific does
it no justice. But, in time, we will overcome. In addition
to leafleting the Thanksgiving
Day parade with Casey (Constable), I leafleted
at the annual Thanksgiving Feast downtown, where
I overheard a girl telling her friends that
she got a Why Vegan? at this same event
last year, and that it caused her to go vegetarian. Rebekah
(Sinclair) and I heard some good
comments at CSU Northridge, including one fellow
who said, “I know this is going to make
me think twice about eating turkey this week.”
Because I was off to the side, I could hear
people’s comments after they received leaflets
from Rebekah. I heard one student ask her friend
why she was a vegetarian and I was reminded
that leaflets can get conversations started
among people, extending their impact and providing
a stage for veg-friendlies to talk to their
friends about their own transformation and journey.
Spoke
to a student who read the Compassionate
Choices booklet during lunch and said she
ordered the Guide and will be going
vegan. Another person also said he is going
vegan. He couldn’t believe how horrific they
treat the pigs here in NC. I confess
I was nervous today because Wichita
State is smack in the middle of several small
farming towns. I feared James (Brennaman) and
I would have poor reception. In reality it was
the opposite. I’ve never had such good response!
I talked to a group of students who were preparing
a presentation on oppression for a sociology
class. They took a stack of pamphlets because
they were including animal cruelty. Then towards
the end of our day, a couple of students filmed
us. They did a short interview with James about
what we were doing for their campus news station.
Five productive class changes at
De Anza College. Some good quotes: I had
been woefully inadequate as an
advocate for the last few years because I feel
so much grief for the animals. Six months ago
I decided to work through my feelings. I typed
a list of some of your quotes from your
articles, and reading it is how
I start each day. You not only save animals,
you save advocates too. Thanking you feels inadequate.
You are doing the best thing possible for animals.
Your weekly newsletter inspires me. Thanks for
all you do. Even
after doing this work for years,
I’m still continually overwhelmed (in a good
way) by the great sense of urgency and elation
that comes from doing this, even if it’s for
three hours at a low-populated school on a Friday
afternoon. It only takes one interaction to
create the next Joe
Espinosa or Brian
Grupe. Each day and each leaflet counts!
What an awesome opportunity we all have to push
the ball forward for such an important cause.
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