Enewsletter
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Enewsletter • June 16, 2010 | |||||||||||||
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Notes from Vegan OutreachNew Opportunity!
Thanks to the amazing dedication and hard work of the team and the incredible generosity of our members, Team Vegan surpassed the initial $75,000 matching goal set up by John and Fany! Impressed by everyone’s commitment to creating fundamental, lasting change, three new donors have come forward to add to the matching pool, bringing the new total to $96,500! If you can, please click over to the team’s page and make a secure contribution – your donation will be doubled, dollar for dollar. With just a few keystrokes, you will help reach more people and change more lives!
PS – Last Minute Update!
The Great Vegan Doc, Michael Greger, MD, has just offered Volume 4 of his amazing nutrition DVDs to everyone who contributes $75 or more to a Team Vegan member (or the Team Vegan General Fund). This DVD isn’t even available to the public yet! So please click over to Team Vegan, or, if you prefer, please pull out your checkbook and write a tax-deductible contribution to: Vegan Outreach | PO Box 30865 | Tucson, AZ 85751 Double your dollars, learn the latest nutrition information, change the world!
From “Your Daily Dose of Vegan Outreach!” Blog
Excerpts from Do Your Choices Make a Difference? and Seeing the Change…and the Opportunity It can easily feel overwhelming to be just one person amongst hundreds of millions, but in a market economy where supply is driven by demand, our choices do create a signal – not just against animal products, but for cruelty-free options. But our example to others can be far more powerful than our signal to the market. It is vitally important that we make sure we aren’t just one person amongst millions – that we our doing our utmost to set the best, most attractive example possible, and providing the animals the most effective advocacy we can. As written here:
In the end, our lives will have the biggest impact and make the most difference if we focus our limited time and resources on how our example and advocacy can have the most positive influence on others. Super-leafleter Stewart passes along this observation:
Anyone who has been vegetarian for five years (let alone 20) can see not only how much more widespread meat-free eating is, but also how much more awareness there is about factory farms, etc. This change – from a society where meat eating was unquestioned by everyone except for a handful of isolated vegetarians, to where we are today – didn’t just happen. As Jack points out, veganism doesn’t spread itself! All the progress we see is because of the example and efforts of each of us. And where we are in five more years also depends on each of us. We should revel in the opportunity we have to change the world!
Notes from Our Members
Reached
nearly 1,000 students at Cal State San Bernadino and San
Bernadino Valley College today. People gleefully took a leaflet
– students and staff! Was thanked profusely
many times for being there. Talked to a girl
about starting a group at CSSB. One lady quit
eating chicken on the spot: “NO MORE!”
she exclaimed. She took a Guide
and an AML
for her daughter! 1,150
Even If You Like Meats + 30 Guides
+ 4 AML + 2 CVA
+ 45 Primal Strips (and a partridge in a pear
tree) = awesome day at Fresno City College!
My brain is still mush from the seemingly millions
of interactions I had today. In short, I think
it’s safe to say that many people’s eating habits
will be changing! At Auraria’s Denver campus,
I saw many, many people reading the brochures,
individually and in groups – that’s what
it’s all about. I had a lot of great conversations
with people who were open to our message and
I felt like I was able to help a few people
move towards a more compassionate diet. One
woman told me she had gotten a brochure in the
morning, but wasn’t fully convinced. Then she
added, “Those pictures are horrible. My
kids and I love animals; we’re really animal-lovers!”
and it was obvious the wheels of cognitive dissonance
were churning. She was excited to take a Guide
and thanked me wholeheartedly. A woman told
me she got a Compassionate Choices
from me last semester and the baby chick pictures
have been haunting her since then, but she is
afraid to give up meat because she might not
get enough protein. We had a nice long chat
during which I tried to quell her fears; she
seemed more resolved to go veg as she left.
I met a young guy who is trying to go veg, whose
girlfriend is trying to go vegan, and whose
grandma has been vegan for 50 years! When the
extended family gets together, his grandma insists
everyone eats vegan food.
The students
at Kankakee Community College really
read the booklets, and many showed surprise.
I had never personally met another vegetarian
in Illinois, but leafleting today, I got to
meet a vegetarian and two vegans. Really uplifting. A woman at the College of St.
Scholastica
told me she couldn’t look at the
pictures. I reminded her that problems generally
don’t go away because we don’t think about them.
She said she knew she should be vegetarian and
agreed to take a Guide. Great
day leafleting at the University of Scranton
(PA). The students at this Jesuit
school were very, very friendly. One student
told me about a relatively new vegan eatery,
Eden, just a few blocks down from campus. I
went there, saw it clearly listed as a vegan
restaurant and got a good meal. Two racks of
literature were in the eatery – one for
Why Vegan, one for the Guide to
Cruelty-Free Eating. Also many stickers
on the wall, including a Vegan Outreach one.
It’s great to see more and more vegan eateries
opening across the US – a sign of the
times that we are helping to bring about.
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