Enewsletter
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Enewsletter • January 23, 2013 | ||||||||||||||||
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Notes from Vegan Outreach
Clubs, Soy, and the Choice We FaceExcerpt: Nearly 20 years ago, Jack summed it up well: “We want a vegan world, not a vegan club.” If a vegan world really is our goal, we can’t spend our time talking back and forth with other vegans about how great we are or how amazing veganism is. Rather, we have to convince more and more meat eaters to change their diet. Although many vegans are highly motivated to change their diet for their health, care deeply about the environment, and try to avoid any connection to animal suffering in their consumer spending, this is not the case for the vast majority of nonvegans. Most people choose what is familiar, convenient, cheap, and tasty. Modern animal agribusiness doesn’t care about a handful of whole-food locavore hard-core vegans – this isn’t the future for the masses. What is a threat to entrenched interests are psychologically informed campaigns that accept human nature as it is and work within our current system; e.g., meat reduction and cruelty-free foods that are familiar, convenient, cheap, and tasty.
From “Your Daily Dose of Vegan Outreach!” & Jack Norris RD Blogs
Recipe of the WeekWhen John-O was visiting the VO office, we polished off a batch of these chocolate chip cookies. Please submit your nominees for product of the week via this page; previous entries here.
Notes from Our Members
This was our second year leafleting the MLK
parade, and it was fantastic once again! We
reached nearly 1,600 people. There were quite
a few good questions and conversations, but
the highlight was when Brittany met Lisa and
Sam [right], who have just gone vegetarian – they couldn’t
support the system of animal abuse any longer!
They helped leaflet, and Robb is going to follow
up with them about getting some vegetarian events
going in their neighborhood! Great outreach at the San Luis Obispo farmers’
market. It’s great to see vegans, vegan wannabes
and veg-curious folks coming out of the woodwork.
Seems like it’s more common every time we’re
out there. Hooray for that! Record-breaking day of outreach at the University of Nevada, Reno, thanks to all the great volunteers who came to help out! Anita coordinated the day’s leafleting, and my awesome host Susan made her leafleting debut. Together with Lari and Aquila, we reached more than 2,200 students! Plenty of great interactions, and we totally saturated the campus!
After my presentation at Santa Monica College, I was hugged, hand-shaked, thanked, high-fived,
and informed by at least 3 people that they were inspired
to change. Was stopped later on campus by 2
young women who are so grateful and inspired
cuz of the talk – they’re taking the veg plunge! Good day at Louisiana State. One woman came
back to say she’d probably go veg. I met other
vegetarians and many others against factory
farming. It’s great to see the excitement when
a fellow vegetarian sees us doing outreach on
campus.
Able to quickly reach 200 students at Oakland
Community College. The crowd was very receptive,
and Don and I had conversations with students who were
vegan, in the process of becoming vegetarian,
or very excited about learning the issues and
helping the animals. Despite the rain, Troy, Gena, Pauline, Livia, Carolyn, and I
had a good night. One woman stopped to tell me that her son had gotten
a booklet a little while ago and now they were
both on their way to going veg. Another woman
got a booklet from Pauline and ended up blogging
about it later in the evening. An amazing day at Harper College – Autumn, Belinda, Chris, Janna, Mark, Mikael,
Nico, Troy, and I handed out 1,188 Compassionate Choices
as well as 223 Guides! One young man sat down
on a bench across from us with his head in his
hands for a while. Many students said they planned
to change their diets and wanted more information
on how to do so. Several students also expressed
an interest in volunteering. Great interactions at Richard Stockton College. For example, had a long conversation with a
philosophy major who used to be veg but now
was not. We quickly found some common ground
and he came around. One professor showed me
the booklet while walking past again, and said
she was going to talk to her class about this.
Met numerous vegans, including a professor,
and told them about VO.
Had a great day with Tommasina [Miller, above] at Lewis & Clark College, the University of Portland, and Portland Community College. PCC was the end of the day on a Friday, but in the 73 booklets we handed out, we met more than 10 vegans!
Nettie, Cobie,
and I reached 2,600 students at Oregon State
– and Nettie set a personal record! Good conversations,
including one student telling Cobie that after
looking over the booklet, he wanted to give
being veg a try.
Had other great interactions,
including a guy who walked by and told me, “Yeah,
I got one. I’m probably gonna stop eating meat
now.” A woman told me, “Yeahhh, you
gave me one earlier. It made me so sad. It might’ve
worked.” I also handed her a Guide,
and her friend walking beside her seemed very
intrigued. Another student said that she previously
liked to call herself an “accidental vegetarian”
but after reading the booklet I had handed her,
she might have to start calling herself a “purposeful”
one. Also, Guided a group of 4 students,
and one (who’d been leafleted earlier) pointed
to the booklet in his friend’s hands and said,
“Check out those chickens, man! That’s
inhumane!” I
got to the University of Texas–Pan American just
as the sun was coming up, and I left as it was
starting to come down. Lizeth, who I met here
last year, joined me for a class change. With
her 50, we reached a total of 3,200 students.
One guy told me he remembered talking with me
last year. He said that our talk from last year
and getting the booklet again has led him
to the realization that he really should do
something about this. I told him that it’s important
that we challenge ourselves, and that we make
efforts to really walk the walk with our beliefs.
That seemed to impact him a good deal. There were other good interactions during the day, especially
when I presented for Professor Faver’s class.
A question of which presidential candidate was
better for animals gave me an opportunity to
segue into a bit about how there were both prominent
conservatives and liberals who were vegan and/or
took animal issues seriously.
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