10 Kinds Of Vegan Activism
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From the interview with Martin Balluch posted at Abolitionist Online:
“We need to change industry to provide easily available ample and cheap vegan alternatives to everything and at the same time make it ever harder for animal industries to produce cheaply”
It got me thinking about various methods of pro-animal activism. I was just brainstorming and remembering what I’ve read and heard elsewhere, but here are a few specific forms of action we vegans should take to help create a vegan world:
- Be a vocal vegan: Let others know we’re vegan. Just drop it into conversations here and there. I’ve found people often think they don’t know a vegan, but in fact they do know a vegan, it’s just that the vegan they know is a quiet vegan.
- Start or expand a vegan blog or website: Make it easy for curious omnivores to learn about veganism online.
- Promote vegan websites or businesses: If you like a vegan product or a vegan business, let others know.
- Start, expand, or invest in vegan business: Don’t just put your money where your mouth is when it comes to acting as a consumer, put your money where your mouth is when it comes to producing your income, investing in your retirement, and so forth.
- Boycott nonvegan business: This is obvious. Don’t let them have your money, your time, or your attention.
- Leaflet: Hand out pamphlets. If you’re shy, carry some pamphlets with you and leave them around at various locations like libraries, cafes, and shopping malls for people to find and read themselves.
- Protest: Join an animal rights organization and participate in demonstrations.
- Educate children: Give presentations about veganism and animal rights at schools or after-school programs. While babysitting, introduce kids to vegan foods and a discussion about animal rights.
- Share videos and books: Lend out or give away animal rights movies, books, and vegan cookbooks.
- Cook for people: Invite nonvegans over for dinner and prepare a wonderful vegan feast.
What is your favorite kind of vegan activism?
I believe that being a “vocal vegan,” which implies your boycott of those industries that exploit nonhumans, is the most effective means to both explicitly and implicitly challenge the assumptions that the justification for eating animal flesh, for example, is derived from. Questioning those baseless assumptions, publicly and persuasively, can change an individual’s perspective entirely. It’s like watching that single person pick up a piece of trash that others have simply walked past – it has the tendency to shake you out of your stupor.
Secondly, educating our children, I believe, can result in a generational gestalt shift if done properly. Imagine it, a generation of children who ask “Why did this animal have to die?”
~ Recent blog post: "They exist for our use" and so forth…. at http://www.not-quiteright.net/tvg ~
I believe the number one way to be an effective activist is the very act of being vegan. It is the single most direct impact you can have on the planet, the animals and your health. I wish I could convince everyone to go vegan but we live in a free country and, unfortunately some just don’t care and that is their right. I believe in leading by example and not by preaching so I do not participate in protesting, or leafletting. This is a personal choice for me, not a religion in which I must recruit converts.
That being said, I will and do use my voice and I refuse to be a quiet vegan. My boyfriend Craig is a big meat eater but I will not cook it for him, I inform him of the consequences of his actions, and he is very aware of the reasons for my lifestyle choice. I actively oppose companies that use animal testing or animal products by not buying their products, I blog and post videos on my myspace page and share the knowledge I gain from books.
I do have to say that many simply have no idea what a vegan eats. I made chile for Craig and he had no idea it was vegan until I told him. He ate 2 bowls of it and the next day ate the leftovers. He ate my tempeh bacon and couldn’t tell the difference. People think we eat salad all day and that’s why I find cooking vegan meals for non-vegans is a powerful way to show them that we are not deprived. They can experience it instead of just hearing you rant on about it, and then it seems real and doable. Even if they don’t adopt a 100% vegan lifestyle, every vegan meal they eat saves lives. My friends and roommates are perfectly ok with the fact that i will never cook with animal products because they know whatever I make will be delicious. One of my roommates even became vegetarian once he saw how many delicious things you can cook and my other roommate is making the transition from vegetarian to vegan and I’ve never preached at them! It works. Cook, people, cook!