Your Vegan Brownies Are Kind Of A Big Deal
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Quite a number of animal advocates look down disdainfully at vegans who spend their time primarily cooking and baking. For example, Erik Marcus at Vegan.com wrote:
“We all want a vegan world, but only a tiny handful of us have realized the enormous personal power we have in bringing this world closer. The rest of us are off baking brownies.”
Elsewhere I’ve seen the brownie-bakers referred to as “inactivists” or worse.
Now, there’s a little bit of truth to the criticism. If ALL you’re doing is baking vegan brownies, then you’re not doing a whole lot for the animals. You have to share those brownies with nonvegans, share the recipes, talk about vegan baking, or do some of the other things I’ll list below in a second.
But even if ALL you’re doing is baking vegan brownies, that’s still a TON better than what most people are doing for animals. Most people are buying or baking nonvegan brownies. Most people are buying or cooking animal flesh, meat that comes from animals who have been treated like meat before they were slaughtered!
So don’t feel bad if your form of animal activism is culinary-style, just try to make the most of it. How do you turn baking vegan brownies into real animal advocacy? Here are some suggestions:
- Share your vegan cooking with friends, family, coworkers, or even strangers. Bake vegan cupcakes for your mom’s birthday. Make veggie deli slice sandwiches for a picnic with friends. Bring your vegan food to work or donate some to a homeless shelter. You could also have a “feed in” where you give away free vegan food. (Get funding from VegFund).
- Sell your vegan baked goods. Have a bake sale and raise money for your favorite charity. Vegan bake sales raised over $25,000 for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. (link)
- Show off your tasty vegan food by posting pictures of it on Flickr, Facebook, and other places where nonvegans and see for themselves what vegans eat. You’ll help educate the public about vegan food. (As an added bonus, if you can include the recipe in your picture description, that’s great, too. People LOVE recipes!)
- Share your experiences. You can start a blog about vegan cooking and share your recipes or even just your favorite cookbooks. Blog about how your boyfriend loves a certain recipe or about how it took you three tries but finally you found the perfect vegan pizza dough recipe. Whatever, just share your vegan cooking experiences so others can learn.
- Teach a vegan cooking class. Make it a one-time class held out of your home or organize a 6-week course with the local community college, it’s up to you. The point is simple: share your knowledge.
- Make a cookbook. If you do a lot of cooking and you’ve come up with some of your own recipes, why not gather them together into a cookbook? You can sell it without any startup cost if you use an on-demand publisher or you can find a publisher who wants to print up your vegan cookbook. Either way, there’s plenty of room for more vegan cookbooks. The sky is the limit on this one!
So what are you waiting for? Put that oven mitt to good use!
good points, especially this : “But even if ALL you’re doing is baking vegan brownies, that’s still a TON better than what most people are doing for animals. Most people are buying or baking nonvegan brownies. Most people are buying or cooking animal flesh, meat that comes from animals who have been treated like meat before they were slaughtered!”
that is oh so true.
i also though that that comment from erik marcus was a bit harsh and myopic, fraudulent and opaque, unnecessarily jangly and sarcastic, that comment in particular was scraping rock bottom. at least baking brownies and sharing reicpes is a non-violent and productive method to share the message of animal rights and veganism, fact is many people get defensive, belligerent, aggressive and worse when exposed to factory farm videos and the truth behind the horrors of factory farming.
True true.
I find that I turn more people on to veganism just by cooking them awesome food than anything else, so that is where I focus most of my activist energy.
There’s nothing like have someone praise your cooking before finding out it was made completely sans animals. Then you see the ‘lightbulb’ go off …
.-= Aletha´s last blog ..Love thy enemy =-.
The San Francisco and East Bay vegan bakesales raise thousands of dollars for human and animal charities…all with vegan baked goods, many of which are donated by volunteers. Comparing vegan bakers and cooks to armchair activism is lazy blogging. Shame on Mr. Marcus.
.-= Megan´s last blog ..East Bay Humane Society gutted by fire – can you help? =-.
> Shame on Mr. Marcus
I think some of you guys may be being a little too tough on me. I’ve repeatedly promoted vegan bake sales in the past:
http://www.vegan.com/blog/2009/04/20/worldwide-vegan-bake-sale/
http://www.vegan.com/blog/2010/04/30/great-cnn-coverage-of-worldwide-vegan-bake-sale/
http://www.vegan.com/blog/2010/01/20/vegan-bake-sales-for-haiti/
and my book Meat Market also included an essay from Robin Robertson all about how cooking can be an important form of vegan activism.
I think cooking can be a great form of activism, but my sense is that the vast majority of vegan cookbook purchases aren’t being made with that goal in mind. And I think it’s incredibly sad that cookbooks outsell advocacy books by such a tremendous margin. If people took leafletting as seriously as brownie baking, our movement would be in an entirely different place right now.
.-= Erik Marcus´s last blog ..Vegan Cinnamon Roll =-.
Not too long ago I took a CPR class. The instructor said something that I think I’ll always remember. He said, “When an emergency happens, the majority of people won’t do anything.” He went on to explain that even out of all the people who know CPR even then only a small few will perform CPR when it’s needed.
I think what’s true about saving humans lives is also true about saving animals’ lives. Most people won’t do it. They just won’t. Even the ones who understand the desperate urgency for the elimination of animal suffering and exploitation… they’ll go vegan, but they probably won’t go out and leaflet.
So what do we do with that? What do you and I do with the realization that most people aren’t going to get more active for animals?
We work with what we’ve got. That’s what we do.
mr. Erik Marcus, will all due respect, that comment was misplaced and unnecessarily acerbic. and as far as leafletting goes, have you ever been out here on the front lines, for reals? having vegan literature and/or promoting an ar/vegan message is just another excuse for most couch potatoe/conformist drones to go ballistic on the hapless leafletter and ar demonstrator, trying to spread a message of peace and compassion.
veejayblox – In my experience leafleting, very few people “go ballistic on the hapless leafletter.” I’ve had very few negative experiences and I’ve never felt physically threatened. For the record, I’ve distributed thousands of leaflets.
>as far as leafletting goes, have you ever been out here on the front lines, for reals?
I passed out about 1000 Vegan Outreach booklets last semester, for reals. I’ve never had anyone go ballistic on me, nor have I even heard a story of this happening.
I think you’re really underestimating the power of culinary activism. Despite having leafletted only a few times in my life, three people close to me have gone vegan, three have gone vegetarian, and my families’ dinners are now almost entirely vegan. Everyone needs to eat – and money from vegan cookbooks go to vegan authors, many of whom actively use their voices to support animal rights causes.
There are many different kinds of people, and many different kinds of activism, and leafletting isn’t for everyone. Nor do you necessarily need to buy a book to engage in activism.
.-= Megan´s last blog ..East Bay Humane Society gutted by fire – can you help? =-.
Oh and please feel free to come to our bakesale later this month:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/herbstanfang/4678413221/sizes/m/
.-= Megan´s last blog ..East Bay Humane Society gutted by fire – can you help? =-.
“I passed out about 1000 Vegan Outreach booklets last semester, for reals. I’ve never had anyone go ballistic on me, nor have I even heard a story of this happening.”
mr. Erik Marcus, if you still live in the santa cruz area i could see how this is true, people are alot more mellow there, and more receptive to the AR and vegan message.
and you’re right, i’ve never really had a “major” problem leafletting, just the mind-numbingly dull, paperthin, usually corrupt excuses for an omnivore diet.
but in all honesty, anybody that has attended an ar/vegan protest knows this is absolutely not true. in fact, feel free to join in the local monthly PETA anti-cruelty protests in san jose at either the KFC or the Mickey Dees in west san jose. you will definitely see a different side of vegan activism. they might not do this anymore, anyway.
and i’m sure i can find some rather blatant examples on youtube and other destinations on the internet of peta folk and vegan protestors getting harrassed.
my point was there is nothing wrong with baking brownies and other types of vegan activism.
I have to say I am enjoying this discussion! I love it when we get passionate together!
veejay, you wrote, “i’m sure i can find some rather blatant examples on youtube and other destinations on the internet of peta folk and vegan protestors getting harrassed.”
I think you’re right. I’ve seen some of those videos. One video I saw was a peaceful demonstration against pet stores that sell puppies from puppy mills. The demonstrators were shot with a BB gun.
However…
a) Most of the time and most of the people are polite and respectful. I’ve been many demonstrations and never has anything violent happened. Most people honk, cheer, wave, and give thumbs-up whenever I’ve stood with a sign that says “Adopt, don’t shop. Puppies aren’t products.” Same thing for when I help a banner that said, “Boycott the circus. Free the elephants.”
b) If you leaflet, the chances of anyone getting rude, let alone violent, are extremely rare. It’s so rare, it’s not even worth worrying about.
isa chandra moskowitz (veganopolis, vegan cookies invade your cookie jar) gave a really interesting talk on this subject at the Let Live Animal Rights Conference NW. you can find it, and even download it for free on itunes. just search “culinary activism”
The Culinary Activism presentation is also available right here on Vegan Soapbox from our archives:
http://www.vegansoapbox.com/let-live-conference-video-culinary-activism/
From my own experience, people tend to roll their eyes at and ignore (if not criticize) any and all animal rights leafleting. (Of course, I live in the Czech Republic, and, having also lived in the US for five years, I can tell you that the way Czechs generally tend to look at things is quite different from the way Americans look at things. Czechs tend to be less accepting of people that try to push a code of behavior on them — both religious fanatics and vegans are ridiculed, and so most of Prague is atheist and omnivorous. On the other hand, they are more open-minded and willing to change their minds if a logical enough argument is presented. Anyway…)
I honestly believe that the best way to convince someone to go vegan is to just show that it’s a good lifestyle, that it really works. I also think we should all work to make it as easy to switch as possible. For example, grocery stores should offer vegan stuff. There should be a single online repository for all unbiased, raw-facts (with no emotional coloration whatsoever) information, videos, research about possible health hazards, animal rights, a veg*n diet, etc. An easy-to-browse free online cookbook would also be nice. Or how about a single place to post all the animal rights petitions, events, and meetings?
Just spitballing, I know this is much easier said than done, but still, if we all attacked the problems people have with going vegan, we’d make a huge difference, much bigger than with leafleting.
“An easy-to-browse free online cookbook”
try these recipe sources:
http://www.chooseveg.com/vegan-recipes.asp
http://www.vegansoapbox.com/recipes/
http://www.everydaydish.tv/
Interesting that I found this, browsing and killing time while I’m waiting for my brownies to cool – brownies that I plan to take to a church event tomorrow evening. No one volunteered to bring snacks but myself and another woman – she’s making cookies (non-vegan) and I said I’d make brownies. Most folks there know I’m vegan and I’ve brought vegan food to potlucks and received many compliments. I also get questions and a few folks I’ve talked with said they’d like to try and eat vegan a few times a week. They’ve asked me fore recipes for the church cookbook as well. It’s a start.
It’s a start.
I recently helped organize a vegan bake sale there, through a meetup group I’m part of, and folks were very enthusiastic. Everything was sold – and only myself and a few other church members are vegan.
I do think you win over more folks with cupcakes and cookies. People just like to eat. Most folks are open-minded enough that they’re very willing to eat vegan baked goods. The bake sale also gave us the opportunity to pass out literature and hand out free samples of almond and rice milk.
The world is changing, it really is, and we will lure the naysayers in with sweets.