10 Questions: Vegan Rockstar with Gary Smith

-->

Often it feels like I just wish I could click my heels and return to the days before social media. Between all the petty disagreements and mindless distractions vying for one’s attention, it can enervate us and all this access to “information” and one another’s opinions can feel like it’s more trouble than it is worth. Then I think of people like Gary Smith, someone I may not have met if not for Facebook, and I instantly remember that there are indeed many benefits to social media. Not simply for meeting inspiring individuals but for being exposed to those who help us to step up our game as animal advocates because they are using social media to create a better world in very smart and effective ways. (Yes, there’s more to Facebook than cute cat videos and cupcake recipes.)

Gary Smith is leaving breadcrumbs to a better world with his blog, The Thinking Vegan, and through his savvy public relations firm, Evolotus, which he runs with his equally inspiring, whip-smart partner, Kezia Jauron. Evolotus’ clients are a veritable who’s-who of progressive and powerful change-makers such as Mercy for Animals, Forks Over Knives, Tofurky and Jenny Brown of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Gary and Kezia get the best possible spotlight on their clients in the media, helping to bring issues, messages and products that might get lost in our increasingly crowded public sphere to a wider and wider support base.

I love Gary’s thoughtful and penetrating approach to animal rights as well as his unapologetic, passionate vegan convictions. I know you’ll love him, too. I am so honored to have Gary Smith as this week’s Vegan Rockstar.

1. First of all, we’d love to hear your “vegan evolution” story. How did you start out? Did you have any early influences or experiences as a young person that in retrospect helped to pave your path?

Late one night in college, I was listening to KPFK, our Los Angeles Pacifica station, and heard about Diet For a New America by John Robbins. The next day, I went out and bought the book. I turned to the first few photographs of factory farms, and that moment, I stopped eating animals. About ten minutes later, I converted my first new vegan, just by describing the photos to my then-best friend over the phone.

I had no idea what I was going to eat, but knew that I could not support the brutality and violence that I had awoken to. Keep in mind, this was long before the internet. Fortunately there was a health food store nearby, and bean burritos from Taco Bell and Del Taco. Around that time, I took a class on the study of nonviolence. I became friendly with the professor, gave a couple of lectures for him at a community college, and did research for his books. With that foundation, I became focused, dare I say obsessed, with studying suffering. At the time, that meant human suffering, but now animal suffering is the obsession.

I ate a vegan diet for three and a half years before sadly going back to eating fish, dairy, and eggs. Though I went vegan for animals, in retrospect, I didn’t fully grasp the larger philosophy of veganism, didn’t connect it to anything else swirling in my head, and I didn’t make changes when it came to clothing, and entertainment. I did learn about or products tested on animals and purchased cruelty-free products.

After going back to eating fish, dairy and eggs, there was always a voice in the back of my head telling me what I was doing was wrong. The voice grew louder, until I heeded it, almost ten years ago. I gave up fish, then a few months later, dairy and eggs. I recall that I wanted to see what it would be like to eat a vegan diet again, but wasn’t fully committing to it. After a day or two, I had this peaceful feeling come over me. I knew that I would never consume animal products again.

What was different this time is that I educated myself. I pored over books, websites, etc., wanting to fully understand veganism. The more I understood, the more outspoken I became.

I’ve dedicated not only my life to activism, but also my career. My wife and I created Evolotus PR, a public relations agency, where the majority of our work is for animal rights and animal protection nonprofits, campaigns, and vegan-themed documentary films and books.

2. Imagine that you are pre-vegan again: how could someone have talked to you and what could they have said or shown you that could have been the most effective way to have a positive influence on you moving toward veganism?

The activist Anita Mahdessian has a story about this that rings very true for me. She wrote, “Many years ago, I had a very brief encounter with ‘my first vegan.’ He seemed to be a very peaceful man, a ‘love and light’ vegan. When I asked him, ‘what is a vegan,’ his answer was ‘vegans do not eat or use any animal products.’ He did not tell me why, and I failed to ask him. If only my first vegan told me the truth. If only my first vegan gave me all the facts instead of ‘love and light,’ I would have gone vegan that very day. My first vegan failed me. My first vegan failed the animals. However, my second vegan did not. And I am forever grateful that he was merciless with the inconvenient truth.”

I have often said, on The Thinking Vegan and elsewhere, that I advocate telling the truth about how nonhumans are being exploited and brutalized, in a forthright, sincere, truthful, factual manner. One of the most popular blogs I’ve written relates to this very topic. Certainly, we shouldn’t be assholes about it. We don’t have to be combative. But the truth needs to be told, whether people want to hear it or not, or are ready to hear it or not.

I’m not saying I would have been ready. But at least I would have had the truth, which I didn’t have.

3. What have you found to be the most effective way to communicate your message as a vegan? For example, humor, passion, images, etc.?

There is no one way to advocate, no one magical “tone” that will appeal to everyone, no single argument that will make the world vegan. I have to follow my own voice, and my own values. People can smell an inauthentic person from a mile away, and I wouldn’t be effective if I pretended to be someone that I’m not.

I tend not to pet people for taking baby steps, not eating animals one day a week, or switching to cage-free eggs. I don’t want people to become confused about what I advocate. There is no way to humanely or ethically exploit another being. Ethically, we are coming from a place of strength. Coming from a place of strength means we can ask for what we want.

I find that people acknowledge this strength, and one way it manifests is people often subtly seek my “permission” to use non-human animals. They’ll tell me that the zoo they take their kid to really, really cares about conservation. They’ll tell me they gave up red meat, or that their toddler flat-out refuses to drink cow’s milk. They’ll tell me they tried once to adopt through a rescue or shelter, but it didn’t have the brand of dog they wanted so they “had to” buy a puppy. They want me, the token ethical vegan, to give them a cookie for their labors, so they can carry on guilt-free. But I don’t give it to them.

This comes up while mentoring new vegans, too. People ask me if it’s okay to eat animals on vacation with their family, or in a restaurant once in a while, or to use a certain hair-care product that is tested on animals, or some other scenario when being vegan may be temporarily inconvenient or undesirable for them. These questions only represent new vegans lacking enough confidence to stick to their new ethical awareness. Happily, I find that when people trust in whatever brought them to that awareness, and are reassured that they can make different choices, they stay with me. It’s an empowering thing for people, and an effective thing.

4. What do you think are the biggest strengths of the vegan movement?

We’re loyal to the companies, organizations, and movement leaders that have influenced us, innovate products for us, and share our ethics. We’re fairly well mobilized and we support our own when we feel we’re called to do so. The successful crowdfunding campaigns for documentary films, books, restaurants, or food companies speak to that loyalty and support. Having said that, I do wish there was less of a focus on veganism as a consumerist, capitalistic lifestyle, and more on veganism as the social justice movement that it truly is.

5. What do you think are our biggest hindrances to getting the word out effectively?

Being in PR, and working with mainstream media every day, my biggest hindrance is that veganism and animal rights are not yet taken seriously everywhere and by everyone. Bear in mind that our clients are usually very deeply offensive to the meat and dairy industries, fast food, processed food, pharmaceutical companies, the medical and healthcare industry. These are the industries that advertise on the nightly news.

Secondly, our credibility is questioned by media and the general public too. We are promoting ideas that are out of the mainstream, so we’re going to be scrutinized more. We have to be better than they are, more professional, more credible. There must be no factual or logical holes in our arguments and our materials. Unfortunately, we’re perceived as having an “agenda,” as if the animal-exploiting industries don’t also have an agenda, which is profit.

I still see a lot of sensationalist campaigns, protests for the sake of protesting, and a lack of strategy or substance behind some of what animal activists are doing. There is no longer a need to get media attention for media attention’s sake, and we’ve turned down many potential clients who wanted stunty campaigns. We really don’t need to scream and wave our hands at people, and media coverage can backfire very quickly if we are portrayed as fools or propagandists. We can raise the level of dialogue, we really can.

6. All of us need a “why vegan” elevator pitch. We’d love to hear yours.

The ethical choice is vegan. All sentient beings feel pain. Meat, dairy, and eggs come from sentient beings. Meat, dairy, and eggs always cause pain. If you choose to eat meat, dairy, and eggs, you are choosing to cause pain and to participate in exploitation and murder. Participating in pain and murder is always unethical. The ethical choice is vegan.

7. Who are the people and what are the books, films, websites and organizations that have had the greatest influence on your veganism and your continuing evolution?

I’m inspired and influenced by so many people and animals. Our dogs, Frederick and Douglass, inspire me every day. I cannot imagine the life they had previous to living with us. They spent the first five years of their lives in cages in an animal testing laboratory, having all manners of terrible things done to them, and yet they are forgiving and open to experiencing life – some of life, at least. I look at their example and want to not only be a better activist, but a stronger and more resilient person.

I’m inspired by all of the farmed animals that I have met at sanctuaries, and those I’ve helped to freedom but never met. They have come from such horrific surroundings and yet seem to have made peace with the world.

I’m inspired by Kim Sturla, Marji Beach, Jan Galeazzi, and everyone else at Animal Place, Nathan Runkle and the entire Mercy For Animals team, and lauren Ornelas’ work at Food Empowerment Project blows me away. Some of my heroes are Thomas Ponce, who started Lobby For Animals at 12 years old; Jo-Anne McArthur, who puts herself through such personal suffering to bear witness to animal suffering; and Tony Kanal, who constantly combines bravery and thoughtfulness in his activism. Ari Nessel from The Pollination Project makes me want to be a kinder person, and his sister Dana Nessel, the civil rights attorney who nearly singlehandedly won the right to marry for everyone in America, makes me want to be a more kick-ass person. Kia Scherr from One Life Alliance taught me about forgiveness.

Aside from Jo-Anne’s book, I recommend Mark Hawthorne’s Bleating Hearts and Ruby Roth’s children’s books.

Through our PR work, I’m also lucky to be tapped into a network of vegan documentary filmmakers and to have early access to a lot of the most influential projects: Earthlings, Bold Native, Got the Facts on Milk, The Ghosts in Our Machine, Speciesism, Cowspiracy, and the upcoming, next big AR film, The Last Pig.

My wife Kezia influences and amazes me. We have been together for close to 20 years. She is my best friend and the smartest person I know. I learn from her all the time.

8. Burn-out is so common among vegans: what do you do to unwind, recharge and inspire yourself?

The reality is that I am preoccupied with ending animal exploitation. It’s quite literally the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. But I get so much energy and excitement by working on these issues, and thinking about how we can be more effective as activists, that I don’t really notice the time go by.

Also the work we do at Evolotus inspires us. Getting the Wall Street Journal to write about a client’s work has the potential of being read by four million people. I could spend the rest of my life passing out leaflets and probably never reach that many people. We are constantly looking for the next big thing that will put animal rights issues into the mainstream. Finding that new next big thing is inspiring and recharging.

To unwind, I’m not ashamed to admit, we do a lot of cocooning with bad reality TV such as competitive tattooing shows, the home and garden channel, and lately binge-watching TV series on Netflix. I also love to shop for and read novels. I’ve already surpassed my goal of reading 100 novels this year! We also are lucky to live in a city with dozens of vegan restaurants, so going out to lunch or dinner, or picking up vegan donuts on the weekend, is something we do frequently. Maybe too frequently!

9. What is the issue nearest and dearest to your heart that you would like others to know more about?

Living with Frederick and Douglass, clearly, the answer is vivisection. Rescuing beagles from animal testing laboratories, fostering them, helping them create a new experience of the world, has opened my eyes to how important it is to consider individual lives, versus abstract concepts and numbers such as ten billion land animals.

To say they have changed our lives would be a massive understatement. We are completely invested in making sure they are happy, healthy, and at peace, after the five-plus years they were confined in a laboratory. They still have emotional and physical scars, but with each day that goes by and each belly rub, they grow more comfortable and adjusted to freedom.

It also puts a different perspective on so-called “single-issue campaigns” because our dogs, and millions more animals like them, are simply overlooked by vegan education outreach. Just one or two decades ago, the animal rights movement included in its focus animals in laboratories and animals used for fur. The truth is, we’ve dropped a massive strategic ball on vivisection, and as a result we’re losing a relatively winnable issue. There’s simply no reason animal testing – at least nonmedical testing, meaning consumer products – should continue today.

Today, this movement is primarily concerned with animals used for food. I understand the logic behind this, and with my experience in hands-on rescue, and this expansion of my consciousness from abstract numbers to specific individuals, has made me appreciate the work of farmed animal sanctuaries differently.

10. Please finish this sentence: “To me, being vegan is...”

The greatest gift you can give to yourself, the animals, and the planet.

Chicago VeganMania 2015!

So here I am, just a few days away from our big event and I don’t really have much to share here except that I am knee-deep in stress dreams and my house is filled to the ceiling with boxes and, well, pretty much everything I wrote about here. Why do we do this, year after year? Because we believe that community matters and we believe that showing the public that the vegan movement is full of dynamic, diverse, creative and truly original people who are pushing forward the social justice movement of our time will help to turn the tide toward a more compassionate, healthy and sustainable world.

Because I am so slammed presently, I am going to re-post a bit from what I wrote about Chicago VeganMania in 2010 because it still fits.

“Back when I started with this business of being vegan, back in the Mesozoic era of the mid-1990s when terrifying winged beasts beat their wings in circles above us and all the milk in local coffee shops came from udders, life ticked along at a distinctly different syncopation. In Chicago, there were usually between twenty and thirty of us who were consistently active, and we met monthly in church basements or spare rooms at the library. Photos from the time were, to put it bluntly, strange: fervent activists in their twenties working side-by-side with sad-eyed animal lovers in their sixties, with few ages represented in between. Back in the day, we got loopy from marker vapors together when we made our protest signs, we looked through an endless stack of boxes in a volunteer's basement to find the musty old chicken costume and played rock-paper-scissors to determine who would almost faint while wearing it at the World Vegetarian Day leafletting, we licked envelopes, people, and lugged all the newsletters to the post office downtown four times a year. We passed our favorite catalogue around the table at Mandy's house and put in group orders together for t-shirts, buttons, stickers. I still have one of those shirts, worn in and cozy like a favorite baby blanket, a black ink Rorsharch splotch on a sleeve from one of our marathon sign-making sessions. It's in the drawer of t-shirts designated only as sleep wear these days. It just has words on it: No, I don't eat meat. Yes, I get enough protein. No, my shoes aren't leather. Yes, I have a life. This shirt encapsulated the experience of a vegan animal advocate, and that particular time in my life, perfectly. Every time I pull it out, it's like I'm transformed back to the day, and I'm standing outside of a circus again or I'm in front of the McDonald's in River North, standing with my friends, rolling our eyes at the dirty looks, making our far superior snide comments about the idiotic snide comments. It's a t-shirt, and a time, that always makes me smile in recollection. 

Although I am nostalgic for the sienna-toned quaintness of that time, for the passionate connection that face-to-face hands-on work creates, I am very grateful to be able to enjoy this particular time right now perhaps because I remember what it was like before veganism had gained a little foothold in our popular culture. We are still very small in actual numbers, but somehow, we've become a force to be reckoned with over the past decade, and the ripple effect of our influence is keenly felt. Recently, for example, I went with my son to an apple festival in the city. Back when I lived in that very same neighborhood of Lincoln Square, it was all about the German delis. (At the Brauhaus on a date, I asked the server if they had anything vegetarian and she recommended hasenpfeffer, rabbit stew, but thankfully I had seen the Bugs Bunny cartoon where the king angrily - and with imperious sibilance -  demanded it so I was nobody's fool. Who says cartoons have no value?) In other words, Lincoln Square was pretty much the opposite of a vegan mecca. Today, the German food and culture remains, but shuffled between everything is more than a little hint at the change that's happening. At the apple festival, I could walk into pretty much any café with a boy Who Suddenly Could Not Wait Even A Second Longer to use the restroom, and know that I could pick up something in the treats-for-bathroom barter system. Later, when we picked up soy- and fruit-based gelato it occurred to me once again, as my friend remarked that they should carry more soy options, what a radically different culture my son is growing up in, thank goodness. Back in the 1990s, my friends and I would launch into spontaneous cartwheels and shout from the rooftops if one coffee shop offered a dry, tasteless vegan cookie or we spotted the v-word on a menu, elusive and magical like a purple unicorn, but today, my son and his little herbivorous urban peers take it for granted that there will be high quality vegan treats for them. Not only that, but they actually have a choice now because just chocolate or vanilla is soooo pre-school: pumpkin, cinnamon swirl, lemon poppyseed, blueberry-freaking-cream cheese. Yes, they're a generation of entitled little brats who will never have to walk three miles barefoot in the snow for mushy veggie burgers, but I can't describe the sense of happiness I feel when I go somewhere and we can just be like everyone else. (But cooler!)

A couple of things to make clear: a culturally diverse, large city, and all the bounty within, is in easy access. I understand that this effortlessness is not available everywhere and I am so appreciative of what we have here. Second, I don't mistake a proliferation of vegan cupcakes as evidence that the revolution is at hand. The revolution will not be found in a bag of powdered sugar. The shift is happening, though, and it is seismic and it is real, born of natural cultural change, smart outreach, talented animal advocates and people waking up to the inescapable reality that our dietary habits cannot continue if we are to continue. It has not translated into fewer animals being consumed or abused yet - these institutions are nothing if not entrenched - but I have no doubt that this will happen as the wave continues. What we are witnessing is this slow untangling in real time so we may not always see it in an obvious way, but make no mistake that it is happening. Imagine the evolution of the vegan lifestyle as it settles into our larger culture like stop-action photography, from 1995 until the present. The dust is still very much unsettled and I believe that the boomerang we tossed out is really in its infancy of its journey back, but progress is certainly happening. I have no doubt about that.

This all a very longwinded way to explain what I am up to these days. My husband and I, along with some of the very best kind of people you could know, are putting together an event called Chicago VeganMania… This is our second year. The driving force behind our event, the thing that gets us excited to send out press releases and answer questions about parking (okay, this last thing is an exaggeration) in addition to all the other work we're doing, is the idea of third and fourth wave activism. If you think back on the historic arc of social justice movements, which the animal advocacy movement is part of, you'll see that the first wave is usually confrontation. It's people not getting to the back of the bus, it is Stonewall. This is what propels us at the beginning, what gives us momentum and the passion. Education is next: this is the outreach, the written materials that make the case, the more recognizable advocacy work. Understandably, the vegan movement has largely centered around these first two waves of activism. What we are trying to do with Chicago VeganMania is to be a part of ushering in the next two waves: celebration, which is the sort of thing witnessed in cultural pride festivals, and integration, where the "whys" of veganism rarely come into play, and it is simply accepted as a normal and natural way of life. The first two waves are still vitally important and they work in tandem with what follows: it's not as though they dissolve when the next waves begin. It is an organic and fluid back-and-forth motion, as waves naturally will be, with different current systems throughout. We need the third and fourth waves, though, for the veganism to take root on a mass scale and become more than a fringe movement. This doesn't mean that we're adapting veganism for mainstream tastes: quite the opposite. By taking proud ownership and putting it out there in our unique and diverse ways with our unique and diverse gifts, we are ensuring that that this movement that flows outward whether we like it or not, will have our particular stamp on it. And our stamp is fabulous so Chicago VeganMania will be fabulous!
So get excited and come to see us if you can at Chicago VeganMania. If you can't join us, keep adding your distinctive talents and unique, compassionate voice to the mix. When people perceive veganism as something more than a dietary fad, as something different than an exclusive club you need to know the secret handshake to gain entry to, we will effect incredible change. Chicago VeganMania is part of the galvanizing entrenchment of the movement. We have so much at our fingertips, we really do. Keep your eyes on the prize, and keep moving forward!"

I hope to see you then!

10 Questions: Vegan Rockstar with Alisha Kettner

Alisha Kettner is a longtime vegetarian who went vegan a few years ago when her hair stylist helped her to connect the dots between the dairy and egg industries and animal cruelty. As a fashion forward shoe-lover and an environmentally-minded consumer, Alisha, also a certified registered nurse anesthetist, married her twin passions with her burgeoning convictions about compassionate living in her adorable, carefully curated boutique located in Oak Park, IL (one time home of Frank Lloyd Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Bob Newhart and Kathy Griffin and a little hop over the border from Chicago on the Green line), Amour de la Terre. As a self-described “eco-nerd”, the shoes and accessories Amour de la Terre carries reflect Alisha’s commitment to the environment as well as her broader social justice convictions by sourcing from companies that use eco-friendly materials, production methods (or both), which means there is no PVC pleather at her shop, and the items she sells are produced using Fair Labor practices, meaning they are sweatshop-free, something that most shoe companies are woefully out of step with. What a great lady with a fantastic mission!

I am lucky enough to know Alisha personally and I have always been impressed by her friendly, optimistic attitude, her commitment to creating a more compassionate, healthy planet and her fabulous taste in shoes. Please check out Amour de la Terre (if you don’t live in Chicagoland, they do ship) and support this wonderful endeavor. Also, get a chance to meet Alisha in person at her booth at Chicago VeganMania on October 10 as well as check out her panel on Compassionate Style and Beauty at 4:30, along with fellow lovelies Trisha Star-Perez of Starship Salon and Ashlee Piper of TheLittle Foxes.

1. First of all, we’d love to hear your “vegan evolution” story. How did you start out? Did you have any early influences or experiences as a young person that in retrospect helped to pave your path?

I’ve been an animal lover my entire life. My childhood home had a dog, cats, fish and a bird, and when I grew up I wanted to be either a marine biologist or a veterinarian. At the library I would take out books on animals to try and learn anatomy, and at the veterinary office I would grab every one of the dog and cat info pamphlets lying on the shelves.

Looking back my animal activism began early. I remember one evening after grocery shopping with my father, we were in the parking lot putting bags in the car trunk and there was a man across the lot that was kicking a dog in the back of his van. I was probably only about 10 years old, but before my dad could do anything I ran up to that van and yelled to the man to stop, and I took down his license plate number and I then called around to find out how to get the dog taken away from the owner.

My grandmother was a vegetarian, and I remember during one visit with her in Tennessee we got to talking about the “why’s” of vegetarianism, and she put on a VHS tape that showed footage of factory farming. This didn’t turn me automatically, but I’m sure it was the earliest seed that was planted. One day at lunch in high school, I remember thinking it was gross that I was eating the flesh of an animal, so I simply stopped then and there. I wasn’t the healthiest vegetarian as a teenager, and could polish off a box of mac & cheese in about five minutes flat.

Then as an adult I met the lovely Christa, who was doing my hair for my wedding. She was vegan and I was vegetarian, so we hit it off. I told her I didn’t understand how she could live without cheese and omelets! She told me a few tidbits about the dairy industry that led me to do more research on my own, and after some internet reading and watching Forks Over Knives, I became vegan and never looked back!



2. Imagine that you are pre-vegan again: how could someone have talked to you and what could they have said or shown you that could have been the most effective way to have a positive influence on you moving toward veganism?

Just like Christa was to me, it’s important to be nonjudgmental and not push too much information on a person at a time. Simply letting someone know a few facts to hopefully “plant seeds” in their head and lead them to do some more pondering and research on their own is the most effective way of encouraging veganism in my opinion. 



3. What have you found to be the most effective way to communicate your message as a vegan? For example, humor, passion, images, etc.?

I like to show people my passion for veganism, hoping it rubs off on them a tad. I like to show that veganism is not about restrictions or exclusivity; it’s about love for animals, love for your own body, and love for the environment.  I always ask how much a person is willing to let me tell them about the factory farming industry before a discussion. I feel if I become “preachy” or tell people too many graphic details before they’re ready, it will only backfire and make them more opposed to the idea of giving up animal products.

Also, I really love food (no really, my friends joke that I have a hollow leg). So I love to show that being vegan actually opens you up to more foods and spices than an omnivore is exposed to. My favorite is introducing hardcore meat and cheese lovers to vegan substitutes and seeing a positive reaction. We vegans are certainly not deprived of good food!


4. What do you think are the biggest strengths of the vegan movement?

In my opinion, the vegan movement is primarily about simply loving animals too much to eat (or wear) them. Since most people are innate animal lovers, we can use this bridge to show that veganism is not some scary unobtainable state, it’s basically putting our ethics into action, and anyone can do it!



5. What do you think are our biggest hindrances to getting the word out effectively?

I believe it’s hard to get the word out effectively because we vegans are so, so passionate about animal rights issues and we can easily come across as being preachy or self-righteous. I admit sometimes I want to just scream and shake people and tell them how they’re supporting abuse and torture with the bacon on their plate. Then I remind myself that I’d lose a lot of friends and need to move to an island by myself, ha! As hard as it is, I try to remember that I too once ate meat and didn’t think twice about it at the time. I remind myself that the vegan movement will certainly “catch more flies with honey than vinegar” as they say. [Ed. note: Agave, Alisha, agave.] As much as I’d love to, I don’t believe I have the capability to make someone do an immediate 180 on the spot. Maybe I can encourage that 180 to occur eventually, but all I can do is “plant the seeds” for people to make the decision on their own.


6. All of us need a “why vegan” elevator pitch. We’d love to hear yours.

Well, it depends on how many floors we get to ride. ;) The simplest answer is I’m vegan for the animals, for health and for the environment. I explain how factory farming is incredibly cruel, how the dairy industry can even be considered more inhumane than the meat industry, how consumption of animal products and milk protein (casein) has been linked to many common diseases, how 80% of the antibiotics in this country are used for the livestock industry, and how factory farming consumes ridiculous amounts of water and land resources.


7. Who are the people and what are the books, films, websites and organizations that have had the greatest influence on your veganism and your continuing evolution?

Forks Over Knives was the earliest influential documentary for me, along with Earthlings, Food, Inc., Vegucated, Peaceable Kingdom, and Fowl Play. The China Study was one of the first books I read on veganism and it astounded me! The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone was also one of the first books I read and was also some of the first vegan recipes I ever used. I’m a fan of any organization that  peacefully works to save animals from unnecessary suffering, but I’m particularly a big fan of Mercy for Animals.


8. Burn-out is so common among vegans: what do you do to unwind, recharge and inspire yourself?

Between working in nursing full time and running the business, I don’t have a ton of free time. When I do get to unwind I enjoy going out for dinner with friends or hangin’ with my beloved rescue pup & letting her take me for a run.


9. What is the issue nearest and dearest to your heart that you would like others to know more about?

This question interestingly made something come full circle for me just now. The three things I’m most passionate about in life are animals, the environment, and health, which are the exact three things that veganism positively affects, so I suppose that life choice is validated! :) Of all of the many animal rights issues, I’m extremely passionate about dog and cat rescues. There are so many animals in need of a good home, there’s absolutely no reason to go to a breeder. One can even find purebred rescues. It physically pains me to think of all of the sweet souls sitting behind bars in the shelters, scared and alone and possibly days away from euthanization. This is an issue I plan to get more involved in during my lifetime.


10. Please finish this sentence: “To me, being vegan is…”

“…a perfect demonstration of love to all: animals, self and the earth.”

History is Not Destiny: Of Brisket, Jewish Grandmothers and Veganism

-->

I grew up in the 1970s, born of parents who steadfastly ignored (or perhaps just remained blissfully unaware of) the burgeoning crunchy health trends of the day, meaning that we didn’t have Grape Nuts in our home but there was plenty of artificial grape-flavored carbonated beverage. Most days at lunch, my brother and I had American cheese on Wonder Bread with various deli slices or whatever was on the menu at the school lunchroom and for dinner, we ate the standard food of the day: chicken Kiev, mostaccioli with meat sauce, pepper steak. Actually, I’m pretty sure that my mom’s pepper steak had more produce in it than a typical week’s menu in our household.

I didn’t grow up with any indication that one day, I’d be someone who would construct my life’s work around rejecting meat and animal products and promoting the consumption of plant foods in their place, but, lo and behold, look what happened.

As a child, what I ate took on a deeper emotional resonance whenever it was provided by my grandmother, a great cook and an even better amateur therapist, a woman who seemed to intuit the complex and mysterious ways in which food feeds our spirits well beyond the surface value. I adored my Grandma Dora, an uncommonly dynamic lady who made all the classic Jewish dishes from scratch: brisket, chicken soup with matzo balls, corned beef. The only thing she made that gave me pause was her chopped liver; even this, though, I would eat without reservation because it seemed to have my grandmother’s wonderful essence in it. Or maybe I was projecting? I can still access the taste memories I associate with my grandmother in an instant, and with these memories, I can bring back her soft, flour-dusted arms, her smile and the musical laugh that had the power to make everything in my otherwise chaotic world all right. She would cook and tell me stories, filling me in on the latest gossip about the feuding neighbors in her apartment building as clouds of steam rose over her soup pot. Sitting at the little table off her kitchen, basking in her joie de vivre and the comforting aromas of her cooking, there was no happier or safer place in the world for me.

When I was 15, though, a fission came between us. When I was 15, I went vegetarian.

When it was clear that my vegetarianism was sticking, my grandmother reminded me - in an offhand way but with a palpable sadness in her voice - that I’d loved her brisket more than any of her other grandchildren. In a way, this was her saying that I loved her more than any of her other grandchildren. It was clear that to her, it wasn’t about the brisket: rejecting meat was rejecting her. Food was an undeniable part of our connection and a deep-seated part of our attachment. Giving up meat meant that I couldn’t avoid severing at least part of the unique connection that had linked me with my grandmother, my most treasured bond.

When my grandmother made her seemingly casual observation, there was so much to say but I didn’t know how to say it; I was young and still figuring it out myself. The thing was that I did love the taste of meat until a dissection unit in high school convinced me that I didn’t want to eat it anymore. As time went on, this avoidance evolved from an aesthetic disgust born of suddenly identifying what “meat” was to a conviction rooted in ethics, a foundation I’ve never swerved from since. At 15, I sensed that eating animals didn’t reflect the kind of person I wanted to be as I tested the waters of my emerging independence. I didn’t say this, though, as I didn’t consciously know it. I told my grandmother that it was probably just a phase and I think this gave her hope, but, growing up with this determined woman as my most influential relative, I had more than a little tenacity instilled in me, too. I think she knew that I didn’t have phases: I had revisions. Twelve years into my vegetarian “phase,” I went vegan. Now, twenty years since I decided to leave behind dairy and eggs, I have dedicated my life to promoting veganism.

When people meet me and learn that I am vegan, many times they remark that they were raised eating meat at every meal. So was I, I tell them. “But I like how it tastes,” many say. So did I, I tell them. But their families have customs and traditions around certain holidays and food is a big part of that, they say. My family was no different, I tell them. Their heritage includes meat, they say. So does mine, I say. I’m not trying to be rude or dismissive; it’s just true. Despite people wanting to think that there was something unique in how I was raised that somehow laid the groundwork for my eventual vegan evolution, there really was not. My family consumed lots of meat and animal products, as did I, and the diet I was raised on was deeply tied to traditions, habits, familiarity and taste attachments, just as it is for everyone else. My path away from eating animals did not have a basis in not liking what I ate growing up, though without a doubt, these things hold no temptation for me today. There was something deeper that called to me, though, and if it was deep enough to risk severing part of the connection I had to my grandmother, it was indeed made of powerful stuff.

More than ever, we are seeing how the choices we make today will have real consequences for future generations. More pressingly, we are beginning to see the fallout from our reliance on animal agriculture in the actual here and now. From the increasing reality of antibiotic resistance that may very well reverse so many life-saving advances to the fact that climate change - something that the greenhouse gas-intensive animal agribusiness is a leading contributor to - is emerging as a major factor in civil unrest and destabilization around the globe, we are just at the early stages of beginning to see that what we eat has a significant ripple effect on all of us but especially those who are most vulnerable: the aged, the very young, those with compromised immune systems and the world’s poor. This is going to increase exponentially as the repercussions accelerate into a critical mass of the worst kind.

 

I don’t particularly enjoy sounding like the Enemy of Fun (which seems to be the vegan’s role in our culture) but as someone who has helped to conceptualize and research hundreds of memes about the vast number of destructive by-products of animal agribusiness, I can tell you that things are more perilous than I ever realized before. From droughts to species extinction, world hunger to ocean depletion, what we now know is that if our planet has a chance at survival - not to mention thriving - we will need to do a serious reevaluation of our habits and begin to leave animals and their secretions off our plates.

Is the answer small farms, organic farms, or “happy” meat? Putting aside the fact that I am a vegan for reasons of compassion and justice, in other words, because I feel it is immoral to inflict harm when we can avoid it, no, not if you’ve put serious thought to it. It’s a mathematical impossibility to produce all the flesh and animal products people consume unless it’s on a massive-scale production model, which is why factory farms exist. There are idyllic-seeming small farms - though commodification and violence are still essential to even the most bucolic settings, despite our apparent willingness to believe in fairy tales - but they couldn’t come close to fulfilling demand, especially not with a world population expected to surpass nine billion by 2050.

Something vegans often hear, with more than a bit of defensiveness, is what about the violence of plant foods? For example, it harms and kills small animals like rabbits and mice when their homes are plowed over for grains. First of all, vegans are not claiming to be perfect, just trying to avoid contributing to harm. Second, is this person genuinely concerned about the small animals killed in the harvesting of grains? Then he or she will want to go vegan for that reason alone as a huge percentage of soy and grain is fed to the animals people eat. The last ditch effort to justify eating animals is to try to smear vegans as participants in the cruelty department because, well, plants feel pain, too. Really? Despite having no central nervous system, no ability to avoid capture and no evolutionary logic for the supposed pain or suffering? (Those who are about to post this video: you do realize that there is a difference between responding to stimuli and possessing sentience, right?) We know that other animals have sentience as we have proof of it; some speculate that plants do as well and we are supposed to accept this without proof. Trying to clumsily lump them together as equivalents shows how willing we are to suspend logic and also how willing we are to turn the genuine suffering - the screams, the cries, the blood, the pain - of sentient animals into mere abstractions in order to justify maintaining our habits.

The consequences of eating animals are real, they are enormous and they are happening all around us. Is this the time to be playing hypothetical chess games simply because the reality challenges our comfort zone and our privileges?

My grandmother and I eventually got over this divide. I think once the initial ruffling settled down, she saw that our true relationship to one another remained steadfast: I wasn’t rejecting her. I was simply no longer eating meat. My love for her wasn’t about the brisket. It was about the affection, the happiness together, the closeness, the understanding, the connection. We lost one component of our history together; it would be a lie to say that it wasn’t a little painful to say goodbye to this aspect of my life with my grandmother. I needed to do it, though, for my self-respect and because my grandmother raised me to be someone who stood up for what I believed in. My veganism is a source of pride, not regret.

Food is emotional. I get that as well as anyone. Connection is deeper than food, though, and doing what we know is right is far more gratifying than eating brisket, even the brisket of your favorite person in the world.

Our love is of much deeper substance than that.