Archive for May, 2009
The audience is everybody
May 29th
If we want a vegan world, then I don’t think it’s effective to limit our audience to certain age groups, racial groups, social classes, political affiliations, or other “demographics.” I want everyone to hear the vegan message.
For some, veganism will be a natural and easy fit. I want those people to hear me, so they can join in and make a difference. For others, veganism will seem radical or impossible. But I want those people to hear me, too. These “others” may in fact be most affected by our perspective. Even if their current lifestyle is the opposite of veganism, they may be on the cusp of a life-changing experience. And if their lifestyle is the opposite of veganism, that might also mean there’s more to gain from their eventual veganism. (Think of an avid hunter who goes vegan and surprises everyone around them; suddenly the whole community is a lot more curious about veganism!) And this all stands in addition to the obvious problem of prejudice (literally prejudging people as “receptive” or “unreceptive” based on factors like gender and race). My proposition is that we can reach out lovingly and respectfully to anyone who is willing to listen.
Of course, this kind of assertion—“the audience is everybody”—begs for some qualification.
Embracing an audience of everybody doesn’t mean I purposely seek out an audience that I feel will be unreceptive. It doesn’t mean I completely forget about prioritization and spend hours talking to people who aren’t even listening to me. And embracing an audience of everybody doesn’t mean that I enter communities as a cultural outsider, declare the righteousness of veganism, and then leave. No, I think this “touring activist” model may well ignore the importance and value of community-based activism and grassroots, person-to-person outreach.
Embracing an audience of everyone doesn’t mean I promote veganism as a single-issue cause, telling individuals and institutions, “I’m fine with your racism and heterosexism; I just want you to stop oppressing nonhumans!” No, it just means I don’t let that existing racism and heterosexism turn into an assumption on my part that those people will “never change.” It simply means I don’t give up on people or shun people. It means I try to stay open to anybody who will consider the vegan ideal. So an audience of everyone doesn’t mean I sacrifice my integrity or my idealism: No, it means I take my idealism to the streets and share it with people—anybody who will listen!
The value of community based activism
May 19th
Listen to the MP3The vegan ideal of non-exploitation is very simple: respect and honor all; and yet it can be difficult for many of us to understand what this means if our usual experiences of relationships are not centered around this ideal. For me, living the vegan ideal means cultivating relationships based on respect, friendliness, trust, honesty, and kindness. Spreading veganism is a process that occurs gradually, person by person, person to person. This is why we very much value community based activism.
Community based activism is activism by community members in the communities we are part of. It’s a way of working to build a community that shares our value of respect for all. We may be involved in multiple communities, small and large, during the course of a single day: our neighborhood, the people we ride the train with, our religious center, the neighborhood grocery across the street, our work place.
Being part of a community means we have repeated interactions with the same people and this means there is time for conversations about veganism. While the vegan ideal is simple, the reorienting it asks of many of us takes time. Through our steady presence in the community, people know they can come to us when they have questions about veganism and people know they can trust us to speak with them with kindness, respect and truthfulness. The great value of community based activism is that we can be available. We can be available to answer questions people have about the whys and hows of veganism, we can be available to provide support during the transition period, and we can be available as part of a growing community dedicated to living veganism.
More than any other groups or individuals, we as community members have the greatest stake in and commitment to transforming our communities. We can be sure we have our communities’ best interests at heart. Because we understand our communities better than anybody else, we know which issues make sense to work on in our community. Because each community is different, there is no one size fits all type or area of activism. And because we are in our communities every day, we can experiment and learn what works and what doesn’t work for our particular communities. In this way, we can be the most effective we can be in building a community of respect.