The value of community based activism

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The 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.