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Leafletting at Diwali Downtown

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

Jason leafletting at Diwali

Last week was Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. There were several events around Vancouver, culminating in a big celebration at the Roundhouse Centre in Yaletown on Sunday. This sounded like a good opportunity for some outreach to the people of the South Asian community, many of whom already have a great respect for cows. So Joanne and I took a bag of our dairy leaflets down to Davie & Pacific to hand out to the people coming in to the Roundhouse Centre. Later in the afternoon, Jason from the Humane South Asians would come by to help out, along with Lauchlan.

I can’t remember the last time I had such a good time leafletting. Aside from the beautiful weather (thank you, lack of rain), we had a very positive, and very receptive crowd. Just about all of the people I talked to seemed both surprised and upset by the systemic cruelty to animals involved in dairy. We finished the bag of leaflets well ahead of schedule–in fact, Joanne and I had to stop early for fear we’d run out before Jason and Lauchlan had a chance to get there!

Roger leafletting at Diwali

That was fine, of course: it gave us a chance to look around inside and see what the event was like. There was lots of food (long lines, though, so I didn’t find out what exactly was there (and vegan) except for some tasty samosas; maybe someone in comments can fill me in), lots of performers (see here for the full list), visual art, crafts, and generally what looked like a lot of fun.

We should definitely make sure we’re back for Diwali next year!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »
Tags: animal rights, dairy, outreach, vegan

Eyes Wide Open Film Screening – Nov 20

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

In January, we screened Earthlings and attracted 150 attendees. A lot of the people went away with their hearts and minds opened up about the extent of cruelty inflicted on animals.

A high school teacher became vegetarian and started talking about animal rights to his students every chance he has.

A long time quiet vegetarian became an outspoken vegan.

A meat eater decided to gradually reduce his meat consumption and learn about vegetarian cooking.

This film has the kind of transformative power unmatched by any other animal rights films currently available.

We are screening Earthlings again on Nov 20th and we need YOU to help spread the word. The worst thing than not screening this film is for no one to come to the screening.

So please do what you can:

Bring a friend or family to the screening.
Spread the word on your Facebook page.
Send an email to all your friends and family.
Post up a flyer at school, work or your favorite cafe.

We cannot fill the seats without your help!

Attached are some posters. Will you help put these up?

Full Colour Flyer
Black/White Flyer

Details about the November 20th double feature film screening can be viewed on our website.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »
Tags: animal rights, animals in entertainment, aquariums, Earthlings, events, Lolita: Slave to Entertainment, the Cove, Vancouver Aquarium, vegan

Building a strong animal rights movement, online

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Download a flier for this event

One part of Liberation BC’s mission is to provide support and build a strong community of effective animal advocates. To that end we’ll be hosting a dialogue/workshop on “How can animal rights activists use the internet to create a stronger movement?” This is the next in the “A Powerful Voice” Animal Rights Community Dialogue Series.

We all know about online tools like facebook, twitter, and forums for communicating and sharing information – but are we using them as effectively as we can to build a stronger movement?

Are there ways we could be more systematically using what exists and working to create new tools that might help us all work together or loosely coordinate our efforts – more easily, with less effort?

What have we got already?
(This is by no means a comprehensive list.)

Animal rights/vegan related:

General:

People use these tools in many different ways. There are many groups on Facebook where activists communicate and share information. Activists connect from around the world on Facebook as well. Care2 is used by many organizations to engage individual activists to take action on particular issues, such as sending letters to decision-makers, pressuring companies to stop certain practices, and so on.

How do you use these tools? How could we use them to not only spread the word about animal rights, but also to help each other?

If you are at all interested in these questions – or if you have expertise to share – please join us for this conversation.

Here’s the details:

A Powerful Voice #3: How can animal rights activists use the internet to create a stronger movement?

Sunday, November 14, 2010 from 1:00 PM – 4:30 PM (PT)

Radha Yoga & Eatery

728 Main Street

Vancouver, British Columbia

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Response »
Tags: animal rights, community building, dialogue, events

Liberation BC is on The Change – come join us!

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

Liberation BC has joined TheChange, which is a really cool site bringing together organizations committed to sustainability. Our page is here: http://www.thechange.com/liberation-bc/. By my count, it looks like Liberation BC is the first animal group to join TheChange, but I don’t think we’ll be the last. (On what sustainability has to do with animal rights, start here.) Anyway, take a look here for a list of organizations who’ve already joined–there’s a very diverse mix.

OK, so that’s the site; why do I think it’s cool? The idea is, as I said, bringing together people committed to sustainability. There are a few ways they’re implementing this: when you register with the site, you can pick organizations you want to “follow”, and then you get their updates. What kind of updates do you get? Well, organizations can post events and jobs, and they can integrate their blog posts and tweets with TheChange. But the heart of TheChange–at least to me–is the idea of commitments. Organizations make explicit commitments on the site, in three categories: environment, community, and employees. This puts pressure on participants to actually do things to make a change, not just mouth the word “sustainable”.

And comments are enabled on basically everything. This gives users a chance to give organizations feedback on what they’re doing–to push for the change we want to see.

It looks like TheChange is still in its early stages, but head over, join up, and follow us. This promises to be cool.

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Tags: animal rights, environmentalism, sustainability

A report from Let Live Portland

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

I’m in Portland at the Let Live Conference, an annual animal rights conference put on by the Let Live Foundation in conjunction with the Student Animal Liberation Coalition at Portland State University. The theme this year is “creativity.”

For those of you not here, some of the sessions are being streamed live.

We haven’t yet started day 2 of the conference yet. Already, though, it feels as if I’ve gotten as much out of the one day as anyone could reasonably expect to get out of a whole 2-day conference. It’s just been packed with presenting, talking to some really amazing people, and hearing lots of great ideas. The creative ideas here are running deep and thick.

The event actually began on Friday night with an inspiring and hope-filled talk by Andrew Stepanian, one of the convicted SHAC 7. He recently got off probation after a 3-year prison term for his role in the Stop Huntingdon LIfe Sciences campaign. I hope the video makes it up soon. I’d highly recommend watching it when it gets posted.

Jasmin Singer‘s talk yesterday morning, though (the official opening talk of the first day) was even more inspiring and more moving. Jasmin is just friggin’ awesome, and her (and her partner Mariann’s) website/blog/podcast/etc Our Hen House, is becoming one of the most valuable out there. Her talk was funny and inspiring and had me re-committing to doing the best work I can to help animals. I hope her talk makes it up onto Vimeo soon so you all can see it. In the meantime, though, be sure to check out her website. Rumor has it an interview with me and Joanne may appear in the not-too-distant future.

Jasmin and I did a session called Creative Online Activism, which covered a whole lot of information in not too much time. We gave some tips on blogging, podcasting, podcasting, twitter, and facebook. Really, we just scratched the surface of what is available. We also learned about some very cool organizations and projects, including Plants & Animals Denver (a vegan collective in Denver, CO) (pssst, they’re also on Twitter), The New Leaf Vegan Society (from Virginia!), and the Free Tilly Now campaign (a campaign to free Tilikum, an orca in captivity at Sea World).

In the afternoon I was on a panel, Creative Campaign Spotlight, where I presented about the Cow Ribbon Campaign. The panel also included, Isa Moskowitz (creator of the Post Punk Kitchen and so much more), Gary Loewenthal (Director of Compassion for Animals), and Danielle Thompson (Director of the Galapagos Preservation Society). It was a bit intimidating to be on a panel with all of these people, since they are doing so much amazing work.

I showed slides of the Cow Ribbon campaign and talked about it a bit. After we all presented our campaigns there was a bit of discussion around creative campaigns. Being creative in what we do is important. Creativity doesn’t have to mean flashy and out there, it can often just mean finding a new way of using something that already exists. I hope that anyone in the Vancouver area who is interested in being creative and finding new ideas for outreach comes to our next community dialogue event on July 11, which is focused on using fun and entertainment for outreach.

I also presented a session about our Animal Advocacy Camp. I was nervous about it at the beginning because I was planning to do a different sort of presentation. Instead of just talking at people for 45 minutes, we did a mini advocacy camp, with an agenda setting and one 10 minute session. Then we had a good discussion about how it felt, what worked and what didn’t. It was total experiment to try to present the idea of an open space event by doing open space, but I think it worked. Even if it didn’t work as well as it could have, I know that I really enjoyed the conversation with some very lovely people.

In the evening we went to Portobello, an aven-more-than-amazing vegan restaurant for dinner and a Let Live party/benefit.

Being here and seeing all of the dedicated grassroots animal rights activists who’ve come from near and far to be together and learn together – it’s just really inspiring. I’m so happy to be doing this work for animals.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Responses »
Tags: activism, animal rights, Let Live, Portland

The myth of rural ethics

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

I just posted a comment in response to a blog post on the Iowa Farm Bureau blog. I doubt that the comment will get approved, so I thought I’d post it here as well.

Here’s the paragraph that caught my eye:

Not only are too many suburban-dwelling kids like my daughter removed from the character-building value of the sweaty, dirty, heavy-lifting jobs which are a part of farm life, they’re uneducated on modern food production. How can we be surprised when they are seduced or recruited by animal activists who claim food today comes from cruel practices or polluters? Many kids have never been on a farm to gain the experience to discern the truth themselves.

Here’s my comment:

I grew up on a small homestead farm in rural Vermont. I watched cows and goats give birth. I saw pigs and cows killed and then butchered. I helped with the smoking of their meat. I helped in the garden weeding and picking vegetables that we ate and canned and pickled.

All of that experience led me to realize that there was no justification for killing these animals. I experienced looking into their eyes in that moment of death. I saw how they wanted to live and how they cared for their young. We were getting enough food from the vegetables we were growing, why did we need to raise these animals like this and then kill them?

I think if people allow themselves to openly and honestly experience the lives of the animals they are “raising” they will gain an greater appreciation of those lives. And a greater respect – a real respect, one that enables us to take the great and noble step of letting them live their own lives.

I’ve also spent time on farm animal sanctuaries, where I have been able to be with animals who are not destined to be loaded on a slaughter truck or get shot in the head. The experience is far different, and I remember those days with happiness. The sadness of killing an animal to eat is not necessary, and can be completely and easily avoided through responsible choices. How can any suffering we inflict be justified when we are doing it unnecessarily?

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Responses »
Tags: animal rights, ethics, factory farming, family farms, misinformation

Vancouver writes!

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Vancouver (and the surround area) is full of amazing, active vegans who want to change the world for the better. This makes me very happy.

But what makes me even happier is that so many of them write blogs.

Blogs are both inspirational to those of us who are involved in animal activism and an important means of getting the word out about animal exploitation and how we can live a kinder, more compassionate life.

I don’t know all of the vegan bloggers in Vancouver, nor do I likely know all of the blogs that they write. But here is my list of the ones I know (in no particular order).

Do you know of others, or do you write a vegan blog of your own? Leave a comment and let us all know about it!

The blogs

The Vegan Spoon
Only just beginning, this blog was inspired by Stumptown Vegans. Restaurant reviews and other sundry eating.

Epicurvegan
The blog of the mastermind behind The Vegan Spoon. She covers crafts, food, and the occasional bit about animals.

Sweet on Veg
Vegan sweetness. Plain and simple.

The Vegan Project
Two women who tried going vegan for a month, are sticking with it, and are documenting the journey for everyone to read.

Two Vegans on a Bike
They’re headed off on a bike trip with only what they can carry on their bikes. Hats off to them for having the guts to follow their dreams.

Vegancouver
Living as a vegan in Vancouver, with some restaurant reviews and other miscellaneous eating.

West Coast Vegan
Another blog about living as a vegan in Vancouver, with reviews of food and some other stuff.

Plate+Simple
Super happy vegan blog, mostly covering food, from a Yaletown perspective, with nice photos.

Eat Raw Vegan
A vegan abolitionist’s blog about living as a raw vegan. Some nice reviews and videos.

Eat, Drink & Be Vegan
Dreena Burton’s blog. I think that’s all I need to say.

Pope Checked
Veganism & hockey. Yup, veganism & hockey. Unfortunately on hiatus at the moment, hopefully to resume in the not-too-distant future.

Caring Cook
A nice blog about everyday living as a vegan, with some easy recipes.

karmaTALK
The blog from Karmavore, the area’s only all-vegan everything store, located in New Westminster.

Lost Swell
Birth Routes
Read Me To Sleep
Three blogs from one little family. The first is Robert’s photo blog (really great photos), the second is Amber’s doula blog (a vegan doula!), and the third is their family blog. Unfortunately, I think they’re moving away, so they won’t be local vegan bloggers for long.

Mud & Grub
Vegan ultrarunners!

Become the Voice
Vegan food, local area events, and some good posts on living as a vegan.

Heart 4 Animals
Local animal rights information, news, and events.

bjorkedoff
Evan’s blog with copious photographs of his baking and other food. Not quite local anymore since he’s off in New York, but we’re hoping he’ll be back when he’s done with school.

Blowing Up My Kitchen!
Raw veganism, with great tips on eating raw vegan and brewing kombucha.

Vancouver Vegan Examiner
Written by Genny of Blowing Up My Kitchen!. News and information about the goings-on in Vancouver’s vegan community.

Dawn of a New Era
Veganism and anarchy, plus some pretty good short fiction.

Me: Vegan
A vegan straightedge perspective on animal rights and vegan food.

Vegan Mischief
Vegan food with some great food photos.

Bliss In a Teacup
Vegan craftiness & vintage loveliness.

– Update –

Here are a few I missed, and some new ones:

Into the Eyes of God
Poetry, art, and more, focused on animal rights and human connections with animals and the entire world.

Pistachiorose
Vegan food. Wonderful, wonderful vegan food.

Animal Voices Vancouver
Vancouver’s only animal-rights radio show.

Paul Eats (Cooking & Baking)
Paul from Mojave loves to cook – and now he’s sharing his mad science with the world.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Responses »
Tags: activism, animal rights, blogs, food, Vancouver, vegan

We have a powerful voice

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

We just got home from the first of a series of animal rights dialogues that we are organizing. The series is called “A Powerful Voice” and the topic of the conversation was “How can we best work together to achieve animal rights?”

There were so many great ideas and a lot of energy around many aspects of activism. At the end of the event we narrowed down the themes to 4 that will be the focus of each of the next events.

I still have to go through all the notes from the day and send them out to the attendees, but the next topics look really exciting! I hope that people leave these events with a renewed sense of being part of a community.

And I hope that this all leads to some exciting new tangible projects – since the whole point is really to work more effectively together, and get more done.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Responses »
Tags: activism, animal rights

Film screening: changing hearts and minds

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

The Eyes Wide Open Film Screening Series kicked off last Saturday with Earthlings.

In the next couple of months, Liberation BC will be screening two other films: Fowl Play, a documentary about the egg industry; and Meat the Truth, a documentary about the environmental impact of meat consumption.

If the series proves to be successful and funding is available, we will continue to screen films throughout the year. Though we’ve never screened films in the past, we’ve always found video to be extremely powerful in reaching out to the public. In my experience, you can argue until you are blue in the face about animal suffering without any impact but the moment you show video footage of that suffering, it is immediately understood. This is why we always had a television with us when we did any outreach work on the streets.

150 people came to the Earthlings screening. The room we rented at the public library had a capacity for 130 people but we managed to fit everyone into the room.

Earthlings DVD

Earthlings, as those who have seen it will know, is not a particularly easy film to watch from beginning to end. It impressed and surprised me how many people did stick it out to the bitter end. Only about 20 people left in the middle of the film. For the 130 who stayed, I admire their courage and commitment to the truth no matter how ugly it may be.

After the film finished we had an open Q&A session. One woman wanted to know how we could get this film shown to meat-eaters as she assumed that everyone in the room was vegetarian like herself. In response to this question, we did a quick survey of the room and discovered about half of the people there were not vegetarians. We put a lot of effort into promoting this screening outside of the animal rights community and so I was pleased that so many of the general public did show up to the screening.

At the Q&A, some people wanted to know where to buy “humane meat”, some wanted to know what vegetarians ate and some wanted to justify omnivorism. It was interesting to hear the debate focusing solely on eating animals when the film was clearly divided into four segments: pets, food,fashion, entertainment and science.

Could this be an indication that people are becoming aware and distrustful about the practices of the food industry? Whatever the reason, it’s nice to see people questioning the food on their plates.

We handed out comment cards and received close to 80 of them back. The majority of the people commented that they had not previously seen Earthlings and had learned something new from the film.

We are hoping these films will provide a platform for people to start talking and thinking about issues concerning animals. Unlike advertising for KFC and McDonald’s, information about animal cruelty is not just going to jump out at people wherever they go. But we can try to make the information more easily accessible by keeping these screenings free and at a central location.

In order to pay for the space, and not charge admissions, we rely on your donations. If you think these screenings are valuable, please consider making a contribution to Liberation BC.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Response »
Tags: animal rights, Earthlings, film, Fowl Play, humane meat, Meat the Truth

Animal Rights and Art

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Click the painting to see more of Katana's art.

Local Vancouver artist, Katana Barnett, has interviewed me at her fascinating art blog, Katanaville. The topic? Animal rights and art. Be sure to check it out!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Responses »
Tags: activism, animal rights, art