I. The Single-Issue Vegan Model is Elitist and Fatally Flawed
Our critical analyzes have exposed radical flaws in the mainstream vegan outreach and vegan abolitionism approaches.[1] We have emphasized the real threat of global ecological crisis which they have ignored and failed to link to veganism. The scientists have warned humanity of impending crisis that will change everything on this planet, and this message has been ignored by governments, media, society in general, and the vegan communities as well. Veganism has been confined to a white upper and middle class enclave.
It is clear that existing vegan models have reached an impasse and are fatally flawed in design and concept, and that a radical new vision is needed to rescue the importance of the vegan message for global crisis and situate it in its full social and ecological context.
We introduce here a radical new model, vision, and approach, which we are calling “deep vegan outreach.” We have major projects underway, such as involve producing a “social cookbook” which emphasizes the crucial role veganism can play in healing the earth and will be a vehicle for reaching communities hitherto ignored by the vegan movement (see below).
We are at a world-historical crossroads, where we choose breakdown or breakthrough, collapse or sustainability. All progressive movements must move this issue to the forefront of attention, recognize a common threat, and integrate veganism into human, animal, and environmental issues.
The movement either takes a giant leap here and now, or it continues to degenerate into irrelevance and marginality. We refuse to allow this to happen. We cannot let dogma, complacency, a narrow single-issue worldview, and elitism to thwart out potential any longer.
We urge everyone to recognize that we hold one of the most important keys to the future, and that we must adopt new visions, models, and tactics.
We need you to join this new effort and help develop a holistic vision for the 21st and a world in crisis. We need your help to promote a comprehensive vegan outreach approach that includes all people and cultures.
We have exciting new ideas and strategies available to kick start a new movement. The initial response to our request for contributions has been enthusiastic and overwhelming and we welcome everyone’s continued input and support.
II. General Principles of Deep Vegan Outreach
1) Crisis-oriented: recognizes the severity of ecological crisis and heeds the warnings of world scientists and policy experts.
2) Pro-active: with a sense of urgency lacking in the complacent vegan community, this approach works to forestall an imminent ecological crisis and emphasizes the importance of a vegan paradigm shift for the entire planet.
3) Extensive outreach: unlike the dominant model, deep veganism engages people beyond affluent and privileged white communities. This approach addresses:
- Economically-disadvantaged individuals and families, and racially and ethnically diverse populations.
- Developing nations shifting to a meat-based diet; above all, we emphasize the crisis implications of the shift to meat consumption in China and India — the world’s most populous nations — the enormous implications of which have been completely overlooked by the vegan community.
- Eminent scientists and governmental bodies such as the United Nation (UN) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which sending out a wakeup call to the world and whom we hope to persuade to emphasize the global need for a vegan diet ethic. Build bridges and alliances with social and environmental movements, as we emphasize commonalities of oppression and the crucial importance of veganism and animal liberation for ecological sustainability, human survival, and moral-spiritual growth.
III. Immediate Projects and Short Term Goals
1) Engage the existing vegan community: spread awareness of the need for deep vegan outreach and a global ecovegan movement; build new webpages, social media profiles, and so on.
2) Production of “The Social Cookbook: Recipes for Renewal”: gather recipes; emphasize world cuisines, ethnic diversity, and affordability of vegan food; write a comprehensive introduction; publish and distribute.
3) Letter Writing Campaign: outreach efforts to major climate scientists (e.g., James Hansen) and policy experts to encourage them to emphasize veganism as crucial for avoiding runaway ecological crisis and renewing the earth and all its inhabitants.
4) Building Racial and Ethnic Diversity: taking steps to move veganism from its current marginalized status in its limited appeal to privileged whites to a diverse and inclusive social movement.
Dr. Steven Best
Camille Marino
Please send suggestions and comments to: camille@negotiationisover.com.
[1] See “Manifesto for Radical Abolitionism: Total Liberation by Any Means Necessary” (http://negotiationisover.com/?page_id=3738) and “13 Ways to Promote Alliance Politics and Total Liberation” (http://negotiationisover.com/?page_i=4200).
Dr. Steven Best is NIO’s Senior Editor of Total Liberation. Associate professor of philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist, Dr. Best engages the issues of the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” He has come under frequent fire for his uncompromising advocacy of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to Russia to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.
.
I invite you to join the NIO blog network and take a stand for those imprisoned in labs. Remember, if they could fight back, their tormentors would have expired long ago. We have an obligation to expose the abusers. It is the LEAST we can do! I welcome your emails & look forward to adding your name to our team.
If you have a Facebook account, join the extended Negotiation Is Over network.”.
To submit work to NIO for consideration and publication, please send an email to camille@negotiationisover.com with the subject “submission”.
To receive NIO updates, please send an email to camille@negotiationisover.com with the subject “subscriptions”.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I would like to see drive thru vegan fast food restaurants change the eating habits of the general public. That is what the affluent vegans can do for the cause that would produce the fastest results.
I don’t have a concrete idea for drive-through, but when I have my own 50/50 place (doing half raw, half cooked), I plan on having, in the front area, a fast food area so people can pop in for raw milks to go, smoothies, sandwiches, burgers, wraps, wings (I make amazing vegan chik’n wings, best wings in the city!) all that sort of thing. Run in, order, five minutes later, leave. That sort of thing.
We kinda have that at work now, where you can get something quick (sandwich or burger or whatever) to go; we also have bike delivery when its nice out.
… So there is progress. We just need more vegan restaurants!
Steven Best, you want to do something “radical” and different from your “adversary” (Francione)? Promote veganic gardening/farming. Francione abolitionists seem not to get that this is the key to empowering people. Even the most staunch animal rightists seem to want to just accept that animal feces is in the food they eat. What’s worse, is the feces comes directly from enslaved animals at the factory farms, and therefore even organic farmers are supporting cruelty and death (and we do too, so long as we eat it and don’t make an effort to change it).
Francione is not interested in promoting this. Et tu? His simple solution is for everyone to switch from Mayonaise to Veganaise. His approach is not flawed because it is nonviolent – it’s flawed because it is market-based. He literally refuses to admit that we are not going to make any change by “voting with our dollar.”
Apparently, in the eyes of almost all animal rightists (from every faction), this idea of veganic farming/gardening is either far too trivial or far too “radical” to incorporate in vegan outreach as one of the *KEY* principles. So it remains a side topic – veganic gardening is currently viewed more as a hobby or a fun topic of discussion. Go on to Vegan Freaks forum under the “gardening” section – people rarely post, and if they do it’s usually on very light topics on par with “What’s your favorite plant?”
This will all change one day soon. Because climate change will demand it.
The time to talk about this topic is now.
Well Jeannie, this shouldn’t surprise you, but I am not Francione and my theoretical, political, and experiential background is quite a bit broader and deeper, and I have an infinitely more open mind.
So, actually, my response is to agree with you 110%, to say this is a fantastic and important idea, and to invite you to work with us to put this issue at the forefront of importance, should you be willing and amenable to our overall approach and politics. You can see we are trying to wake up and shake up this stagnant and complacent vegan community and reinvent ourselves in new and exciting ways. This is certainly one.
Oddly enough, I have just started to read through 3 books I purchased on composting and veganic gardening. I live on an acre of land which goes to waste and I’d like to make it into a community garden or at least grow food for myself and to share with others who might need it.
I see the importance of gardening in broad terms, involving not only avoiding chemical poisoning of corporate agriculture and the high costs or inaccessibility of organic foods, but also as cultivating individuals and communities not only soil, breaking with capitalist market relations and a key link of the oppressive chains, becoming autonomous and self-reliant, and bonding with the earth and processes of growth in one of the best possible ways to nurture ecological consciousness.
So there are nutritional, individual, community, educational, political, and economic dimensions to this that are crucial for planting seeds for a new world. It is key to autonomy, health, veganism, community, and breaking with corporations and market structures.
I am with you completely in seeing this as a crucial and centerpiece issue. I encourage you to help us incorporate this into our budding thinking and raw green efforts to reinvent veganism as something meaningful and accessible for all people, and to make the paradigm shift from vegan outreach to social outreach, from kitchen cookbooks to social cookbooks, from the “culinary activism” to revolutionary movements.
Too much so, the vegan community is a joke, but it’s not funny anymore, now that we are at the most critical threshold in the 7 million year history of hominid/human evolution.
Francione, Vegan Freaks, and the rest of it — just bourgeois ideology, narcisstic consumerism, “green” and “cruelty-free” capitalism, another intolerable expression of elitism and, in fact, racism, in the indifference to class and racial struggles.
They are the past, we’re trying to scatter seeds toward winds of the future; they are part of the problem, we’re struggling to be part of the solution.
But we are a lonely few, we need you, thousands, and millions like you. Our door is open for business, and our sign does not say “Whites Only.”
Steve
This is a brilliant idea and exactly the kind of independent thought we need.
We need to move away from consumerism and the systems that reinforce speciesism and oppression. In addition, gardening can be an excellent way of bringing people together in the community and sharing vegan principles. It seems so much more organic to do outreach with members of the community already engaged in this common project rather than evangelizing with leaflets to other suburban whites.
We encourage you to join our efforts and contribute. Do you have experience? Can you provide any advice or direction? I look forward to your thoughts.
This could be a launchpad for total liberation politics.