Copy-and-Paste Activism Does Not Work: Perspectives from a POC

Gwenna Hunter, event coordinator for Vegan Outreach and founder of Vegans of LA

As the founder of Vegans of LA and the Los Angeles community events coordinator for Vegan Outreach, as well as a volunteer for various animal rights groups, I have found that when communicating with communities of color, it is best not to stand before them and say “go vegan because animals are suffering.” One would assume that a community who knows what it’s like to suffer would understand this as an easy conversation. However, living in a reality where you still struggle with being treated equally, along with constant news and social media showing people of color being treated unfairly and brutalized by police officers with little to no consequences, makes it emotionally painful to hear about animals having their rights fought for with such consistency, passion, and unity. This is why, when speaking with communities of color, I always start my conversations with health and self-love. Twice in my career as a community events coordinator, I made the error of starting these conversations with animals. I was basically doing what I had seen and heard in an attempt to follow the “go vegan” script, yet I was met with harsh resistance, particularly from older black men.

The first time I experienced this type of reaction I was presenting at a library in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. I started talking about animals and a gentleman stood up and yelled “You’re an evolutionist!” He was a large man with a face that revealed pain and stress. He began to tell me in front of a roomful of people that the Bible says it is okay to eat animals, and if it weren’t true then God wouldn’t have said it. Getting into a debate with anyone over the Bible typically creates more frustration and separation, and I did not want to have that conversation. I was actually terrified of this type of confrontation. It was something I hoped to never experience while giving a talk about the vegan lifestyle.

At the time I was new at giving these talks and when confronted with what I had hoped to avoid, I had to take a deep breath and remind myself to see him as a victim of the same programming I was once part of. I asked him if he felt that a loving God would want to take the life of someone who loved, gave birth to children, and felt joy and sadness. His response was: do not question God! I had no idea how to respond, but, luckily, prior to the event starting, he and I had struck up a conversation. He wasn’t aware that I would be speaking, but he knew that I was the organizer of the event. He shared with me that he once worked at a carnival and was responsible for being the caregiver of several animals there. He said that to his amazement the animals would greet him every time he showed up and that he felt a bond with them and an affection that he had never expected. He was also very surprised to experience their reactions and their attachment to each other.

I was able to use that conversation to express how he may have felt if, during that bonding time, someone came and slaughtered those animals in front of him and then ate them. I said that this is how vegans feel about all animals. We believe that they are all aware and express a full range of emotions, just like us. I posed the question: “Why have anyone suffer so that we can have the experience of eating their dead bodies?” He listened and connected with his own story and then quieted down as he went for a second helping of the vegan food that we had provided.

I understand how easily people can become provoked when they feel they’re being told that what they have believed their entire lives is not true, when it challenges their religion, when it raises questions about their traditional food choices, and especially when they feel that an animal’s rights have priority over theirs. Or worse, when their own suffering is compared to an animal that they have been programmed to believe is here for us to do what we want to it.

Another situation where a person of color was offended by my promoting a vegan lifestyle was during an outdoor tabling event in a black community called Leimert Park. I spoke during a panel discussion about being a black vegan influencer, and I had a table with free booklets provided by Vegan Outreach. An older black gentleman approached me and asked, “Sister you’re out here telling people not to eat animals, but what are you doing for our black community? Black men are being shot in the streets.” I could see and feel his anger. It wasn’t necessarily toward me, but toward the system he felt I was representing because he may have felt that I was in it just for the animals. I looked him in the eyes and said, “I am doing this for black people. I want us to stop eating dead bodies and believing that it is nourishment. I want us to wake up and eat better, because if we eat better then perhaps we can unite and make better decisions for ourselves and our communities. This is why I am here. We need to expand our consciousness and capacity to love.” He looked at me and said, “Okay, my sister. Thank you for being out here.”

Conversations like these let me know that people of color will often make assumptions and criticize this type of work if the activist isn’t wearing a dashiki and a head wrap, or doesn’t have obvious images of POC on their outreach table. Our culture is hurting. We are hurting so much that it is often hard for us to show love and empathy for nonhuman animals because of the comparisons we grew up hearing—that we are lower than animals, an eighth of human, “savages,” “apes,” “monkeys,” and are subject to having dogs sicced on us during protests. Experiencing, watching, and reading about these experiences can cause resentment toward animals, when it seems like they are being shown more love, empathy, and kindness. It’s like having a sibling who gets treated with special attention, while the other sibling is constantly being compared to the perfect sibling and never gets the same amount of attention. At some point, no matter how nice the praised sibling might be, resentment will inevitably creep in. This is why so many POC are triggered when they hear non-POC talk about animal rights and when animal exploitation is compared to human slavery. POC wonder why more white people are not out there marching, fighting, and doing the same work on our behalf. We want to know: Why does it feel like animals are more important? Why are so many outraged when an animal is hurt, but the same outrage is not expressed when a black person is brutalized by the police? What do they see in animals that they do not see in us? This at the very core breaks a piece of my heart.

When doing activism with POC it is best to start the discussion by helping people think differently about food through self-love and how to change genetics. We want to look and feel our best. Then the conversation can ease into the topic of animals. Explain how animals are fed antibiotics and how they walk around in their own filth. Prompt them to think about how we are a society that is obsessed with eating dead body parts and how eating someone’s wings, thighs, and ribs is rather strange when you really think about it. Create a space for deep critical thinking and questioning. Conversing like this can often trigger a new form of awareness. Tell them how the mothers cry out for their children and how they are not able to nurture them properly. Let them know that when a cow gives birth to a boy, whom she had carried in her womb for nine months just like human mothers, he is taken for veal. Paint a picture and tell a story so that empathy has permission to flow from their hearts. But please do not say that animals have rights before assessing the energy of those you are speaking with. It is important to make a connection, gain trust, and show that you care about the community you are speaking with. If not, you will lose their trust, and if they feel that their lives are seen as less important, they will be resentful. Copy-and-paste activism only works when you are preaching to the choir. If you want to reach the congregation, you must feed people with the information that they are hungry for. It doesn’t matter how they get their foot in the door, as long as they come in. Plant the vegan seed and let it grow on its own.

Activism in the White Community versus the Black Community

When I got involved in activism, I wasn’t vegan yet. I was vegetarian and working toward it. I was new to LA and knew very few people, so I started creating meetups where I would host an event at a vegan restaurant and people from the area would come out to make new friends and have conversations. My meetups were mostly frequented by white people. When I began getting more active and volunteering, the white vegan community embraced me and I got involved in many events and causes. What I noticed that concerned me was the strictness of their veganism and constantly policing each other on being vegan. For example, if someone in the community did anything that was not considered vegan, such as consume honey, they would get attacked. However, I did learn about speciesism, and checking my language, and the importance of referring to an animal as “he” or “she” instead of “it.” I learned more about animals’ unique personalities by being invited to events where they would roam freely. I felt more connected to the innocence of animals, and I could understand how easy it is to love them and want to defend them with everything you have. I understood this powerful connection.

In the black vegan community, rarely was there conversation about animals’ ability to love, communicate, and feel. The commentary I heard was mostly along the lines of “Don’t eat animals because of what they are fed” and “Don’t eat animals because it’s not good for us.” Conversations were centered on taking better care of ourselves, breaking family cycles, creating new eating habits, encouraging exercising and being active, eating raw foods, and loving yourself. I didn’t hear this kind of discussion as much in the white vegan community.

I am fortunate to gain value from both sides. What is unfortunate is that the white vegan and black vegan communities are often separated. Imagine if we came together to make change; it would be a day of reckoning for the meat and dairy industries. We would be much more effective if we took the time to learn how to gain an understanding of each other and help educate one another on how to advocate for the other in ways that go beyond veganism. After all, this lifestyle is about doing no harm; no harm to any being. This is why I often include conversations about human oppression on my Vegans of LA page. I often hear white vegans say that the vegan conversation should only be focused on the animals because they are voiceless, but if we cannot interact with oppressed humans and show them that we care about them as well, people will continue to eat animals. We cannot save one species without saving the others. Forms of oppression are all connected and operate from the same methods of control, commodification, and mental programming to keep us enslaved and oppressing each other. For me, the definition of veganism has evolved to encompass a harmonious balance on earth for everyone, where danger, fear, and toxicity are replaced with compassion and love for all.

My Spiritual Awakening

My journey really began in my early teens in Cleveland, Ohio. I lived within walking distance of a mom-and-pop health-food store called Weber’s. I would go there with money I earned and purchase sodas made with natural ingredients and chips made with vegetables and I would spend a lot of time reading ingredients on packages. I was curious about foods made without animals, and I understood vegetarianism, but at that point in my life I had never heard the word “vegan.” One day I purchased a frozen package of veggie burgers (this was in the late eighties) and prepared one. It tasted like a tire sandwich. That was it for me . . . or so I thought.

Many years later, when I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, a dear friend called and asked if I would do the Daniel Fast with her. This fast was based on the Bible and called for abstaining from eating animal products with the purpose of gaining clarity and getting closer to God. At that time, I still ate some meat, but had stopped eating cows and pigs because of an earlier health scare. (My body started having trouble digesting meat, and I would break out in cold sweats, vomit, and experience stabbing stomach pain and severe back pain. I was first diagnosed with kidney stones, and then a peptic ulcer. When all treatment failed to stop my symptoms, I was finally able to diagnose myself when I realized that these symptoms only occurred when I ate cow’s flesh. Once I made the connection and stopped eating beef, the symptoms disappeared.) So, when my friend gave me that invitation in 2008, I figured I could do it. I felt there was something divine about the fast, and, after completing it, I felt amazing. The menstrual cycles that once wreaked havoc on my mind and body came and went with ease—no cramps, no spotting, no heavy bleeding, and I was actually pleasant. It felt like a miracle. I was convinced that eating meat was the reason I felt awful all those years during my cycle. So, I decided to stick with it and become pescatarian, and then vegetarian.

During the first few months I had one of the most profound dream experiences. I dreamed that I was in the sky overlooking a green pasture. In the pasture was a beautiful cow, and I could feel that she was aware of my presence. She looked up at me, and our eyes connected. All of a sudden, my soul and my body merged with her. I could feel and interpret her thoughts and feel her energy. I was her consciousness. I woke up from the dream crying uncontrollably because I felt her love so strongly. I have always been someone who seeks the truth and wants to learn about ways to expand my own capacity to love and see the world. In all of this, I had never considered that the animals we eat actually love. The cow’s love was pure and innocent, yet powerful. I also felt a physically warm sensation on my chest over my heart when I awoke, and when I touched the spot, I was paralyzed with the most beautiful feeling of peace. I felt that this cow had given me a piece of her heart, and from that moment on I knew that cows were aware and that they were no different from us. However, I still had yet to make the connection to the dairy industry. In my mind, cows were milked by gentle hands, and they mooed, and it was a mutual agreement. It wasn’t until the YouTube video Dairy Is Scary by Erin Janus crossed my path that I learned how cows are treated like slaves, raped, and mistreated. I saw that industrialized milking wasn’t done with gentleness but with machines, and that cows are treated like their lives don’t matter. Knowing that cows are not milk machines on legs with no thoughts or consciousness, I was immediately stunned that these loving, conscious beings were experiencing this type of treatment for our unnecessary pleasure. I went vegan on the spot and have never looked back.

Because I know what it is like to suffer, I don’t want anyone to intentionally suffer so that I can eat them or wear their skin. I know what it is like to live on a planet where people judge and treat you differently because you don’t look like them. I know how it feels to be part of a society that doesn’t believe a woman can make her own decisions regarding her own body. I know what it’s like to be treated lesser than because my body produces more carbon than others and therefore having darker skin is often treated as a form of punishment rather than the magic it truly and scientifically is. I know what it is like to experience physical and emotional abuse as a child and being at the mercy of another individual, and yet still having compassion and love for them. Animals are so incredibly forgiving.

Not everyone will have a dream giving them a divine connection to a cow. Most people will have to make the connection another way. I was fortunate to have this experience, as it changed my entire outlook. If you are living hand to mouth and seeing your friends and family being mistreated by the world, the last thing on your mind is animal rights. You want to enjoy pleasure any way you can, and for some people, eating is the only simple pleasure they have in life. Food is often the one thing we believe we can control. If you approach someone and tell them to stop eating animals, expect to be met with resistance, because what they are hearing you say is “I don’t want you to have this pleasure.” It’s a matter of different perceptions and interpretations of reality.

We as vegans often speak to people from where we are and not necessarily from the psychological level of the person who is still eating animals. You don’t teach someone one plus one equals two and then immediately get into trigonometry. People all over the world are hurting, and everyone wants their pain acknowledged, not just by those in the same oppressive category, but more importantly by those who are not. As for those who feel like vegans only care about animals because we acknowledge their suffering, it’s important to understand that we can support and advocate for the liberation of humans and animals. We do not have to choose between the two. We can stand up for all. The sky is not the limit; the mind is.