Aside from literally writing the book on yoga and animal rights (Yoga and Vegetarianism), building the Jivamukti school worldwide, and running a popular vegan café in New York City, Sharon has just released Simple Recipes for Joy: More Than 200 Delicious Vegan Recipes, a beautiful book of foods from the almost-eponymous Jivamuktea, and her own home kitchen.
Leilani Munter is a race car driver, environmental activist, vegan and animal rights activist. Leilani uses her sport and platform to advocate for both animals and the environment. At the ARCA Racing Series event, she raced in a car designed to look like the orca whale Tilikum, featured in the documentary film Blackfish, and make a statement about Sea World and other animal abusement parks.
TJ Tumasse spent more than six years working as an undercover investigator inside many of the nation’s largest factory farms, local shelters, and roadside zoos for Mercy For Animals and other organizations. His cases exposed the ugly truth about what continues to happen behind closed doors, and led to groundbreaking criminal convictions for felony abuse to factory farm animals as well as corporate, local, and federal policy changes.
Lately (again) some ex-“vegans” are in the media proclaiming their love of eating animals. The usual reason for them going back to exploiting animals, though they still maintain their love for them, is they listened to their bodies and their
Author Mark Hawthorne nailed it the first time with Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism, which aimed to empower people to get active for animals around the world. Now, he’s nailed it again with Bleating Hearts: The Hidden World of Animal Suffering. It's the most comprehensive book about animal exploitation ever written. It is an encyclopedia of nearly every horror we do to animals, and how to make a difference on their behalf.
Few living vegans are as influential and as compelling as Dr. Will Tuttle. His book The World Peace Diet has been called one of the most important books of the 21st century, and many vegans and activists credit Will with sparking their initial (or eventual) shift to veganism. Will and his wife, artist Madeleine Tuttle, travel the world giving lectures, workshops, and trainings based on The World Peace Diet, including veganism, spirituality, effective activism, and personal development. Will is a former Zen monk with a master's in humanities and a PhD in philosophy of education, and his work is embedded with these twin threads of spiritual consciousness and intellectual examination. Now, he is assembling the works of 28 other authors for Circles of Compassion: Connecting Issues of Justice, due out this July from the innovative new company Vegan Publishers. The writers explore the connections between injustice to animals and other social and ecological injustices.
I appreciate Earth Day just as much as the next person, but the commercialism and the lack of discussion and awareness around the biggest culprit in both global climate change and the destruction of the planet frustrates me to no end. While changing out your lightbulbs, driving less, taking shorter showers and not allowing the water to run while you brush your teeth may all add up in some complex earth-saving logarithm, continuing to ignore the number one polluter of the air, water and land, the biggest consumer of a limited resource, i.e. water, and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases is at best absurd and at worst, hastening the end of the human species (not that I have a problem with that).
I was surprised to find myself enthralled by Game of Arms. Not only was it well shot, but the storylines were engaging and showed the humanity of the athletes. When the show featured Rob Bigwood as part of his New York arm wrestling team Arms Control, they didn’t shy away from Rob’s veganism, in fact they portrayed it very fairly. It also became clear to me that Rob was the real deal, an ethical vegan. Throughout the series, both Rob and the show continued to speak openly about veganism.
Around this time of year four years ago, I had a discussion of Passover with a group of friends who are, like myself, Jewish and vegan. The discussion centered around how difficult it can be to attend seders where the dinner table is littered with the body parts of nonhuman animals. Being vegan, we not only abstain from eating meat, dairy and eggs, we also abstain from the use of all animals, whether that be for food, clothing, entertainment or animal experimentation.
lauren Ornelas is Food Empowerment Project’s founder and serves as the group’s executive director. lauren has been active in the animal rights movement for more than 25 years. In cooperation with activists across the country, she worked and achieved corporate changes within Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s, and Pier 1 Imports, among others. lauren founded Food Empowerment Project in 2006.
And the truth needs to be told whether people want to hear it or not, whether people are going to go vegan or not. Watering down the message is defeatist and at best presents a confusing message about what we actually want.