How to Become an Introverted Vegan Activist, Pt. 3
"One meal, soon forgotten, in exchange for a whole life."
-Unknown
1. Sign Online Petitions
I don't know how effective petitions are at doing what they're meant to do, but regardless, they are great to bolster numbers. If 10,000 people sign a petition asking for McDonald's to finally create a vegan option on their menu, while McDonald's may not actually take that step, it creates news and noise about the issue.
2. Get Vegan Magazines in Your Doctors' Offices
Instead of Cosmopolitan or GQ, doctors should be supplying patients with information regarding how to live healthfully. Naked Food offers this for free – just go to their website and sign your doctor up for a free one-year subscription – which will provide patients with articles written by doctors about various illnesses and other issues related to animal agriculture as well as healthy recipes. Another option is to bring an old magazine you've already read (Forks Over Knives, VegNews, or any vegan magazine of your choice) to the doctor's office and leave it there. Or, if you have the funds, buy a subscription for the office; the holidays are a great time of year for this, as many magazines offer large discounts on annual subscriptions.
3. Ask Local Companies for Vegan Options
Even if you live in a very nonvegan area, it never hurts to ask for vegan options at local businesses. The more you and other vegans (however few of you there are) ask for vegan products, the more likely that businesses will start to listen to you. If you enjoy going out to eat, ask your waiter/waitress what their vegan options are, even if you already know. Get comfortable asking for vegan foods, and they'll get used to hearing it. They'll soon realize that there's a demand for vegan products, meaning that there's an untapped market from which they can profit.
4. Contact Companies About Their Vegan Offerings
Like the last tip, it never hurts to ask, so if there's a company you'd like to offer vegan products, reach out to them. Let's look at an example of mine: I love candy corn, and I believed it to be vegan until I discovered that gelatin is a creepy amalgamation of body parts. (Why is gelatin considered vegetarian if it's made of skin and hooves and muscles? How are vegetarians ok with that?) So I reached out to Brach's, hoping that their gelatin was plant-based, which is possible but rare. Alas, it was pig-derived gelatin, but I told that person working for Brach's that I would be taking my business to another company. If enough people said that to them, maybe they'd consider dipping their toe in the vegan pool. This doesn't have to just be with food, either. If a business you like sells other animal products or supports animal-unfriendly companies, let them know. Don't be afraid to tell them they're doing something wrong in the eyes of potential consumers; they need to be aware of that.
5. Create Vegan Business Cards
Personally, when I give someone something related to veganism, I want to have faith in that product (book, movie, pamphlet) or I want it to be something that I designed myself. That's why I made my "info cards," which I discussed in Pt. 1 – I wanted to have the ability to share small amounts of specific information with my favorite vegan resources. But another option is to make your own info cards or business cards. You could design them on your computer or order them from a website. They're something small you can keep on you at all times with a list of your favorite vegan resources: films, books, magazines, podcasts, influencers, athletes, celebrities, etc. It'd be particularly impactful if you said that these were the things or people that inspired you to go vegan.
Another option, my personal preference, is to create a card with a picture of an animal with a line that says something like "I'm vegan for him/her" or "I'm vegan for Pig #760512" or whatever else you like. Or, have that on the front with resources on the back. You can be creative as you want.
6. Vote Vegan
With US presidential elections happening later this year, you can help put animal rights on the ballot by voting for vegan-friendly candidates. There are two plant-based politicians in the running, Cory Booker and Julián Castro, but that doesn't mean they're your only options. Many vegans, such as myself, wish they would discuss animal agriculture issues more, though they're in a tricky situation since most of the population isn't yet vegan. Obviously, there are many other issues to consider, and you should not feel pressured to vote for a vegan (or vote at all) if you don't believe the candidates represent your values.
7. Order Pre-Made Vegan Business Cards
It can take a lot of work, thought, and effort (and money, depending on how you do it) to design your own business cards; sometimes it's easier to just buy pre-made ones. Now, there aren't that many options if you go this route, but, as I've said before and I'll say again, anything is better than nothing. My mom and I both have Vegan Outreach's restaurant cards that say "I ate here because of your vegan food! Thank you!" It's nice to keep those around for whenever we go out to eat at a nonvegan restaurant.
7. Report Nonvegan Ads
I was on a vegan food blog one day, which are usually full of ads, but I was horrified to see a Fairlife milk advertisement. (This was before the exposé, but the name is just appalling and disgraceful.) While I could've just ignored it, I decided to report the ad as offensive to Google. When prompted for an explanation, I wrote why I shouldn't have to be subjected to dairy ads on a vegan website and briefly detailed how dairy is produced.
Something similar occurred a few months later on Instagram. Usually, my feed is full of cute animals, suffering animals, and vegan facts, but I was disturbed by a page being promoted to me by a farmer. But this was no ordinary farm; the image was of a bison in a "knock box," about to be stunned before slaughter. Now, I'm all for sharing images like this as part of vegan education and activism, as a way to stimulate conversation about animal agriculture. But I'm not ok with pictures like this being shared by farmers, as if they're trying to normalize slaughter. Accompanying the picture were hashtags like #dairypride; my eyes were in pain from rolling so hard. I reported the ad to Instagram as "violence or threat of violence." While I didn't expect anything to come of it, I got a notification the next day that Instagram had taken action on the reported post. So, you never know what may come from taking just a few minutes to do this, but nothing will ever change if we don't try anything.
8. Buy & Lend Vegan DVDs
DVDs may be old technology, but most people still have a DVD/Blu-ray player. Documentaries are such a powerful tool for learning, and I love to recommend them. However, most people don't want to pay to watch a movie (especially one about veganism) if they're unsure they'll like it or aren't too interested in the topic. And if it's on Netflix now, there's never that assurance that it always will be or that they'll actually seek it out to watch. That's why it's so handy to have physical copies to lend out to people. For one, it takes out all the work for them; all they have to do is pop it in the player. Also, like with books, the person you loan it to is kind of shoehorned into a situation where they have to watch it; it'd be rude for them to return the DVD to you without viewing it, considering you'll probably ask how they liked it or what they thought.
9. Chalking
I briefly discussed holiday-themed chalking as a fun Halloween activity, but chalking is also a great year-round activity. The best part, to me, is that you don't have to be an artist to do this; all you need is a stick of chalk, a space outside to draw, and two minutes to write whatever you want. It can even be something as simple as "Go vegan!" Another bonus is that chalk isn't permanent, so you don't have to worry about placing it someplace where it'll never come off, and it allows you to keep going out there, even to just the same spot, and write different things. One week, it might be "dairy is rape" and the next it's "zoos are prisons." You can check out Vegan Chalk Challenge for inspiration on what to write and/or draw.
10. Be Vegan
Simply being vegan is a form of activism. You are actively contributing to bringing down animal agriculture with every penny you spend on vegan foods, clothes, and other products. People around you will undoubtedly be influenced by you simply living a compassionate life. However, that's not an excuse to just do nothing, because many people will never get to the point of going vegan all on their own – you still have a duty to help push them in the right direction when you can.
be conscious, be kind, be vegan