Vegan Outreach - "Activism and Veganism Reconsidered"

"Activism and Veganism Reconsidered"

In their June 1998 newsletter, Vegan Outreach published an essay by Ball called "Veganism as the Path to Animal Liberation" (now called "Activism and Veganism Reconsidered". This article questioned the priorities of the animal rights movement, in part by pointing out that ~99 percent of all animals killed in the U.S. died to be eaten, while only a small minority of the movement's attention went to exposing factory farms and promoting vegetarianism. The essay also argued against the movement's focus on trying to get media attention through protests. It also questioned the effectiveness of civil disobedience and direct action, and a perceived tendency towards self-delusion and dogmatism in vegetarian and animal rights promotion. Until veganism was more widespread, Ball argued, animal liberation could not succeed on any major front. The essay made a wide impact on activists and shaped Vegan Outreach's guiding principals of advocacy.

New booklets were developed in 1999 and 2000, including a Vegetarian Starter Guide (now the Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating) for people who were interested in following a vegetarian diet, and Vegetarian Living (later Try Vegetarian) which fewer graphic photos contained in the Why Vegan brochure. In 2001, over 330,000 copies of Why Vegan and Vegetarian Living were distributed. In the fall of 2003, Vegan Outreach launched its Adopt-A-College (AAC) program, the animal advocacy movement's first systematic attempt to reach large numbers of students in the U.S. and Canada in an organized way. The program's first year saw 22,000 brochures distributed at 63 schools; most recently, 486,219 brochures were distributed at 692 schools during the fall 2009 semester. As AAC started to grow, Vegan Outreach was able to hire a new employee, Jon Camp, to focus on leafleting at colleges. In his first two years of employment with the group, he handed out over 145,000 brochures. As of March 2010, Camp is Vegan Outreach's all-time leading leafleter, having reached over 570,000 individuals with VO literature.

Another big change for Vegan Outreach occurred in 2005, when the first copy of their new brochure, Even If You Like Meat (EIYLM) was printed. VO explained the new booklet in this way:

After many years of leafleting, we realized that students had started to erect a number of mental barriers to prevent them from seriously considering their part in supporting factory farming and slaughterhouses.... One major barrier is that people have convinced themselves that boycotting animal cruelty has to be an all or nothing proposition, and, since they cannot go all the way, they will do nothing. Thus, a big emphasis of EIYLM is to let people know that not supporting cruelty does not have to be an “all or nothing” proposition. Any amount of animal food reduction helps prevent suffering. Another problem we encountered was that people would see the word “vegan” or “vegetarian” on our flyers and assume we were just do-gooder busybodies trying to get them to improve their health, so they would not take a flyer. With EIYLM, we put pictures of factory farms on the front of the brochure so people would immediately see we were talking about a serious social issue in which animals were being treated cruelly.

— Jack Norris, RD "A History of Vegan Outreach", veganoutreach.org.

Vegan Outreach continues to evolve and grow. Anne Green was hired full-time as Vegan Outreach's Director of Programs and Development in 2007, after many years of unofficially contributing to the planning and management of the organization. In 2009, Matt, along with Bruce Friedrich, published The Animal Activist's Handbook, about which Peter Singer has written: “The Animal Activist’s Handbook punches way above its weight. Rarely have so few pages contained so much intelligence and good advice. Get it, read it, and act on it. Now.”

VO has also hired other leafleters; currently, in addition to Jon, Brian Grupe, Nikki Benoit, Fred Tyler, Vic Sjodin, and Eileen Botti are all associated with VO in some way in early 2010. Hundreds and hundreds of others also leaflet for the animals. AAC activists have reached over four million students across the country; including other venues like concerts, the total is more than six million. Since its founding, Vegan Outreach has distributed over 11,000,000 booklets.

Today, Vegan Outreach continues its mission of disseminating this information on college campuses and at other busy venues across the globe. Their brochures have been distributed in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, ten Canadian territories and provinces, Mexico, and numerous other countries (including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Taiwan). Many of Vegan Outreach's pamphlets and articles are available in multiple languages, thanks to the translation efforts of volunteers and supporters. The rate of distribution is increasing every year, limited not by demand—there are many individuals, student groups, and organizations who would like to distribute as many as possible—but by availability (i.e., resources for printing and distribution).