Vegan for Beginners

Presenters:

Alexis Brill, Thesimplevegan.com

Dr. Milton Mills, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Part 1: Evolution of our Food System:  This will include an overview of how US culture has adopted unhealthy eating practices since fast food was born, and thus is resulting in extremely high rates of heart disease, cancer & other degenerative diseases.

Part 2: What Science Tells Us About Healthy Eating:  How adopting a plant-based lifestyle helps to drastically reduce your risk of these diseases.

Part 3: Plant-Based Eating – How to make the transition to a plant-based diet.  This will be focused on nutrient-dense foods including tempeh, tofu, legumes, greens, & whole grains – and how you don’t have to give up your favorite foods (such as pizza, etc) – just swap out the dairy for delicious cheese alternatives that are either soy-based, tapioca-based, or nut-based.

About the Presenters

Alexis Brill is an animal-rights activist, vegan, and health & wellness advocate. Her latest project is TheSimpleVegan.com, created to help offer resources & tips for people interested in veganism.

Dr. Milton Mills is the Associate Director of Preventive Medicine with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and co-author of PCRM’s report on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines.  Whether internist Dr. Mills is practicing at Fairfax Hospital in Virginia or at free clinics in Washington, D.C., his prescription for patients is likely to include some dietary advice: go vegetarian. “Medical research shows conclusively that a plant-based diet reduces chronic disease risk, so that’s something I absolutely encourage my patients to move toward,” says Dr. Mills, a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine.  Dr. Mills doesn’t limit his message to his patients. He takes it to audiences around the country as well, speaking at hospitals, churches, and community centers.

Presenters/Facilitators

Adam Weissman, Global Justice for Animals and the Environment

Christina Schiavoni, WhyHunger

This workshop is a followup to Globalizing Agribusiness: Free Trade, Factory Farms, and Genetically Modified Food

A participatory session to plan strategies and actions to fight free trade agreements that destroy farming communities, make our food unsafe, and globalize unsustainable industrial agriculture. Learn about the latest free trade agreements threatening our food system, hear about past organizing efforts from seasoned activists, and then: get organized!

After learning about how “free” trade threatens the food system, this workshop will:

- provide attendees with information about the latest trade deals coming down the pipeline (in particular, the Transpacific Partnership, which is currently under negotiation by the US and 8 other countries);

- share success stories and lessons learned from past organizing efforts;

- and engage attendees in a participatory strategizing and planning session on how to educate our communities on these issues in a way that speaks to them and how to get the food movement as a whole more engaged in the fight against destructive trade deals.

Tools, Skills or Messages Participants Will “Take Home”

Participants will leave this workshop with up-to-date information on current trade deals undermining food justice; with knowledge of what past organizing efforts have consisted of; and with ideas that they can bring back to their own communities and organizations to connect organizing efforts around food justice and trade. Participants will also have the opportunity to connect with one another and to stay connected to one another for future mobilizing efforts.

About the Presenters

Christina Schiavoni is the Director of the Global Movements Program at WhyHunger in NYC, where she works to connect US-based food and farm movements to global movements for food sovereignty and the right to food, water, and sustainable livelihoods.

Adam Weissman works with Global Justice for Animals and the Environment, opposing trade agreements that endanger animals, ecology, food safety, and human rights, and TradeJustice NY Metro, a coalition fighting NAFTA-style trade agreements.

Time: 12:30PM-1:45PM

Location: Room 5E4

Presenter: Zaac Chaves

While many alternatives suggested within the greater movement for food sustainability have often failed to include mindful questions around animal ethics beyond the question of large verses small scale farms, this panel offers a special opportunity to highlight foraging as a mindful alternative to obtaining calories for food.  The hubristic entitlement of land presumed in an agricultural scheme, crucial to modern societies as we know them, precludes other animal use of that land for their own livelihoods. Foraging on the other hand seeks a way for humans to acquire food without presuming the land be used solely for human purposes.

Join us for a vital discussion question how humans ought to relate with the rest of Earth, while recovering the skills necessary for living as fellow Earthlings on this planet.

About the Presenter

Zaac Chaves coordinates mushroom tours at schools, farms, and animal sanctuaries. He authored the pamphlet Least Harmful Sustenance aimed at helping others learn about the edibility of common and invasive plants and fungus.

Description:

No personal action has a greater impact on reducing our contribution to global warming than changing how we eat.  Learn  about the latest research on the climate impacts of our diet from a physicist and a statistician and find out how you can help fight climate change with a fork!

Moderator:

Ken Gale, Host/Producer, Ecologic

John Maher is an animal lawyer and adjunct professor of Animal Law at Touro Law Center. He represents Best Friends Animal Society and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) and NYLS.

Description: 

A philosopher, an ovarian cancer survivor, and an animal rights activist will look at feminist perspectives on the exploitation of animals for food, plant based diets and womens’ health and healing, and why we must avoid sexism in efforts to fight the suffering of farmed animals.

Moderator: 

Jasmin Singer, Our Hen House

Presenters: 

Caryn Hartglass, Founder, Responsible Eating And Living

Lori Gruen, Director, Wesleyan Animal Studies

Doris Lin, Guide to Animal Rights, About.com

Topics:

Ecofeminist philosopher and activist Lori Gruen will examine the ways that the consumption of animals and female animal products harms not just animals but disproportionately harms women and children globally.  She will also specifically refute some feminist arguments that advocate what she is calling “loca-carnism”.

Caryn Hartglass: It’s not by chance that I am a survivor of advanced ovarian cancer.  I will talk about the role healthy eating and living played in my survival and recovery.  People will discover why nutrient-dense foods and meditation are critical to healing and recovery from life-threatening diseases.  They will learn about the anti-cancer superfoods that boost the immune system, how to prepare them and incorporate them in their every day diet.  Participants will be provided with simple instructions on how to craft one’s own meditation practice.

Doris Lin will look at campaigns that have compared plant-based diets to sexual conquest for men, reinforced idealized mass media images of women’s bodies, and undermined efforts to create solidarity between the animal rights and feminist movements.

Tools, Skills or Messages Participants Will Take Home: 

- Participants will develop an understanding of ecofeminism and how feminist ethics of care can be applied to animal issues as an alternative to rationalist approaches to ethical questions.

- Participants will discover why nutrient-dense foods and meditation are critical to healing and recovery from life-threatening diseases. They will learn about the anti-cancer superfoods that boost the immune system, how to prepare them and incorporate them in their every day diet. Participants will be provided with simple instructions on how to craft one’s own meditation practice.

- Participants will be invited to critically consider campaigns that attempt to advocate for farmed animals by using sexualized images of women, rather than recognizing how animals and women are both commodified under patriarchy and challenging both.

-Participants will take home an understanding of why sexualized and misogynistic campaigns are harmful and do nothing to further animal rights.

About the Moderator:

Jasmin Singer is Executive Director of Our Hen House (and podcast co-host), writer for VegNews Magazine, and host for VegNews TV. Previously, Jasmin was Farm Sanctuary’s campaigns manager and actor-educator with AIDS-awareness theater company Nitestar.

About the Presenters:

Caryn Hartglass is the founder of Responsible Eating And Living (REAL), a nonprofit that promotes plant-based foods and planet-friendly products. She currently hosts the weekly It’s All About Food show on the Progressive Radio Network.

Lori Gruen is the author of Ethics and Animals:  An Introduction (Cambridge:  2011).  She is Professor of Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality  Studies at Wesleyan University.

Doris Lin, Esq. is the Guide to Animal Rights for About.com and Director of Legal Services for the Animal Protection League of NJ.  You can find her at @aboutAnimalRts or @DorisLin or http://animalrights.about.com.

Room: 5E4

Time: 11AM-12:15PM

Description:

Join activists combating obesity, heart disease, and diabetes in communities of color by encouraging healthy, animal and earth-friendlier plant-based diets and increasing access to fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains in neighborhoods where healthy food is largely unavailable. Discuss culturally sensitive approaches to promoting healthy eating and strategies for overcoming access and economic barriers to life-sustaining foods.

Moderator:

Ruth Santana, Global Justice for Animals and the Environment

Confirmed Presenters:

Bina Ahmad, Legal Consultant, National Lawyers Guild,  will discussing veganism and animal rights from her perspective as a Muslim woman of color.  She will discuss the challenges and strategies in reaching out to Muslim communities of color and her experience being a member of this community while also advocating for animal rights from within these communities.

Doris Lin, Legal Director, Animal Protection League of New Jersey, will discuss offensive race- and ethnicity-based animal rights campaigns, and recognizing one’s own privileges.

Donnie Smith, blogger, Blackveganism, will be talking about veganism in communities of color and access to food. At the same time he will be talking about race, class and other issues that are connected to food.

Terry Hope Romero, Author, Vegan Latina

Konju Oruwari, graduate student and blogger, Green Chimurenga, will discuss the need for critical thinking and consideration of the broader dynamics of social injustice and imposed human inequities when imagining and advocating wider adoption of plant-based lifestyles.

Tools, Skills and Messages Participants Will Take Home:

Audience members will gain an understanding of:

- the problem of food deserts and access to healthy foods

- obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases facing communities of color

- cultural barriers to accepting plant-based diets in communities of color

- why the approach to plant-based diets presented by white and middle class vegan advocates isn’t practical for many people of color (expensive processed foods only sold at health food stores that don’t exist in many communities) vs. CSAs working to provide healthy, affordable, whole foods in communities of color

- how people of color can work to promote plant-based diets and eating in their own communities and how white allies can support them.

- how white advocates for plant-based diets can avoid turning off people of color with condescension, self-righteousness, unwillingness to listen and dialogue, and a failure to see the world from outside of their own cultural experience and privileged position to consider other people’s realities.

Doris will look at when an animal rights campaign becomes a race- or ethnicity-based campaign.

Bina will address Islam and how it intersects with animal rights, and how to reach out to Islamic communities by approaching the animal rights narrative in an Islamic, culturally sensitive manner.

Donnie: “It’s not just about people becoming vegan.  We need to understand that veganism is made up of a very privileged group of individuals in our society. I want people to be open and understanding.”

Konju: Participants will be prompted to consider more deeply the consequences of deep inequality, injustice and the status-quo social violence of discriminatory and inhumane policies upon the pursuit of vegan consciousness. They will consider how the priorities of human liberation and justice may complicate considerations for non-human liberation, and begin to contemplate ways to reveal to others how an overarching culture of violence intertwines both issues. Participants will begin to consider skillful means of communicating how a plant-based lifestyle itself can liberate both humans and non-humans and promote social justice, health and a more sustainable human civilization in better harmony with non-human plants and animals.

About the Moderator:

Ruth Santana is an activist in the animal rights, Latin America solidarity, and trade justice movements.  She works as an occupational therapist and teaches metalwork / jewelry making at the School of Visual Arts.

About the Presenters:

Bina Ahmad is an animal rights activist, a member of the Muslim Defense committee, and an Executive Committee member of the NYC National Lawyers Guild, focusing on Occupy Wall Street criminal and civil cases.

Terry Hope Romero: Cornell Certificate in Plant Based Nutrition.  Books: Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, and Viva Vegan!: Authentic Vegan Latina American Recipes.

Donnie Smith is a vegan living in Brooklyn, NY.  He has been involved in the animal rights movement for 5 years or longer. He believes that food is power and that is something that he’s working towards.

Konju Oruwari is a Pan-Africanist and third-world internationalist writer and activist. He has been vegan for 13 years. He currently studies occupational therapy at Columbia University. His blog, Green Chimurenga, can be found at africanvegans.com.

Description:

Our culture is in deep denial about our relationship to the animals we eat.  We condemn Michael Vick as cruel for fighting dogs but hide away the violence that brings meat to our tables in slaughterhouses and factory, delegating the dirty work of killing animals to an exploited workforce.

Moderator:

Katie Pryor, NYC Regional Outreach Coordinator, Vegan Outreach

Presenters:

Gary Francione, Rutgers law and philosophy professor and author: Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or Your Dog, will discuss the literally delusional thinking that characterizes our animal ethics, as discussed in in his controversial 2007 essay, “We’re All Michael Vick.”   We regard animals as having a moral status but we use them in ways that are wholly inconsistent with that view.

Timothy Pachirat, assistant professor of politics at the New School and author, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight, brings to life the massive, routine killing of animals for human consumption from the perspective of slaughterhouse workers.  Drawing on five months undercover on a slaughterhouse kill floor, he explores the slaughter industry and how our society facilitates violent labor and hides what we find too repugnant to contemplate.

Victoria Moran,  author of Main Street Vegan, will discuss how the animal food industry is unique in depending upon such brutality that laws exist to keep consumers in the dark. Moran will share her slaughterhouse experience, explore the spiritual deficits of the status quo, and alternative approaches.

Tools, Skills and Messages Participants Will Take Home:

Pachirat: Participants will:

- Gain a concrete understanding of how industrialized animal slaughter works in the contemporary United States.

- Gain an understanding of how the work of industrialized killing is organized to fragment moral and experiential responsibility for killing.

- Reflect on the possibilities and limitations of a politics of sight, defined as concerted, organized attempts to produce social change by collapsing distance between consumers of meat and the realities of industrialized killing work.

Francione:  Participants will be exposed to the idea that there is no difference between Michael Vick and the rest of us in that there is no difference sitting around a pit watching dogs fight and sitting around a summer barbecue pit roasting the corpses of animals.

About the Moderator:

Katie Pryor is NYC Regional Coordinator for Vegan Outreach. A statistician with a B.S. in Mathematics and M.S. in Environmental Sciences (May 2012), Katie works to end suffering and environmental degradation caused by factory farming.

About the Presenters:

 Victoria Moran, CHHC, is the Oprah-featured author of books including The Love-Powered Diet and the new Main Street Vegan.  Among the VegNews “Top 10 Vegetarian Authors,” Moran is director of  Main Street Vegan Academy, training Vegan Lifestyle Coaches in NYC.

Timothy Pachirat, Assistant Professor in The New School for Social Research’s Department of Politics and Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts, is the author of Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight.

Gary Francione, Distinguished Professor Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy, Rutgers Law School, authors books and articles on animal ethics and law, including Animals as Persons and The Animal Rights Debate.

Presenters:

Timothy Pachirat, Department of Politics at The New School for Social Research and the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School for General Studies; author, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight

An account of industrialized killing from a participant’s point of view. Political scientist Timothy Pachirat, was employed undercover for five months in a Great Plains slaughterhouse where 2,500 cattle were killed per day—one every twelve seconds. Working in the cooler as a liver hanger, in the chutes as a cattle driver, and on the kill floor as a food-safety quality-control worker, Pachirat experienced firsthand the realities of the work of killing in modern society. He uses those experiences to explore not only the slaughter industry but also how, as a society, we facilitate violent labor and hide away that which is too repugnant to contemplate.

Through his vivid narrative and ethnographic approach, Pachirat brings to life massive, routine killing from the perspective of those who take part in it. He shows how surveillance and sequestration operate within the slaughterhouse and in its interactions with the community at large. He also considers how society is organized to distance and hide uncomfortable realities from view.

About the Presenters:

# 1: Corporate Power, Diet, and Animal Agriculture

#2: Animal Agriculture’s Impact on Global Climate and the Environment

Description:

Do animal welfare laws effectively prevent suffering for animals used for food?  Should we work to enact humane laws – or are they ineffective in a global food economy?   Join animal welfare, law and public policy experts to explore these questions and discuss strategies for action to prevent animal suffering.

Presenters:

Adam Weissman of Global Justice for Animals and the Environment  will address how the deadly combination of offshoring facilitated by liberalization of agricultural tariffs and WTO challenges to import bans on cruelly produced foods threatens to render humane laws irrelevant and even counterproductive.

Tools, Skills or Messages Participants Will Take Home:

Weissman:

Participants will learn that whether they take the position that activists for the welfare of farmed animals should focus on industry regulation, advocate veganism, or both, they must pay attention to international trade policy, which helps producers offshore production to escape domestic regulation and lowers princes on animal-based foods globally, incouraging increased overall consumption of animal products.  Participants will learn how they can join the fight against future free trade agreements and hold elected officials accountable for their votes on these agreements.

About the Moderator:

About the Presenter:

Adam Weissman works with Global Justice for Animals and the Environment, opposing trade agreements that endanger animals, ecology, food safety, and human rights, and TradeJustice NY Metro, an activist group coalition fighting NAFTA-style trade agreements.