The bake sale took place at 3G Vegetarian Restaurant last night.  We received three $1000 matching donations from individual donors and a donation of 20% of dinner proceeds from the restaurant.  In total, we collected $8,314.52 from the bake sale.  All proceeds will go to support the efforts of EARS in spaying, neutering and relocating the rabbits to safe sanctuary.

Thanks to a large donation of $50,000 from Fur Bearer Defenders and additional donations from various individuals ranging in the tens of thousands, there is now enough funds to save all of the UVic rabbits.  The only hope now is that the University can halt their plans for a mass cull until the rabbit relocation details can be sorted out.

A huge thank you goes out to our volunteers, bakers, supporters, donors and corporate sponsors: 3G, EIO Kids Store, Organic Lives, Edible Flours & Gorilla Food.  We could not have had a successful fundraiser without any of you!

If you missed the bake sale and would like to make donations to the rabbits, please visit the EARS website.

Everyone is invited to write down a topic or question that they would like to address, and post their topic up on the agenda wall. Very quickly, the agenda wall fills up with topics. Fight the urge to control them – just let the self-organizing happen.

Each person who posted up a topic is responsible for leading that discussion, and it is up to them how they will lead it. The space is open and it is theirs. As the host, I’m just there to set it up and then get the hell out of the way. (more)

I was at my first Open Space workshop a couple of weeks ago, and I really enjoyed it.  Some people, I think, are a little concerned that a format like this lacks organization by necessity–that it will become chaotic.  The truth is that with the right guidance (for example, Glenn’s!), Open Space can be a fantastically positive event that brings people together and allows for wonderful, creative ideas.

I hope to post some information about some of these projects and how people can get involved when I receive information from the project leaders. Keep an eye open for it.

One project that was discussed was a bake sale to help save the rabbits who are living on the campus of the University of Victoria. That bake sale will be happening on July 28th at 3G Veg Restaurant in Vancouver. For more information, check out our event page.

I just have to say that I was really impressed with how many ideas were presented and how creative everybody is. It was very energizing and empowering to see how capable the animal activist community is in Vancouver.

The next events in this community dialogue series will be:

• September 19: Developing a local information hub: who, what, why, and how?
• November 14: Educating ourselves: becoming better activists through education and practice

There will also be another event focused on “What is our message?” which is yet to be scheduled. This one will likely be a more high-level conversation than these other events, so I’m not quite sure how to hold it yet.

If you have any thoughts or comments about these events or the topics, please leave a comment or contact me directly.

OK, so that’s the site; why do I think it’s cool? The idea is, as I said, bringing together people committed to sustainability. There are a few ways they’re implementing this: when you register with the site, you can pick organizations you want to “follow”, and then you get their updates. What kind of updates do you get? Well, organizations can post events and jobs, and they can integrate their blog posts and tweets with TheChange. But the heart of TheChange–at least to me–is the idea of commitments. Organizations make explicit commitments on the site, in three categories: environment, community, and employees. This puts pressure on participants to actually do things to make a change, not just mouth the word “sustainable”.

And comments are enabled on basically everything. This gives users a chance to give organizations feedback on what they’re doing–to push for the change we want to see.

It looks like TheChange is still in its early stages, but head over, join up, and follow us. This promises to be cool.

Urgently needed:  Land donation/lease or money donation.

If you or anyone you know has land to lease or donate, please let us know right away!

Since all existing rescues and sanctuaries are at capacity, activists are looking for any plots of land where the rabbits can go to live out the rest of their lives.  This will not be a permanent land donation/lease as the land will only be needed for the lifespan of the rabbits (7-8 years) and can be returned to the donor after the rabbits die.

All of the rabbits will be spayed or neutered. The money donated will be going towards the expenses of spaying and neutering the rabbits as well as leasing land for them.

If you have land or money and are able to help, please contact Susan Vickery immediately at  ears@x-mail.net or 250-538-8003.

To donate by PayPal visit www.earthanimalrights.org.

Sinéad and Joanne

Yesterday we had a table at the Kitsilano farmers market. We do one date each year at each of the markets around town (Main, Kitsilano, Trout Lake, and the West End).

While the day was not the best – it was a bit grey and cold – we still had a very nice time.

Our volunteers were overwhelmed by how positive the reception was. In an email, Layne wrote that “I think it was the best tabling experience I have had. A number of people wanted to be on the mailing list and/or were interested in the veg recipes or nutritional advice.”

Over the past few years we’ve definitely observed a shift in how people react to animal rights and veganism.

Both Layne and Sinéad recounted the same story about a mother and her little boy:

A 2-year-old boy in a stroller, with a toy cow in his hand, grinned eagerly upon seeing our booth and proceeded to exclaim, “COOOOWWWS!!!!!”

(His mother promptly whispering to us not to tell him anything about hamburgers or he won’t be able to sleep at night, that he loves tofu, and is “all about the cows”)”

At first when the mother told us not to tell him anything about meat or dairy, we worried that she was feeding him meat and just sheltering him from the facts, but then she told us that he doesn’t really get much exposure to meat and they’re going to wait a couple years before they tell him about where it comes from (makes sense, he was just 2 and a half!). He wanted to take the “Dairy: A Mother’s Suffering” pamphlet because it had pictures of cows on the front…but we managed to distract him with some of the cow stickers and the colouring book.

To top it all off, just two booths down from us was Edible Flours, a new vegan baking company! We, of course, sampled some of their muffins and cupcakes.

Goodies from Edible Flours

Keep an eye out for us at the Trout Lake market on July 24 (Veganmania will also be there) and the West End market on August 7 (Edible Flours will be there too). If you are a paid Liberation BC member, Christa from Veganmania has generously offered a 10% discount on your purchases of  her delicious vegan goodies.

Some of you may have made it to Animal Advocacy Camp or our first dialogue at Radha. Some of you may have been at Let Live. This event will hopefully continue some of those conversations about creative outreach – and will provide an opportunity to start shifting from ideas into real actions.

Have you got projects in mind and want to find other people to work with? Do you want to brainstorm new ideas for activism? This is the place!

The more perspectives in the room, the better the ideas we’ll generate. I do hope you’ll join us!

For more information and to register, visit apowerfulvoice.eventbrite.com. The event is from 1:30-4:30, but please arrive a little bit early so that we can start on time. There will be some snacks and beverages available for purchase, but this is not a “food” event, so it might be a good idea to eat before you come.

Colleen is the author of several vegan cookbooks and a popular vegan podcast.  Colleen’s power to turn people to veganism is uncanny.  Just listen to her podcast, you’ll know what I mean.  So please, help Colleen get her own show on Oprah!

You can vote as many times as you’d like.  So do it now, do it for veganism and most of all, do it for the animals! And please, spread the word!  Voting closes on July 3rd and she needs LOTS of votes.

Click on the link below to view the video and vote.

Colleen Patrick Goudreaux audition

Listening and learning

I’m back at home now after Let Live, an inspiring weekend of talks, conversation, and some really good food.

Let Live is an amazing animal rights conference. I love it because it focuses on the grassroots – people who are dedicating their spare time to making change for animals.

There are a lot of really great talks, and I was very impressed how the sessions were organized to provide ample opportunity for conversation and interaction. It felt less like there were experts and audience, and more like we were in a room full of activists, each with one with valuable perspectives and ideas.

I’ve already written about the first day of the conference.

One Sunday, I was part of 2 separate panels. I was on the first one, “Creative Outreach,” with Andrew Stepanian and Gary Lowenthal. Andrew is one of the SHAC-7 and is really smart and experienced. His latest project is Sparrow Media, created to provide publicity services to organizations and activists working for good causes. Gary Lowenthal is the mastermind behind the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale.

I felt a little outclassed by my far more experienced co-panelists, but the discussion was great, and I learned a lot from the audience and my fellow panelists.

Just a few of the ideas and resources we tossed around during the conversation (some are new, some are things people are already doing):

• When leafleting or tabling, have a big sign that says “free vegan information” or “free vegan recipes” or “Do you care about animals” as a way to attract attention
• give people incentives to take information (this is the basic idea behind Pay-per-view)
• Veg 101 classes (great idea from NorthwestVeg)
• Prepare a list of references and resources to have available to people (organized by topic)
• donate books and dvds to libraries

There were many more ideas shared. One of the points that was made was that creativity doesn’t need to mean brilliant and original ideas. Instead, creativity can be adapting existing ideas, modifying or adjusting to fit a new or novel situation.

Another point was to choose your tactics based on your audience and situation. And try to be smart about using resources efficiently. In other words, don’t spend a bunch of money on an ad that won’t be seen by the audience you hope to reach.

A little later in the day I was on another panel, “Making the most of your situation.” This time I shared the front of the room with lauren ornelas (Director of the Food Empowerment Project) and Christopher Greenslate (co-author of On a Dollar a Day). The panel was moderated by Jasmin Singer.

Me, Lauren Ornelas, and Christopher Greenslate

Once again, I learned a lot from the audience and my co-panelists. I can only hope that I’m able to have even a fraction of their insight at some point in my life. We each had a slightly difference perspective on how we’ve made the most of our situation in our activism.

I made a couple of points in my talk:

• We are almost always free to change or modify our situation. In other words, the situation in which we find ourselves does not have to stay that way.
• If you want people to do something, you have to become those people. By this I mean, there’s no point in saying “someone should do this” – instead, say “I will do this.”
• Don’t be afraid to learn how to do new things, if it helps to make you more effective and helps to get things done.

Christopher and lauren were both completely brilliant during this session. It was a humbling experience to sit next to them – humbling but also energizing.

I guess that was my theme for the whole weekend: being humbled and energized. I’ve seldom felt so much like we have a real chance at success. There are so many smart, talented, and dedicated people working for animals that it really feels like our victory is inevitable. Inevitable through our hard, hard work, but still inevitable.

Now I’m ready more so than ever to plan and act as strategically as I can to end the exploitation of animals. Events like Let Live serve to build connections, a network, a web of activists and organizations that WILL change the world.

Now we’ve just got to get to work and make it happen!

Josh Hooten and Willow

Michelle and Nicole

Jasmin Singer doing her opening talk

[Thanks to Michelle Lee and Nicole Reid for the photos]

For those of you not here, some of the sessions are being streamed live.

We haven’t yet started day 2 of the conference yet. Already, though, it feels as if I’ve gotten as much out of the one day as anyone could reasonably expect to get out of a whole 2-day conference. It’s just been packed with presenting, talking to some really amazing people, and hearing lots of great ideas. The creative ideas here are running deep and thick.

The event actually began on Friday night with an inspiring and hope-filled talk by Andrew Stepanian, one of the convicted SHAC 7. He recently got off probation after a 3-year prison term for his role in the Stop Huntingdon LIfe Sciences campaign. I hope the video makes it up soon. I’d highly recommend watching it when it gets posted.

Jasmin Singer’s talk yesterday morning, though (the official opening talk of the first day) was even more inspiring and more moving. Jasmin is just friggin’ awesome, and her (and her partner Mariann’s) website/blog/podcast/etc Our Hen House, is becoming one of the most valuable out there. Her talk was funny and inspiring and had me re-committing to doing the best work I can to help animals. I hope her talk makes it up onto Vimeo soon so you all can see it. In the meantime, though, be sure to check out her website. Rumor has it an interview with me and Joanne may appear in the not-too-distant future.

Jasmin and I did a session called Creative Online Activism, which covered a whole lot of information in not too much time. We gave some tips on blogging, podcasting, podcasting, twitter, and facebook. Really, we just scratched the surface of what is available. We also learned about some very cool organizations and projects, including Plants & Animals Denver (a vegan collective in Denver, CO) (pssst, they’re also on Twitter), The New Leaf Vegan Society (from Virginia!), and the Free Tilly Now campaign (a campaign to free Tilikum, an orca in captivity at Sea World).

In the afternoon I was on a panel, Creative Campaign Spotlight, where I presented about the Cow Ribbon Campaign. The panel also included, Isa Moskowitz (creator of the Post Punk Kitchen and so much more), Gary Loewenthal (Director of Compassion for Animals), and Danielle Thompson (Director of the Galapagos Preservation Society). It was a bit intimidating to be on a panel with all of these people, since they are doing so much amazing work.

I showed slides of the Cow Ribbon campaign and talked about it a bit. After we all presented our campaigns there was a bit of discussion around creative campaigns. Being creative in what we do is important. Creativity doesn’t have to mean flashy and out there, it can often just mean finding a new way of using something that already exists. I hope that anyone in the Vancouver area who is interested in being creative and finding new ideas for outreach comes to our next community dialogue event on July 11, which is focused on using fun and entertainment for outreach.

I also presented a session about our Animal Advocacy Camp. I was nervous about it at the beginning because I was planning to do a different sort of presentation. Instead of just talking at people for 45 minutes, we did a mini advocacy camp, with an agenda setting and one 10 minute session. Then we had a good discussion about how it felt, what worked and what didn’t. It was total experiment to try to present the idea of an open space event by doing open space, but I think it worked. Even if it didn’t work as well as it could have, I know that I really enjoyed the conversation with some very lovely people.

In the evening we went to Portobello, an aven-more-than-amazing vegan restaurant for dinner and a Let Live party/benefit.

Being here and seeing all of the dedicated grassroots animal rights activists who’ve come from near and far to be together and learn together – it’s just really inspiring. I’m so happy to be doing this work for animals.