Vegan Fashion Museum Opens In Los Angeles

"A vegan fashion museum showcasing cruelty-free and ethically made clothing is opening in Los Angeles.

The  F.A.K.E Museum - which stands for 'Fashion for Animal Kingdom & Environment' - is on Melrose Avenue, in front of Melrose Place. It will be open to the public until August 31.

It will host designers from around the world, and feature alternatives to silk, leather, wool, and other fabrics."

Read more here:  Vegan Fashion Museum Opens In Los Angeles

Beyond Veganuary: How To Continue Your Vegan Journey

"It can take time and effort to implement new habits - but it is worth pushing through. A vegan lifestyle has huge positive impacts on animal suffering and the environment."

Beyond Veganuary: How To Continue Your Vegan Journey

V-EGANISM's Official Mission Statement

I needed to create a detailed, official, mission statement for V-EGANISM. This following statement will also be located at the top of this web blog permanently.

There are animal welfare vegans and animal abolition vegans. V-EGANISM is neither. Just as there are positive things and negative things about conservatives and liberals, there are positive things and negative things about welfarists and abolitionists. V-EGANISM avoids all 4 "political parties", and remains as an independent in thoughts and actions, only choosing what is right and just for animals, humans, and the environment. V-EGANISM however does have a mission statement which is how the founder of veganism, Donald Watson, originally coined the word's definition. It was a perfect definition then and it still is a perfect definition now! So the following paragraph is V-EGANISM's official Mission Statement--and nothing more, nothing less, we are simply called, "Vegans", with no additives:

"V-EGANISM educates people and helps people and animals regarding the political and social justice cause, Veganism, which is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude--as far as is possible and practicable--all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, cosmetics, household products, entertainment, services or any other purposes; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals, and the environment."

10 Rebuttals Every Vegan Should Know

Being vegan has some truly positive effects. Veganism is clearly better for the animals, it is healthier for the environment, and it has proven to be amazing for the human body. With veganism sounding so marvelous, you would think that everyone would be vegan. However, there are people out there who are not aware of the details and think that vegans are lacking from this lifestyle.

Read more:

10 Rebuttals Every Vegan Should Know

Wanderlust and the Environment: Can We Afford to Keep Traveling?

Traveling comes with a high environmental cost. But many people who care about the environment still want to be able to see the world. Could virtual – or virtuous – travel be the answer?

Wanderlust and the environment: can we afford to keep traveling?

Easy, Safe and Eco-Friendly Halloween Costumes for Kids

Halloween is one of the most thrilling days of the year for young children. And of course, the main focus of all the excitement is choosing a really fantastic outfit to dress up in. As a parent, you’d like to make sure that Halloween costumes will look great and be easy to assemble, without endangering either your offspring or the environment.

Read more about it here: Easy, Safe and Eco-Friendly Halloween Costumes for Kids

Whole Foods Selling Rabbit Flesh

A$$whole Foods Market has begun selling rabbit meat in select stores nationwide, and the move has animal advocates hopping mad. Mad enough, they say, that they'll be protesting at Whole Foods stores this weekend, handing out leaflets reminding consumers that rabbits are popular furry companions.

I think it's foolish to only protest the selling of rabbit flesh when there are other kinds of animal flesh sold at A$$whole Foods.

People should be just as outraged at selling any kind of animal flesh--not just rabbits. There is no difference in their lives; all animals are sentient beings who have the right to live, and also important, people do NOT need to eat animal flesh to be healthy...And not eating animal flesh is in the long run, good for the environment as well, plus we would be saving billions of lives every year, as well as our own lives.

Peace out.

Psychological Factors Regarding the Environment

There is a mental distance that many people invoke when thinking about the damage happening to the environment. A feeling that becomes present when realizing that the current lifestyle that many of us live will be the very thing that eventually kills or limits life on this planet is hard to face. There is a  sense of denial that we live with in order to cope with the reality that today’s luxuries are contributing factors to the destruction of the Mother Earth, which is why some psychological process needs to be addressed and explored regarding the problems of climate change and other environmental issues that are continuing to manifest. But doing right by the environmental movement means that we have to do without the very luxuries that we have been conditioned to believe make life worth living. 

We as people have failed to take into account the psychological conditioning that capitalism and other such systems like in the United States have had on the average person. We are continuing to struggle between the messages of society that are based on worth, gain and monetary values.

This is why the solutions lie very much in the psychological and the spiritual realms of activism; we cannot combat hundreds of years of programming with a simple Public Service Announcement or by using guilt tactics that promote recycling. We have to reach beyond the borders of our average activist actions and embrace the concept of majickal intervention as a means to transformation in thought, action and healing. We must also incorporate the knowledge we have gained from the social sciences in understanding how systems of denial operate, how dissociation from reality becomes a protective measure against what feels threatening, and how the social construct of our environment will shape and mold value systems. 

We live in a society that exists in so much pain, and with so many struggles that life becomes about the struggle and not about the beauty. We have to look at the struggle for environmental justice in combination with the many other struggles of justice we are fighting: They do not exist separately.

The fight for environmentalism is a combination of a psychological, spiritual, societal and historical wound that is wrapped in unchecked privilege, oppression, pain and the trauma of a world. We need to intensify our efforts to support ourselves in a healthy, whole and integrated way, so that we can change and heal the world.

Shopping to Help the Environment

Everyday choices can affect your family's health as well as the environment.

There's a growing trend among consumers to make choices reflecting the goals and values that matter to them most. So here are a few ideas for easy changes:

Starting with the products you use most frequently can be a simple way to shift your choices to a healthier place. Many hygiene products, such as soap, shampoo and toothpaste use unnecessary chemicals and animal ingredients that are harmful to our human body and, of course, cruel for the animal it was made from. Natural, cruelty-free (and not tested on animals) ingredients work just as well or better than the artificial/cruel variety, so look for options that don't rely on dyes, formaldehyde, parabens and animal ingredients. Ingredients with chemicals directly impact waterways once they go down the drain. More cruelty-free options can be kinder to your body, to animals and to the environment.

Cleaning products like floor polish, glass cleaners, and bathroom disinfectants can be harsh and tested on animals. Consider gentler, cruelty-free alternatives.

Even if your foods are vegan/cruelty-free, certain food products can contain artificial sweeteners or use pesticides. Try switching to less processed foods and buying organic when possible. Look for locally sourced foods for added freshness and to reduce overall carbon footprint in transit.

Companies with smart environmental policies do exist. Do your research and support brands that work to lessen their environmental impact, and take pride in the quality of their ingredients, which should be listed in full on the packaging.

Brands like Tom's of Maine, which makes personal care products like soap, deodorant and toothpaste, as well as others, share their progress in helping the planet by publishing goals and results to the public. They recently released their second edition of the Tom's of Maine Goodness Report that details the company's approach to ingredients, packaging, waste, water, energy, the community, and its employees. For example, the company has opted to use steam capturing technology, ultimately reducing water usage. Cartons used for packaging toothpaste are made of 100 percent recycled paperboard and can be recycled again after use. The company is even looking into future "smart packaging" alternatives, such as biodegradable packaging made of potato starch.

Seek out a list of simple and understandable renewable and naturally-sourced ingredients. Also, inspect the material on which it's printed. Minimal packaging made of recyclable materials is ideal.

If your town doesn't take in a wide range of waste for recycling, TerraCycle is an innovative USA based up-cycling leader that enlists volunteers to recycle waste to make products such as benches, picnic tables or deck materials, ultimately sending less to landfills.

The impact of a few simple changes can have a lasting ripple effect that goes well beyond your home and life.

Kick Your Leather Habit For Good With These Awesome Alternatives

Womens' vegan leather jacket

Mens' vegan leather jacket

Many people see leather as fashionable, timeless and think it lasts forever. But if people knew how it affects our planet, people's feelings about leather may change.

As we know, leather is the skin of a slaughtered animal. In many cases, these skins come from cows, but skin from goats, sheep, pigs, and even cats and dogs are used to make leather. Some of the most luxurious and softest leather comes from the skin of newborn calves; so if you have decided to stop eating veal because you just can’t stomach the thought of eating a baby cow, but you’re buying leather, you are likely still contributing to the cruel exploitation of these babies.

Also, the leather industry is wreaking havoc on the planet. The leather tanning process, which turns raw skins into usable leather, fills the environment with such nasties as formaldehyde, cyanide, lead, and other known carcinogens. Tannery workers, as well as people who live in close proximity to tanning facilities, are riddled with a host of health problems which have been linked to the chemicals used in the leather making process.

Manufacturers are taking notice and are offering up products made from materials that are cruelty-free and kinder to the environment, which is better for us all. Here are five terrific alternatives that won’t even have you missing the leather:

Kick Your Leather Habit For Good With These Awesome Alternatives

Destroying Our Environment, Losing Our Languages

As we continue to cut down forests and lose biodiversity, there’s something else that we’re also losing: languages.

Since the 1970s, linguistic diversity has been declining as fast as biodiversity--at about a 30 percent decline. There are fantastic comparisons between linguistic diversity and biodiversity; both are products of evolution and have evolved in tremendously similar ways, but both are facing an extinction crisis.

It’s not the first time biodiversity and languages have been linked. Another study showed that 70 % of the world's languages are found in biodiversity hotspots. Which means that as those hotspots are threatened, so are the languages. One in four of the world’s remaining languages are threatened--the exact same ratio as mammals that are endangered.

Today there are 7,000 languages spoken worldwide. Half of those have fewer than 10,000 speakers, making them spoken by only 0.1 percent of the global population. The rest of us have a much smaller diversity in the languages that we speak. 95 percent of the world’s population speaks one of just 400 languages, and 40 percent of us converse in just one of eight languages: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian and Japanese.

That loss in diversity of language is leading to a kind of cultural homogenization. We are losing the richness of human diversity, becoming more and more similar. And as we become more globalized, and our consumption and use of natural resources increases, we lose both languages and our environment. 

As we lose languages, we lose local know-how of how to function within a certain environment. New Guinea for example, is a hotbed of biodiversity and culture. It has one of the greatest varieties of life in the world. As deforestation continues, all of those are threatened, and as cultures and languages are destroyed in the process, we lose the knowledge that has been developed over tens of thousands of years. How to use traditional plants for medicine, how to live a symbiotic relationship with the natural world, these are all things that we lose in the process.

(source: care2.com)

Peace to All Beings: Veggie Soup for the Chicken's Soul

This award winning book, Peace to All Beings, is about working to protect the environment, to promote world peace, to end world hunger and human rights abuses, to liberate animals from suffering, and to raise planetary consciousness. They are all deeply interconnected, and none can go very far forward without the others. All find their common ground in the ethics of nonviolence, compassion, and reverence for all life. Peace to All Beings reveals the root cause behind the violence and war now being waged against the earth, the animals, and people. 

10 Environmental and Animal Activists Who Were Killed for Taking a Stand

Supporting veganism in the face of overwhelming and powerful opposition can be a courageous and sometimes dangerous act. For many activists, unfortunately, taking a stand for what’s right becomes the last thing they ever do.

Between 2002 and 2013, for example, an incredible 908 people in 35 countries were murdered for trying to defend the environment, according to an April 2014 report from Global Witness. During this period only 10 perpetrators were caught and punished for these crimes.

The link below shows just a few committed activists who were killed over the last 25 years fighting for the causes they believed in:

10 Environmental and Animal Activists Who Were Killed for Taking a Stand

In Defense of Insects

A bush cockroach (Ellipsidion australe)

Here are two awesome articles on sticking up for all animals--including insects. Insects are not only living sentient beings, but they also help the environment.

On Defending Cockroaches


Also, check out the other link inside that article, called:

The Insects Among Us

Vegan/Animal Rights: A Failing Movement

I mentioned this briefly in my Tweets on Twitter but I want to elaborate my thoughts here.

Since listening to Steven Best's lecture, and dwelling on it regarding my own personal experience, I have now come to realize the world going vegan will most likely never, ever happen--not only in my lifetime-but never (unless God/dess force everyone to be vegan) because of the movement itself.

Steve Best gave his reasons why the Vegan/Animal Rights movement is failing--mainly due to the movement as a whole in not wanting to join forces with other social justice causes of various movements world-wide to make the planet a place of freedom and justice for all: People and Animals and thus the Environment. Please listen to Steve's lecture if you have not already. It is the most profound speech I have ever heard!

Here are my personal experiences and also reasons why the Vegan/Animal Rights movement is failing and will continue to do so:

The movement is full of egos--people wanting to be a celebrity in some way so chooses the Vegan/Animal Rights movement to do it in (mind you, people like these are in any kind of movement--not just animal rights--in wanting the spotlight to be some sort of celebrity). These people do not want to listen to others; they just want to do their own thing in hopes of being a famous vegan celebrity.

For instance:

I have contacted well-known animal rights people/groups in the movement like Our Hen House, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, Erin Red: Red Radio, Go Vegan Radio and Gary Francione. I have mentioned thoughts of my own and thoughts of other animal activists to make progress in the Vegan/Animal Rights movement and they have not responded to me. These ideas (mine and others--like Steven Best and Gary Yourofsky) are well thought-out, intelligent and ideas no one in the movement has said, but yet there is silence with these people and groups that could help make a difference in the movement since they all have a fairly large following. But no response, be it for or against these ideas. They just have their own beliefs and do not care about what others are thinking. What respect I had for these people are now gone, as to me, they don't really care about animals; all they care about is becoming some famous celebrity vegan. Some of these people's/group's podcasts actually sound like entertainment shows!

How sad and pathetic, but as I said, these types of people are in all kinds of movements.

So why do I continue in the Vegan/Animal Rights movement, knowing it's a lost cause?

Because I care about freedom and justice for all beings and it is my own personal moral responsibility to continue to help others and the environment. I'm happy I will have a clear conscience when I pass on, knowing what I did for animals, people and planet was ethically and morally right and I was not in the movement to try to become a famous vegan celebrity.

My hope is that vegans/animal rights people in the movement will come to their senses and realize to truly save the world, we must not have huge self-centered egos and start listening to each other, learning from each other, and come together as a whole to make a peaceful, loving world.

All beings--people and animals--want a free and just life, so let's start making it happen--NOW.

The Girl Who Loved Animals

 

The Girl Who Loved Animals (and who is still alive and still loves animals!), is a 2013 documentary about a former homeless teen who educates people about veganism/animal rights.

"Once upon a time Kitty Jones dreamed of being a dairy farmer. However, after discovering the cruel reality of animal agriculture and job shadowing at a "local, organic, family" dairy farm, Kitty has realized that animals do not exist for humans to use and has dedicated her life to animal and environmental advocacy. A recent graduate of Shorecrest High School in Seattle, Kitty has been profiled on the blogs of Vegan Score, the ASPCA, Rainforest Action Network, and the Humane Society. She won the President's Volunteer Service Award for volunteering over 1,000 community service hours, and was the founder and president of her school's Animal Rights Club. Jones aims to teach people that animals are not ours to eat, wear, test on or abuse, and that in exploiting them, we are harming not only our own health but the environment. She is now studying Conservation and Resource Studies at UC Berkeley and will forever continue to promote a peaceful, cruelty-free, plant-based diet and vegan lifestyle.

In the fall of 2011, production went into this full length documentary film, The Girl Who Loved Animals: Kitty Jones and the Fight For Animal Rights which follows Kitty for almost a year as she advocates for animals at her high school, hands out leaflets at farmer's markets, volunteers at a cat neutering clinic, and spends time with all the different animals at the Precious Life Animal Sanctuary where abused and neglected animals have been given a safe haven to live out their lives. Additional footage for the film was also supplied by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and The Humane Society of the United States."

Check the film out if it comes to a theatre near you.

Here is the trailer:

The Girl Who Loved Animals

Vegan Is Love: Having Heart and Taking Action

Author-illustrator Ruby Roth, introduces young readers to veganism as a lifestyle of compassion and action in her book, Vegan Is Love.

Roth illustrates how our daily choices ripple out locally and globally, conveying what we can do to protect animals, the environment, and people across the world. Roth explores the many opportunities we have to make ethical decisions: refusing products tested on or made from animals; avoiding sea parks, circuses, animal races, and zoos; choosing to buy organic food; and more. Roth’s message is direct but sensitive, bringing into sharp focus what it means to “put our love into action.”

The book also features back-of-the-book resources on action children can take themselves.