Podcast Transcript
Hope
Welcome to the Hope for the Animals Podcast sponsored by United Poultry Concerns. I’m your host, Hope Bohanec. You can find all our past episodes on our website, HopeForTheAnimalsPodcast.org.
Today we have an interview with longtime activist vegan and yogi, Victoria Moran. She’s done decades of work bridging the two worlds of spirituality and veganism, and this work is close to my heart. Before we get into the interview, I want to explore with you the concept of ahimsa.
The vegan community has really been inspired by, and embraced, the word ahimsa. You’ll see ahimsa on t-shirts and necklaces and other items. There’s now a lot of online groups that are vegan groups with the word ahimsa incorporated in to bring in that spiritual component. I want to talk about this word and try to give some context and a little more depth to the word and the concept.
Even though I have dedicated myself to veganism and vegan activism for 30 years, I’ve always felt that just vegan is not enough. I truly believe that we, as a human society, need a fundamental consciousness shift, a spiritual awakening. Getting everyone to eat veggie burgers, that’s great and that’s part of it, but I don’t think it’s enough. I feel that we could easily slip back into killing animals and harming each other and the planet if there isn’t a truly deep shift in our psyche—in our priorities as a society— and we really need to embrace our compassionate nature. I feel that we need this to turn the corner on every issue we face from the climate crisis, to racial divides and racism, to the suffering of the animals. I don’t think that any of this will heal without major societal shifts, consciousness shifts. I don’t feel that religion or spirituality has to be the way to do this. But for me, and for a lot of people, we see spirituality as a natural ally to this shift.
A little background on my spiritual journey: I was raised Southern Baptist born-again Christian in the south. I went to Sunday school and church regularly with my grandmama, Opal. I loved her and I loved Jesus, and it was all very moving to me as a child. But by the time I was a teenager, the radical activist in me had rejected it all. I called myself an atheist or agnostic, really. There were just too many things that didn’t resonate, and there were inconsistencies and prejudices. So I really understand the critiques and criticism of religion, I’ve been there. But when I met my husband, Cogen, 20 years ago, I was agnostic at the time, he was into Eastern religions and spirituality, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism. Cogen now has his Master’s in Buddhism and a PhD in Hindu studies, and I have learned so much about these traditions from him. I’m not an expert, but he certainly is, and I started seeing that there was a lot there. There’s a lot of beauty there. There was knowledge on how to create a better world; there were parallels to veganism, compassion, environmental protection, and caring for each other, the animals, the planet, and all these beautiful things. I started seeing the awe and reverence for life and the preciousness of all life through these ancient religious traditions. It really helped me to get out of my depression and anger about the state of the world. From the knowledge I have gained from him, I want to share with you the concept of ahimsa and what I’ve learned.
Before we get into it, I do want to give a little side information about appropriation of culture because some are concerned about the vegan community using this term, and they’re calling it appropriation. I feel like it’s important to distinguish between being inspired by another culture or tradition, and appropriating words or concepts from those cultures. The distinction is subtle, but it’s important. Appropriation would be when someone from a position of privilege or power redefines a tradition for their own purposes, and thereby it endangers or changes the original culture or concept or word. We want to be careful not to do that. But that’s not what’s going on here, that’s not what’s happening when vegans are inspired by ahimsa. We’re learning from the other tradition, and we’re learning these concepts so that it can inspire our own ethics, that we can be informed by the wisdom of this tradition. That’s called cultural borrowing, and cultural borrowing can enhance a culture or tradition. We need to be aware, to be respectful that this concept is coming from another tradition and we don’t want to redefine it, but we can learn from that tradition and have it inform us and our ethics and teach us. We don’t want to say ahimsa is vegan or means vegan, because that’s not the case, it’s a much broader concept than just animals or food. But I think that’s why we’re drawn to and inspired by this word, because to so many vegans, the word, vegan, is bigger than just dietary choices. We’re looking for ways to define this shift in consciousness to non-violence and this respect and reverence for all life. With that disclaimer out of the way, I want to tell you about ahimsa.
This word is a Sanskrit word, and it literally means non-harming or non-violence, but it can really be thought of as dynamic, active compassion. There’s really not an English equivalent, so that’s why I want to explain it and want to delve in and explore the meaning more. There are two other concepts, two other words that I want to tell you about because they are connected to ahimsa, and they are dharma, and karma. All three of these concepts are in all the major Eastern religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. All embrace these concepts. It’s kind of interesting, because those three religions actually have a lot of disagreement on big issues, like whether there is a God or not, whether there’s a soul or not. But with these three concepts, dharma, karma, and ahimsa, they all agree on the meaning and the importance. It kind of gives it a little more weight, I think.
Let’s start with dharma. On the macro level, dharma means the harmonious flow of the universe, how the universe functions and flows and wants to be in sync. There’s also dharma on a societal level, and the community level, or community harmony. Getting more micro, there’s dharma that’s your personal, ethical code of conduct. It’s your meaning of life, what you were born to do, your swadharma is what that’s called. To really be in harmony with your own personal actions and your own choices. If we live ethically in harmony with nature and animals, then society is in harmony, and then we’re in harmony with the planet and the universe. What we do personally affects the community and the planet. That’s the case with veganism, with a lot of choices in our life. I always resonated with this concept of our personal dharma because I knew what I wanted to do since I was a very little girl. When people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to say that I want to work with animals. I’ve known for a long time what my purpose was. So this idea of your personal dharma felt very deeply true to me, and I have been very blessed to feel that I’m doing exactly what I was meant to do this lifetime, fulfilling my dharma. It’s really cool concepts that we can tap into, what we’re supposed to be doing, what our purpose is. There’s so much more to dharma, but that’s the cliff notes version.
We’ll move on to karma. Karma is a word that we, of course, are more familiar with in the West. I think most everyone can agree, on some level, to the concept of what you do comes back to you, or whatever energy you put out, you’ll get back. Everybody kind of agrees with some level of that. Well, that’s karma, though that’s just scratching the surface, it goes so much deeper. The concept of karma and eating animals is throughout the literature. It’s said over and over again, in all three of the Eastern traditions, that killing and eating animals is one of the worst things that you can do for your karma. I’ve heard the critique from some anti-religious folks that karma is selfish, that if you’re doing good things just to help yourself then that’s selfish. But that’s not fully understanding the tradition. You really have to be cultivating compassion, to get the good karma benefits. If you’re just doing good things for selfish reasons, then you don’t get the good karma points. Sometimes things start off selfish, like going vegan for health reasons, and then the more you learn about the animals, your compassion grows. It’s similar that people may start off first doing something for their own karma, but then the picture gets bigger as your compassion deepens and we see the greater good, the environmental benefit, and the benefit to the community and, of course, to the animals. You don’t want to cause others to suffer. That is ahimsa, and that’s what we’ll be talking about next. To wrap up the karma section, there’s a sacred text that says, if you harm an animal, however many hairs or feather on that animal that you cause the suffering to, you will be reborn and suffer that many times. It’s really powerful action and reaction. We don’t want to cause harm to others.
Now that you have all that context, now we can talk about ahimsa. Going back to the appropriation and redefining issue, again, I want to say that ahimsa doesn’t translate as vegan. It’s not limited to animals or animal products. It’s a broader concept literally meaning non-harming or non-violence. “Himsa” means harm and “ah” is negating, so ahimsa is not harming. Instead of an absence of violence, I think it really can be more defined as a presence of active, dynamic compassion. Being compassionate in all that we do, being non-violent in all that we do, in our words, our actions, everything, it’s the number one guiding principle of most all Eastern traditions. The term, “ahimsa paramo dharma” means non-violence. It’s the supreme law of the universe, it’s the highest and best action we can take when faced with any situation. It’s the ethical imperative. Ahimsa is throughout the literature and there’s numerous references to ahimsa and vegetarianism. It’s basically the concept that compassion for everyone and everything on the planet should be our guiding force. I think that’s why we’re really drawn to this word as a vegan community, we really want to have that compassion for everyone and everything on the planet. This word really encompasses and embodies that beautiful concept. When you practice ahimsa, non-violence, you have good karma for yourself, and that brings on good dharma for the community, and then it goes out to the whole planet. This is how we can bring harmony and peace to our planet.
All of this really helps me, it heals me, because when I went through my atheist and agnostic period, I was really angry and pissed off that everything seems so unfair and unjust and random and meaningless. There was just so much suffering. It was so frustrating to think that it had no meaning. Now, that’s just me, and I think atheists can be very happy people, not angry, and live fulfilled lives without any need for religion. I don’t mean to say that everyone needs religion. But for me, and I think for a lot of people, we’re seeking something deeper. We want to believe that all this suffering on this planet is not just random, that there is meaning and learning and growing behind it. When I started digging into these traditions and learning about the philosophy, seeing the world from a more spiritual perspective, it helped me to start making sense of things. It helped me to move past that anger and I now feel more accepting and connected and understanding. I encourage you to find what gives your life meaning, and I encourage you to be inspired by ahimsa, and live every minute of your life as much as you can meditating on non-violence and how we can be more compassionate in everything that we do. It’s important to not just meditate but to take action. How can our actions bring harmony to the world, this world out of balance, and truly create the compassionate loving vegan world that we all want to live in? Let’s now hear from Victoria.
Hope: Let’s bring in our guest today. Today we have Victoria Moran, and she is listed among VegNews Magazine’s top 10 living vegetarian authors, having written 13 books on veganism and eclectic spirituality, including the iconic Main Street Vegan, and the international bestseller Creating a Charmed Life. She’s been featured twice on Oprah and she hosts the award winning Main Street Vegan Podcast, so she is a fellow podcaster. Be sure to check out Main Street Vegan Podcast. She also produced the documentary, A Prayer for Compassion, and it’s one of my favorite vegan films. She also directs Main Street Vegan Academy, which trains vegan lifestyle coaches and educators. She is very busy, very active in the vegan and animal rights space, and we’re so happy to have her. Welcome, Victoria.
Victoria: Thank you, Hope.
Hope: Good to have you. You have been vegan a long time, and I know that your activism goes back many decades. I would love to hear your vegan story. How you went vegan, why you went vegan, and how you got into all this.
Victoria: Oh, my goodness. When I first heard the word vegetarian, I was five years old and came home from first grade with the four food groups, half of which— if anybody wasn’t around for the four food groups, they were what the USDA used to say people should eat— half of it was animal products. I proudly recited what I had learned at school that day. My grandmother-aged nanny, who was kind of a curmudgeon and didn’t like the government telling her what to do, said, “Humph! There are people who never eat meat. They’re called vegetarians and I could take you to a restaurant and get you a burger made out of peanuts and you’d think you were having beef.” Well, we never went to the restaurant, but interestingly enough, it was at Unity headquarters. Unity is a Protestant denomination founded in the 1890s by two very vocal vegetarians. In that funny way that life goes— you mentioned my podcast, thank you— it’s on Unity Online Radio, this very place where that restaurant was. That just stayed in my mind from the time I was little, and I didn’t know what to do with it. When I was 13, I tried to go vegetarian, but didn’t know what to eat and got hungry, so that didn’t last very long. When I was 17, I started reading books about yoga. There were only three that I could find at the time, but all of them said if you want to be serious about yoga, you need to be vegetarian. That was when I started on the path.
Hope: And was this– when was this? The 70s? 80s?
Victoria: Oh no, you honor me. It was 1967.
Hope: Wow.
Victoria: I was 17, then I moved to London when I was 18 and started taking yoga and going to vegetarian restaurants. I got rid of eating land animals at that time, but I was in Weight Watchers and they said you had to have fish five times a week, so I held on to fish until 1969. When I was 19, I went vegetarian, although I was still eating eggs. I heard about veganism a couple of years later. So many people nowadays don’t realize that back then, you could be interested in animals and yoga, and never have heard of veganism, because it was just such a tiny little thing. I did hear about it when I was probably 21 through the American Vegan Society, and immediately knew that it was right. But I had a heck of a time doing it myself. It was difficult because there wasn’t soy milk at coffee shops or anything like that, and I was a practicing binge eater. I’d given up on the Weight Watchers thing, and I would go to the 7-11 in the middle of the night trying to get my stash. I would read the labels and everything had some whey in it or something that wasn’t vegan, and I would give up. Then I would try to crawl back and have some self-esteem and eat in some reasonable way again. All of the information at the time, just like some of the information now, was “oh my goodness, if you want to lose weight, you certainly don’t want to be having all those carbs.” I would be told nonfat yogurt and egg white omelets, so I went back and forth with vegan for many years, and finally, finally did it.
I finally committed in earnest in 1983, when two circumstances came together in my life. One was that my daughter had been born. It was about time to get her started on solid foods and I wanted so much for her to be vegan, but of course I had to be vegan first. Also, I had gotten very serious in the 12 step program of Overeaters Anonymous, and I finally had spiritual tools to use so that I had the power of choice in what I would eat. I chose vegan and have never looked back.
Hope: It’s so interesting because I went vegan 30 years ago as well. A long time ago. It’s all relative, but it was so much harder back then. There was so little options and choice for food. When I hear people today say, “Oh, it’s too hard, it’s too hard,” inside I laugh because it was so much harder back then. But, of course, it’s relative, and it can be still difficult for folks now. If you think back, the only soy milk that I could find was powdered soy milk that you added water to. It was chalky.
Victoria: A lot of us back then didn’t have blenders. I mean, blenders were expensive. I remember trying to make the soy milk with the powder and a whisk.
Hope: That’s how I did it too.
Victoria: Yet, then and even now, we can be inconvenienced by being vegan. The animals are so much more than inconvenienced when we’re not.
Hope: That’s right. Absolutely true. When you bring them into the picture, then it becomes so much easier to avoid the suffering that that food represents.
Victoria: It really does. I have friends who are very, very excited about the health aspects of going vegan, or they’ll call it whole food plant based, and they’re excited. I see that excitement when anybody is on a new diet, and what I like to come in with is, “That is wonderful, that’s fabulous, it is so healthy, you’re going to do so much great things for yourself. And learn about the animals.” Because if you’re just doing it for yourself, someday when your mother says, “Oh, come on, one won’t hurt,” or you get really tired of the guy at the office who’s always teasing you about eating his lawn trimmings, then you’ve got somebody else who’s at stake. Then it becomes absolutely effortless to stay on this path.
Hope: So true. You mentioned your interest in yoga and then also about Unity. Your activism leans into the spiritual, connecting spirituality and veganism. I’m curious if you were raised in a religious household or what is your spiritual history?
Victoria: Thank you, what a delicious question. My father was Roman Catholic, nominally, but he really wanted me to be raised Roman Catholic. My mother had grown up eclectically Protestant, and they would go to whatever church was in the neighborhood. She took the Roman Catholic training when she was going to marry my dad, and there’s this family lore that she left the last class and said, “Thank you Father, I learned a lot but I’ll be damned if I don’t use birth control.” It was that kind of a home. Then there was this other influence, I mentioned the woman who told me about vegetarians. Didi started living with us when I was six months old because both my parents worked and this was before daycare. She was really a parent and a spiritual teacher, and she had been involved in Rosicrucians.
Hope: What is that?
Victoria: It’s on the lines of theosophy, anthroposophy, a kind of study of occult teachings, some of the inside of religious teachings more than mystical elements. She’d also been in Christian Science, and then she’d been in Unity for a very long time. Unity was it for her, that was the one that took. She raised me with ideas like reincarnation and the oneness of all religions, that the names are different, but they’re all there to get us back home. In addition, my dad was a physician and his office had been in a very immigrant, Eastern European area in Kansas City when he started his practice before I was born. By the time I came along, the neighborhood was almost 100% African American. His older patients would come back to see him, and then he had all these new patients who were black. So my childhood was full of going to people’s places of worship. Whether it was a Greek Orthodox wedding or a bar mitzvah or a big Baptist funeral at an African American Church, it was like the United Nations of religions.
To me, nothing has ever been more important than that big picture. Around the time I was 12 or so, I started to see that there were people who were very orthodox about their beliefs, and believe that they had the only way and everybody should do what they did. Then there were other people who had this beautiful mystical view of this truth that was accessible to everybody, and you just pick it up kind of like you get a bus at your stop. I got a degree in comparative religions and I’ve been what the theologian Marcus Bach calls a vagabond, and the wonderful world of spirit, just studying all kinds of different approaches. The yoga has really been the thread that has gone through my whole life and continues to be the center of my spiritual practice.
Hope: We talked a little about A Prayer for Compassion, the film that you produced. This film has to do with spirituality and food choices, and I really love this film. I’d like you to talk a little about it. In that film, you tell the story of a cow. Can you tell us that story?
Victoria: Yes. I think that the reason that when an organization is trying to get funds for starving children, they show one child, they don’t show hundreds, because we can relate to one. That’s certainly been the case with the story of this cow. She is one that I’ve remembered when I started to get up overwhelmed. I spent a day in a slaughterhouse, this was back in the 1990s. I was a longtime vegetarian and I’d been vegan for quite a while, but I’d never been to a slaughterhouse myself and I mentioned that to a woman. I was living in rural area at that time in Central Missouri, and she said, “My husband’s friend owns a slaughterhouse and I’m sure if you smile pretty, he’ll just show you anything you want to see.” So I went there with this gentleman, and we were all suited like surgeons, with the coverings for the shoes and the masks and the head covering, and entered into, all I can say is, hell. I understood what it must have been like in the mind of Dante to tour Inferno with Virgil, because this man was Virgil and he was taking me through hell. The smells, the sounds, the state of the workers. I did not go there expecting to have sympathy for the people who were doing harm to animals, but I developed so much sympathy for them because it was very obvious that they had nowhere else to be. They were not there because they wanted to be there, they were there for survival.
After all this, after this completely surreal day, it was about time to leave. I was outside and a small farmer drove up in a truck with three cows. I know that this is something very important to you, Hope, and I certainly concur, the people that say, “But what about getting your meat from the small farmer? That’s what I do.” That’s who this guy was, he was so small that he drove them in himself. I watched them going up the ramp and the first one just went and that was it. But the second cow was paying very close attention to what was going on. The smells and the sounds that I’d been around all day, she was getting through this ramp that she was supposed to walk up. It was an open area so smells and sounds could get through. She just stood on that ramp and she was not going to go one step further. Then the man who was working there, the guy who would hit her with the captive bolt pistol and hopefully stun her before slaughter, whistled to her. When he did that, I remember thinking, he’s 20 minutes from leaving this place. He’s going to whistle to his dog when he gets home just that same way. When he did that, this cow kind of turned her head, and it was so clear to me that she was determining whether to follow her instincts that said do not go further, or her trust in this man. She walked up the ramp. After that, he got her with the captive bolt pistol, and then her throat was slit and her skin was sliced off.
That was what cured me of leather. I was already vegan, but I thought, oh, you know, it’s old leather, I’ll just use it until it wears out. Then it was like, no, no, those shoes in your closet are somebody else’s skin. It was so clear. That was her story, and I just feel that I need to tell her story. Sometimes vegans and animal rights people get very angry with me. They say we already know this, you don’t need to make us sad. I don’t need to make you sad, although I’m glad that I do. I think if anybody can hear that story and not be sad, there’s something wrong with their conscience. Her death has to mean something, and that’s why I tell it. I know she has made a lot of vegans.
Hope: It’s such a heart wrenching story. It’s interesting that you mentioned Dante’s Inferno and being guided through hell, because in that story, he goes through different hellish, horrible attributes that humans can do and be, and the worst of the worst is betrayal. Betrayal was the absolute worst thing that someone can do to another. That’s exactly what’s happening to these animals, especially in the small scale situation where they know the person who is feeding them and caring for them, and then that person is who takes them to the slaughterhouse. It is a betrayal, and that’s why I called my book The Ultimate Betrayal.
Victoria: Yes.
Hope: It’s heart wrenching, but thank you for telling her story, and making her life meaningful so that we can hopefully save her sisters and all of them.
Victoria: Yes, yes, all the beings. We talk about cows, because it’s easier for humans, I can certainly speak for myself, it’s easier to relate to mammals because I’m a mammal. I live with a dog and a bird, the bird is a rescue pigeon, Thunder. He’s blind in one eye so he has to be an indoor bird. I love Thunder, but it’s harder to relate to him because he lives in such a different body. I think sometimes that’s why people will say, well, I don’t eat red meat. I wish you didn’t need any meat but if you have to eat some, at least red meat makes fewer deaths. But the chickens, we’re just killing so many billions of birds. Something that I have learned from Thunder is how much is going on in the brain of a bird. I mean, nothing gets past Thunder.
Hope: What you were saying about chickens being killed in such greater numbers, I want to clarify that and go back to that because it is so important. People often are like, “Oh, I’m cutting out red meat,” like you said. But if you’re looking at it from the perspective of ethics and morals and wanting to relieve suffering, you can actually cause more suffering by switching from eating cows and pigs to eating chickens and fish, because their bodies are smaller. To feed the same amount of people, you have to kill them in such higher numbers, and people don’t realize this. Just switching from beef to chicken, it doesn’t have the effects people think. It certainly doesn’t help with animal cruelty and it’s no better environmentally or health-wise or anything like that. It’s an unfortunate myth that’s out there. Some people, of course, if they’re moving their way to veganism, have to take it in stages, but then I’d say cut out chicken first so that you are saving more lives.
Victoria: Yes, I have heard from our great colleague Karen Davis, “Chicken and eggs. If you can just do chicken and eggs first, and then chickens and eggs and fishes.” It’s almost the opposite of the way that most people do it.
Hope: That’s right. That’s right. There seems to be more and more vegans with an interest in spirituality, and vice versa. There’s several faith based vegan advocacy groups now that are in existence. What do you think about this, this blending and melding of these two worlds?
Victoria: I think it’s wonderful because if you see the connection, then the connection is there. Certainly for me, it’s been there all along. Some of the early Christians were devout vegetarians and even, as far as we can tell, vegan. There’s a beautiful book called The Vegetarian Christian Saints by Dr. Holly Roberts, and these are just wonderful stories. The way that Suzy Welch, a business journalist and TV personality, appears in A Prayer for Compassion; she is herself an evangelical Christian, and she says that these people, like herself, don’t eat animals or abuse animals because of love of Jesus Christ. I find this so fascinating because most of the Christians that I know, certainly the devout Christians, love Jesus Christ. A few of them carry that love all the way to animals, and I keep looking for ways to help get the message to more of them.
Hope: There seems to be more and more Christian vegetarian groups, Jewish vegetarian groups, and even the interfaith groups, that of course are reaching out to all faiths with the compassionate vegan message.
Victoria: There is about to be another one, if I may tell you about it.
Hope: Oh sure!
Victoria: It’s called the Compassion Consortium, and I am part of that, but it is really the brainchild of my husband, William Melton, and two interfaith ministers, Reverend Sarah Bowen and Reverend Erica Allison. The idea is to have a home or second home for vegans, pre-vegans, people who care about animals, and who either are part of a spiritual community or tradition but don’t feel that their part that wants to show compassion to animals is celebrated in their spiritual home, or some people have left religion altogether. We’re going to be having monthly Zoom gatherings, actual services, actual interfaith religious services, and we’ll also have a monthly book or film club. CompassionConsortium.org for anybody who finds that of interest.
Hope: Wow. I will put a link to that in the show notes.
Victoria: Thank you.
Hope: Yes. Victoria, you have written 13 books, which is amazing to me. I’ve written one and it took me so long, and I have another couple that I’m working on, but it’s so hard to find the time to write. People don’t realize how challenging and time consuming it is to write a book. I wonder which of your 13 books is your favorite, and if someone wanted to get started with one of your books, which one would you suggest?
Victoria: It’s so hard to choose, I think that’s almost like asking a parent who has lots of children. I was just this morning reading the New York Times, and my husband always teases me that I read the New York Times with a dictionary because they always use these wonderful words. There’s a word that I’m not really sure how to pronounce, it’s spelled O-E-U-V-R-E, French for open, and it is the collection of works of an author or a painter or a composer. In my oeuvre, or however you say it, I have about half that are more about veganism and well-being, and then I have the other half that are more about spirituality and well-being. I feel that the two kind of compete. Main Street Vegan certainly, because that is my magnum opus on being vegan. I actually wrote the first book about veganism, I think, that ever came from a free standing publisher back in 1985, Compassion, the Ultimate Ethic. But that actually came from the paper that I had to write for my BA in Religious Studies. Even though that’s a book about veganism, it’s Main Street Vegan that I really am so proud of and so in love with and so grateful that people continue to discover. My biggest selling book and the book that I think has helped the most people, is one called Creating a Charmed Life, and that’s 75 little essays, kind of geared to women, and it’s kind of magical. Somebody wrote to me once, “I love all your books but Creating a Charmed Life, that’s a blessed book.” So I guess it would be those two.
Hope: You founded a school back in 2012 that trains and certifies vegan lifestyle coaches and educators. That is called Main Street Vegan, like your book. How have you adjusted to the pandemic? Are you still doing it online?
Victoria: Yes, and it’s so interesting. You know how sometimes we get very invested in, “this is the way it’s done,” and I must say, I was very invested in, “This course is in person. For this course, you come to New York City.” I mean, when you took that honeymoon to Paris, did you do it online, or did you go to Paris? I was really proprietary about it. It is a magnificent experience to get to go somewhere fabulous and meet the presenters and then go out to eat and go out to field trips. But when we went to Zoom, the magic came along, which is so fascinating to me. I actually love Zoom, I love the idea that you’re online, but you’re live. I’m not, still to this day, very fond of the kind of packaged online courses, but oh my goodness, Zoom makes me happy. I feel like I know the people that have been in the Zoom classes in the way that I knew people from the in person classes, and they get the same certification, VLCE. We are certified by BeVeg. We’re the first school that they have certified, which is cool. It’s a wonderful, wonderful community. We’ve had just over 500 graduates from 31 countries on six continents, and people are doing amazing things. Many are coaching and consulting as one would think since that’s what the certification is called, but other people have an entrepreneurial gene, and they’ve gone into business. Everything from vegan cowboy boots in Dallas, to a vegan bodega in Philadelphia, to vegan ice cream in Mexico City, we’ve got lots of companies and retail stores and people doing publishing and writing. It’s really thrilling to be part of so many people’s process and what they’re then doing for the animals.
Hope: It’s fabulous. I love that. I ask all my guests this and I want to ask you too, what gives you hope for the future?
Victoria: The young vegans that I’m around in the academy and in other contexts. To see that when we were doing it, back in the day, we saw ourselves as the counterculture. This was an alternative lifestyle, this was out of the norm. They don’t see it that way. They see it as the norm that other people haven’t come to understand yet. I think they’re going to take us to the finish line and get this thing done.
Hope: Victoria, it’s been a wonderful conversation. I’ve had a lot of fun. Before we wrap up, won’t you let our listeners know how they can find you? What you have going on? Anything of interest.
Victoria: Oh, that’s so kind. MainStreetVegan.net is where everything is. You can find links to Amazon and Vimeo for watching A Prayer for Compassion, you can get information about Main Street Vegan Academy. We have a new Zoom course starting in August. You can also find out about the Main Street Vegan Podcast. We do a new live show every Wednesday afternoon and the podcast goes up on Thursday morning. We are coming up on our 500th episode. We have been doing this weekly since 2012. Everything is there. The Compassion Consortium, that spiritual home or second home for vegans is coming up late in April. In May, I’m doing a retreat with Gwenna Hunter of Vegans of LA called Veganism and the Spiritual Life. If you go to MainStreetVegan.net, click on events, you can find links to all of those.
Hope: You are a busy woman doing so much good work for the animals and for all of us, thank you so much, Victoria. You inspire me.
Victoria: You are inspiring to me and I am a great fan of your book. That is one that is never getting passed along. If I want somebody to read it, I buy them their own copy.
Hope: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much and thank you for being on the podcast, it’s really been wonderful.
Victoria: All the best.
Thank you for listening to the Hope for the Animals Podcast. I usually ask here at the end, if you would please take an action to help us continue this podcast and keep it going. This time I would like to ask if you are able and have the means, to please give a donation. You can go to our website, HopeForTheAnimalsPodcast.org and click on the donation button, and please give as generously as you can. This will really help us to maintain these podcasts, to keep creating episodes on a variety of vegan subjects, and to further intelligent, engaging conversations, to help bring about the compassionate vegan world that we are waiting for. Please make a donation if you can by going to our website. Have hope for a better world for animals, and live vegan.
