Philosophical Vegan Forum

What are your stance on veggie pride parades and the effectiveness of leafleting and street demonstrations? I have issues with both. In regards to veggie parades, I can understand the need to represent a community, however watching grown men and women dressed up as oversized vegetables and fruits reduces the seriousness of the issue. How is a non-vegan to look at a crowed of adults dressed up in costumes to make a positive association with veganism and a desire to investigate?

In regards to leafletting and public demonstrations, with the prevalence of crazy religious street preachers and corporate marketers, I think that people are either highly skeptical of the sanity or suspicious of the motivations. I dont want veganism associated with the man on the corner yelling that the end of the world is near.
Also, how effective is it handing out flyers to the public? With a single video on youtube, or a blog, you can reach thousands of people. I would imagine that standing on a street corner in a busy city you may hand out a few dozen flyers in a day, many of which will end up in the trash.

What are your thoughts?

TheVeganAtheist wrote: Also, how effective is it handing out flyers to the public? With a single video on youtube, or a blog, you can reach thousands of people. I would imagine that standing on a street corner in a busy city you may hand out a few dozen flyers in a day, many of which will end up in the trash.

Leafleting is the only proven effective means of outreach (some other means of outreach may or may not be more effective, but there's little reliable research on them).

Have you ever gone leafleting?

You can hand out hundreds of leaflets an hour, possibly up to a thousand an hour in a really good location (averaging one every five seconds or so).

Most people walk on, every now and then somebody circles back around to talk. You get more positive comments than negative ones; although only marginally positive, like "I respect what you're doing, but I could never go vegan." Every now and then you get people saying they'll try some recipes, or that they're going to do meatless Mondays, or that they're even going to try to go vegan.

See here, where they break down some of the research, including a bit on what kinds of leaflets really work and which don't: http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/ ... rventions/

I also think I would only support leafleting of the options you provided.

I think people generally think low of public demonstrations, including myself. It may cause an even worse reputation/image ("don't want to be associated with those people"-mentality). I can even remember myself some years ago laughing about these leftist people (although I have grown more towards the left myself now).

I'm not really sure about these 'veggie parades'. In the Netherlands we have the gay pride and it's generally enjoyed by most people (also non-gay). But I also feel that homophobic people are even further removed from gay issues, because of the more extreme material being broadcasted (that's the media). With something like veganism/vegetarianism, I think this would be even worse because of the attachment people have to animal products. It's even more controversial, and I'm not sure society is ready for it yet.

I think veg*n parades only increase distance between the veg*n and meat-eater population. In the end I think rational but respectful discussions are the only way. I also don't think veg*n 'pride' parades are appropriate; we are fighting for the rights of animals, not for ourselves.

Leafleting is too easy to ignore and get annoyed by in my opinion. Human contact is absent, which is a difficulty when talking about moral issues.

I've never been to a veggie parade but I would assume deep down it's more so a get together for vegans and vegetarians. The target audience should be more focused on the vegetarians than the omnivores guarantee there will be more vegetarians at the parade than omnis. Leafleting is good but I have to agree with TVA social media marketing is the new generation of activism what's great is we all can become social media experts for free from hubspot.com . We can reach millions if not billions of people if we all become educated on social media and inbound marketing. Learn how to utilise Google's free applications, learn search engine optimisation for better search results, make accounts on social media websites and get the word out there ! Create a blog and advertise and market the fuck out if it! There isn't a big vegan social media outlet, let's get together and make one !