Our strategic plan for building a vegan Midwest
A rough-and-tumble beginning
“After falling asleep on the couch from sheer exhaustion on Thursday, unable to even speak in my semi-crapulous, catatonic state, struggling just to pause the final chapter of The Maze Runner series, let alone rise to prepare vegan spaghetti and meatballs for the rest of my family, I [shuddered] awake whereupon my mom began screaming at me about how I am such an incompetent leader, causing a grown woman to cry while my mother wailed, grief-stricken, until well past 2 a.m. in the morning, any attempt to console her backfiring in a cacophony of attacks.”
Project Animal Freedom endured a tumultuous beginning, surging from the most vaulted of aspirations to the deepest of despairs in the span of just three months. We began with an ambitious mission—the creation of a fully vegan world by 2056—and we pursued that mission vigorously, planning 33 events over the span of 15 months on our first night of existence alone. One of those events—Vegmas—generated unexpected enthusiasm, with over 300 people marking “interested” on Facebook before we even began selling tickets. When we did start selling tickets, sales grew exponentially until nearly 160 tickets had been sold, raising over $4,000 in the process. We even secured Mic the Vegan, a famous vegan YouTuber from the Midwest, to speak at this event thanks to a fortuitous connection to someone who had helped coordinate speakers for VegFest Los Angeles.
While our marketing efforts for the event promised the finest vegan feast in St. Louis history, a very different reality emerged the night of the event. The first critical error was my neglecting to finish a 20-page paper due the same day as our first annual “Vegmas: A Compassionate Christmas Celebration.” I arrived five minutes late to an event I should have been five hours early to; risking overprepation is much preferable to the alternative—scant preparation leading to catastrophic failure. Even at this juncture, we could have still salvaged much of this event; then, roughly an hour into the event, food ran out. The reviews were nothing short of phenomenal:
“Running out of more than half of the food before half of the room even got to the tables was obviously unacceptable. At least you recognize that. Offering pizza as a consolation prize to a $30 a head vegan fine dining experience was unacceptable. We witnessed multiple people at our table alone who were not generally vegan, but with vegan partners or whatnot for the first time trying something like this only to give up and walk out disgusted as I was. I firmly believe this dinner actually made more people swear off veganism confirming the flakey behavioral stereotypes vegans are regularly saddled with. I myself went home hungry and finished off a real cheese pizza likely out of indignant spite. :D HA!”
Or this gem:
“DO NOT EVER AGAIN invite Jerry [name concealed to protect privacy] to mumble his incoherent ‘poetry’ into a microphone at an event. That was truly torturous! While I'm still honestly laughing at his pathetic cliche-riddled plagiarism of the Doors, the Eagles and the Animals, I'm also confounded how the gruesome imagery he poorly attempted to convey was relevant or appropriate at a festive dinner NOT ACTUALLY involving said cruelty. This amounts to the insensitivity of anti-choice abortion protesters shoving photos of dismembered fetuses in my face when I walk into a Planned Parenthood for a health checkup.”
The road forward
Much has transpired since that unfortunate evening, with our organization largely recovering from the tainted image we acquired in the wake of our 2018 Vegmas fiasco. Fully two years and one week after this disaster, I would like to unveil our official strategic plan for 2021 and beyond, demonstrating the best is yet to come. With this plan now in hand, we are poised to not only witness our most compelling year of activism yet, but also keep true to our core promise—building a fully vegan Midwest by 2056. Since our inception, we have further promised, as an extension of this overarching goal, to open our first chapter outside St. Louis by the end of our third year, and we are now on track to readily realize this goal by our October 19th, 2021 deadline. Here is our plan for boldly moving forward, cognizant of our turbulent past while laser-focused on securing the auspicious opportunities of our immediate future.
Our top three goals
In our ratified strategic plan, we have decided to pursue the following three elements as core to our overarching strategy:
Mobilizing activists across the Midwest
Creating new vegans across the Midwest
Inspiring large-scale generosity to benefit animals
The first question you might rightly ask is as follows: why the Midwest? We have chosen to limit our mission to maximize our chances of success. An overly broad mission, such as the creation of a fully vegan world, quickly becomes overwhelming; which targets should we hit and where? How should we approach these targets, and what metrics will we adopt to measure success? Moving levers—like the global percentage of adults who identify as vegan—would be exceedingly difficult, and even then, our contribution to this increase would be nearly impossible to track. By limiting our mission to a specific geographic area, we introduce a set of levers that are much easier to manipulate, along with metrics whereby we can more easily measure success.
We have also chosen to focus on the Midwest since it provides a unique set of challenges and opportunities for growth. Across the Midwestern United States, a disproportionate number of animals are tortured and killed each year in puppy mills, factory farms, laboratories, and more. Missouri, our home state, has a particularly egregious puppy mill problem; for eight years straight, Missouri has ranked #1 in the nation for abusive, virtually unregulated puppy mills. Worse yet, only 2.3% of Midwesterners are vegetarian or vegan compared to 3.7% of Westerners and 5.4% of Northeasterners. This disparity necessitates the need for an organization expressly dedicated to abriding this deficit. Seeing no other contenders, that organization is Project Animal Freedom.
Before we can create new vegans, however, we need to foster an ever-expanding group of committed activists. Given this necessity, inspiring, empowering, and mobilizing activists across the Midwest emerges as our top priority; we simply cannot effect the change we hope to see without a thriving grassroots network of activists across the Midwest. Using a combination of online internship postings and social media outreach, we will recruit interns and chapter organizers in every Midwestern metropolitan area with a population in excess of 100,000, starting in cities such as Springfield, Missouri and Lincoln, Nebraska that lack a meaningful animal rights presence. We will then expand ever outward until we unite the Midwest in the pursuit of a common goal—the complete and total liberation of all animals, both nonhuman and human.
As part of our efforts to foster thriving animal rights communities, we will continue growing our rich Facebook group ecosystem, featuring groups from Badass Vegan Feminists to Vegan Meme Factory. We will also construct a Midwest Animal Rights Directory. This directory will feature every known animal rights organization in the Midwest, not only facilitating networking and interstate partnerships, but also ensuring we build chapters in communities that need us most, i.e., communities that lack a local animal rights organization despite having a population in excess of 100,000 residents. On top of these efforts, we will also introduce a Business Spotlight Program through which we will feature a new outstanding plant-based business every month. Our hope is to not only build strong relationships with pre-existing animal rights organizations to facilitate our campaigns, but also secure valuable business partnerships to help fund our activism.
With the underlying framework of activists and fund development in place, we can then proceed to our next major goal—the creation of more vegans across the Midwest. As mentioned previously, the Midwest suffers from a relative paucity of vegans; in fact, we are tied with the South for the lowest overall percentage of the population that is vegetarian or vegan. (I will never forget when, shortly after going vegan at the age of 12, my parents took me to a small-town buffet in Alabama on our way home from a vacation in Florida; when I asked our waiter what vegan options the buffet offered, she sardonically replied “Honey, you’re in the South!”) The Midwest also sports a lower concentration of animal rights organizations, vegan events, and vegan dining options than other areas of the country. Project Animal Freedom therefore exists in part to end the Northeastern and Western domination of vegan culture; it is time we transformed our nation’s heartland into a thriving hub for animal rights activism!
Our final goal—inspiring large-scale generosity to benefit animals—may seem self-serving, but it is absolutely crucial. As a movement, we are battling a trillion-dollar industry; in the US alone, the animal abuse industry accounts for $1.02 trillion in annual output, or 5.6% of the total US GDP. Yet the highest-grossing animal rights organization, the Humane Society of the United States, had a revenue of just $132.8 million in 2014, commanding just 0.013% of the financial resources the animal abuse industry has at their disposal. The third best funded animal rights organization, PETA, reported a $52 million haul in the same year. The picture becomes clear: animal rights organizations are seriously underfunded relative not only to the sheer scale of the problem at hand (the rape, torture, and murder of trillions of innocent creatures), but the vast financial resources the animal abuse industry has to sustain its operations and crush the efforts of any group that dares challenge its economic agenda.
The problem outlined above becomes even more dire when we consider that the vast majority of money donated to help animals is donated to animal shelters and purposes other than aiding farmed animals and lab animals. Yet for every companion animal euthanized in animal shelters, roughly 3,400 farmed animals are slaughtered for food. In fact, farmed animals account for 99.6% of all animals culled in the US while shelter animals account for just 0.03% of the total number of animals each year culled in the US as tracked by the USDA. Despite this massive disparity, animal shelters and mixed use/other charities claim 98% of donations; just 0.8% of donations go specifically to farmed animal advocacy organizations with an additional 0.7% going to anti-vivisection organizations. Here is a graphic from Animal Charity Evaluators that exposes this dramatic reality:
As we wrote in our October 27th blog post, “Why vegans shouldn’t donate to animal welfare organizations,”
The totality of lives lost to animal agriculture is overwhelming; other categories of culled animals barely register. This observation does not diminish the profound suffering and needless death of animals in animal shelters, but it does put into perspective the sheer scale of suffering attributable solely to animal agriculture. If we further accept the principle that every animal has an equal right right to live a life as free of unnecessary suffering as possible, then the following conclusion cannot be avoided: we need to fundamentally readjust our funding priorities.
At Project Animal Freedom, we are dedicated to increasing the pool of financial resources available to animal rights organizations by 10-fold over the coming decades through the formation of our Animal Freedom Foundation, a grant-giving sub-organization that will support the most cost-effective interventions in promoting the realization of a cruelty-free world. We will inspire such large-scale generosity by making fundraising a key component of our chapter organizers’ responsibilities; as we grow each successive year, so should our base of financial support.
Our programs
“But I am suffocating, just as did the tall poppy under a sheet of glass in the ‘parable in pink’ (I printed it in morning-glory blue, but it came out pink due to an empty cyan cartridge) I wrote when I was but 16, a short, one-page commentary upon the sociological phenomenon of 'Tall Poppy Syndrome,' a virulent social disease that has ensnared, embattled, and immanacled me on numerous occasions, many times leading to my personal, professional, and interpersonal destruction; little did I realize six years latter, this dated document, since lost to a bout of despair in which I destroyed all my awards and significant achievements… would assume such relevance once more.”
While we have engaged in commendable activism over the past two years, we have seriously struggled in one area: the strength of our programs. We nominally run two major programs: our Compassionate Campuses Campaign and our Compassionate Cities Campaign. Due to various obstacles, from failed leadership recruitment to slipshod promotion and budgetary constraints, these programs have yet to blossom as originally intended. Fortunately, the past two years of activism have built a leadership pipeline and fundraising engine sufficient to finally award these programs the funding and attention they deserve. Our Compassionate Cities Campaign, in particular, is especially crucial to accelerating the growth of Project Animal Freedom across the Midwest and should be prioritized even ahead of our Compassionate Campuses Campaign. Below, we will include an overview of each of these major programs, along with auxiliary programs that can support the success of each.
Compassionate Campuses Campaign: Starting in the fall 2021 semester, we will finally jumpstart our college internship program. As part of this internship, high-achieving and high-potential interns will learn effective tabling, leafleting, and community building skills, in addition to receiving continual, one-on-one advice on building a movement for the animals on their campus. By pursuing high-impact advocacy, each of these interns can save thousands of lives per semester while honing their skills as lifelong activists. To encourage our campus interns to not only contribute to their campus community, but also catalyze animal rights activism in their broader community, we will introduce a modest stipend of $500/semester, similar to the campus outreach programs coordinated by The Humane League and PETA.
Instructor Education Program: As part of our Compassionate Campuses Campaign, we will innovate upon the pre-existing college outreach models already employed by other animal rights organizations by emphasizing not only peer-to-peer education, but also student-to-instructor education. For example, we will require interns to email professors at the beginning of their semester to gauge support for various outreach initiatives, from providing extra credit to students who attend animal rights-themed documentary screenings to permitting pertinent in-class presentations, and knowledge of animal rights issues. This program will also feature an instructor-based educational component, such as periodically sharing relevant philosophical articles, distributing field-of-study-oriented books on animal rights, and so on. Our goal is to increase the number of professors willing to use their influence to further the cause of animal rights, as well as the number of professors who identify as vegetarian or vegan.
Compassionate Cities Campaign: As part of our #CompassionateCitiesCampaign, we strive to build healthy, thriving communities for the realization of our shared vision: a world where all animals live safe, happy, and free. Using Direct Action Everywhere’s current Compassionate Cities Campaign as a firm touchstone, we strive to build healthy, productive, and welcoming community circles that cater to different subpopulations of the vegan community, subpopulations that often go ignored, overlooked, and even forgotten. Fortunately, we are building community circles to help remedy this issue. By creating, growing, and administering dozens of Facebook groups and pages, from LGBTQIA+ Vegans of St. Louis to Badass Vegan Feminists, we hope to strengthen the overall resilience of our movement for human and nonhuman animal liberation.
With several compassionate community circles already in place, we are advancing to the next phase in nurturing healthy relationships with fellow community members. Not only do we wish to bring single vegans together and hold the occasional LGBTQIA+ group popup, but we also actively strive to partner with other exceptional entrepreneurs, outstanding nonprofit organizations, and other reputable businesses where possible. Propelled by our Compassionate Circles and our Compassionate Communities sub-campaigns, our #CompassionateCitiesCampaign strives to create change at the city-level, influencing the priorities of like-minded nonprofits, supercharging fellow animal advocacy organizations, and supporting city-wide animal legislation, from horse carriage and fur bans to slaughterhouse opposition and whistleblower support.
As we have promised since our formation, our goal is not only to galvanize the St. Louis animal rights scene, but to revolutionize the Midwest, one city at a time. With our three-year anniversary rapidly approaching, we are pleased to announce the formation of an exploratory committee for the Springfield, Missouri area with the goal of establishing our second chapter no later than October, 2021. Springfield represents an ideal candidate for our Compassionate Cities Campaign; unlike larger cities, such as Chicago and Kansas City, Springfield does not have an established animal rights movement. Yet with a population in excess of 168,000, there is ample opportunity for growth; all we need to do is recruit a competent field organizer, mobilize supporters, and provide guidance and support to ensure the healthy growth and development of our second-ever chapter.
Better yet, Springfield already features a consortium of prospective supporters on Springfield (MO) Vegetarians and Vegans, a Facebook group with nearly 2,000 members. This established social media community will greatly facilitate leadership recruitment, event promotion, and our fundraising campaigns. We are also targeting roughly 200 US cities with populations in excess of 100,000 residents, yet no online communities. As part of our social media outreach, we will establish placeholder chapter pages, promote those pages, then invite people who like these pages to join our branded communities. For example, we created a group for vegans and vegetarians in and around Billings, Montana. We have organically recruited a few individuals, but we could easily recruit dozens if not hundreds more for a modest investment in Facebook marketing. Using this method, we have grown St. Louis Vegans, our largest group yet, from 1,500 to over 2,100 members in the past four months alone while spending less than $50 in the process.
Our monthly campaigns
Each month, we strive to spearhead a different campaign as part of our effort to expose and abolish various facets of the animal abuse industry. Here are our proposed campaigns for 2021 and beyond:
January: Veganuary
February: Fish-Free February
March: Meat-Free March
April: #MeatIsEcocide
May: Murder-Free May
June: Genocide June
July: Animal Freedom Day
August: #AbolishAnimalAg
September: Slaughter-Free September
October: #HalloweenIsReal, #DominionDare
November: #NondairyNovember
December: #ChristmasOfCompassion, #Vegmas
We will share more information about these campaigns as time progresses.
An auspicious future
“While my parents, life coach, and fellow activists tried to free me from the constricting confines of this ancient pipe, some striking their chisels and hammers longer and more vigorously than others, you came along with a sledgehammer, smashing excuse after excuse for why I should not push even harder, cracking and discarding this unbearable pipe forever. Though I finally crumbled the mantle of this ancient pipe when my bulging 23rd ring, and all the rings which preceded it, could no longer be contained, I did not do so until others chipped away this choking edifice piece by piece, or, in your case, chunk by chunk. I find something oddly satisfying in beholding the foil of all human creation, be it the indefatigable ocean waves finally breaching the walls of my sand empire and engulfing even the most vaulted spires of my sand towers in their inevitable doom or the collapse of a demolished building, reduced to a smoldering pile of rubble after a series of strategic, controlled TNT explosions. And so I now find joy in watching the old ceramic muzzles crumble to the ground as if in slow motion, free at last.”
While Project Animal Freedom suffered a major setback with our first annual Vegmas, we have since recovered, recruiting new five leaders in the past three months alone. We have also proven ourselves as competent event organizers with a mission worth sharing. I also rank founding Project Animal Freedom as perhaps the single best decision I made in my life, allowing me to leave behind a dysfunctional organization I had once served and form a new organization that would succeed precisely where they failed. With our tumultuous past now well behind us, we hope you join us as we strive to revolutionize the Midwest, one heart, one mind, one stomach at a time! After all, the animals are counting on us, and we owe them more than we can ever give.
