Dear Colleagues:

Earlier this week, I posted two entries (1,2) about creating a virtual billboard spreading the slogan:

THE WORLD IS VEGAN!

If you want it.

The point of this project is to reinforce a simple idea: that a vegan world is something that humans have the ability to bring into existence. We only have to want it.

I really envisaged this as a virtual billboard. I want the message to get out—all over the world and in every language—over the internet. I want that virtual dissemination to spark discussion and further non-violent vegan educational efforts.

There are some people who are proposing to make and sell items with this slogan. Please understand that neither I nor this site has anything to do with these efforts and we will not solicit or accept any money for promoting this idea of peace and nonviolence.

Thank you. And remember: THE WORLD IS VEGAN. If you want it.

Gary L. Francione
©2009 Gary L. Francione

Dear Colleagues:

Yesterday, I suggested that we have a virtual billboard that we could spread around the world:

THE WORLD IS VEGAN.

If you want it.

So far, I have received two sets of designs in English and I know that there are others being done in foreign languages.

Vincent Guihan, who has two excellent blogs, Animal Emancipation and We Other Animals, has created a set available here.

John Colvin, who maintains the blog John’s Plate, has a great set here.

PLEASE use these in any way you can to spread the message.

Veganism is OUR choice. We have the ability to say no to violence. We have the ability to affirm the personhood of animals. We have the ability to reject the status of animals as property. We have the ability to say no to speciesism. We have the ability to solve the problem of animal exploitation in the only way it can be solved: by abolishing the demand for animal products.

Celebrate peace. Celebrate non-violence. Go vegan.

Gary L. Francione
©2009 Gary L. Francione

Dear Colleagues:

In 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, John Lennon and Yoko Ono had a billboard placed in Times Square. It read:

“WAR IS OVER!

If you want it

Happy Christmas from John and Yoko.”

I propose the following:

That we flood the world with a message; that we create a virtual billboard:

THE WORLD IS VEGAN! If you want it.

Send this message on all your social message boards and ask your friends to send it on theirs. Text your friends and ask them to text their friends. Add this message to your signature line on your emails. Let’s start a friendly wave of creative, nonviolent vegan education.

Forty years after John and Yoko made the simple statement that peace and an end to the Vietnam War was ours if only we wanted it, let us have an electronic billboard that will not be just in Times Square but all over the world! Let us spread the message that nonviolence against our nonhuman brothers and sisters is possible—if we want it.

I will do a podcast on this in the next day or so.

Please go vegan. It’s incredibly easy to do. It is the best thing for you and for the planet. And, most importantly, it is the morally right thing to do. We cannot justify killing nonhumans for our trivial purposes, no matter how “humane” our acts of injustice are.

Gary L. Francione
©2009 Gary L. Francione

Dear Colleagues:

In this, Commentary #11, I have a discussion with Gary Steiner, Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Bucknell University. Gary recently had an editorial in the New York Times about veganism and we talk about the reactions that he got to his editorial, including the criticisms from welfarists, many of whom praise slaughterhouse designer Temple Grandin and other supporters of speciesist exploitation.

We also discuss how welfarists refuse to engage abolitionists in debate because they have nothing to say in response to the argument that welfare reform merely increases the production efficiency of animal exploitation.

Gary L. Francione
©2009 Gary L. Francione

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