By Emily Carter, VRG Intern (on right in photo above)

As an intern for The Vegetarian Resource Group, I worked at our booth during AR2019, as well as attended sessions.

Walking into my first animal rights conference gave me an exhilarating feeling I will never forget. I had never been to anything so special; immediately, I felt this overwhelming sense of community and belonging. Opening the lobby doors of the Alexandria, Virginia Hilton Mark Center and seeing the room filled with vegan activists made me feel like a normal person. All I could think was, FINALLY! Finally I am surrounded by people who think rationally about animal cruelty. Finally I can imagine myself in this movement doing what I love. Finally I have hope. 

Since 1981, the Animal Rights National Conference (ARNC) has been bringing together individuals, families, food vendors, and exhibitors that cover the spectrum of animal rights and all things vegan. This year there were 100 presenters from more than 60 organizations, over 100 exhibitors, film premiers, nightly networking sessions, and an awards banquet.

I attended several presentations; one about vegan business featuring Seth Tibett, founder of Tofurky and Jill Carnegie, co-founder of NUMU, which is a new vegan cheese company specializing in pizza cheese. Yes I got to try, and yes it was incredible! I attended a group discussion titled: “Is killing ever justified?” which sparked some interesting conversations about circumstantial ethics, like the fact that Impossible Meats tested their product on rats. It was refreshing to have a well-rounded conversation with people who have developed opinions about the animal rights movement. 

I also visited a talk called “How to Win Arguments Against Experiments on Animals” with Michael Budkie and Alka Chandna. This one was my favorite because I learned a lot about the inefficiencies of animal experimentation and ways to communicate the uselessness of animal testing. It was pretty morbid, but incredible work is being done to help the helpless. The passion and hurt in Alka’s voice when she described horrid living conditions, painful testing, and meaningless death made me feel for this line of work. 

Seeing everyone’s passion, dedication, and hard work for animals revived my own. It is important to bring together this community, maybe more so than others since the animal rights community is so dispersed. A huge reason people abandon veganism is because it is isolating, so I think it is extremely necessary to get involved in activities like this to remind ourselves that our community exists and that it is bigger than we may think. Over 2000 people showed up at ARNC, which was the most amount of vegans I had ever been around at that time (now maybe more since I attended Baltimore’s Vegan Soulfest this past weekend). 

Perhaps one of the coolest things that happened to me was meeting a new friend who bought me a super cute vegan shirt that I had been eyeing, and also bought my ticket to the awards banquet! The banquet featured a three course meal: a hearty salad with NUMU cheese (my favorite), jackfruit ‘crab’ cakes with risotto and asparagus, and vegan cheesecake wrapped in white chocolate with colorful print.

To intern for The Vegetarian Resource Group, see https://www.vrg.org/student/index.php