{"id":13956,"date":"2019-08-05T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=13956"},"modified":"2019-07-24T11:36:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T15:36:00","slug":"report-on-roots-market-vegan-festival-in-clarksville-maryland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/05\/report-on-roots-market-vegan-festival-in-clarksville-maryland\/","title":{"rendered":"REPORT ON ROOTS MARKET VEGAN FESTIVAL IN CLARKSVILLE, MARYLAND"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Emily Carter, VRG Intern<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday, July 20th some of the VRG gang geared\nup for Roots Market\u2019s fourth annual vegan festival in Clarksville, MD to spread\nvegan love! The festival attracted vendors with free samples, as well as\noutreach groups looking to recruit, inform, and fundraise. The Vegetarian\nResource Group booth was situated between Vegetarian Journal Senior Editor\nRissa Miller\u2019s booth for Burleigh Manor Animal Sanctuary and a freezer case\nfull of Gardein products that were buy two get one free for the vegan holiday\n(yes, I left with some). The day was extremely hot with a heat index of 115\ndegrees, so we were thankful when someone would reach in to grab some\nplant-based meat and we would get a blast of cool air! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dedicated vendors and organizations set up\naround 9:30 to prepare for a day of vegan activism in the wet Maryland heat.\nAttendees started showing up around 10, when the doors were to open. Many\npeople arrived early for the swag bag giveaway, for which people waited in a\nline out the door to receive one of the 100 vegan goodie bags including various\nsnacks and wellness samples. While they waited in line, festival attendees\ncould snack on the various trays of vegan samples situated across the store,\nincluding chips and guacamole\/salsa, Amy\u2019s new vegan pizza rolls, Hodo\nproducts, peanut butter fudge cookies, chocolate covered nuts, and more! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sales and samples attracted a lot of people\nto the festival, in addition to the hot meals being offered by Roots market.\nLunch options were a vegan mac and cheese bar with all the toppings and neat-o\npies made with corn chips, new Beyond Beef, vegan cheese, sour cream, and green\nonion. For a sweet treat, they were serving donut sundaes with coconut ice\ncream and yummy toppings. Thanks to Rissa Miller and her partner Nathaniel Corn\nfor buying Amy and I food throughout the day! We were so happy to get to sample\nall of the amazing food offered at the festival, especially the decadent donut\nsundae. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to all of the informational booths\nand the seemingly endless food supply, there were other festivities taking\nplace around the festival to celebrate the arts. Rissa had a poetry reading in\nNest, a clothing and gift shop near Roots Market, during which she read one of\nher sections in an all-vegan-authored anthology called Vegan Tales<\/em>. After the reading, I had to order a copy; I suggest\nyou do as well! In addition to poetry, there was also live music happening\nthroughout the day inside of the cafe within the market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The atmosphere was lively, energetic, and\nengaging despite the heat. By the end of the day, I had gotten used to the heat\nand still had energy (thank you caffeine!) to pass out copies of the Vegetarian Journal<\/em> and I Love Animals and Broccoli<\/em> coloring\nbooks. We met many people who wanted to join our email list or volunteer in the\nfuture. This was my first time ever attending any sort of all-vegan event, and\nI was not disappointed! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being in a predominately all-vegan audience was\nnice because I felt there was less chance I would be challenged for my\nlifestyle. Only one person I engaged with was not vegan or vegetarian, and I\nthink we had a very productive conversation. He came up to our table and\npointed to the picture of the cow on the coloring book and said, \u201cYou see,\nthose things are causing a lot of environmental damage, which is why we must\neat them!\u201d I took this moment to explain supply and demand and how eating the\ncows creates more supply for them, so we should stop eating them. My favorite\npart about having booths with the VRG is those moments when you can tell you\nplanted a seed that may save animals in the future. It makes standing out in\nthe 115 degree weather totally worth it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For information about Roots Market, see https:\/\/rootsmkt.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For information about VRG internships, see https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/student\/index.php<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To support The Vegetarian Resource Group\noutreach, donate at https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/member\/2013sv.php<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Emily Carter, VRG Intern Saturday, July 20th some of the VRG gang geared up for Roots Market\u2019s fourth annual vegan festival in Clarksville, MD to spread vegan love! The festival attracted vendors with free samples, as well as outreach groups looking to recruit, inform, and fundraise. The Vegetarian Resource Group booth was situated between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13958,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13956\/revisions\/13958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}