{"id":13972,"date":"2019-08-08T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=13972"},"modified":"2019-08-06T13:46:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T17:46:00","slug":"animal-rights-conference-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/08\/animal-rights-conference-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal Rights Conference 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walking into my first animal rights conference\ngave me an exhilarating feeling I will never forget. I had never been to\nanything so special; immediately, I felt this overwhelming sense of community\nand belonging. Opening the lobby doors of the Alexandria, Virginia Hilton Mark\nCenter and seeing the room filled with vegan activists made me feel like a\nnormal person. All I could think was, FINALLY! Finally I am surrounded by\npeople who think rationally about animal cruelty. Finally I can imagine myself\nin this movement doing what I love. Finally I have hope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 1981, the Animal Rights National\nConference (ARNC) has been bringing together individuals, families, food\nvendors, and exhibitors that cover the spectrum of animal rights and all things\nvegan. This year there were 100 presenters from more than 60 organizations,\nover 100 exhibitors, film premiers, nightly networking sessions, and an awards\nbanquet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I attended several presentations; one about\nvegan business featuring Seth Tibett, founder of Tofurky and Jill Carnegie,\nco-founder of NUMU, which is a new vegan cheese company specializing in pizza\ncheese. Yes I got to try, and yes it was incredible! I attended a group\ndiscussion titled: \u201cIs killing ever justified?\u201d which sparked some interesting\nconversations about circumstantial ethics, like the fact that Impossible Meats\ntested their product on rats. It was refreshing to have a well-rounded\nconversation with people who have developed opinions about the animal rights\nmovement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also visited a talk called \u201cHow to Win\nArguments Against Experiments on Animals\u201d with Michael Budkie and Alka Chandna.\nThis one was my favorite because I learned a lot about the inefficiencies of\nanimal experimentation and ways to communicate the uselessness of animal\ntesting. It was pretty morbid, but incredible work is being done to help the\nhelpless. The passion and hurt in Alka\u2019s voice when she described horrid living\nconditions, painful testing, and meaningless death made me feel for this line\nof work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing everyone\u2019s passion, dedication, and hard\nwork for animals revived my own. It is important to bring together this\ncommunity, maybe more so than others since the animal rights community is so\ndispersed. A huge reason people abandon veganism is because it is isolating, so\nI think it is extremely necessary to get involved in activities like this to\nremind ourselves that our community exists and that it is bigger than we may\nthink. Over 2000 people showed up at ARNC, which was the most amount of vegans\nI had ever been around at that time (now maybe more since I attended\nBaltimore\u2019s Vegan Soulfest this past weekend). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps one of the coolest things that happened\nto me was meeting a new friend who bought me a super cute vegan shirt that I\nhad been eyeing, and also bought my ticket to the awards banquet! The banquet\nfeatured a three course meal: a hearty salad with NUMU cheese (my favorite),\njackfruit \u2018crab\u2019 cakes with risotto and asparagus, and vegan cheesecake wrapped\nin white chocolate with colorful print. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To intern for The Vegetarian Resource Group, see\nhttps:\/\/www.vrg.org\/student\/index.php<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/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-13972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13972","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=13972"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13976,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13972\/revisions\/13976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}