News Five trustees quit Vegan Society board following controversy

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Zuri, former vice-chair of the charity, said in their resignation letter they had remained at the charity for two years “despite it being a hostile work environment from the beginning,” but they could “confidently say that The Vegan Society is not a safe place for young people, for Black people, for queer people or for any other marginalised people.”

The Daily Mail has managed to find a slightly more ridiculous-sounding angle:
[Zuri has] written how veganism was coined by a 'white man' but 'hippy vegan food' is based upon culinary traditions including dal from Pakistan, tofu and wheat from China and hummus from the Middle East.
... although I don't see an actual quote by Zuri in the article using the phrase "cultural appropriation", and you can of course trust the Daily Mail to come up with a sensationalist article to make fun of vegans any day of the week, so I would take what they're saying with a healthy grain of salt.

Anyway, sounds intense!
 
Hmm. Hard to tell if there's anything to the allegations or if it's just typical drama dressed up in woke outrage.

Veganism as cultural appropriation is pretty funny though! My people have subsisted for generations on TV dinners, frozen pizza and fried food so I better not catch any other ethnicities appropriating our cuisine.
 
I have heard about lots of infighting at the Vegan Society for years.
 
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I always thought my English was good enough but after reading these articles all I can think is "Huh? I don't understand... What exactly is the problem now?"
 
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This is the first I've heard about it and I can't really figure out what is going on.

I can not figure out if the main character, Zuri, is victim or perpetrator.

I read a little bit of her bio - and it itself is interesting.

"Hi, I'm Eshe Kiama Zuri an activist and community organiser in Nottingham. I'm 25 years old, disabled and non-gendered. I use they/them pronouns only. I'm a loud mouth, believer of fighting for what is right by any means and lover of vegan food. "

 

It would seem that Eshe wanted to radically change the image of the VS which may have led to her downfall:

"As veganism grows in popularity, it’s time the new generation of vegans brought with them what Eshe describes as “fresh and up to date perspectives of veganism… and our own expertise and love for all animals and the Earth.” This was rejected and abused by the old white vegan establishment. It is time for the new vegan movement to boldly move beyond the archaic racism of The Vegan Society’s old guard and join the fight towards total liberation."


 
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Agreed.

In any democratic organization there are always some people whose main agenda, whose driving force, is very different to that of the main aims of the organization.

For example, on this forum, we sometimes have contributions devoted to preaching religion or to preaching a particular form of political extremism.

My own experience is that vegans tend to be much more liberal in their views than most other groups. I would expect vegans to be less racist, less transphobic, less prone to ableism and less likely to bully than any randomly chosen set of people.

I would even venture to suggest that this equally applies to “the old white vegan establishment” of the Vegan Society.

Roger.
 
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In any democratic organization there are always some people whose main agenda, whose driving force, is very different to that of the main aims of the organization.

For example, on this forum, we sometimes have contributions devoted to preaching religion or to preaching a particular form of political extremism.
This affair somehow feels like exactly this. Someone pushing a personal agenda under the camouflage of "veganism".
 
The idea that veganism is cultural appropriation is just silly. Eshe Kiama Zuri comes out of this badly, and they appear to be a divisive, overly woke troublemaker who doesn't know that in your 20s you are not as wise as you think. That being said, they make some serious allegations and there may well be some problems that need to be addressed. I wouldn't be surprised if there is at least some credible issue there, even if they are exaggerating it.

It's very hard to tell who is really in the right unless a lot of other people comment, or a credible outside investigation is made. It may be worth paying for an outside investigation and report, which I imagine would cost of the order of £10,000 which might be worthwhile.

There are both specific allegations like the claim that the N-word was used in conversation, as well as the general point that veganism is a somewhat white movement. This could be addressed by taking specific actions to get more people into the organization using targeted advertising, headhunting, community outreach.

On the question of BDS, I think it makes sense to hold back a notch from the organization formally supporting BDS, which has very little to do with the society's goals and would unfairly alienate Israeli vegans. I think they should put out a statement saying they support the struggle of the Palestinian people including some modest financial support for animal rights there, that they don't generally buy any products or services from Israel, that some of their members personally boycott Israel as individuals but they don't feel a formal, full boycott from the whole society is appropriate.

On the question of the Daily Mail: remember one of the functions of the Daily Mail is to provide support for its readers resistance to change. The purpose of this article is to help its readers feel less guilty about eating meat by thinking "these loonies at the vegan society are mad, therefore their arguments about veganism are mad, therefore I can continue to eat meat guilt free."
 
I really don't like this kind of stuff.
Even here I don't like it when vegans disagree. Although I know that there are lots of opinions and points of view and this is a pretty safe place to explore and analyze those things.
but I don't like the "airing of dirty laundry in public". it can give a bad impression of vegans in general.
But then like the rest of us I'm pretty much in the dark of what really happened.
 
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Unfortunately the airing of dirty laundry in public can get results.

A classic example of this was the Susan Fowler Uber blog of 2017:

She had already tried to raise the issues internally, and clearly wasn´t getting anywhere. Her blog post was spectacularly successful in a way that it clearly wouldn´t have been had she continued to raise it internally. Her blog led to an investigation and 20 people got fired and the CEO left. It´s also plausible that all this helped Uber change in general for the better. In 2017, Uber was a criminal enterprise pretending to be a company with constant scandals and from 2018 onwards there haven´t been any.

It seems to make sense to raise issues internally as a general rule but raise issues externally when things are really bad (e.g. cases of sexual assault getting covered up).
 
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The idea that veganism is cultural appropriation is just silly. Eshe Kiama Zuri comes out of this badly, and they appear to be a divisive, overly woke troublemaker who doesn't know that in your 20s you are not as wise as you think. That being said, they make some serious allegations and there may well be some problems that need to be addressed. I wouldn't be surprised if there is at least some credible issue there, even if they are exaggerating it.
[..]

On the question of the Daily Mail: remember one of the functions of the Daily Mail is to provide support for its readers resistance to change. The purpose of this article is to help its readers feel less guilty about eating meat by thinking "these loonies at the vegan society are mad, therefore their arguments about veganism are mad, therefore I can continue to eat meat guilt free."
This.

What some "overly woke" people need to realize is that there is the point of overkill at which you will start losing even long-time supporters because they think that things haven gotten just annoying and/or utterly ridiculous. Take it down a notch or two, please.

To my mind comes e. g. that while I'm a woman and want equal rights I don't want German texts to be mutilated by "gendering" them. I also think name changes of streets/brands/restaurants/etc. are utterly ridiculous. I don't know how many people speak German on here but here is an article about a restaurant called "Zum Mohrenkopf", run by a black(!) man who doesn't want to change the name of his restaurant: “Zum Mohrenkopf”: Schwarzer Gastronom will sein Restaurant nicht umbenennen
 
Even here I don't like it when vegans disagree. Although I know that there are lots of opinions and points of view and this is a pretty safe place to explore and analyze those things.
I prefer everything being roses and fine and dandy as well, lol. :laughing:

However, vegans as a group are very heterogeneous. In fact this is something that rubs me the wrong way: non-vegans often view vegans as some kind of homogenous group with certain (character) traits, behaviors and political views which is definitely not true.
 
I wonder why not one of these five persons can make a clear statement?? It's all just blahblahblah again - they're talking without actually saying anything.

(Someone having to think about politicians here, too, lol?)