Hi from Brazil

[Koji Pereira]

Hi, 

I'm here because my friends at Veganos pela Abolição advised me to keep in contact with abolitionists outside Brazil, and I hope to learn more about creative vegan education here and make some friends too :)

My name is Koji, I'm an interaction designer, vegan for 15 years and I live in Belo Horizonte city in Brazil. I travel to US almost once a year, because I work closer with people in Silicon Valley. I'm 32 years old and I became a Vegan by influence of Harcore/punk DIY community. I've been involved with different struggles, including feminism, copyleft/free software, left wing politics in general and, of course, animal rights. 

I'm a volunteer of a pacifist animal rights group called Gato Negro (Black Cat) here in Brazil (www.gato-negro.org only in portuguese, sorry). We work basically with veganism as the moral baseline for the animal rights, we promote small events with lectures, culinary workshops, discussions and so forth. So we have an annual event within two days, some thematic culinary workshops during the year, a studies group and we are working now to build a vegan pledge as a 1 month event. We also have some materials, one basic leaflet about animal rights and veganism, another focused on animal advocates, a Vegan Starter Booklet and an online list of products (in Brazil is a little hard to do, we almost do not have 100% vegan companies, so sadly we have to show vegan options inside this context.) 

My main challenge now is:
1) Show brazilian people that is not hard to go vegan (even in Brazil! We have a lot o fresh vegetables, grains and fruits!).
2) Make people understand our point of view without calling us "fundamentalists" (This is harder, people endorse violence but cannot understand our point sometimes)
3) Understand and get more inspired by others experience on vegan education

Cheers!
Koji Pereira

[Louise, London]

Hello Koji,

Really good to know you're there and hear about what you are doing to help the animals. I'm new to activism, and its good to learn different ways to share views and experiences, how to educate and support people to become vegan. I like your emphasis on a pacifist approach. At first, I felt quite judgemental (angry) about people who continue to eat animal flesh or secretions. But its becoming clearer to me that people are in a sort of trance, they just don't 'feel' for the animals, and eating them is so ordinary. Its not that people are bad, its that they are numb, unconscious, dreaming a dream where their focus is themselves and the human world, animals rarely even come into consideration. Attention, is so dominated by the media, by external inluence, called to from all sides, the people have to filter a lot of stuff out. They tend to filter the negative most of all.

But positive examples people sometimes do let in through their filters, and store up somewhere as kind of spiritual sustenance in an often bleak world. They remember people like you, living with compassionate awareness, enjoying full culinary delight, without hurting animals.  I think you will touch and inspire people, influence them on some level even if they don't immediately become vegan. For me its great to hear of anyone, anywhere, becoming vegan or acting on behalf of animals. Fills me with energy and inspiration. Thankyou!

 

[Carolyn Bailey]

Hi Koji!

Welcome to ARZone! 

It sounds like you're very busy in Brazil, which is fantastic. 

Let us know if there's anything in ARZone that we can help with. :) 

[Koji Pereira]

Yes, I think we should make the distance shorter. We have a study group, as I said, and one proposal is to have video chats with activists around the globe. So I will keep in contact in order to make this possible! :)

Carolyn Bailey said:

Hi Koji!

Welcome to ARZone! 

It sounds like you're very busy in Brazil, which is fantastic. 

Let us know if there's anything in ARZone that we can help with. :)