Vegan Chicago for 2008

Hello,

A few things have changed around here. I thought it would just be best to get it all out in one big ranty post for you to read at your discretion. Please feel free to add to the thread if you have further questions or comments.

Why we are now called “Vegan Chicago”Last year we merged with the EarthSaveChicago’s project VegChicago. Our intention was to make a bigger impact by tying in with an official non-profit. We worked hard on a website that could be a vegan guide to Chicago while using the already established meetup group for monthly events to bond the community. Well, over that past year I’ve sorta shifted my philosophy on a few things and have a new approach. Because of this I decided to revert our meetup group back to its original format but switch the name around to “Vegan Chicago”. (before the VegChicago merge we were “Chicago Vegan Meetup”)

The “Veg” moniker
Now alotta this may seem petty but I bring it up to explain a bit about how we got here and where we’re going. First of all I feel that “Veg”-anything does a disservice to the vegan cause (however that may be defined). It’s too generic and encompasses too many ideas. Many in the movement feel this is a good thing, to expose people to veganism through secondary issues, and it is very true for many. Historically this is how many of us came to be vegan, through other issues like vegetarianism, environmentalism etc. But I think it’s best to be completely honest and maintain blunt integrity with our message. People who honor that are the people we want to attract first and foremost anyway. Veganism came into its own off the heels of vegetarianism, but veganism is so much more than a vegetarian diet. It’s time to come out of the closet. We’re vegan dammit and we ain’t afraid to say so! Now now, don’t get scared or upset yet. We’re not becoming anti-vegetarian or anti-people-who-eat- meat or whatever. If anything we’re trying to do exactly the opposite.

Vegan Universalism Philosophy
We’ve always maintained that we’re friendly to “vegans, vegetarians and veg-curious” and will never “vegan police’” and this holds true still. There are so many paths to veganism that it would be silly to try to pave them into one highway and I’ve seen many fail trying to do so. While I may have my own vegan philosophy, this meetup group was never meant as my soapbox (and thankfully so for the sakes of all of you dear members). My best hope is for everybody to bring their specialties to the table, to share, take from others, grow and move forward. If you’re respectful and rational I don’t care what sorts of views you espouse. No dogma here.

Vegan Chicago Website
So we do have a Vegan Chicago website (not yet operational) and I still hope it can be a great guide for people seeking anything vegan in Chicago, but logistically the approach will be different. First of all the whole idea of maintaining a website with updates about vegan business and happenings through a small group of content managers has proven to not work at all. Even some of the biggest and best sites with paid staff who try to do this fail. I propose only the community itself can provide any reasonable content in this area. Also the very idea of creating a “vegan community” is oxymoronic. Instead of making a vegan community and growing it we should think of sharing veganism with the greater Chicago community. To solve both of these issues I decided to find the best review website out there and work with them. It’s sorta silly for a community site based around an idea to hoard those ideas and limit their exposure, especially on the internet. So for our Vegan Chicago site I hope to pull information from Yelp.com to provide all of the most up- to-date information about vegan businesses and such. If more people who are vegan participated in that site, it would touch many more people and we would also get the best quality vegan related information.

This also means we are sticking with Meetup for now for our events. Think of Vegan Chicago as a portal that works synergistically WITH the internet and the people instead of against them.

Recap
-So in short our new name is “Vegan Chicago”. Vegan is first and foremost.
-We still maintain a “universal” approach and advocate gentle, rational outreach and discourse.
-Our new website ditches the past and looks towards the future, embracing collaboration.

See, nothing here that shakes your world to the core. Our group is a nebulous concept but it’s something very real to many many people we have touched and brought together. People don’t believe me but there are many vegans in Chicago, we just have to wake them up!

thanks for reading and love to you all,
-dave.dandelion.sutherland