Member-only story
How Vegans Got Folded Into the Right-Wing Response to the Coronavirus
Of ‘bunny huggers’ and rabbit holes, losing allies, and finding myself after the pandemic
Before I can tell you this story, I have to tell you a little bit about me. I promise it won’t be too much. I want you to know that I am someone who believes that not everything has an answer, not everything can be charted, graphed, and explained. I believe that our world has mysteries and I accept that uncertainty is part of the human experience. My own discomfort with some of the aesthetic aspects aside, I could also probably be called a hippie, though a Generation X one — meaning I vastly prefer The Cure to The Doors, I love a good asymmetrical haircut, and I’ve never found a better PG response to the disappointments in life than a sighed, “Oh, whatever.”
That said, the flower child impulse in me is strong.
My natural persuasion is to be on the side of justice, which is why I am a vegan, feminist activist and have been since way before any of these became slogans for tank tops and mugs on Etsy.
I am a pagan-hearted, herb-infusing, vegetable-fermenting, ointment-making, moon-worshipping, tree-hugging, drop-everything-to-go-to-a-protest activist. I have been arrested twice for non-violent civil disobedience and I have no regrets. I have protested at the headquarters of Monsanto and on the sidewalk in front of McDonald’s. I am not someone who accepts without question what so-called authority figures tell me is the unvarnished truth; I have a lifetime of principals, professors and police officers who could verify that I would have stayed out of detention, gotten better grades and not gotten into trouble if I had been more compliant. While my life would have been easier at many junctures if I were better at conforming, my natural persuasion is to be on the side of justice, which is why I am a vegan, feminist activist and have been since way before any of these became slogans for tank tops and…
