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This is PlantBase Briefing.
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Joy is revolutionary by Vasilis Denescu on Substack at Win for Animals.
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I'm Mary Nerx and host of this curated content plant-based podcast where I narrate articles
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from experts on plant-based and vegan topics with permission in about 10 minutes or so
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every Tuesday and I'm pleased to have permission from Vasilis Denescu to share his content.
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He's an associate professor of communications at Mercer University.
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He's been vegan for over 20 years and he's been publishing work on effective animal
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liberation for over a decade.
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He also is a speaker on many podcasts and webinars.
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He's spoken many times on the Humane Hoax Project team webinars.
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I'm a member of the Humane Hoax Project team so I've been privileged to hear him speak
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So now let's get to today's PlantBase Briefing.
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Joy is revolutionary by Vasilis Denescu on Substack at Win for Animals.
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Today I get to be vegan.
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Today I get to live with my spouse who is vegan.
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Today I get to raise my son who was growing up vegan.
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Today I get to fight for animals again.
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Yesterday I gave a talk about animal liberation in Romania.
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Today I'm submitting an article on animal liberation to Oxford University Press.
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On Monday I'll be going on a podcast about animal liberation and this weekend I'll be
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giving a talk at a law school about animal liberation.
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When I wake in the morning my first thought is animal liberation.
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When I go to bed at night my very last thought is about my son but the one right before
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that is also about animal liberation.
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Today I get to be vegan.
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I'm not naive, I'm not unaware.
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I've been vegan for over 20 years and vegetarian before that.
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All I do is work on animal liberation.
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I know all the things you already know.
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I've seen all the videos you've seen.
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As I tell my students on the first day of my animal studies class, drop this class.
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Trust me, drop this class.
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You do not want to know what I know.
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I do not want to know what I know.
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No one wants to know what I know.
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So how then can I talk about vegan joy?
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Because vegan joy is how we win.
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I used to have a counter at my desk that showed the number of animals killed every day.
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Did it help me fight for animals?
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No, it shut me down.
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I tried to escape from reality.
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It was when I began focusing on vegan joy, on winning, on a single question, how can
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we win that I became productive in a way I had never been before.
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Each second of each day is a chance to move closer to winning.
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I am motivated and fulfilled in a way I never was, not for a single second, when I was watching
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earthlings on repeat.
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Today I get to be vegan.
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No one, no one can ever make me eat meat, no matter how hard they try, no matter what
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they do, they will fail.
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No one can take away my ability to live my values, to fight for my values, or to help
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change the world into what I want it to be.
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It has also changed how I see other vegans.
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Every vegan is my comrade, something deeper and richer than friendship, than romantic
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love, than even family.
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It is what so many people are searching for, but cannot find, a shared purpose.
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You and I are fighting together for the same thing.
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Your victory is my victory.
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Your success is always my success, because both of us are fighting for animal liberation.
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There are all these articles and discussions about veganism and mental health, but my question
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to others is this, do the people who eat meat look all that happy to you?
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There's a story of thought experiment I teach in most of my classes, the ones who walk
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It was written by a vegetarian.
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In this story there's a utopia with one secret, a single small child kept in a cage,
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healthy, tortured every day for the sake of everyone else's happiness.
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Every citizen must learn this secret and decide whether to stay or to leave.
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When I teach it, my students always say that this is not in fact a utopia, that they
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could never be happy pretending to forget what they know, and there are always some students
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who say, I would not stay and I would not just walk away, I would free that child.
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All of us have three options, we can keep eating meat and try to pretend we do not know
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what we know while animals suffer in cages, we can quote-unquote walk away by being personally
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vegan but still know that animals are suffering, or we can go beyond both options and free them.
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I am neither a welfareist nor an abolitionist, I am a liberationist, and I will never stop
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until all the animals are free.
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I've already told you how I start every class I teach on animals, drop this class.
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To end the sub-stack, I will end it how I end every class.
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I do not want you to go vegan, that is not what I want.
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What I want, what I've wanted since I was nine years old and first learned what was
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actually happening to animals, is to be wrong, to be lied to, to be tricked by big vegan,
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for animals to already be free.
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But I cannot have what I want because that is not reality.
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So we, all of us, have to settle for the second best thing, which is to change it.
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Learning to find joy even while I grieve, finding community, loving one another because
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we know what each of us is going through, loving one another because we are in a shared
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struggle together, feeling the joy of coming together, of having purpose, of acting, of
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fighting for the most important issue there is, of actually changing it, finding vegan
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joy, that is how we win.
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And we are already winning.
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You just listened to Vegan Joy, Joy is revolutionary, by Vasileste and Esquieu on sub-stack at win
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And I'm your host, Maryne Erickson, wow, so powerful.
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I think I'm going to reread or re-listen to this whenever I need some motivation because
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this is just absolutely beautiful, there's nothing more important to me than freeing
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these defenseless, innocent babies being tortured in unbelievable numbers for absolutely no
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reason at all, other than people's taste, pleasure, or habits, it's unfathomable.
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And I mentioned in the intro that I'm part of the Humane Hoax project team and we have
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an online webinar next Tuesday, March 17th from 1 to 3.30 p.m. Eastern, Vasileste is not
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speaking this time, but we do have a panel of three amazing speakers, Leo Wilborn from
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In Defense of Animals, Dr. Faraz Harcini from Allied Scholars for Animal Protection, and
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Leila Kasam, PhD from Project Phoenix.
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These wonderful speakers will be talking about humane labels and myths and fabrications
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and farming animals, cage-free eggs, and some of these things that are supposed to make
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us feel better about our purchases, but is it really possible to farm animals in a kind
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way, hint no, but tune in or register and you can get the recordings for free, you can
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find the information at humanehoax.org.
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So please share this episode with anyone who might benefit and thanks for listening.
