2009 program guide is now available

The Veggie Pride Parade Program guide is now posted to the Veggie Pride Parade Web site. Find a schedule of events, a list of speakers, a list of exhibitors, a list of prize donor for the costume contest, an essay by vegan historian Rynn Berry, and, of course, ads from vegan organizations and businesses from all over the region.

Click HERE to go to where you can download a PDF of the entire guide.

Speakers, entertainers set for Veggie Pride Parade, NYC, 2009

	Paul Shapiro is the senior director of the factory farming campaign of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). He has spearheaded numerous successful campaigns on behalf of farmed animals. He directs the effort to convince retailers, food service providers, and universities to expand their vegan options. Prior to working for HSUS, Paul founded Compassion Over Killing (COK), where he helped lead campaigns such as the successful effort to end the use of the misleading "Animal Care Certified" logo on battery-cage egg cartons nationwide. At COK, Paul worked as a farmed-animal cruelty investigator, primarily documenting conditions on egg and broiler factory farms, livestock auctions, and slaughter plants. He will bring our parade crowd to life with his powerful oratory abilities.
	J.P. Vaswani is one of India's most recognized nonsectarian spiritual leaders and the head of the Sadhu Vaswani Mission. For the past 43 years, Dada, as he is affectionately known, has been a tireless advocate for animal rights and non-violence. He is the author of over 100 books, many in multiple translations. Cultivating his ideals from his mentor and guru Sadhu T.L. Vaswani, who it the founder of the mission that carries his name, he is today an accomplished orator, philosopher, educationalist, and philanthropist. Dada has held audience with the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and Pope John Paul II, as well as other prominent world leaders. His message of global harmony and peace has captivated audiences at the World Parliament of Religions, the British House of Commons, and the UN World Peace Summit. Dada lives in Pune, India, where he oversees the multi-faceted charitable programs of the Sadhu Vaswani Mission. Dada is forever there to speak for the defenseless, which of course includes all the animals on Earth.
	Peter Anderson is the principal of Future Leaders Institute, a progressive charter school in Harlem. He's worked in education for over 15 years and holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and New York University. For the kids, the emphasis is on leadership training and character development. "Go hard or go home," are words he lives by and projects at every opportunity. And part of what he passes along at his school: the wisdom of healthy eating. Partnering with New York Coalition for Healthy School Food (NYCHSF), they provide 2 plant-based meals per week prepared at the school by Chef Jorge from Candle 79 Restaurant. Each month NYCHSF hosts a Family Dinner Night with a plant-based meal, hands on learning activities, and a cooking demo. "True education is holistic," says Anderson.
	Marianne Thieme is a member of the House of Representatives in the Netherlands and the leader of her party, the Party for the Animals. She is the on-stage narrator for the pro-vegan DVD Meat The Truth, which presents a hard-hitting but popular presentation of the vegan environmental arguments, emphasizing, in particular, livestock's heavy influence on global warming. Ms. Thieme's career in animal protection began as a fauna consultant for the Dutch Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Recently, she became the director of Stichting Wakker Dier, an organization that campaigns for the abolition of the factory farming industry. In her capacity as director of this organization, the agricultural magazine Farm proclaimed Ms. Theime the most influential woman in the Netherlands with respect to the social and economic position of farmers.
	Cheryl Hill returns to the big city from her current home on Austin, Texas, where her entrepreneurial spirit is marketing vegan smoothie recipes, spearheading publishing projects, and playing gigs with the band that bears her name. She will entertain us with her operatically trained voice and poignant chords and lyrics. Cheryl is the composer of our parade's awesome theme song, Get Your Green On. Cheryl is one hot guitar player, but New Yorkers may also remember her as the wise woman of Vegan Wellness TV. Visit her Web site: www.cherylhill.com
	Tony Avella is a New York city councilman from Queens' 19th district. He heads five council committees and is a leading advocate of animal rights and animal welfare in city government. The 2007 scorecard of the NYC League of Humane Voters gave Tony a 100 percent rating, but it might as well have been 110 percent. He's taken heroic stands in, no-less, leadership rolls with the Horse Drawn Carriage Ban, the Pets in Housing bill, and humane education in the city's schools.
	Karen Davis, Ph.D. is president and founder of United Poultry Concerns. She is the founding editor of UPC's quarterly magazine Poultry Press and the author of numerous books including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs. Ms. Davis maintains a sanctuary for rescued poultry birds in Virginia. She in an inductee to the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame. Since 1999, Ms. Davis and UPC have hosted eight annual conferences on farmed-animal advocacy issues. At www.upc-online.org/karenbio.htm one can find a seemingly endless list of Ms. Davis's victories and accomplishments as she has for so many years worked on behalf of what society casually relegates to the "lowest of the low" (modern poultry birds).
	Joan Wai is the founder and chief executive director of Youth Buddhism Communications, a New York City-based group fully committed to compassionate meatless living. She is the organizer of the 1,000-strong all-vegan banquet put on by the group every year. She is also the director of a community center run by the organization.
	Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D. is professor emeritus at the College of Staten Island. He is the author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, Judaism and Global Survival, and Mathematics and Global Survival, and over 130 articles at JewishVeg.com/schwartz. He is the president of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) and the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV). He is the associate producer of A Sacred Duty, a powerful, pro-vegan DVD production. He is director of Veg Climate Alliance. Dr. Schwartz may be reached at president@JewishVeg.com.
	Christine Vardaros is a world-class vegan cyclist. She's writes fitness columns for VegNews magazine, Cyclo-Cross magazine, and the Marin Independent Journal. She is an official spokesperson for In Defense of Animals, a founding member of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, and is a member of the athlete's advisory board for the Stone Foundation for Sports Medicine and Arthritis Research. And she's never owned a car.
	Mickey Z will wax eloquent in poetry and prose in his most inimitable style at the post Veggie Pride Parade rally and expo. Proudly armed with his high school diploma, born and raised in Astoria, New York, part working class, part radical vegan, Mickey Z is probably the only person on the planet to have appeared in both a karate flick with Billy Blanks and a political book with Noam Chomsky. He has been a vegan for 14 years and can be found on the Web at www.mickeyz.net. Look for his blog posts at Plant Green (planetgreen.discovery.com/tv).
	Dave Warwak is a meditator, philosopher, humanitarian, artist, musician, poet, and writer. Formerly a tenured middle school art teacher, he became an animal rights activist after he was notoriously fired for teaching kindness, i.e.: veganism, to his students. Warwak's mission has since been tell children the truth about our world. Read trial transcripts that document his fight to keep his job, which includes testimony by T. Colin Campbell, in Peep Show for Children Only. Dave will perform the baby-vegetable (children in vegetable costumes) naming ceremony on stage after the parade at the post-parade rally and expo.
	Pamela Rice is the author of "101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian"—both book and pamphlet. She is the founding director of the Vegetarian Center of NYC and the organizer for this event. She is the founding director of the VivaVegie Society (www.vivavegie.org), the parade's sponsoring group. She is also the erstwhile publisher of The VivaVine: The Vegetarian Issues Magazine. Pamela will award prizes for best costume and signboard contest at the post-parade rally and expo.

A slight change of plans, but we're happy for that

Due to scheduled construction at Washington Square Park (Teen Plaza), THE VEGGIE PRIDE PARADE has been bumped, but we like the situation just fine! The end point for the May 17, 2009 parade will be Union Square Park (north end) instead. See and click image at left to see where we will be in the park. (Of course, the Green Market, shown in the image, will not be there the day we set up.)

This is a spectacularly excellent development, and, it happens, we got the venue plopped right in our lap.

There also is construction going on now right at this, the Union Square, location, but it will be finished well before May 17, we have been assured by Sarah Frazier of NYC Parks. We will be one of the first groups to get to use the renovated area. Ultimately, it should be downright lovely! But more than this, we'll be able to have all the noise and participants we want. Washington Square Park actually has strict limits on noise level and crowd size. We surely are going to be much bigger this year and years to come, so we'll need the extra elbow room.

Veggie Pride Parade 2009 is on. Time to mark your calendar

Veggie Pride Parade 2009 is on. Mark your calendar for Sunday, May 17, 2009. VivaVegie Society, the sponsoring organization, is hard at work putting together the details so New York City can have a repeat of this successful event, which first hit the scene in 2008. Now is a good time to re-visit the Veggie Pride Parade Web site. Enjoy!

An inspirational slide show has now been posted.

An inspirational slide show of the First Veggie Pride Parade in America, 2008, has now been posted. Using the images from a dozen or more people, who have posted their images of the parade to various image Web sites, such as Flickr.com, we've been able to make a great great slide show of the parade. Here's a promise. This slide show is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Click HERE or the image at left to see the slide show.

Lots and lots of images of the parade now posted

Some people at Sunday's event took pictures. Some people took a lot of pictures! And some of those images have been posted to Web pages. And we've made a Web page linking to them all. Click HERE to see the links. Once you get clicking around, you'll be amazed at how comprehensively this event was actually covered.

If you were not able to be there at our big parade, at least you have this next-best view.

Media coverage for Sunday's parade, extensive

For a rundown of all the media coverage that was given to the parade -- all in one place -- click HERE. The best of the bunch was being picked up by the Associated Press. About 155 mainstream news outlets (TV, radio, print) ran the story. Having an article and photo in The New York Times, which went all over the country, was also tremendous.

A new route. A better route!

The NYPD just hit us with a big one: They changed our route. Thankfully, the start and end points have stayed the same, and the route is, in fact, a better one!

Click HERE for for a map. Orange = new route.

Wonderful story about parade in NY Sun

'Give Peas a Chance,' Veggie Priders Will Say

By GARY SHAPIRO
Staff Reporter of the Sun

Vegetarians will be saying "Give Peas a Chance" as they march through Greenwich Village Sunday during the first Veggie Pride Parade.

Beginning in the meatpacking district, of all places, the celery celebrants will wend their way to Washington Square Park for a rally featuring music and exhibitor tables.

The parade organizer, Pamela Rice, thinks big. Veggie Pride "will be the Woodstock of the 21st century," she says. Ms. Rice has spent hundreds of hours preparing for the event, which she says has a serious purpose: "We want people to understand the ramifications of their food choices."

Click HERE for full story and to leave a comment in the NY Sun Web site.

AM New York does story about Veggie Pride Parade

[amNewYork has a super excellent story about the Veggie Pride Parade in today's (May 12) paper, p. 4. A longer version of the story can be found in the amNewYork Web site. Click HERE to read and leave a comment.]

Show your veggie pride in first-ever parade next week
What do you get when you cross a seven-foot peapod with an equally tall smiling carrot? Why, a veggie wedding. The nuptials of Penelo Pea Pod and PeTA’s Chris P. Carrot will cap the first U.S. Veggie Pride Parade next Sunday in Greenwich Village.

The parade starts at noon in the Meatpacking District, where Ninth Avenue meets Gansevoort, Greenwich, and Little West 12th streets. It ends at Washington Square Park.

For full story, click HERE.

New color poster for download

We have a new color post-able poster to promote the Veggie Pride Parade around town.

This is a 1.7 MB file you can run out yourself from your own color printer or send to the copy shop so it can run it out.

Click HERE and scroll down to download the file.

Lots of free food at post-parade rally and expo

The First Veggie Pride Parade in America, May 18, 2008, in Greenwich Village, NYC, will end in a rock concert, rally, and expo. The event is considered a First Amendment event. No one is allowed to sell anything. That means that everything is free, including all the groovy munchies from the food vendors with exhibit tables. Expect food or drink from Whole Earth Bakery, Sacred Chow, Tofurky (Turtle Island Foods), Honest Teas, Primal Spirit, and possibly Vegan Treats.

Our progam guide brings it all to the table

The program / ad booklet for our Veggie Pride Parade is ready for viewing. Click on the image at left or click HERE to go to our program-guide page to download in PDF format.

Two thousand hard-copy booklets, 24 pages plus cover, will be distributed at the parade and at the post-parade rally/expo to parade and rally participants, parade watchers (bystanders) and curiosity seekers. Another 1,500 copies will be distributed in the week prior to the parade to local restaurants.

The guide gives a rundown of the day's activities, a map of the parade route, bios of the speakers, parade chants, list of exhibitors, list of companies donating prizes for the costume and signboard slogan contest, thank yous to the volunteers, and, of course, ads from advocady organizations, farm sanctuaries, restaurants, bed and breakfasts, cooking schools, online stores, food producers, and sundry pro-veg companies and groups.

The program is a window on our historic day, even if you cannot in fact come to the event. The guide is sure to become a collectors' item.

Parade receives donation of 800 vegan jerky sticks!

Today Primal Spirit Foods

http://www.primalspiritfoods.com/

donated 800 vegan jerky sticks.

Veggie Pride Parade volunteers will be giving them out at the post-parade rally.

Make sure you get yours!

Exciting developments for the parade

Following indicates some nicely positive activity on the parade front. - Pamela Rice

1)
VivaVegie Society has found a groom for Penelo Pea Pod: PeTA's Chris P. Carrot. Read all about it here:
http://www.veggieprideparade.org/dept/wedding.htm

2)
From the director of United Federation of Teachers, Humane Education Committee, Shiela Schwartz
(http://www.uft.org/member/committees/humane/) :

I'm having a great fun helping people prepare costumes. One friend's twin babies are coming as an apple and a pumpkin. I have another child coming as Minnie Mouse with a sign that says, "I only eat SOY cheese." We are working for a good sized UFT contingent.

3)
From http://teamorganicnyc.org/
... the pro-organic (mostly vegan), world-class triathlete team:

What an exciting idea! Thank you for putting this together! I think our teammates would love to participate in the parade if possible. We could march in our full team uniforms with our bikes or ride our bikes slowly within the parade. The back of our bike shorts already says either "Go Vegan" or "Go Organic" so our costumes would be that of the Vegan\Organic Athletes!

Hear podcast about Veggie Pride Parade

You can surf the pages of the Web site of the Veggie Pride Parade:

• http://www.veggieprideparade.org

And that is sure to be fun...

Or you can just hear all about the event right from the "horse's mouth."

Hear Pamela Rice, organizer of The Veggie Pride Parade, speak about her project in her latest podcast.

Go to:
http://www.vivavegie.org/podcast/
and click on Podcast #7.

Or just click HERE and download straight away.

A restaurant can offer dinner for two as a prize

A restaurant can offer dinner for two as a prize for our costume / poster contest.

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Click HERE, or copy and paste the following URL (http://www.veggieprideparade.org/pdfs/certificate.pdf) into your browser, to download a certificate pledging your gift.

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There will be a quick ceremony handing out the prizes from the stage at 2 p.m. at the post-parade rally in Washington Square Park. All donating restaurants will get free publicity for this in the program guide.

Veggie Pride Parade, interactive bulletin board

Do you have a question about the Veggie Pride Parade?
Do you have a suggestion or a comment?
Don't keep it to yourself.
Your post are valuable and deserve the light of day.

Join the Veggie Pride Parade, interactive bulletin board:
http://www.veggieprideparade.org/dept/bulletin.htm

It's easy and you can meet other people involved with the parade.
NOTE: All topics are moderated to keep the dialogue respectful and to keep the spam out

TOPICS:

Category: "Veggie Pride Parade"

• Questions for the Parade Committee
• Volunteers Corner
• Costumes
• Posters & Slogans
• Need Housing? Have Housing?

Category: "Veggie Talk"

• Rants & Raves
• I'm Veg Because...
• Vegan Food and Restaurants
• Environment, What We Eat, the Links

VegNews gives Veggie Pride Parade full-page ad

In exchange for various promotional benefits that our parade can offer (ad space, for instance, in our parade-day program guide), VegNews Magazine of SanFrancisco has given our Veggie Pride Parade, NYC, a full-page ad in its magazine.

For a sneak preview, click on the image here for a full-size pdf (lo-res) version of the ad.

VivaVegie Society, the sponsoring organization of the parade, is very pleased with this great gift from this the premier national vegetarian publication in the United States.

The edition of the magazine that the ad falls within will indeed also be the same one distributed free at the post-parade rally in Washington Square Park, since VegNews Magazine will be one of the event's lucky exhibitors.

Click HERE for VegNews subscription information.

Veggie Pride Parade, NYC, launches bulletin board

Our motto is:

The Veggie Pride Parade, NYC, is your parade, inclusive and participatory. ...And we mean it.

Our Web site allows everyone to get involved -- both in grand ways and in small. But now we also have ways to voice our ideas, suggestions, questions, compliments and complaints. We have an interactive, moderated bulletin board with the following forums.

Veggie Pride Parade forums:

• Questions for the Parade Committee
• Volunteers Corner
• Costumes
• Posters and Slogans
• Need housing? Have housing?

Misc. forums:

• Rants & Raves
• I'm Veg Because
• Vegan Food and Restaurants

Go to:
http://www.veggieprideparade.org/dept/bulletin.htm
and post early and post often.

NOTE: We can add more forums upon request. Let us know a general forum title... We may set it up, particularly if you offer to moderated it as well.

Just three little things to promote the parade

There are three important things that anyone can do now to help make the parade a big success.

1. Promote the Veggie Pride Parade, NYC, online with your blog, podcast or vidcast or at your Meetup group, Yahoo group, Google group Web page or on your Facebook or MySpace site. Post to Internet calendars and message boards. Reach out to your non-virtual world as well: PTA, church or synagogue, union, lodge, veterans' group, co-op board, poker, book, or investors' club, wilderness society, coffee clache, or cultural or block association. Whenever the opportunity arises, break the ice with, "Have you heard there's going to be a Veggie Pride Parade this year in New York City?"

2. Post a flyer wherever you go: work, school, health club, grocery store, or house of worship. Keep a dozen or so in your satchel, along with cellophane tape, push pins, and small stapler for mounting.

3. Get a story, op-ed piece, or letter to the editor published in the mainstream media about the parade.

Volunteers and supporters getting involved

Since the official launch of the Veggie Pride Parade Web site, parade organizers have fielded many emails and phone calls from people wanting to get involved. Volunteers of all stripes have come forth to fill important slots in our manpower needs.

Now on board now are parade-day volunteer directors for both the marshals (Jean Thaler) and the ambassadors (Kelly Calvo).

We also have three people (Doug Greene, Lisa Lindblom, and Ariel Pennie) who have pledged to engage local veggie restaurants and pro-veg businesses to ensure their participation in the parade. Contact the organizers (info@vivavegie.org) if you want to volunteer your time as well with this important need.

We have a photographer working on images of representative parade-marchers with typical signboards, which might be carried in the parade. We'll be posting those images soon to give people more creative ideas for what might be done in the parade.

Pro-vegetarian organizations have also already been in touch to arrange for table space at our post-parade rally in Washington Square Park and to buy ad space in our parade program.

In just days, we will have an interactive bulletin board, thanks to Mindy Getch, of Portland, Oregon. Stay tuned: We'll have a special blog post about that as soon as it's available.

If you want to get involved as a volunteer, contact the parade organizers at info@vivavegie.org. Have fun, and also know that you've helped a great cause.

First Veggie Pride Parade in America, Greenwich Village, New York City, May 18, 2008

The First Veggie Pride Parade in America will take place in Greenwich Village,
New York City, on May 18, 2008. The procession will begin at 12 Noon in the Old Meat District (where 9th Ave., Gansevoort St., Greenwich St., and Little West 12th St. intersect). It will culminate in Washington Square Park (Eastern end), where a festival of rock music, speakers and exhibitors will take place.

Parade participants are encouraged to dress up in costumes and to wear sign boards announcing their pride in their vegetarian lifestyle. Local restaurants will represent themselves with banners. They may be animal-rights activists, environmentalists, or just concerned with their health. But on May 18, 2008, all will come together with one voice, one expression, of veggie pride.

At 2 p.m. on stage at the post-parade rally in Washington Square Park, the winners of a costume and poster-slogan contest in various categories will be announced.

At 4 p.m., also on stage, a 7-foot-tall human pea pod, Penelo Pea Pod (long-time mascot of parade sponsor VivaVegie Society) will be married in an open wedding ceremony. The lucky guy (ur, animal? vegetable?) has yet to be identified...or to come forth. More to come on that soon!

There is a special page within the Veggie Pride Parade Web site outlining how restaurants can get involved, and how both individuals and businesses can place a sponsorship ad in the official program/ad booklet. Contingents from all walks of life are encouraged to get involved.

The parade is fashioned after and will take place the same weekend as the Veggie Pride Parade in Paris. The Parisian parade was the first of its kind ever to take place in the world and has been going on annually since 2001.

Visit http://www.veggieprideparade.org/ for more information about volunteering and sponsorship.

Post a poster for the parade, PDF now available

The Veggie Pride Parade has a ready-made poster for you to publicize the event. Click HERE or on the image to download a printable PDF. Make multiple copies to post everywhere you go—your campus, your favorite veggie restaurants, your local grocery store bulletin board, just for example.

You can make multiple copies two ways. The best is to bring or send the pdf file to your local copy shop. Many places can make copies right from the file.

If you make one copy from your own printer to later make photocopies from it, make sure you choose grayscale settings in both cases.

Thank you for helping to make the Veggie Pride Parade a success.

Remember: Posting flyers can win you volunteer points.

To be or not to be, commercial that is

The park permit (Washington Square Park) for the post-parade rally held by the VivaVegie Society, the sponsoring nonprofit organization of the FIRST VEGGIE PRIDE PARADE IN AMERICA, May 18, 2008, Greenwich Village, New York City, has so far been designated as "GENERAL." This means NOTHING COMMERCIAL (or only minimally so) can go on at the rally.

In order for commercial activities to take place, the city would need to be paid a minimum fee of $11,000. The organizers have not ruled out going for the commercial option. The veg'n lifestyle is, of course, essentially a comsumer choice. Those companies from whom veg'ns purchase their veggie consumer products should probably have a presence at the post-parade park rally. The rally will present commercial vendors invaluable opportunities to promote their products and services if the organizers choose to cover the city's big fee.

It is entirely possible that the money can be found. In exchange for funds, the rally can provide banner space up in the front of the stage. If you are interested in becoming such a sponsor, click HERE (pamela@vivavegie.org) to contact account manager Pamela Rice.