FEATURE: Taryn Graham

My name is Taryn Graham, and I am a black vegan. I have been vegan for a few months now and I am so glad that I am. I became vegan after being diagnosed with Hashimotos Thyroiditis late last year. After I went vegan I got my blood tested and it showed that my thyroid levels were perfectly normal.

Now, I am preparing to launch my blog that talks about living a healthy vegan life while having a chronic illness. Although I became vegan after being diagnosed with an illness, veganism means more to me than health. It means supporting equality for all. Including the animals and the environment. I believe that when people go vegan they learn to have compassion for all beings. That means not only do we not harm animals, but we also learn how to treat each other better. 

As more people become vegan that means that more people will be leading healthier lives. However, not everyone can afford to lead a life that consists of eating more fruits vegetables. 

That is why it is so important that more African Americans become vegan. We have to speak out about the food injustices that take place in our communities so that we can have better access to healthy foods. 

FEATURE: Malcolm Barnes

My name is Malcolm Barnes. I'm 25 years young and I’m a relatively new vegan of about seven months as of the first week of January 2016. I got out of the national guard in 2014 knowing full well that I needed to make a change, so I researched for two years about men like Dr. Sebi and the alkaline lifestyle, more about our culture and how I needed to start taking meat out from my life. I learned after leaving that my body was breaking down from over 30+ allergies to almost everything around me,  and then I found out about the vegan community, and how predominantly European it is. So @alphablack_veganmen on Instagram was born.

I found over a hundred other black vegan men within the first few weeks that the rest of the mainstream vegan community was apparently not promoting, and now I'm building from there while not contributing to eating animals or letting other people drown out our voices. There is such a massive wave of blatant racism within the vegan movement, and I refuse to let it go unchecked. I made a similar page for the women later on called @melenated.vegangoddesses so that I could promote both.

Now I'm trying to build my YouTube channel Plantbased EmpireTV and hoping to show more of the black community that we exist and are more than powerful enough to do amazing things.  Elevating the African community and doing stuff like a promotion for free has been a staple, but naturally, I need to do more. I'm hoping to expand this further than anyone has done before.

Social Media

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Alphablackveganmen/
Instagram: @alphaback_veganmen 
Tumblr: http://alphablackvegan.tumblr.com/
Twitter : @plantempire
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melenatedvegangoddesses/
Instagram: @melenated.vegangoddesses 
Tumblr: http://melenatedvegangoddesses.tumblr.com/

FEATURE: Delisile Godeffroy-Taylor

My journey towards becoming vegan started over 10 years ago, even though I did not realize it at the time. I started having problems with stomach discomfort and pain. An ultrasound revealed I had gallstones. I was told to get ready for surgery, but after researching life after gallbladder surgery I decided to try a diet change instead. Fatty foods triggered my attacks so I cut out all fatty foods and became even more diligent about only eating home cooked whole foods. During my consultation, the surgeon guaranteed me that no one can maintain a low fat diet and that I would be back within a year. I have not seen him since. The interesting thing was I didn’t even need to keep an intense super low fat diet. I just eliminated processed fatty foods. For example eating an avocado? No gallbladder attack. Eating a slice of diner store pizza? Agony. 

Unfortunately my stomach issues were not the only thing I was struggling with. I live with depression, bipolar, and OCD, and I struggle with compulsive binge eating. So while I did okay for a while with my whole foods home cooked diet, at some point, I stopped taking my meds (I make bad decisions sometimes). I was fine for a while and then I fell into a three year bout of severe depression. I lost my job, and it left my body way out if it’s weight comfort zone because I was getting zero exercise, and in constant pain. 

I remember the exact moment I realized I needed to do something about my health. I was taking a shower and I was out of breath from just from the exertion of washing my own body. Suddenly I felt light-headed and nauseous and thought I was going to pass out. I turned off the shower and dragged myself to my bed and collapsed there, dizzy and panting. I had one clear thought in that moment: if I did not do something about my health I was going to die.

I made a promise to myself many years ago that no matter how dark things got for me with my mental health, suicide was not an option. I had to be there for my son. That was a powerful motivator and it kept me alive on many occasions when I just wanted out. However, I realized that what I was doing to my health was just a slower form of suicide. I went to my doctor that week and got back on medication. The first thing to go when I take my meds is my compulsive binge eating. So with just that one simple step I was already feeling better. Next I cut out the processed foods and gluten (which I had slipped back into the habit of consuming regularly). I felt even better. 

Even though for the most part I had eliminated all my bowel issues by this point, I had, not surprisingly, become obsessed with how diet impacted health. The more I researched the more I was convinced that going vegan was the best choice for me and my son. Sometime around mid-2014, I made the choice to go vegan. It was a surprisingly easy change for both me and my son. I think most of that had to do with the fact that our diet was already almost exclusively home cooked and whole food. Cutting out meat and dairy barely phased us. There was a little bit of a learning curve on the home baked goods though, but I got that on lock now. 

Even though I had eliminated my most noticeable stomach issues, I found that when I was vegan my stomach felt even better. It’s hard to describe but it is sort of a clean comfortable internal feeling that I never had before but now wonder how I lived without it. Another unexpected side effect of going whole food vegan was my that son’s migraines completely went away. He used to suffer severe, throwing up, light sensitive, body shakes migraines (ever since the 1st or 2nd grade) on a regular basis. Since going vegan he has had, at most, 3 migraines in the the past 4 or 5 years.

Over the years, I have gravitated from being a purely health choice vegan to being an ethical vegan. It felt like an organic transition and that is where I am at now: voluntary vegan and reluctantly gluten-free. I am also in the final stages of editing and design for my vegan, gluten free cookbook, Love Letter to My Son in 40 Recipes: Vegan, gluten-free, whole-food cooking, with a Southern African Flair. Anyone who wants to show some support or preorder a copy can get details at: https://www.gofundme.com/LoveLetterToMySon

Follow me on Instagram (@DZGTaylor) and Twitter (@DelisileGTaylor) for daily posts about my cooking adventures, cookbook progress, and general foolishness.

FEATURE: Jasmine C. Leyva

For me the most empowering aspect of adulthood is being able to shape and mold my former self—the girl that lived by the code of her circumstances—into a conscious woman that creates her own constitution. Food, naturally, plays an integral role in this shaping. I grew up eating what was given to me; I ate what everyone around me ate without question. But upon moving to Los Angeles, I met a beautiful black female vegan in her sixties. She was much different from the sixty-year-olds to which I had become accustom.  Her skin was flawless, she appeared to be in perfect health, and her sixty-year-old body frame surpassed my own in fitness—and I was just twenty at the time.  Unlike so many of “us” who are readily dismissive of the unfamiliar, I was willing to give her vegan lifestyle a try.

Within just a few weeks of abstaining from meat and dairy, the acne that plagued me had subsided, my energy levels went up, and all across the board, I felt better. Back then, I had the mentality of a young girl; thus most of my reasons for pursuing a plant-based lifestyle were cosmetic and self-serving.  Now, as a woman, my dietary choices are motivated by my values and ethical convictions.

Growing up in Washington DC, there were several pervasive archetypes I was supposed to look up to and take as inspiration, among them: “the strong black woman,” “the educated black woman,” and “the hard working black woman”  The “compassionate black woman” as a figure utterly opposed to the suffering of both living beings and the planet was virtually non-existent. I also don't remember seeing much of the “food conscious black woman,” someone whose vision extended beyond the normative, convenient, and cheapest of foods, to celebrate quality food as a hallmark of health and wellness.  I imagined that these women existed, but they always felt few and far between, that is, they seemed invisible in my community.

My documentary, The Invisible Vegan, is therefore my attempt to remedy this problem. It is my attempt to try to decrease the number of people, especially my people, from dying of preventative diseases.  It is my attempt to give people like me, the examples and relatable messengers I wish I had. It is my attempt to inspire different audiences, not necessarily to convert them into vegans, but to help them understand the reasons behind plant-based eating. This in turn, I hope, will enable viewers to make educated choices based on different perspectives—rather than blindly accepting points of view because they’ve been handed down to them. This is the ultimate goal of the project.

Social Media

Twitter: @jasmine_c_leyva
Instagram: jasmine_c_leyva
Facebook: Jasmine C. Leyva

Latest Teaser: https://youtu.be/ZN4BhesG8XQ

FEATURE: Liz Ross

Liz Ross is the founder of Coalition of Vegan Activists of Color (COVAC), which partners with individuals and community organizations to mobilize vegan and animal rights activists of color to provide motivation and exchange information by conducting workshops, conferences, social networking events and volunteer events. 

 COVAC is organizing its 2016 People of Color: Animal Rights, Advocacy and Food Justice Conference, which will take place in Los Angeles, California, on October 15, 2016.  This conference is the first of its kind in Southern California.  Attendees will share a space with activists and leaders of color who engage in vegan outreach, animal rights, vegan health and fitness, vegan food justice, urban farming, migrant worker rights in the U.S. food system, vegan hip hop projects, and much more.  Click HERE for more information.

Liz is an active member of Black Skeptics Los Angeles (BSLA), which is committed to community building and promoting social justice work through a secular humanist perspective.  Each year, BSLA spearheads its “First In The Family Scholarship Fund”, which provides financial resources to undocumented, foster care, homeless, system-involved, and LGBTQ youth of color to help them with their college expenses. 

A former police officer, Liz raises awareness about the history and problem of mass-incarceration through presentations, and volunteering for organizations, including A New Way of Life: Reentry Project, that are working to counter its negative impact. 

Liz has given presentations on “The Origins of the Criminalization of Blackness in the Post Emancipation Period and How it Helped Shape Policing Policies”,  and “The Politics of the ‘War on Drugs’ and It’s Affects on Predominantly Black & Brown Communities”.  Liz also facilitates discussion groups on Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Liz currently serves on the advisory board of Food Empowerment Project, a vegan food justice organization. In addition, Liz provides a space for vegans of color who live and visit California to connect, and organize social and volunteer events through her Facebook Group page, Cali Vegans of Color.  

Liz is featured in the upcoming documentary film Vegan Noir: Black Vegans in Los Angeles, which she also helped produce and served as consultant.  Vegan Noir profiles nine Black vegans in Los Angeles. It will premiere at the People of Color Animal Rights, Advocacy and Food Justice Conference on October 15, and at independent film events this fall.  Produced and directed by Toni Bell, this film is in production at the University of Southern California Master of Arts in Visual Anthropology program.

Born and raised on the island of Trinidad, Liz moved to the U.S. in her early twenties. Liz has been an ethical vegan for over seven years, is passionate about learning agro-ecology, and enjoys running half-marathons.

Social Media

http://www.covac-us.org/
http://www.covac-us.org/2016-conference/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/covacvegansofcolor/

FEATURE: Rashodd Tarail

Once I began meditating, veganism came naturally. I mean, one doesn’t have to research too deeply to find the health risks correlated with meat rich diets and those of African descent. But after thorough research and investigation, the devouring of books, essays, and articles, it was obvious to me that veganism was not only a beneficial diet, but a key component to the overall well being of humanity, the animal kingdom, and life in general. Whether you look at it scientifically as did Einstein and Tesla (The Problem of increasing Human Energy) or whether you look at it ethically, as say a Coretta Scott King, you cannot honestly make the argument against the planetary benefits of plant-based diets on the whole. You may not like it, but let's be truthful.

I have been vegan for 6 years now and long story short I credit my switch to mediation and a lot of reading. Even though I had abstained from eating beef and pork for 10 years prior to going vegan, I was still eating
small amounts of turkey, chicken and fish. In hindsight, it was a few years after reading Do You by Russell Simmons and looking very deeply into more spiritual practices that veganism dawned on me. For beginners, I
think meditation helps deal with the scrutiny one faces from one’s peers, ultimately phasing it out...but experiences are subjective. As I continue my vegan journey, I am now stepping into a new creative phase. I am now developing a few photography projects focused on African Diasporic veganism; the first being a 13 x 9 print available through
my online shop aboyandphysics.co.

Social Media

Website: aboyandphysics.co
Twitter: twitter.com/aboyandphysics

FEATURE: Zatiti Ema

Going vegan in the 80's was about not following our former slave master and his diet.  It was about liberation of our minds, bodies and souls.  It was about taking a stand against racism and all the casualties that have been inflicted upon our people through oppression and the former plantation culinary teachings of eating garbage in order to survive.  Those foods would later be known as soul food. 

This diabolical tactic of eating what is not edible would become mainstream for our race in America.  Pigs feet, intestines, skin and all the other parts of the animal were used to feed our people.  Our mothers did their best to make it palatable.  Yet this is not food made for human consumption.  It is slave food, used to maintain a system that did not have our interests at heart.

Going vegan is about showing the rest of the African family what is possible.  Going vegan is about a rise in consciousness.  Going vegan is about being natural again- shunning chemical and artificial edibles that masquerade as food.  Going vegan is about being Malcolm, Martin and Harriet Tubman in the store, activists in the kitchen and at the table. Going vegan is about staying healthy and strong.  Going vegan is about the resources of our planet and the animals. Going vegan is another form of African Liberation, cause African/Black lives rock!  

I can be reached on Facebook @RBGandVegan and Amazon.

Special Discount for BVR Audience

Zatiti is giving BVR readers a discount on her book Our Journey: Red Black Green and Vegan. For one week, you can get her book at a discounted price of $23.99.

Also check out her newest children's book on Kindle for $4.99 titled What's In Your Lunch Box?: Vegan Kids Guide For A Healthy Compassionate Planet. 

BVR Interview with Grey

Ever since his Thanksvegan rap and video went viral, people all over the internet have been talking about Grey. Aph Ko had the chance of interviewing him about his perspectives on veganism, anti-racism, and that incredible Thanksvegan video. 

BVR: When did you first hear about the vegan diet, and when did you decide that it was right for you?

G: My girl introduced me to it. She wanted to transition into a plant based diet and started introducing meals to me. By the third meal I was convinced. She kicked the knowledge out to me while serving delicious dishes. "You mean to tell me this isn't meat, it's much healthier for me, and it's easy to make?..sign me up."

BVR: How did your friends and family react to your decision to go vegan?

G: I guess they couldn't believe that I would give up meat at first. However, as time went on, they saw I was serious and they supported it.

BVR: When you created your Thanksvegan rap, did you know it would be such a big hit? What was your inspiration for making it? What was it like to make a video for the song?

G: Not at all. I didn't even like the video to be honest. I almost deleted it. I saw the original video on Instagram and instantly loved the beat. I couldn't stop playing it. I told myself I have to spit something on this. I normally do freestyles in the car every Friday using the hashtag #GreyCantFreestyle So this was just another freestyle. I knew something was different about an hour after I posted it when i received way more likes and comments than usual. Once it went viral, I told myself I have to write a 2nd verse and we have to shoot a video for it ASAP.  The video was a lot of fun.

BVR: Can you tell me a little bit more about your politics? Like, how do you see your vegan diet intersecting with issues like anti-racism or animal rights?

G: Well I'm fairly new to the plant based community; 8 months to be exact, so I'm still learning a lot everyday. I read and watch various documentaries which gives me insight and raises my awareness on the food that we eat. I'm definitely an advocate for animal rights and human rights. To me, food is similar to music in a way that it brings everyone together from all walks of life. That's a beautiful thing. As far as racism, vegetables sees no color. Everyone from every background can enjoy a healthy lifestyle with just a little bit of knowledge.  

BVR: There are still a lot of black folks who reject veganism and plant-based eating because they think it's a "white person's" thing. This, in part, inspired me back in 2015 to create the first article that listed 100 Black Vegans to dispel the stereotype that veganism wasn't for them. (That list became the inspiration for my current website Black Vegans Rock). What advice do you have for some black folks who still say that veganism or plant-based eating is a "white person's thing?"

G: I tell people all the time that its just a lack of knowledge. There's just a disconnect between the black communities and veganism. We have been conditioned to eat the way we eat and believe what we believe about food because of what our families have passed down from generations as well as what the mainstream media has pushed on us (food chart, milk does a body good, etc.) Once you know better, you do better. Once you understand that vegans can eat pretty much everything that non-vegans can't...it's an eye opener. It's as simple as people not knowing that you can grab vegan Taco Bell and fast food. Again, it's just a lack of knowledge that isn't being pushed to our people the right way.  I think that will change over time as more of us become more aware as a people of what we are taking into our bodies and how that directly cause diseases and conditions, which are told to us as being "hereditary" when in actuality it comes from our eating habits.

BVR: What's next for you? 

G: With this video going viral and impacting the community in the way that it has, I feel there's a much larger purpose for me now. I love music and will always create music and will continue to release music. Right now, I feel it's more than just the music. I feel there's a need for me to help bridge the gap of knowledge about veganism and plant based diets, especially in the black communities. I recently partnered with an awesome company, Heart of Cool (heARTofcool.com), to help spread awareness in the forms of outreach, videos, fashion, music, etc. It's exciting! We have a lot of great things rolling out very soon.

Social Media

Youtube: YouTube.com/OfficialGreyMusic

Instagram: AirMaxJunkie

Facebook: Facebook.com/GreyPMODB

Twitter: GreyNyteLyfe