Hi Dr. Paolucci, thank you for reading this post and for leaving a comment. I’m grateful for the opportunity to respond to your concerns. I agree with you that it’s absurd to compare the plight of nonhuman animals to the plight of anyone else, and I certainly didn’t mean to do so in this post. I’m sorry if it came across that way. We at VO believe we can care about more than one issue at a time and that, in fact, it will only make us better activists for the animals. Our mission is to end violence against animals, and we’re very passionate about that, as I know you are too. Thank you for your work toward freeing all animals from suffering!

Thank you, Todd. This means so much to me, and I’m sure it will to the rest of our staff too. I’ll share it with them, as we all have a hand in this work and I’m only *one* of the people who should be on the receiving end of any feelings of gratitude you have towards VO. 🙂 I was glad to see you at the conference and hope you had a great time. See you again soon if I’m lucky!

Thank you very much for your feedback, James. This is an active learning process for VO and we will take this feedback to heart as we move ahead and make decisions. I will be honest and tell you that while we’ve had a *ton* of feedback, good and bad, on this topic, we have not heard your particular point before. So thank you. I hope it goes without saying that the very last thing we want to do is offend people. If people don’t give us feedback we can’t change. I can’t promise we will change course, because people of color on our staff may disagree with your points. But we will absolutely consider it. Our team will discuss this and thank you again for taking the time to write.

Yes! Thank you, Allen. Everyone you mentioned is doing incredible work!

Thank you, Jean!

Margaret, thank you for this comment. And thank you for your support and leafleting! I understand what you are saying and I understand the concern from a donation point of view. This is not a decision that was made lightly (as you can probably guess). Please know that this new work *will help more animals.*

Right now many big animal rights and welfare groups are lacking in diversity. That means there are millions of people they (we) can’t reach. Fast food restaurants are marketing aggressively to people of color to eat more meat, but our movement is not reaching people of color with the vegan message. As long as that’s true, we’re not going to win for the animals.

VO believes that you can speak out against racism and sexism and other inequalities while speaking out against speciesism, and that we should, because we want to live in a kinder world. At the same time, we believe it is crucial to increase the number of vegans in the country. If mostly white people reach out to mostly other white people about going vegan we’ll be limiting the work. VO’s mission of creating more vegans has not changed; in fact, our new work will make our movement that much more effective.

That said, we know it’s a big change and I understand why you are concerned. Please let me know if you want to discuss it in greater detail. I’d love to call or email (lisar at veganoutreach.org). We want to see more feedback from our donors about these issues and we’re grateful you spoke up! Thank you!

Thank you, Brad! You sound cute!