This episode features Julie's conversation with Lisa Levinson. Lisa directs In Defense Of Animals Sustainable Activism Campaign, offering emotional and spiritual support for animal activists. Lisa and Julie will talk about their work and challenges as vegan and animal activists. Their views about our society and the changes they are leading to a different future for the animals and us.
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Hello, and welcome back to the life foods podcast. Today we have an interview with Lisa Levinson. Lisa directs in defense of animals Animal activism campaign, offering emotional and spiritual supports for animal activists. In her conversation with Julie they will talk about veganism as a spiritual practice and their work and challenges as begin and animal activists. So let's get right to it. Please welcome Julie and Lisa.
Hi, everyone. I'm Julie Autry from ally food. And I have Lisa Levinson here. I'm so excited and honored to be talking with her. Lisa directs in defense of animal sustainable activism campaign, offering emotional and spiritual support for animal activists via a hotline support group, and online events. Lisa organizes vegan spirituality groups and retreats to explore veganism as a spiritual practice. She core agonizes the interfaith vegan coalition to help places of worship go vegan. And she co founded public eye artists for animals to teach compassion for animals through the arts, and founded the the toad detour to help migrate Toad safely across the roads in Philadelphia. And I met Lisa a little while ago. And we hit it off right away. We obviously have, you know, many commonalities. We're both vegan, and you know, we really hit it off, and I really respect all the work that Lisa does. And so I wanted to really talk to her and have everyone benefit from her wisdom and her knowledge and her information. So I'm now give the floor to you, Lisa. You know, tell us a little bit about what made you get involved within defensive animals. And tell us a little bit about you know, in defense of animals and what you guys do
Sure. So it's lovely to be with you today. I'm so excited to have another great conversation with you, Julie. Some little background about so in defensive animals is an animal rights organization that really fights for the rights and the habitats of animals of the environment and also to help people. So this organization has been around for about 30 years or more actually, and it was founded by Dr. Elliot Katz, who's a veterinary veterinarian. And now at the helm is Dr. Marilyn crumbly, who is a psychiatrist in Maryland has created this new vision for independent animals to really provide support services because her background is as a psychiatrist, so she wanted to provide some support services for animal activists. So she's created several programs to really imbue activists with a lot of support. One of them The one that I ran is called the sustainable activism campaign. And this one provides emotional and spiritual tools for animal activists. And so we have actually webinars that we run every week for activists and online support groups, just so that people can, can talk with one another and also hear from some of the leaders in our in our movement, about ways that they can get some support. And we even have a support line where people can call us and talk to us.
So exciting, you know, people are people as a group, you know, they need support, and they need to be able to talk to other people that are like minded and, you know, share their interests. And I think that's amazing.
Oh, yeah, definitely. It's really helped a lot of people who live in remote areas and they they feel like they're the only vegan or the only animal activist in their area, and suddenly they have a whole new community. So we really want to provide all these reasons versus for activists, because many times activists suffer from something called compassion fatigue or burnout, which is when they don't, they actually are feeling overwhelmed. And then they need to stop and take a break from doing their activism. So we're trying to provide support along the way, so that activists can continue helping animals for the long haul.
Because it's really not supported. I mean, that, you know, kindness to animals and, you know, loving animals. Yeah, loving pets, and loving all animals is a completely different thing. You can be a pet lover and not be an animal lover, if you know what I mean. Correct? Yes, yes. And in our society, you know, people call them call themselves pet lovers. And then on the other hand, they are not questioning like, Hey, where's my food coming from? How do you find there's a correlation between people that truly love animals and people You know, that believe in, you know, organizations like Ida and veganism, that people that are vegan that that there's some kind of correlation between the two, that once you recognize the fact, once you really recognize your inner kindness toward another being, because humans aren't the only beings on earth, correct, like animals are also beings to that once you realize that, that you start questioning. You know, why am I eating me or questioning that? The animal that I have as a pack, and the animal that I'm eating, it's pretty much the same thing. It's literally is the same thing.
Yes, exactly. And there's a wonderful book that highlights this. It's called why we love to eat. pigs were cows and love dogs. So by book, it's by Dr. Melanie joy and she's a wonderful advocate for animals and animal rights. And what she's done is coined the term carnism as explaining why we have this curious form of loving animals and eating other ones that we and how we can really live with that internal divide that goes on within all of us. Yeah, yeah, it's a great book. And so we provide resources like that on our animal activist support line for people can call us and reach out for help. And if anybody does want that kind of support, the number there is 800-705-0425. And that's just a way you can call we also have you can reach us online to at Ida USA dot o RG forward slash activists support and you can chat with us on line, you can text us, there's lots of ways to reach us. But we can help people who are struggling with some of these concepts. And even right now, we have something going on for February, which is our activist APPRECIATION MONTH where which we're doing.
I'm loving this.
Yeah. I mean, it's, this is so great. It's interesting that, you know,
it's interesting to me that a lot of times, you know, people in general kind of distance themselves from animal, you know, activists that support animal and that are for animals. And they, you know, it's almost like, Oh, my God, you know, here they are again, or whatever, but in the real sense of life. You know, it's, I would think that there should be a curiosity about like, Hey, what are you doing and the fact that we even have such activism is, you know, constitute that we're living almost in a bubble Barrick society to me where I think it should be the other way around where like, you know, most people should question or, you know, and I'm not trying to preach here and I'm not trying to, you know, tell people what they should do and shouldn't do. But I would think that it's a natural curiosity, like when you look at a little child, um, you know, they make the correlation very quickly. They make the correlation very quickly that hey, this is, you know, my pet dog. And then if they are actually shown, you know, somebody eating an animal, you know, they can put the dots, you know, the two and two together. I mean, Paul McCartney said that if, if slaughterhouses had glass windows and glass doors, that everyone would be a vegan or they definitely have a hard time, you know, with the fact of what's on their plate and question it and you know, And again, going back to the fact that having dogs as pets, and eating pigs or eating cows doesn't make much sense. And then, you know, we go to, to the extent of there are other cultures that it's okay for them to eat dogs, and we condemn them yet, you know, you look at ourselves, which is quite interesting. And you know, I'm actually going to look up the book that you just talked about. And really, I'm interested in finding out what makes somebody do that what, you know, how can somebody do that?
Yeah, it's a great resource. And
that's why we have we do have a lot of different campaigns in defense of animals to try to address this. I mean, everything from a farmed animals campaign to a dog named campaign to end the dog meat trade, and to really look at how we have these two distinct issues in these different cultures and they and to be able to advocate for animals, it's really important to understand the cultural realities. Yeah, go on there. Lisa, I know that you're a vegan. Right? And I want to talk a little bit about that. Just, you know, just from your personal
history and personal point of view. How long have you been a vegan? And um, why? I mean, I can assume why, but when did you have that turning point of like, Okay, this is not okay. For me. This is not my path.
Oh, sure. So I've been vegan for about 25 years, actually. Yeah. And, yeah. So I went vegetarian when I was in California. And I think for many of us, going vegetarian is like the first step. It's a huge decision. So at that time, I went vegetarian. I lived on a working farm. That was I was doing environmental education. And so we did. animals were born there. We raised them and then they were also taken off to slaughter. And so that was really sad for me to see. So I made that choice to be vegetarian. And then I happened to move to Philadelphia for graduate school and the vegetarians. I met there were all macrobiotic, macrobiotic, then you're, you're actually vegan by default because they don't eat any dairy products. Right? No processed sugar. And, and so that's really how I learned a lot about veganism and vegan cooking. But years later, I coined I recognized that, Oh, I'm vegan, not just a vegetarian. Oh, wait a minute.
Yeah, right. And then what, what, what were some of your challenges, you know, like, I know, um, you know, my story's a little bit different, you know, in the sense that I was a vegetarian for the longest time of my life. And I wasn't, you know, I was born a vegetarian. My family was vegetarian. So it was really Easy. It was an easy transition and a very natural transition for me. But I know that a lot of families and a lot of people are good majority of the people that's not you know where they are that they grew up eating meat and their families, you know, grew up eating meat. So what were some of your challenges? Because I know you're the other. You're the other one and your journey was definitely different than mine.
Well, I would say that some of my challenges were, were probably working with my family on this because they were not vegetarian or vegan. And so over the years, I think it's, they didn't understand me that well, and understand that this is related to my values, not just my preferences, and that for me, this is a spiritual practice actually, veganism is about having compassion for all living beings. And in order to practice that, just like that, Someone would practice meditation or practice another spiritual tradition. That's my practice is veganism. And so talking to my family about that, would they think that I was limiting myself and that I was making choices that confine me or separated me Actually, from my family, in their eyes. So we've had lots of discussions and over the years, I think they've come to understand me quite a bit bigger, better, but the initial struggles were, for me, mostly related to family issues. And and again, there's another wonderful book, a second book by Dr. Marie joy, which is called Beyond beliefs. And this book is specifically designed for vegans and non vegans so that they can communicate with one another. So there's a lot of resources and tips in the book. It wasn't around when I was going through some of my issues, my family, but it certainly is helpful. For many, many people thinking of family as a vegan ally, rather than trying to convert them to veganism,
right, right. Yes. How did your family ever think like, Oh, you know, Lisa's trying to tell us what to do, or trying to turn us on to this, you know, vegan thing that she's on or whatever, because I hear all kinds of, you know, all kinds of stories and stuff like that. And, you know, like, I think that's one of the areas where people find themselves, you know, extremely challenged and confronted, is, you know, their families and they don't understand like, Oh, you know, it's just, it's just a choice. And, you know, it's just a choice that if somebody's going to eat me, that now they're not so it's not like a personal attack, but a lot of people do take it almost as a personal attack that Oh, now you're eating this so we can't hang out or whatever, you know, it's like okay, and has it been hard for you? To hang out with other people that were your friends that aren't vegans.
Hmm, that is a good question. Yeah, always right. Yeah, it does go both ways. I would say that a lot of my close friends are vegan these days. I do. When I hang out with a friend that I've had for many, many years, I usually explain that I'm vegan and what that means to me, a lot of them are very understanding. And so that's, that's been okay actually, with friends when they understand what's, what my needs are. And we generally will go to a vegan restaurant. Some of the issues that has my family are that they, rather than thinking I'm trying to convince them, they think that it's, it's all about me and that do something, it has to be my choice that where we go to restaurant, and I try to explain it's not so much that I need to have my way it's more that for me, it's a spiritual practice. Just to to be vegan. And so when I observe other people eating animals, especially people who I care about, it's, it's emotionally difficult. And also it feels as though I'm observing this, this atrocity in front of my eyes and so can be traumatic. So that's part of that understanding is trying to communicate with them.
This was the first part of Julie and Lisa's conversation. If you would like to listen to the second part, please subscribe to this podcast and listen to the next episode. Thank you and see you soon.
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