Show your veggie pride in first-ever parade next week

5/11/08
veggie pride parade
By Rolando Pujol

Show your veggie pride in first-ever parade next week

Photo credit: Urbanite

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.

“I like going through Greenwich Village because I respect it for its legacy with progressive ideas, and vegetarianism is a progressive idea,” said Pamela Rice, parade organizer and founder of the sponsoring VivaVeggie Society.

Rice, inspired by a similar event in Paris, has been organizing and planning for more than 10 months. “It is really going to be bigger than I thought. Mostly it is because of Facebook, MySpace and other online social networks rallying every vegan New Yorker to be there.”Already receiving angry emails, Rice said the event is supposed to be a fun and does not anticipate much protest.

“We will be chanting and some people do get huffy about it. That’s our right to go down the street and carry our signs,” said Rice.

Representatives from veggie-friendly restaurants and vegans dressed in fruit and vegetable costumes will also march to the park. Vegan friendly exhibitors like Wild Wood Organics and PeTA will provide free literature and food. And prizes will be given for best signs and costumes. Speakers will include Karen Davis, the founder of United Poultry Concerns, and Odette J. Wilkens, the executive director of the Equal Justice Alliance, a coalition of animal rights and social justice groups.

Rice says she hopes the event will allow vegetarians to come out of the shadows while dispelling misinformation about vegetarianism.

With the “go green” movement gaining prominence, Rice says, “We’ve lost our orientation to our food. There remains a conspicuous silence toward animal products that we need to examine.”

-- Kathleen Bulson

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Show your veggie pride in first-ever parade next week

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