VegWorcester Blog

Two years ago Pamela Rice asked why haven’t vegetarians and vegans jumped on the pride parade  bandwagon and organized veggie pride parade and walks? Afterall, they’ve been doing it for seven years in Paris. So why not here in the USA?

Well, this Sunday Pamela’s wish will come true in New York City. They are having the first ever Veggie Pride Parade in New York City (and the US).

From SuperVegan:

The parade procession will begin at 12 Noon in the Old Meat District of Greenwich Village. The parade will then culminate in Washington Square Park, where a festival of rock music, speakers, and exhibitors will take place. The press release doesn’t mention anything about hook-ups, but if this is anything like Gay Pride, you can expect ample opportunity to spice up your love life.

For updates, check the Veggie Pride Parade Blog.

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Yeah, I know. I’m beating this to death. I know I already asked you to request soymilk at Worcester Dunkin Donuts, but this time you can get some free ice coffee for doing it.

All day today Dunkin Donuts is giving away free iced coffees at all of their locations. What better time to ask for soymilk? DC-based animal rights group, Compassion Over Killing, is taking this give-away as an opportunity for some veg advocacy. They’re asking people across the country to stop by their local Dunkin Donuts, pick up a free iced coffee and remember to ask their local store to get with the times and offer soymilk. There’s even a facebook group about it.

You’re living under a rock if you didn’t already know that there over a dozen Dunkin Donuts in Worcester. If you’re a serious coffee addict you could probably even hit up a couple of locations.

Get ‘er done!

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First New York City had a Dunkin Donuts offering soymilk, then 2 DC area Dunkin Donuts added it as an option too. Now let’s put Worcester on the map and get some of our local DD’s to start stocking the good stuff.

We have somewhere around 15 Dunkin Donuts stores in Worcester and a bunch more in the surrounding towns and cities. We can definitely get a few to start offering soymilk. Hopefully Dunkin Donuts will see how much demand there is for soymilk and add it to all of theie 5,500 stores.

So how about this, look at the list below and pick a location that’s close to where you live. Or if there isn’t one close to you, just pick any one. Give them a call or stop by the store and ask to talk to the manager. Ask him or her if they would start offering soymilk. Make sure you mention that there are other Dunkin Donuts that already offer soymilk. It’s that simple. Whaddya say?

Here are 15 Dunkin Donuts in Worcester:

100 Institute Rd Worcester, MA 01609
508-831-5693
340 Grove St Worcester, MA 01605
508-363-4901
67 W. Boylston St Worcester, MA 01606
508-854-8011
211 Chandler St Worcester, MA 01609
508-798-8354
421-427 Main St Worcester, MA 01608
508-791-5053
104 Belmont St Worcester, MA 01605
508-756-3274
123 Summer St Worcester, MA 01608
508-797-1329
845 Main St Worcester, MA 01610
617-753-9555
648 Chandler St Worcester, MA 01602
508-767-0341
185 Madison St Worcester, MA 01610
508-757-3991
295 Shrewsbury St Worcester, MA 01604
508-757-6168
263 Grafton St Worcester, MA 01604
508-754-0541
610 Park Ave Worcester, MA 01605
508-753-9696
107 Ward St Worcester, MA 01610
508-752-3350
490 Lincoln St Worcester, MA 01605
508-852-0953

Let me know how it goes!

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The fine folks at Compassion Over Killing in Washington DC have successfully convinced 2 DC-area Dunkin Donuts to offer soymilk. Hooray!

Dunkin Donuts is the world’s largest coffee and baked good chain. Just imagine if they were to offer soymilk at each of their 5,500 stores. Actually, that’s exactly what Compassion Over Killing is trying to get DD to do. They’re calling on people across the country to meet with Dunkin Donuts store managers in their area to request soymilk at all of the 5,500 locations.

We definitely need to get some Worcester DD’s to sell soymilk. We have over a dozen in our little city.

Want to help get soymilk at a local Dunkin Donuts? Here are some tips from the COK feature:

• Contact your local Dunkin’ Donuts store. Click here for store locations and phone numbers. Or, better yet, stop in to your local Dunkin’ Donuts and ask to speak to the manager about adding soy milk. Be sure to let him or her know that there are other Dunkin’ Donuts stores already making this option available to customers.
• Email Dunkin Donuts’ Consumer Care Office and thank them for adding soy milk to two DC-area locations, and ask them to make soy milk available in all locations, like most national coffee chains already do.
• Call Dunkin’ Donuts’ Consumer Care hotline at 1-800-859-5339.
• Write to Dunkin’ Donuts. Express your concerns in a letter and send it to:
  Dunkin’ Donuts Consumer Care
  130 Royall Street
  Canton, MA 02021

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VegWorcester needs a poster. And you need a new t-shirt. Let’s help each other out.

Design a poster promoting VegWorcester.com and if you submit the sweetest design, you’ll get a free “Give Peas a Chance” Baseball Tee. Not to mention you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that your creative work will be hung up at college campuses and businesses all around Worcester.

So here are the rules:

All submissions must….

• …include “VegWorcester.com” somewhere in the design.
• …be gray scale (eg no colors besides black, white and all the gray in between).
• …be letter sized or smaller.
• …be emailed to contest@vegworcester.com by 11:59pm on April 30, 2008.
• PDF is preferred, but other formats will be accepted.
• By submitting your poster, you’re saying it’s cool for us to publish it and use it to promote VegWorcester. Duh.

So do it up! Email your entry to: contest@vegworcester.com.

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Alright, this is super exciting. Here is the Spring 2008 Guide to Vegetarian Dining in Worcester (pdf). It’s a one-page guide to some of the best veg-friendly restaurants in the Worcester area.

By no means does this list cover every single place to get quality veg food in Worcester. In fact, you can get good veg food at nearly every restaurant in Worcester (even Burger King has a veggie burger). This mini-guide lists local places that are either all-vegetarian or who have a very good vegetarian selection. Leave a comment if you think I left out a really good one.

So print it out. And hang this baby on your fridge!

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If you get a chance, pick up a copy of the current issue of Worcester’s InCity times. They published Mike’s challenge to Worcester’s entire vegetarian community in this week’s edition.

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Mike just posted a challenge to all the vegetarians in Worcester: Hand out at least one leaflet about factory-farming to a student before the end of the spring semester. I’m in. Are you in?

Just last fall semester, Mike Benedetti, Duck Osborne and I gave out a kilo-leaflet (that’s 1,000 leaflets) at 5 of the colleges in Worcester. And it was a buckets of fun. We got tons of good conversations and positive responses, even though the subject matter can be a little depressing. We gave out leaflets from Vegan Outreach, we used the “Why Vegan?” (download the pdf) and the “Even if you like meat” (download the pdf) pamphlets.

Anyway, here’s Mike’s challenge [via WorcesterActivist]:

Worcester Vegan Challenge 

by Mike Benedetti, Eileen Botti, Rachel Hamilton, Artur Janc, Cody Rank, Jaclyn Marie Kateri Snow Sargent, Allison Vasallo, and Drew Wilson

We challenge every self-proclaimed vegetarian and vegan in the city to hand out one (1) booklet about factory farming to a college student this semester.

Last semester, along with our friends, we handed out more than 1,000 booklets about the cruelties of modern animal agriculture to local students. It was time well-spent, both because of the many positive comments we received and because if only 1% of those students make a change in diet, thousands of animals will be spared needless suffering.

On one of our last days leafleting in 2007, a local vegan came to join us when we had only a single booklet left. We were surprised at what a positive experience it was to get a new person involved even in such a small way.

We’d like to see this positivity repeated hundreds of times in Spring 2008. If you’d like to leaflet with “Team Worcester,” or just pick up a free Vegan Outreach booklet to hand out on your own, please contact us: info@vegworcester.com or 305-393-3250.

We wish you a happy and cruelty-free Spring!

Post a comment below if you join in!

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The Colombian–a paper in Washington state–published an interesting article about vegetarian potlucks: Potlucks supply moral support for local vegetarians.

There are vegan potlucks in Worcester pretty regularly. (In fact, there was one today that I missed!) But for people who aren’t yet confident cooks, there’s  also a monthly vegan meet-up that brings new vegetarians, veg veterans and just the veg-curious together to visit local veg-friendly restaurants. The next meet-up is scheduled for Sunday, April 6 at 1:00 PM at the Moe’s on 3 Stafford Street. Don’t be shy, check it out!

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