Most of the interviews at Weird! Why Aren’t You Vegan? are with people who are unique and different (read: not vegan). This has the normal people (read: vegans) feeling a little left out. So, to appease the masses, we now – once a month – feature a regular old, nothin’ special, run-of-the-mill vegan. This month, we meet Leah Patriarco.
I met Leah at a vegan meetup in Saint Louis. Yawn. We ate vegan food and talked about being vegan. Totally ordinary. It was at an Ethiopian restaurant called Meskerem. I’m dying from boredom… Okay, nope. I can’t even pretend that Ethiopian food is anything but amazing and exciting and delicious. Go get some and bring it back to your house. I’ll wait.
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Okay, back to the introduction. Through no fault of her own, Leah sometimes makes people uncomfortable. I’ve felt it. Maybe you’ve felt it. She’s perfectly friendly and, aside from having a congenital condition known as “Daria Face,” Leah is really approachable and easy to talk to. The problem some people seem to have – myself included at times – is that Leah walks the talk. She cares about the world’s issues, she talks about them, and (here’s where we slackers start feeling judged) she does something about them. She is vegan. She rides her bike most places. She speaks up (and writes up) about race issues. She gives talks about street harassment. She attends anti-war and anti-violence protests. She hosts potlucks and makes weirdo non-vegans feel welcome. The list goes on. Leah is an incredibly inspiring and active person, and the only reason you (we) ever feel judged is because by being so active, she serves as a metaphorical mirror to show us all the things we aren’t doing for the world. To summarize, shame on you for not being Leah. But seriously, the vegan thing is totally uninteresting. Like, who isn’t vegan these days?
Meet Leah Patriarco.
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