First Anniversary & Future Activities In San Francisco
by Dixie Mahy, President San Francisco Vegetarian Society
After the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed the VEG DAY MONDAYS RESOLUTION on April 6, 2009, there was a lot of excitement and a flurry of blogs and newspaper articles.
Hope Bohanec from In Defense of Animals and I sent out e-mails to our organizations asking for volunteers to get started on signing up restaurants to keep the momentum going. We were hoping to get some action going with restaurants and schools. Although we had some wonderful members in our organizations offering to help, we did not have a plan of action for them. We thought they could just go to the various restaurants and schools, with the Resolution and some flyers and just ask them to participate. Unfortunately, that did not work out. What we really needed was an organizer to take charge of implementing the Resolution and coordinating the volunteers. Since I was overwhelmed running the San Francisco Vegetarian Society, organizing and attending its monthly activities & fundraising, editing its quarterly newsletters & mailings, and organizing its 10th annual WORLD VEG FESTIVAL, and Hope was busy with In Defense of Animals running their numerous projects on behalf of the animals, we were unable to put a lot of energy into implementing the Resolution. The momentum slowed to a halt.
As we started into January 2011, we both decided we needed to do something to stimulate the interest again. We almost had to start over with the Board of Supervisors since our sponsoring vegetarian supervisor, Sophie Maxwell, had been term limited out of office. We needed to reintroduce ourselves. Since I was working on a MEAT OUT LUNCH for March 20th that SFVS does every year with UUFETA, (Unitarian Universalists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), I decided to approach Supervisor Eric Mar who was not a vegetarian but was veg friendly and had previously sponsored a Certificate of Appreciation for SFVS. I submitted a Proclamation using FARM’s template but modified it to include reference to VEG DAY MONDAYS RESOLUTION.
