She Built a Movement: Hear How This Incredible LA Woman is Fighting Food Insecurity!

Most people don’t know this: veganism is an intersectional social justice movement. But animal and human rights activist Gwenna Hunter is on a mission to let people know!

Gwenna is both a Black woman used to challenging systems of oppression and someone with personal experience with food insecurity. Combined with spiritual experiences connecting to animals, she was inspired to create the first plant-based food bank in Los Angeles, Vegans of LA.

VKind spokesperson Shabnam Islam interviewed her to learn more. Let’s dive in!

Gwenna’s background 

Although she didn’t realize it until she moved away at twenty years old, Hunter grew up in a food desert in Cleveland, Ohio. She most often ate from the convenience store and Pop Eye’s Chicken. No one in her circle talked about nutrition. 

However, she herself was curious about vegetarian foods. At age fourteen, she tried a veggie burger from the health foods store down the street. Alas, as an early version of a veggie burger in the 1980s, she remembers it being totally disgusting. But this curiosity about vegetarianism early in life created an openness to it down the line. 

Vegetarian to feel better

In 2008, a friend invited her to try the “Daniel’s Fast” together. With its religious roots, their purpose was to deepen their spirituality by avoiding animal products. To her surprise, Gwenna found that the extremely painful menstrual cycles and concurrent breakouts she suffered from disappeared. Motivated to keep feeling better, she remained a vegetarian for eight years. 

Connecting with Compassion

What happened in February 2016 created in her a deep empathy and compassion. While Gwenna reports that she has some healthy skepticism, she doesn’t let that be an obstacle to transformative experiences.

In what felt like a dream and waking state, she connected with a cow and felt as though she was her. She knew that cows experience love and felt incredulous about what we do to these creatures.

To the skeptics among us, this may sound woo-woo. But extensive research demonstrates objective measures showing that cows experience emotional and cognitive distress. Likewise, academic research has evidenced that cows have individual personalities, complex cognition, and friends. 

“Everybody is a crazy vegan when they start!”

Shabnam and Gwenna discuss how learning to communicate effectively as a vegan advocate is a journey. While many new vegans want to share slaughterhouse footage on social media, this isn’t always the best way to share the message. As Gwenna has learned, the most reliable route to inspire transformation is advocacy with love, compassion and kindness.

Personal experience with food insecurity

When Gwenna first moved to LA, she had difficulty getting a job and found herself living in poverty. One week, she only had five dollars to feed herself. Although she scraped by with foods from a ninety-nine cent store, that experience gave her a firsthand understanding of how being in a survival state impacts one’s hopes and goals. 

Gaining professional experience with vegan food justice

Eventually, she acquired a job with Vegan Outreach, where she worked for about five years. During that time, she gained experience advocating to students on HBCU campuses. She also began giving talks about veganism to different social justice organizations in exchange for meals and tabled at different events.

Then, during the pandemic, she began participating in a vegan mobile food bank that collaborated with social justice organizations like BLM, Black Women Farmers of LA, and the LGBT center. Simply by providing hot vegan meals and produce, people would come back saying that they were healthier, had more energy, and that their diabetes had improved. 

As she reflected on her personal and professional experience, she realized how important food banks are to remove stress and obstacles for people who face food insecurity. And, she noticed how ironic it was that LA – one of the biggest vegan cities in the U.S. – lacked a vegan food bank. 

Inspired by this idea but overwhelmed by the logistical and financial needs, she decided to simply trust that it would all work out.

When the pieces came together

One day, a friend told her that a black pastor from BLM was doing a program with students about vegan food. When she met up with him for lunch, she shared her idea. As luck would have it, he already had a food bank. “Instead of starting from scratch,” he said, “Why don’t you take over mine?”

How Gwenna’s life changed since creating Vegans of LA

Gwenna shared that these experiences of trusting that things would work out and connecting with animals on a spiritual level have helped form her as a human. 

Recognizing that she has been judgmental and shaming as a vegan in the past helps her remain more nonjudgmental today. She now recognizes that different forms of advocacy are effective for different audiences.

How she defines “success” today

As a result of her personal and professional trajectory, Gwenna now judges success not as an external measure, but an internal measure of how she feels about herself. When she looks at her work with creating Vegans of LA, she sees it not as a personal success but as providing people with what should be a human right. 

She recognizes that “we’re all on the same level as human beings.” Yet playing into roles of power and hierarchy and white supremacy keep both human and animal injustices alive. So, success to her means working towards peace and planetary unity. It also means taking care of herself, saying “no” to some things to avoid burnout. 

How intersectionality of social justice causes is at the forefront of her work

At the heart of her work with the food bank is the core conviction that food is a human right. Like other basic needs, she says, people shouldn’t have to work to have food, shelter and clothing. 

By sharing the vegan message as part of a broader social justice message, she is able to invite people into the movement. 

Communication strategies for advocacy: Connect animal rights to human rights

Over the years, she has learned that while some people are quite disconnected, others just haven’t heard the right words. With experience, she has honed the ability to tailor her message to her audience. 

In particular, she has learned to explain animal rights by relating it to human rights. This is especially important to connect with people who feel like they are fighting for their own rights. 

What she does is to ask people if they have ever experienced suffering and invite them to consider what humans do to animals with fresh eyes. 

“It’s so weird, we eat their legs, butts, arms, necks, and breasts and we call it healthy…then go inside their bodies and eat their ribs… then we’re not done, we take the skin off their bodies and we wear them.” When people inevitably have a look of disgust on their faces, she tells them, “It almost sounds like a blood cult; that’s what I would think if I came to this planet for the first time!”

She points out that we use words like “bacon” to distance ourselves. But, really what we’re eating are babies, mothers, fathers, and siblings. She highlights what we have in common with animals – that they, too, carry babies in their bellies and give birth through their vaginas. Simply stating the facts in this way often helps people to see the reality in a new light. 

Given that Black and brown communities are already questioning the status quo with regard to human rights, she tells them, “Don’t stop there! Think about the whole system of food and animals.”

Human rights and animal rights 

In her own journey to veganism, she watched the viral YouTube video “Dairy is Scary.” After her experience feeling connected to the cow in her dream, she saw the cows in the videos as females rather than animals. In doing so, she recognized that what they were experiencing was rape, slavery, depression, and their bodies being sold and used. She realized that the blueprint of human slavery and animal slavery is one and the same. 

So, the parallels between human and animal rights movements help many people connect the dots. But beyond these similarities, many people are unaware that animal agriculture directly causes human rights abuses today. 

Much evidence demonstrates widespread violations of workers’ rights in the egg, dairy, meat, and fish and shrimp industries. Two even lesser known impacts on human rights are that the animal agriculture industry greatly contributes to world hunger and environmental racism.

Ask not, “What’s really in a Beyond Burger?” but “What’s really in a hamburger?”

Shabnam points out that the vegan movement is growing tremendously among the Black community. Most people that Gwenna serves are grateful and accepting. However, others are skeptical of the ingredients. 

She points out to people that there’s no list of ingredients on meat. It doesn’t reveal all the antibiotics and drugs that are in there. And, she’ll say, if you watch a video of how hot dogs are made, you might question that as well.

While Gwenna has sharpened her communication skills with vegan advocacy, she jokes, “The crazy vegan is still in there! She’s just a little zen right now.”

Gwenna’s recommendations to those are hesitant to try veganism

For those who aren’t sure about trying a plant-based diet, Gwenna recommends easing into it. “Why not just try one meal without animals?” she advises. “Quit looking at vegetables as sides. Try quitting one animal at a time… If you make mistakes, be gentle with yourself.” She recommends experimenting, having fun and checking YouTube for instructions on how to veganize anything.

With Gwenna’s personal and professional experience, insights and history of successful work, it’s no wonder people see her as a true changemaker. 

Visit the Vegans of LA website to learn more.