I grew up hearing and reading the phrase “Never Again”, meaning that we can never again allow the rise of fascists to commit another Holocaust. According to Wikipedia, “In the context of genocide, the slogan was [first] used by liberated prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp [in April 1945] to express anti-fascist sentiment.” I learned my lesson well and I am resolutely anti-fascist.

I was pleased to read that “President Joe Biden announced a new plan [in May 2023] to fight hate, bias, and violence against Jewish people and combat an alarming rise in antisemitism”. In contrast, I was displeased that Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s response to this plan of fighting antisemitism was “When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives.” If so-called conservatives are conserving antisemitism and other forms of bigotry, then yes, we will go after them.

While we remember past atrocities, we must also remember the frighteningly similar statements and actions of the current Republican Party:

REMEMBER that Rep. Boebert is not the first to clump together conservatives with racists and antisemites. Social media algorithms, for example, have a hard time blocking white supremacist and antisemitic posts without also blocking so many Republican accounts. The underlying connections are inescapable.

REMEMBER that the Republican Party opposed investigating and expelling nazis and other white supremacists from the US military. What valid reason would there be to retain them?

REMEMBER that Trump in 2016 tweeted an image using a Star of David to symbolize Hillary Clinton’s “corruption”.

REMEMBER that Trump hosted a private meal for a Holocaust-denying white nationalist (Nick Fuentes, who said “I don’t see Jews as Europeans and I don’t see them as part of Western civilization, particularly because they are not Christians” and that Jews should leave the US or be converted) and a rapper who has spewed antisemitic conspiracies (Kanye West, who said to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones “I like Hitler” and “I also love nazis.” Trump supporter Alex Jones, in turn, periodically references the “Jewish mafia”.).

REMEMBER that it was right-wing racists who attacked synagogues in Pennsylvania and California, shooting and killing Jews in those temples. The shooting at the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was the deadliest attack against Jews in American history, in which 11 people were killed and several others were injured. Cecilia Wang, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the deadly assault was inspired by elements of Trump’s rhetoric.

REMEMBER that a featured speaker at a major gathering of US Republicans in Budapest, it was a popular Hungarian TV talk show host (Zsolt Bayer) who called Jews “stinking excrement” and used racial slurs against Blacks who was a featured speaker at a major gathering of US Republicans in Budapest. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who glorifies nazi collaborators yet was praised and endorsed by Trump, was the keynote speaker on the first day of the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) Hungary conference, which the US Holocaust Memorial Museum protested. Other racists and antisemites were also speakers.

REMEMBER that it is people on Fox Noise who amplify the neo-nazi so-called “great replacement theory”, fearing Jews and other minorities will “replace” White Christian men. As they admitted to lying about their views in court, we don’t know whether they actually believe this or not, but they are saying and repeating this old fearmongering drivel, nevertheless.

REMEMBER that Republicans in a “Unite the Right” rally marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 with nazi flags, nazi salutes, and tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us!” Trump later said some of them were “very fine people”, despite how deplorable they are. One Trump supporter, who was said to be “deeply into Adolf Hitler and white supremacy”, purposely drove into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and seriously injuring many others.

REMEMBER that in 2022, all Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against condemning the racist mass shooting in Buffalo, the great replacement theory, and a House commitment to combat hatred and racial injustice. All Democrats voted in favor.

REMEMBER it is Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz who agreed with racist Tucker Carlson about his repugnant views and also positively mentioned the “great replacement theory”. Not nearly his first offense.

REMEMBER it is Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar who promoted an antisemitic website that denies the Holocaust, praises Adolf Hitler as “a man of valor”, and is pro-Kremlin. Not nearly his first offense.

REMEMBER it is Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who has a history of racist, islamophobic, and antisemitic remarks, including her infamous “space laser” post. Not nearly her first offense. MTG previously shared a video claiming “an unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists, and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.” She was promoted by her Republican colleagues, not censured, for her vile comments and actions.

REMEMBER that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) wrote that Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King “had relationships with Austria’s far-right Freedom party, which has stumbled through repeated neo-nazi scandals; that King had deployed an antisemitic smear about George Soros, the Jewish-Hungarian philanthropist [who survived the Holocaust]; and that King had endorsed foreign politicians linked to antisemitic and neo-nazi groups.” Not nearly his first offense.

REMEMBER that Trump stated that Jewish Americans in real estate were “brutal killers” and “not nice people”. Trump also retweeted antisemitic memes from fascist organizations. Not nearly his first offense.

REMEMBER that some Trump supporters at the January 6 insurrection were wearing shirts announcing “Camp Auschwitz” and “6mwe” (6 million wasn’t enough, grotesquely referring to the estimated number of Jews killed by nazis in the Holocaust). “Prosecutors have found that Trump’s January 6 rally”, according to Jonathan Chait’s “The GOP’s Surrender to the Antisemites”, “attracted a significant number of people who share Hitler quotes, hold membership in neo-nazi organizations, have a fixation with “white genocide,” and the like.” Both Trump and DeSantis are saying that they might pardon them if they become president.

REMEMBER that the KKK, neo-nazi, and white supremacist groups have endorsed Trump for president, while other neo-nazi groups have endorsed DeSantis for president. DeSantis supporters outside Disney World in June 2023 were waiving nazi flags and had a Make America Florida banner, while also featuring racist and homophobic slurs. Even if Trump and DeSantis aren’t nazis themselves, the nazis want them as leaders, which should tell us something.

REMEMBER that it is Republicans who support authoritarian Trump and DeSantis who are carrying Confederate and nazi flags, banning books, suppressing history, denying rights to the LGBT community, and outlawing abortion.

REMEMBER that many Republican politicians use Gab as a social media platform, including the Wyoming Republican Party, describing it “an awesome platform”. Gab founder and CEO Andrew Torba stated that “We don’t want people who are Jewish.” Torba is very open about wanting the US to be a White Christian nation with a White Christian economy.

REMEMBER that it is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that documented over 100 right-wing candidates running for office as Republicans in 2022, espousing a range of extremist ideology, including “support for QAnon; ties to anti-government extremists like the militia movement and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association; white supremacy; and antisemitism.” The ADL suggests that even though many would not win their elections, they are normalizing hateful ideologies.

REMEMBER that Russell Walker overwhelmingly won his North Carolina Republican primary election (65%), even though he said “What is wrong with being a white supremacist? God is a racist and a white supremacist” and “Jews are not Semitic they are Satanic as they all descend from Satan.”

REMEMBER that Cynthia Hughes, the founder of the Patriot Freedom project, told the crowd at Trump’s “Save America” rally in Pennsylvania about her nephew Tim Hale-Cusanelli, who was convicted for participating in the January 6 insurrection. Hughes neglected to mention that the Navy investigated Hale-Cusanelli and he is reported to have said a slew of hateful things, including that Jews “are ruining everything and did not belong here” and that “Hitler should have finished the job”.

REMEMBER that it was Republicans in a few states that banned versions of the Diary of Anne Frank and Maus, important books about the Holocaust. Maus was also banned in Russia and burned in Poland, just as so many Jews were.

We must fight fascism wherever and whenever it rears its ugliness. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a large majority of Jews consistently vote Democratic, not Republican. Three-quarters (74%) of Jews voted for Democrats in the 2022 Midterm Elections because Jews know that the Republican Party is socially unjust, too corrupt, increasingly racist and antisemitic, and could be an existential threat to religious, racial, and sexual minorities, to American democracy, and to our environment. 2022 is consistent with other modern US elections in which Jews voted between 68% – 78% for Democrats.

Likewise with other religious, racial, and sexual minorities, who disproportionately reject the Republican Party. Jews also disproportionately donate to and participate in many social justice organizations and campaigns.

According to Jonathan Chait, the GOP “has become a party in which antisemitism has gained a foothold. No recent development in American life has done more to throw American Jews’ safety and civic equality into doubt.”

The Republican Party is an existential threat to Jews and other minorities, including me and my family. Never forget and never again. They must be stopped. NEVER AGAIN IS NOW!

Bloomberg News reports “The pandemic is poised to usher in the biggest retreat for global meat eating in decades.”

Eating meat is associated with heart disease and heart attacks — the #1 cause of death in America and the world. Likewise with stroke, various cancers, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, kidney diseases, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis, arthritis, endometriosis, impotence, gout, and other very serious ailments.

About two-thirds of diseases in the U.S. are diet-related — the U.S. Surgeon General admitted — and vegetarians and vegans are much less afflicted, living 6–10 years longer on average, according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Plant-based nutrition has proven to be safe and even superior, not deficient, compared to animal-based diets. Communities with the highest life expectancies around the world, labeled Blue Zones, are largely plant-based.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, “1.4 million Americans are disabled, then killed prematurely each year by heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with consumption of animal products.”

Surgeries, stents, drugs, and exercise sometimes treat and control heart disease, but only a plant-based diet has been able to reverse this leading cause of death. Eating plant-based meals isn’t nearly as radical as heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and dying prematurely.

“In America today”, Dr. Joel Fuhrman advises, “about half of all Americans die of heart attacks and strokes. And about 30% of adults die of cancer as well… The diet to be healthy has to be mostly… fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds.”

The American Institute for Cancer Research declares that a plant-based diet can lower risk for many cancers. Maria Petzel, senior clinical dietitian at MD Anderson Cancer Center, emphasizes that the evidence that plant-based diets reduce one’s cancer risk is “overwhelming”.

In the comprehensive China Study by Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas Campbell, MD, “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease… People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease.” This vital conclusion should not be ignored.

The pandemics of the last century — including the flu outbreaks of 1918, 1957, and 1968, each of which killed millions of people — originated in raising animals for meat. COVID-19 also likely originated in animals and the human appetite for them, as did SARS, ebola, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.

Whenever animals are crammed together, inevitably in cruel conditions, or we encroach on their habitat, we risk contagion. The prestigious Lancet reports “all new infectious diseases of human beings to emerge in the past [generation] have had an animal source.”

 “If there were no poultry industry”, Neal Barnard, M.D. concludes, “there would be no epidemics of bird flu.” If there were no cattle industry, there would be no E. coli outbreaks, Christina Fisanick adds, or mad cow disease. And if there were no hog industry, there would be no swine flu. There would also be much less deforestation, species extinction, and climate change. We kill animals and the animals we eat end up killing us.

“At the individual level”, Roni Neff of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, implores, “it seems pretty clear that the No. 1 thing that can be done is to eat less meat and dairy.” It’s really that simple.

The ADA states that “well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian meals are appropriate for all stages of the lifecycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence… Vegetarians and vegans have been reported to have lower body mass indices than non-vegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer.”

Plant-based eating is a form of preventive medicine, substantially reducing the incidence of doctor visits and drugs, excessive medical costs, loss of productivity, and other issues. Plant-based eating is not only better for your personal health, it is also better for public, animal, worker, and environmental health, making plant-based eating also planet-based eating.

The meat, dairy, and egg industries are unhealthy, unethical, unsustainable, unjust, unhappy, unsafe, and unwise. Overall, vegetarians and vegans live longer, healthier, happier lives. Eating plant-based has me feeling physically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually better. Find out what it will do for you!

New Zealand declared a climate emergency — joining dozens of other jurisdictions — with its popular Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern calling climate change “one of the greatest challenges of our time”, adding that we must “act with urgency”. We need to do so, as well.

Our rapid industrialization of production, power generation, agriculture, and livestock, especially since the Industrial Revolution, are associated with the overproduction of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — the three major greenhouse gases. These gases in our atmosphere trap more heat from the sun, raising average temperatures. The oceans are absorbing more carbon dioxide, thereby acidifying them. This is affecting all countries and all species, including us, creating a climate emergency.

Although it took hundreds of millions of years to form dirty and dangerous fossil fuels, we are burning through them. Despite our knowledge of safe and clean alternatives — especially solar, wind, hydro, wave, tidal, geothermal, hydrogen, algae — we continue to over-rely on fossil fuels, notably oil, coal, and gas. That makes us fossil fools.

Climatologists assert that 350 parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric CO2 is a threshold level of carbon dioxide, which was below 285 ppm for thousands of years, yet it surpassed 418 ppm on June 1, 2020, the highest level in three million years.

That same month, the Arctic soared to over 100º Fahrenheit (38ºC) for the first time in recorded history. Houston has been ravaged by five “500-year storms” in the last five years. In 2020, wildfires ravaged the western US, massive storms hit the Koreas, the Philippines, and the Gulf Coast. None of this is normal, but it might be our “new abnormal”.

A rainforest takes thousands of years to develop its rich biodiversity, yet we are destroying these life-giving forests with alarming rapidity, greed, and arrogance. Deforestation means that the forests can no longer absorb carbon dioxide, emit oxygen, filter water, provide homes for people, fauna, and flora, produce food and medicine, be available for exploration or recreation, or display their beauty. Over 80% of the burned Amazon Rainforest is later used for grazing cattle.

Although we can thrive on plant-based diets, we have substantially increased the amount of meat and dairy we consume and therefore the number of animals we cruelly herd, imprison, torture, and slaughter. The production of meat is extraordinarily wasteful in terms of energy, water, chemicals, land, calories, and lives, while emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ammonia, and other ecologically-disruptive gases. We can quickly and easily reduce our carbon hoofprint and methane mouthprint by eschewing, not chewing, animals, which would help reverse our climate crisis.

These and other phenomena are creating our experience with climate change, which every reputable scientific, environmental, and educational institution in the world agrees is real, serious, worsening, and anthropogenic (human-caused despite whatever natural variations may occur). New studies reveal that climate change is even affecting Earth’s magnetic poles and tipping Earth off its axis.

Crises brought about by climate change, or global warming — higher temperatures overall though lower in some regions, melting icecaps, shrinking glaciers, shifting weather patterns, increasing drought, increasing severity of storms, rising sea levels, changes in rainfall, shrinking freshwater supplies, increased ocean acidity, more and bigger wildfires, the spread of diseases, increased crop failures, altered coastlines, submerged islands, species extinctions, climate refugees — cause social disruption in all countries and will increasingly do so. And this is most true for the most vulnerable.

The environmental costs are devastating. The economic costs are enormous. Political costs are uncertain and shifting. Social costs are incalculable and inevitable. Climate scientist Michael Mann reminds us that “The solution is already here. We just need to deploy it rapidly and at a massive scale. It all comes down to political will and economic incentives.”

The sooner we act, the lower the procrastination penalty, which will get increasingly expensive in terms of money, property, habitats, and lives. How can we take effective action? We can conserve precious resources, consume less crap, recycle and compost more waste, reduce or eliminate meat and dairy, switch from fossil fuels to renewable energies, and support politicians who respect science.

It is already tragically too late for some species, some people, some cities, and some islands. Now is the time for bold action on all levels, from the personal to the planetary. Let’s act decisively before it’s too late for the rest of us.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who described racism as “maximum hate for minimum reason” with the “maximum of cruelty for a minimum of thinking”, was a friend of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and they marched together for civil rights. 

Inspired by Rev. King and Rabbi Heschel, we oppose all forms of racial discrimination and seek to reverse racism. We are aware that in the four centuries of Blacks in America, the forms of racism have changed, but the reality of racism has remained constant.

Within the universe of institutionalized racism and violence, there is another, often-neglected issue that also causes disproportionate harm to Black people.

Mahatma Gandhi once said “The most violent weapon on Earth is the table fork.” Charles Patterson, PhD, author of Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, provides some historical context: “The domestication/enslavement of animals was the model and inspiration for human slavery… the breeding of domesticated animals led to eugenic measures as compulsory sterilization, euthanasia killings, and genocide, and… the industrialized slaughter of cattle, pigs, sheep, and other animals paved the way, at least indirectly, for the Final Solution.” Indeed, Coretta Scott King stated that veganism was “the next logical extension of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy of non-violence”.

African Americans suffer far more from diet-related diseases than non-Black Americans and Black Africans. African Americans are far more likely to suffer and die from heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and other diet-related diseases than Whites. 

Diabetes is one of the most problematic and devastating of the common chronic diseases in western countries and in Black communities. Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes are many times more prevalent in Blacks living in western nations relative to those living in west African countries eating a more traditional low-fat, non-dairy, plant-based diet. Research shows that once an African American develops diabetes, they are over 240 times more likely to suffer a limb amputation and over 100 times more likely to go blind from retinal damage or end up on hemodialysis from renal failure. The African American community has the highest rates of renal insufficiency in the United States. Research has consistently shown that both the risk for, and severity of, type 2 diabetes can be markedly lessened, or even reversed, by adopting a plant-based diet.

According to Dr. Greger’s strictly non-commercial, non-profit, science-based, public service NutritionFacts.org, colon cancer is over 50 times lower among native African populations than among African Americans. For African Americans in their 50s, over half have diverticulosis, compared to less than 1% among Africans eating traditional plant-based diets. African Americans have a five times greater risk of dementia than Africans in Nigeria. 

John Lewis, the filmmaker behind They’re Trying To Kill Us, realized that “We think that a lot of ailments and diseases are in our genes, but in reality a lot of the problems that we have are related directly to food.” Lewis went vegan after his mother was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2006. He says “Talking to the doctors and understanding that her colon cancer was related directly to too much animal protein, coupled with fried fatty foods, et cetera, I thought to myself, not only can I help my mother and my family, but I believe we all deserve a right to live a better way.”

Heart disease, stroke, various cancers, diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimer disease rates among Africans increase substantially when they move to the United States and adopt an animal-based American diet. Further, “In a study of 50,000 African American women, women who ate more vegetables had significantly lower risk of the type of breast cancer hardest to treat.” The Standard American Diet is SAD, but it doesn’t have to be.

Historically, oppressors have intentionally and consistently used limited access to healthy foods as a means of creating ill-health in communities of color to keep their members sick, docile, preoccupied with their diseases, and thus, more easily controlled. Any meaningful discussion of the value and worth of “Black Lives” has to include improving “Black Health.”

Although it is often experienced by African Americans, it is not widely known that about 75 percent of African Americans are lactose intolerant, according to The National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse. In view of this, it is shameful that the government recommends dairy consumption for all people and that the dairy industry used African Americans in their “milk mustache” campaign ads to promote its inappropriate product. 

The promotion of dairy to Blacks and other people of color, who are mostly lactose intolerant, and the requirement that milk be given to all children participating in the School Lunch Program (which is utilized by many students of color) is another form of institutional racism leading to and creating discomfort and disease. In addition, the provision of low-quality processed commodity foods and agribusiness warehouse products like surplus cheese to people of color through food support programs, such as WIC and others, also promotes and fosters the development of chronic disease.

Studies indicate that much of the reason for the very high disease rates for Black Americans is their “Southern” diet, what came to be known as soul food, with its deep-fried foods, lard, rich desserts, and other tasty but nutritionally-unhealthy foods, including processed meats, eggs, cheesy casseroles, and other high-fat dairy, sugary treats, as well as fasts foods and other processed junk foods. Of course, unhealthy diets are unfortunately widespread and not unique to African Americans.

It is worth noting that the “Southern” diet for Blacks was a consequence of slavery. As slaves, African Americans were given the refuse from their White owners, including ham hocks, chitterlings, lard, chicken necks, and other less desirable, less healthy scraps. And to kill or disguise what was in the food, it was typically deep fried. As with much else in a white supremacist society, these things were imposed on Blacks and then passed down generationally.

Correspondingly, there is too often a lack of sufficient fruits and vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and other foods that are high in fiber, complex carbohydrates, and phytonutrients for optimum health. The fat, sugar, and salt that make Southern food so tempting raises blood pressure to killer levels, making it deadly for African Americans. Some good news is that certain traditional southern foods, such as black-eyed peas, corn, yams, okra, and collard greens, are already very healthy.

Limited and unhealthy food choices are compounded by rampant poverty in the African American community, largely due to the ongoing history of racism, racial segregation, and economic inequality, resulting in food deserts and the inaccessibility of healthier foods at reasonable prices.

Dr. Terry Mason, former Commissioner of Health for Chicago, is featured in the powerful documentary Forks Over Knives. As an African American himself, he is keenly aware of the issues and knows how race intersects with class in America. Dr. Mason outlines that, in poor neighborhoods of color, “the diets are calorie-rich and nutrient-poor. This is the real problem. And, unfortunately, poor people are poor in everything. They’re poor in health, they’re poor in food choices, they’re poor in almost every aspect that you could think of.” That “poverty” includes a lack of potentially life-saving health education and information on how to modify traditional diets to promote better health.

It is another unfortunate aspect of the systemic, society-wide classism and racism in American culture that fast food outlets are deliberately targeted to poor communities of color. Moreover, these unhealthy products are subsidized by taxpayer dollars to make these disease-promoting items artificially cheap and easily accessible, especially for those in a lower socio-economic status. 

Speaking of fast foods and junk foods, Dr. Mason says it plain: “These things are drugs. They have other deleterious side effects, not the least of which is adding a lot of empty calories,” which leads to ill-health. Dr. Mason’s recommendation? “If it walked, hopped, swam, crawled, slithered, had eyes, a mom and a dad, don’t eat it!”

The fact that it is poor diets behind the high disease rates of African Americans actually illuminates an avenue of hope, because diets can be changed and health can improve fairly quickly. Shifting toward nutritious, delicious, colorful, plant-based meals would sharply reduce the disproportionate levels of disease and death rates among Blacks. 

In fact, Dr. Milton Mills, an African American physician, who is featured in What the Health?, another powerful documentary, has argued that Blacks and others should actually return to our early diets, when all humans were in Africa, concluding that we as humans are not designed to eat meat, even if we are capable of doing so. Dr. Mills shows through “comparative anatomy” that we as humans are very similar to plant-eating animals and quite different from meat-eating animals in a variety of physiological ways from our jaws and claws to our stomachs and intestines.

Fortunately, healthier, plant-based versions of soul food favorites are possible. Various herbs and spices can be used instead of salt for seasoning. People can reduce the amount of meat in dishes and add more vegetables. Plant-based meats can replace high-fat, high-cholesterol meat dishes. If the changes fit into a person’s lifestyle, they can be fun, satisfying, healthy, and sustainable. As an example, Chef Tamearra Dyson opened Souley Vegan in Oakland, serving plant-based Louisiana Creole delicacies since 2009. 

Partly due to Dr. Alvenia Fulton’s and Dick Gregory’s early efforts promoting vegetarianism in the Black community in the 1960s, as well as advocates like Dr. Mason, Dr. Mills, Dr. Ruby Thomas, Chef Babette, Tracye McQuirter, Tabitha Brown, Rachel Ama, A. Breeze Harper,  Angela Davis, Sen. Cory Booker, and many others, “African Americans are more likely to go vegan, reduce meat consumption, and follow a flexitarian diet for health and the environment than white people,” according to Liam Pritchett for LiveKindly. 

African Americans have great role models for shifting toward vegan diets and it is essential that more Black people join them because African Americans have the most to gain from the health benefits of plant-based foods, since they experience the highest rates of chronic yet preventable, diet-related, life-threatening diseases in the country. And for Joe “Monk” Coleman of Plant Powered Brothaz, veganism “is an expression of love for yourself.”

Studies show that eating a healthy, plant-based diet, along with moderate exercise, not smoking, and not being obese can cut one’s risk of disability and death from chronic diseases by up to 90%! And of these, the most beneficial behavior is eating a plant-based diet. Medicare for All would also be an important component of good health and would be a huge benefit for the disproportionately-uninsured Black community, as well as the rest of the country.

In addition to health, plant-based diets are also better for animals, better for public health and preventing future pandemics, better for spiritual health, and better for the environment and fighting climate change. The founder of Vegans for Black Lives Matter, Gwenna Hunter, reminds us that “Every animal comes to this planet conscious and ready t receive and give love. Every animal is a gift to humanity not as food but as loving souls who are deserving of dwelling here equally with us and not for us.” 

Alice Walker put it well many years ago: “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites, or women created for men.”

At the 2012 Empowering Women of Color Conference, Angela Davis stated that we all must challenge “the whole capitalist industrial form of food production.” Dr. Davis mentioned that “Most people don’t think about the horrendous suffering that those animals must endure simply to become food products to be consumed by human beings.” Vegan food is truly good for the soul.

Ultimately, we must all realize that in addition to Black “lives” that Black “health” matters! Because without health, the quality, substance, and effectiveness of Black lives will be severely diminished, shortened, and of limited potential. 

Our fervent hope is for our Black brothers and sisters — and everyone else — to have long, healthy, peaceful lives. Black lives matter, therefore Black health matters.

 For further information, get the free, online African American Vegan Starter Guide. It features 40 pages of inspiration and information from African American vegan experts on how to transition to a plant-based diet, along with many delicious vegan recipes from renowned Black vegan chefs. Also, visit Black Vegans Today, Black Vegans Rock, and follow amazing human beings such as Gabrielle Reyes and Genesis Butler. And see the film They’re Trying To Kill Us.

But it was cold, confusing, and scary, so I cried. And I screamed! Not to worry, the full Moon reassuringly told me. Even though I appear blocked this evening, the Moon comforted, I will always be here for you and I will stay with you wherever you go in this world, no matter what. Love cannot be eclipsed, the Moon gently counseled.

The Moon had been taught by the Sun for long enough to know a valuable lesson. It knew to endlessly give to all, without exception, without ceasing, and without ever asking for or expecting anything in return. The selfless sharing was the reward itself. And so the Moon shined, regardless of circumstances, lighting the way for me. Some thought this to be lunacy. All extreme kindnesses are.

And because it was also the first night of Passover, I knew I would be free, that we would all be free, despite whatever hardships we may encounter. And, sadly, hardships there would be.

Life guarantees obstacles, difficulties, pains, and troubles, yet it does not guarantee suffering. The latter has to be chosen — or not. Likewise, life guarantees ease, fun, love, joys, and happiness, though those must be chosen, as well.

Miracles are ubiquitous and omnipresent, even in the mundane, but they have to be first noticed and then appreciated for them to have any real meaning. I started my time on Earth by noticing and appreciating my birth. And I have not stopped doing so. Neither has the Moon.

It was Monday evening and it was Tuesday morning. My first day. And it was very good.