Vegan POC Activists You Should Follow on Social Media Right Now

Social media is a powerful tool for spreading the compassionate message of veganism. These incredible vegan activists are changing the world for farmed animals, and if you haven’t already—no shame—you’ll need to start following them on social media ASAP.
Omowale Adewale
Founder of the first Black VegFest, Omowale Adewale is a social justice activist working to address socioeconomic and political issues of the Black and Latinx communities while ensuring inclusiveness.
 
I don’t try to be perfect. I strive to be consistent connecting the struggles of all animals globally, and that includes humans. And it will take the work of activists around the world developing a more compassionate system.
Follow Adewale, a truly inspiring person, for info on the next Black VegFest.
Twitter and Instagram: @omowaleadewale
 
Aph Ko
Founder of Black Vegans Rock, an awesome website that spotlights Black vegans and builds Black vegan community, Aph Ko is a must-watch activist. One of IndieWire.com’s 10 Creatives of the Year and recipient of the 2015 Vegan Anti-Racists Changemaker of the Year Award, Ko also wrote a groundbreaking article that highlights 100 Black vegans.
If you want to learn more about intersectionality in the vegan movement, follow Ko.
   
Dr. Amie Breeze Harper
Dr. A. Breeze Harper holds a doctorate in critical food geographies. Creator of The Sistah Vegan Project and editor of the book Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society, she is not only a writer but a speaker and a consultant with Critical Diversity Solutions.
 
Dr. Harper’s work focuses on how systems of oppression, namely racism and normative whiteness, operate in the U.S. She uses food and ethical consumption cultures in North America to explore these systems. Dr. Harper recently worked with Mercy For Animals to explore diversity, equity, and inclusion topics.
 
Twitter and Instagram: @sistahvegan
Michelle Carrera
 
Searching for an opportunity to volunteer with her son, Ollie, Michelle Carrera founded Chilis on Wheels in New York City to help people with food insecurity in her community. Since then Carrera’s organization has branched out across the United States and Puerto Rico, offering warm meals, clothing, toiletries, sleeping bags, and other essentials to anyone in need.
Twitter and Instagram: @chilisonwheels
 
Bryant Terry
A James Beard Foundation Leadership Award-winning chef, Bryant Terry is dedicated to helping create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. He is also an educator and author, having written several popular vegan cookbooks, including Afro-Vegan and Vegan Soul Kitchen.
 
Follow him for great recipes and for great insights into food justice, like this:
Food justice starts from the conviction that access to healthy food is a human rights issue.
Twitter and Instagram: @bryantterry
 
Kevin Tillman
As founder of Vegan Hip Hop Movement, Kevin Tillman explores the intersections of animal, human, and earth liberation using hip hop as a key part of the resistance. In an interview with Vegan Straight Edge, Tillman stated:
Hip Hop has historically served as the mouthpiece for oppressed groups in society (i.e., the poor and people of color). Veganism applied to this level of activism only expands the circle for other oppressed beings, and other animals. We are all animals, and the sooner folks make the connection, the better off we all are.
Twitter: @lordvegan, Instagram: @decolonize
 
Chef Babette Davis
Chef Babette is a 67-year-old vegan goddess. She is owner of LA vegan restaurant Stuff I Eat and co-founder of the Love Ur Age Project, which promotes successful aging through a healthy plant-based lifestyle. Davis is the author of Cash in on Cashews, a collection of 50 vegan recipes using cashews! When she isn’t cooking up a storm in Inglewood, you can find her advocating vegan school lunches in LA school districts.
Twitter: @rawchick62, Instagram: @chefbabette
 
Genesis Butler
Not yet a teenager, Genesis Butler is making waves in the animal rights movement. In May 2017 at the age of 10, Butler became one of the youngest TEDx speakers in history. Her talk schooled the audience on the link between consuming animal products and harming the environment and how veganism can save the world.
While Butler does not have her own social media (she’s still young!), you can keep up to date with her organization here.
 
Jocelyn Ramirez
After her father was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, Ramirez saw the need for health food options in the LA area and did something about it: She founded Todo Verde. Inspired by her Mexican and South American roots, Ramirez left her career in higher education to serve healthy vegan food. She also offers guidance on healthy living through workshops, dialogues, food demos, and speaking engagements.
 
Currently she sits on the leadership board for the Los Angeles Food Policy Council.
In a video interview with MFA, she asserted:
As women and women of color, the more that we collaborate and work together and see each other as allies as opposed to competition, we’re gonna continue to uplift each other.
Twitter and Instagram: @todoverde
 
Brenda Sanders
Brenda Sanders is a food justice activist from Baltimore City, Maryland, who advocates social and environmental justice as well as animal rights.
 
Sanders hosts a monthly vegan support group, organizes Vegan SoulFest, manages community gardens in an economically depressed neighborhood, and is a founding member of Pep Foods Inc.
On the matter of veganism, she said:
I’m convinced that empathy and connectedness will be the real keys to replacing the current animal-based food system with a plant-based one. When we as a culture begin to value living beings more than selfish desires, the whole world will change for the better.
 
Gwenna Hunter
 
Gwenna Hunter is the founder of Vegans Of LA and a connector who seeks to build vegan community wherever she goes. Hunter also works for Vegan Outreach as coordinator of community engagement and events for Greater Los Angeles.
Vegans Of LA recently launched a new project: interviewing vegan changemakers and community leaders in Greater Los Angeles. To learn more about the organization and to get involved, visit www.facebook.com/VegansOfLA.
 
Twitter: @Gwenna_Hunter, Instagram: @gwenna1
 
Tracye McQuirter
 
Nutritionist, speaker, author, and vegan for more than 30 years, activist Tracye McQuirter boasts a long list of accomplishments. McQuirter directed the nation’s first federally funded and community-based nutrition program, served as a policy advisor for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, co-founded the first vegan website by and for Black Americans, and co-created the first-of-its-kind free African American Vegan Starter Guide.
McQuirter’s book Ageless Vegan, published in the summer of 2018, includes delicious recipes, advice on switching to vegan foods, and tips for upping your vegan game.
Twitter and Instagram: @ByAnyGreens
 
Berto Calkins
 
This personal trainer is the embodiment of protein-packed vegan eating. Super fit Calkins keeps a positive approach to animal rights on his social media, posting memes that will make every vegan say, “That’s me!
A supporter of MFA, Calkins spoke at Circle V in 2017. In a video interview with MFA, he said about veganism:
You can promote what you stand for and that says a lot about you as a person.
Twitter and Instagram: @whatsgoodberto
 
lauren Ornelas
An animal rights advocate for more than 20 years, lauren Ornelas is the founder and executive director of the Food Empowerment Project. In case you haven’t heard of it (no shame, but you definitely need to know about it), the Food Empowerment Project is a vegan food justice project that raises awareness about the power of food choices and the intersectional injustice of animal abuse, environmental depletion, unfair conditions for agricultural workers, and lack of healthy foods in low-income areas. Fun fact: She is reportedly responsible for turning Whole Foods CEO John Mackey vegan.
 
Want to get started on your plant-based journey? Check out ChooseVeg.com for tips, tricks, vegan recipes, and more.