Vegan Evan, a 10-year-old vegan activist from Florida, is running for president in 2048. He wants his leadership to show veganism is the right choice for everyone.
“I love being vegan, and I think everyone else will too,” says Evan Blair, known as Vegan Evan. The 10-year-old vegan activist beams at me through rectangular glasses, his dimples puncturing his rosy cheeks. He has just returned from a day of school, but you wouldn’t know it with the amount of energy projected through the Zoom screen. “Animal Markets Breed Diseases,” his t-shirt reads. He’s been vegan five years — half his life — and animals have always played a central role in that.
“I love animals,” he says. While Blair was pescetarian from the age of four, when his mother Shannon turned vegan after watching Cowspiracy, he wanted to turn too. But she wouldn’t have it. “She said it wasn’t a good idea because I couldn’t eat cupcakes or pizza,” he explains. “But I told her: ‘No mummy, if the animals are being hurt, then I don’t need or want that stuff.’”
Vegan Evan found his transition quite easy. After discovering how vegan-friendly Florida was, the only issues he had to worry about was the occasional comment from non-vegans. “People would say stuff like: ‘I like bacon’. It’s supposed to annoy me but it never has affected me — because I know I’m right,” he says, laughing.
Read our interview with teen vegan activist Zak Mullen.
Having a local vegan circle to rely on also helps. Among many people — too many for him to count, Blair brings up Vegg Ian and Kennedi, who both join him frequently to take part in local activism on the weekends.
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Being a vegan in Florida hasn’t always been easy, but the plant-based diet is increasingly easy for Blair and his mother. The two of them love to cook, and they can often be found making cashew cheese quesadillas in the kitchen. The activist points out that accessing vegan chicken breasts, burgers, or rice and beans are all easy too. And great for those who don’t find cooking so straightforward.
While he says the local community is quite open-minded and inclusive to vegans, especially with concerns surrounding the planet, Blair is worried that more of an effort needs to be made to save animals first and foremost.
“I’m really upset because the grey wolf recently became un-endangered, but now people are allowed to hunt them again,” he says. After fostering a pig for eight months, the 10-year-old also discovered that the animal is smarter than dogs and three-year-old human children. He says the key to getting people to see pigs and other species like them in another light is via sanctuaries. “You see animals safe, happy, and free.”
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Vegan Evan has a very ambitious future: a mix of presidency, piloting, lawyering and being a doctor for humans and non-humans alike. It’s a good thing he enjoys school. More specifically, he loves the school he started attending this year, Solid Rock Community School (SRCS), one of the world’s only plant-based schools.
Throughout kindergarten, Blair was given the incredibly long menu of hot dogs and hamburgers in the cafeteria. But SRCS has its own vegan chef, and its students are given a substantial amount of choices; including broccoli, spaghetti, and rice and beans. His science teachers are all vegan too. The students learn about how eating plant-based affects them, and instead of the traditional My Plate exercise, Blair and his classmates engage with the ‘My Vegan Plate’.
He says a plant-based education could truly transform society: “Kids would be healthier, could learn more about veganism, and grow up to be healthier.”
Blair didn’t pay much attention to the latest US elections. He is 10 after all. But he tells me he tried to keep up so he could see how it works for when he’s president. The child activist has had a campaign running for two years now, and plans to have the longest-running campaign on record.
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Vegan Evan wants to be president in 2048 so he can suggest some big changes in American law. “And really make people think,” he adds. “Hopefully, when I tell people about health and the planet, they’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
His biggest mission is to introduce a ban on harming animals forever. But he hopes that by then, people won’t be harming animals anymore anyway. “I’ll be focusing more on how we can change the world for the better through veganism,“ he says. “That’s our top priority.”
