To be vegan is to have the guts to deny the fairy tale of the harmless animal product. To be vegan is to deny the psychological distance between the flesh in the Styrofoam tray at the supermarket and the someone - not the something - who that meat came from. To be vegan is to live fully and honestly with yourself about how animals are treated, and it is about your not taking place in that exploitative system to the greatest extent possible. Veganism is not only an affirmation about how we want the world to be, it is a lived form of protest, and our reminding people that everything is not quite right when it comes to how we treat animals. A form of everyday heroism in a world gone terribly wrong, veganism is your refusal to participate in a system that is ethically bankrupt. It is bravery in a time of cowardice.