 she was a victim of domestic violence so if i'm going to resonate with victims as a whole that obviously covers the animals as well you know my sister was cut up in a similar fashion to these animals are my sister died in the most fear that you can imagine and this happens every single day at an exponential rate to these animals okay so here we have jacob silver and jacob emailed me this week i think it was and you had a very interesting story jacob so i just wanted to get you on the channel to discuss your life and like you had a very interesting upbringing and you have a very interesting transformation story and i'm really interested with these transformation stories because if everyone knows i come from a you know some like a pretty interesting background myself and i have a transformation story but jacob thanks for coming on mate no thank you for having me brother i mean i've been feeling connected with you for quite some time and i just was naturally drawn to reach out i feel like now is the perfect time more than ever to have these type of conversations so i appreciate you holding space no worries man no worries at all now like obviously no one probably knows who you are on my channel and i don't even know who you really are and where you come from so let's just go back to like your your the start of your life like where do you come from and what are some of the challenges you faced and yeah let's go to the beginning of your journey so i am from providence wrought island the east coast of the u.s smallest state on the map a lot of people don't really even know where it is they hear wrought island they think oh like long island new york but no it's stone state stone city and yeah so i was born here in providence wrought island my father was incarcerated within the first one to two months of me going home from the hospital he was a violent offender and went to jail for things you know possession of gun possession gun possession you know use of the gun saw it off shotgun that whole sort of thing my mom was handcuffed to the table and the only reason why i know this in detail is through the stories i've heard from my mother and my sister as well as going through my sister's diary that she let me read and we'll touch back on my sister in a second but so moving on from there you know fatherless child in in an inner city just like anybody else is you know bit of a bit of a normal story here grew up really poor i saw homeless shelters through elementary school you know going back and forth on the public bus to get to school you know stealing out of the corner store just to eat because we were a bit hungry my mom struggling with not only her personal challenges but you know financial rose as well leading up to about 12 years old where i started using cannabis and started becoming a product of my environment you know getting into some crime getting into selling drugs using drugs becoming an addict and um getting arrested for the first time as a juvenile in a raid and then getting arrested again as a juvenile being in a stolen car and just making very poor choices you know and at this point i'd only met my father twice and then the first time he was on the run in two states and he somehow found us in in provenance and he had a baby with another woman and told me that it was my fault if i didn't let him stay that he would have to you know leave the baby somewhere which i'm pretty sure he did and i think about that to this day you know leading up through school getting into trouble getting kicked out of multiple schools you know drug addicts making poor choices from cannabis to pill usage to heavy alcohol usage psychedelics cocaine you know you name it pretty much everything about heroin because my my father was a heroin addict and even though i became him in every other aspect of my life i didn't allow myself to become him using heroin you know i turn 18 i find myself in the in the prison system i get arrested as an adult you know felony substance one intent to deliver violation of probation you know obstruction of justice you know you gotta do a mandatory sentence for that so i did under under six months probably about four and a half to five depending on what you count as prison time you know and mind you this whole time i also been struggling with my health because i was born with a bicuspid aortic valve i have an immune disorder which ended up being bachettes which is like an elevated version of crones or ibs that affects different parts of the bodies and i also got pericarditis for the first time at 17 which is where the sac around your heart gets infected and fills up with fluid so now i'm fresh out of jail and still haven't learned my lesson i'm still you know in the same neighborhood around the same people and now things are even worse because i had opportunities to you know sell drugs in a different fashion and leading up to christmas born in 2010 when i turned 21 my older sister staria was murdered i was a victim of domestic violence and finding her like that was something that really changed me forever and shortly after that i got pericarditis for the second time and my heart stopped wow dude this is a there's a lot to unpack here man like that's a there's there's so many things leading up to to the life that you led and we will get to your sister being murdered which is an extreme tragedy and this must cause you a lot of trauma the way your life was growing up do you think it had anything to do with not having a father in the home or you know you say you were a product of our environment um seems like your family system at home was quite broken up do you think that's what led you astray it was a combination of the family being broken up uh and the neighborhood you were in like the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood you were in and the people in that neighborhood um what was it predominantly for you think i think it started with not having a father and and the home being broken so of course you look outward and you look into your environment for maybe males to have an influence on you or even a sense of family so you know similar to you i was also in a crew and had my brothers around me who were similar outcast myth misfit type people you know maybe they don't have fathers at home maybe their mother is a drug addict or whatever the case may be and we kind of bound together as family and we took care of each other or at least i thought we took care of each other you know yeah there's that factor and then also it's even a bit strange because i have a very feminine influence i was raised by all women you know i don't know if you're into like the natal chart or anything like that but i have a predominantly feminine to feminine influence over masculine and i see things from that outside perspective and i never really connected with a lot of men for that reason i have a hard time trusting man i never really had like a father figure just because you know i always saw men as having like a twisted outlook and very manipulative and possessive yeah that's very interesting i mean i was raised by a single mother as well but i did have male influences but um you know i was i was a bit of a people pleaser and i wanted my friends to accept me and the male influences i had in my life were you know going down the wrong track themselves and i tried to impress them and you know be the best version of the male gangster that i could and yeah very toxic environment one that's filled with it's constantly trying to please the people in the gang and or you know committing acts of violence or doing things to you know build a reputation did you see much violence growing up in that that gang world like what was it like the violence aspect of it well i mean i saw violence even before that i saw violence as a child like i said i was raised around women who were abused yeah and you know so i saw that that's a common theme and you look outside into your neighborhood and there's a lot of domestic violence out there and then of course leading into you know violence in the streets you know i lost friends at a young age i mean even i started losing friends as early as you know 12 13 14 whether it be to jail or the grave in middle school two of my closest friends one of them went to jail for selling drugs in the school and the other one went to jail for armed robbery and then you know i had friends that i had that same friend i actually buried and you know it's it's it's tough to lose the people that you come up around and it just kind of makes you more cold and desensitizes you to things even leading into veganism you have such this self-hate that sometimes it's hard for others to make that connection and i think that you know even guy would say that the people who are oppressed or have the most suffering tend to gravitate towards veganism a bit more simply because it just makes a lot of more sense to them yeah it's interesting um uh knowing what it feels like to be a victim or a victim of your circumstance it helps you understand the animals uh circumstance and empathize with it more well for me at least it did and um i'm sure that's one of the connections you made let's uh let's talk about um like what happened with your sister that seems and that happened when you're after 18 years old i mean that must have been a shock to your system and like i don't know how how i would deal with something like that so can you tell us a bit about that story yeah i just turned 21 November 3rd and it happened Christmas morning in the same year so and here's the here's the part that really affected me the most was because of my past and my poor choices i wasn't there to be i wasn't able to be there for in the best way possible because i didn't know about anything that had happened so i got out of jail i was living in the next city over and i was kind of doing my thing just hustling you know you know gun possession that whole situation paranoia greed and they didn't tell me about anything that was happening you know because prior to this there had been some violent altercations there was obviously a uh no contact order restriction order restraining order sorry placed on her attacker and when i had saw her i came back to i went through a breakup right around the time of my birthday so i came back to the city where she lives in and i saw her for the first time in a bit of time because you know i have been so outcasted by my poor choices so i saw her for the first time and she had this new hairstyle i'd never seen a day in my life without the hairstyle i didn't really think anything of it i just kept asking her like why why did you make the change well come to find out was she was missing a huge chunk of her hair from being through the tiles and on the shower wall by this man and nobody told me and at the time i was homeless which is you know a bit of a common theme in my life since i was a kid and she kept asking me like hey you should stay here you should stay here but never really telling me like why i should stay there you know and they were just afraid that if i found out that i would do something crazy which you know fair enough yeah i probably would have but i would rather go down defending my loved ones in the same way that we do the animals than then go out not doing anything and so i didn't stay with her because i was an addict and i was making poor choices you know and i didn't want to be a burden on people i was just so i felt terrible about it you know i just went through this breakup i couldn't stop using you know i'm making poor choices i'm in the street still i'm on the same people i am the company that i keep so i told her you know i can't stay here with you and 11 days later i found her you know slashed into pieces and gray in the face and watching my mother picking up her daughter you know yelling to the sky and and having to physically pull my mother off of my sister you know definitely led to some heavy PTSD and changed my life forever that is that's a horrific story and like you were the one who found her you guys were the who found your sister yeah well we were going we were all gathering anyways like for holidays as like the one time we make sure to get together you know especially like at my situation you never know what's going to happen to me so we get together as much as possible so i was i was actually literally getting dressed and my mom i remember like it was yesterday i was throwing my shirt on and um we were smoking a joint and my mom had called me for like the fourth time all super concerned you know stressing about not nobody has heard from her since this time last night where she was making cookies and uh prepping the food because me and her we come from a background of cooking which is something we can tap into after but so we always had this thing of like who can make the better dish you know and i was gonna go over there early to finish cooking so she's like hey can you go and check on staria what's your name and i'm like yeah no problem and when i got there the door was open and you know as soon as you got there you obviously knew something was wrong it was a very eerie vibe the energy was totally off the smell was completely off obviously from the amount of blood and that sort of thing and mind you she just had children twins twin girls so she's she's there on the floor and no more than 15 20 feet tops are her children screaming in a crib who have been by themselves since three to four that morning it's now probably 11 a.m and you know the father of the children who is who committed this crime and he's obviously nowhere to be found and so you had this reaction of like well here's my sister there's also these babies and you know you're freaking out and then my mom gets in luck because she shows up as well you know but she couldn't she didn't want to wait she just had this motherly instinct to to just go she didn't want to wait for me because maybe um again i made poor choices maybe i was slack and maybe i would take a bit of time to get there and yeah now it's this this trifecta of children crying finding your sister and your mom in this state oh god that's uh how did you feel at that moment i mean i couldn't imagine it like and you said that she was that the the attacker had cut her up or something like how did you find her like in what state the first incision or if you want to call it that you know she was actually sleeping and she was very paranoid about this so she was sleeping with a knife directly next to her yeah you know right at the nightstand where you would keep your tea or whatever it is that you keep on your nightstand by long clock there was a knife and she got very close to grabbing the knife because you can see by the way of the uh the blood trails so she gets sliced pretty deeply with the first cut and in her sleep then there's a tussle and the worst part about it was my sister had so i have two sisters and me and my other sister are very much alike and then starya and my mother are very much alike and they're very linear and they have a great fear of death as me and sanya are more tapped into the tribal aspect of it and spirit side so she had this great fear of death so she died in the most fear that you could ever imagine you know when your children crying and you're you're bleeding out before she could bleed out she died of you know um affixiation which is where you choke on your own blood and so yeah there was a tussle there was a struggle and she got she got hit a couple of good times and she died there on the floor oh my god that's what a horrible way to die and um it must have been a heavy weight to bear seeing as you said uh you know you didn't stay there for your own reasons and did you did you blame yourself for a while after that i mean i could only imagine the psychological aspect of you know feeling like you weren't there for her i mean obviously you had you couldn't control this but like that still wouldn't have helped your trauma about that how did you deal with that aspect of the trauma i have i don't want to say have because i'm doing a lot better now but i had very heavy survivors guilt for a long time it really affected me of like you know the what ifs what if he came in the house and i was sitting there like because if they honestly if they told me what had been happening i would have been like okay not only am i staying here but i'm never going to sleep i got my pistol here and i'll stay up no matter what and if something happens i'll be here and i'll i'll take action accordingly so i always think of like i were to throw i would throw my life away in an instance for the women that raised me you know the people that taught me how to be a man and allowed me to become this person that i am today so i had a very heavy you know survivors guilt from that of course ptsd of the visual aspect of it the graphic side of it but more even more so the emotional aspect of seeing your mother sort of distraught and then seeing you know these these twin girls having no mother or father like my life was difficult enough and i had a mom and two sisters they have an uncle and they have uncle and aunt and a grandma who have like done their best in the past 10 years to rekindle a family bond you know and i won't lie for the first couple months i i kind of i don't want to call it a relapse because i never really was super sober to begin with but i fell down i went down the rabbit hole down the drain real heavy for a good five months i didn't even really address the stuff that was hidden within you know i i remember burying her and asking my mom well what do we do now and she said we go home i was just so confused like baffled you know we go home and we leave her here in the ground like is that how this works and i went home and i got really drunk i used some drugs and i shouldn't even do cocaine because of my heart condition but you know got down with some of that got real heavy until i you know purchased that oxy cotton and then at a point in time in my life i just tapped into what they had taught me as a child and the power that i have and i just got sober cold turkey you know and never went to any sort of clinic or anything like that and i just stopped doing everything and put my stuff towards something better so obviously because of the trauma and that you know in the grieving you started to hit the drugs in the alcohol and this is quite normal for someone to try to you know blanket those feelings i used to do it all the time as well i mean but something like this is this is on another level and you're saying you got you hit rock bottom or you sunk really low and and then all of a sudden you just had this kind of like decision where you just decided to be be sober talk about that decision because you know that decision that decision just doesn't come easy for people you had some type of awakening or like epiphany like talk about that yeah it was definitely an awakening for sure i mean i had i had been raised with you know spiritual type upbringings and just self empowerment and obviously i was i'm a self-taught kind of individual so i always had strong beliefs but my actions never aligned with what i was taught and so one day i just made the choice i remember that the last day i got really drunk and high we went out to the casino the entire time in the car me and my good bretta we are drinking in the back seat killed the bottle before we even get to the casino get to the casino drink after drink after drink pills pills pills i get into a fight i get beat up you know because i'm so out of it i can't even lift my own arms you know somebody has their way with me i puke everywhere and the reason why i got so intoxicated was because the next morning we had this memorial type service where we at the local park where they do neighborhood day where we all grew up we're doing this thing of where we walked around the neighborhood as a as a community as a whole everybody coming out of their house walking through my sister because she was very loved in the neighborhood i might have made poor choices but everybody loves staria she was like everybody's sister you know so the whole neighborhood is outside walking for her and at the end we we let the balloons off into the air which obviously thinking back now is terrible for the environment but it was it was more symbolic you know yeah of course yeah and i remember just dreading that so much that's why we got so crazy and my mom being so disappointed in me when i was showing up the next day you know half puke it and i'm pale and you could see it in my eyes and she told me i look like my father you know in his later days because he turned into a monster because he used to be a great person my my sisters would say but once he got on to the heroin and the alcohol and started swinging those guns around it's a different story he's a survivor they say and so yeah i started to make better choices and then as i began to make those choices and i was traveling doing music and trying to find an outlet for just what i was feeling boom i get pericarditis for the second time and my heart stops and i have to get the epidermic needle into my chest to pull the fluids out of the sac of my heart so that i could come back to and i remember waking up that's when it really happened you know waking up this is all relatively close to to my sister dying this is like in the same 10 months you know and that's when i was like okay i really need to reassess my life i've been gifted this opportunity to breathe every day you know i'm open to receive and i'm deserving to receive and i need to take these opportunities and be just so grateful for them i need to make better choices so that's really where it all started wow wow this looks like yeah like the things that preceded um the awakening sort of contributed to the awakening so you had you you know all this uh you know you're growing up in this neighborhood you had your father as sort of you know this figure in your life like you're you could either be like him or not be like him so that's a realization and you know being around domestic violence and your sister falling victim to the domestic violence and to the point where she loses her life and then you're using substances to sort of deal with this and then you have this sort of life-threatening moment where it gives you the realization hey you could lose your life and have you lived according to you know have you have you paid your life sort of what it deserves or are you sort of wasting it away and that's that's when you decided like this is it i'm gonna be i'm gonna be sober from this point onwards or was it a progression to being sober or was it just like bang no well i really asked myself am i satisfied with the life that i'm living hmm you know emancipate yourself from mental slavery none but ourselves can free our minds right yeah so i went sober i went sober that day instantly went through withdrawals you know the whole nine i'm sure you can relate and yeah at that moment i was not only sober but i became a voice for injustices that i strongly believed in so i began getting involved with domestic violence in my neighborhood you know obviously making the connection to veganism and getting immediately involved and i also went vegan overnight it wasn't like uh oh you know we'll eat a little bit less animals it was like no i i get it and i need to make action right now you know like once 20 seconds ago i was a non-vegan but right now i am vegan and that's not going to change so talk about this talk about your um seems like you're a doer your amount of action so when you have the awakening you take the action that's a strong person that you're a strong person for doing that not many people have that type of conviction let's talk about how you woke up to what was happening to animals like how did this come into your life it's almost like you know it's it's bizarre because it's like you had these this is what happened to me basically i had these series of like you know awakenings and veganism had been to be one of those it's almost like my my mind was open to change and how am i how am i going to do better and veganism was one of those things because what's happening to the animals obviously i don't want to hurt people don't want to hurt animals i'm trying to do better what was it like for you like how did this seed come into your mind so a lot of these things happened at the same time as i was just reflecting on myself and thinking about how do i practice what i preach how do i align myself with what feels right in my core and obviously you know feminism was a part of that non-violence was a part of that you know breaking apart the societal norms you know classism it's all part of it but in order to really engage in those sort of things we have to have a oneness and we have to also recognize veganism which was actually probably the most important one to me and a lot of people will say like oh well you're only so passionate about this because of your sister and it's like don't don't project it like that use it as a form of inspiration and a form of understanding because once i realized that it was i have life i don't need to bring death into my life i was gifted this life and what am i going to do with it and then you get informed because you know everyone's like everyone just needs to be more informed and i don't really know if that's necessarily true because we all know right from wrong right and you know generally speaking so then i really got informed about these things and what happens in the slaughterhouse is the living conditions the rights violations and then noticing the parallels between the suffering that not only i went through but a lot of people in society today are going through and then it's like oh your anti-violence well fantastic let me tell you about something that's right up your alley then you know veganism is for you if you're anti-violence oh you believe in feminism let me tell you about something that's right up your alley you know and i just began to perspective is huge for me so the second that i started to see some of these things in these images and reading about them i started to put myself in that position and it's like yeah sure i'm a fatherless kid i've seen prison i've seen violence i've had you know guns pressed to my head by the police all these different things however i i've never been enslaved my entire life nobody's exploiting me for my body parts you know there's not this this vast genocide of my people right here in the now of course there's been you know genocide of the indigenous and terrible things like slavery and you know leading all the way up to the police system and that sort of thing but the animals just have this this deep calling for me i always considered myself an animal lover you know everyone always joked around and said i was like you know the dog whisperer like all the mean dogs in the neighborhood always were gravitate towards me naturally because people say you know i have i just energy doesn't lie and i have a solid energy so i always consider myself as animal lover but here i am with you know cow and my sandwich and pig on my plate and i'm eating eggs every day or not every day but whatever it is i'm just enjoying these things and that hypocrisy is is huge and also like you had a you know a family member murdered i've had a i've had a family member murders as well my uncle was found he was stabbed dozens of times and he was found a week later and my father suffered a great PTSD from that having that type of loss in your family especially a forced killing like it was not it wasn't like okay they they didn't look after their health and they died of some terminal illness or something like that which is still horrible but to have someone be murdered in your family and then you know although like pigs might might not be as aware as a human being they're still aware of you know their suffering and they don't want to die and they're screaming and in in that that fear and you spoke about your sister may have been in this fear and you know you've got this level of connection to that that other people might might have just they just might not have had experience before so does that play into your empathy for the animals as well sure i mean think of it like this so my sister i hate to use the word victim but you know let's just be clear about it she was a victim of domestic violence so if i'm going to resonate with victims as a whole that obviously covers the animals as well you know my sister was cut up in a similar fashion to these animals are my sister died in the most fear that you can imagine and this happens every single day at an exponential rate to these animals you know whether it be thrashing around in a gas chamber or you know getting their their throats cut you know bolt gun to the head or any of these things that happen you don't think they're afraid of these things you don't think they have this deep fear of their oppressors you know i find a lot of freedom fighters bull are always you know fight the power anti establishment you know against the man but it's like well the man is killing animals and and tricking you into eating them and you fell right into that trap and now you're defending the oppressor which is what we need to to break those chains up you know so i think all of those things really play a role it's just i don't want to be contributing i realize account i'm very big on accountability i'm sure you are too as far as like you know being a drug user and having making poor choices we're accountable for that we need to make better choices and self-empowerment is huge you know knowledge is power but applied knowledge is empowering and that's something that i truly live by so yeah i'm here i'm never gonna go back on it yeah it seems like it's like when you make the connection in one aspect it almost like it opens up the floodgates and you're just like that's there it's there it's there uh coming from neighborhoods like we're from um you know you you said like you know domestic violence and violence was normal and gang violence and having a gun and doing drugs and you know your father was imprisoned for this and like this is all like when you're when you're involved in the neighborhood like that that's the only reality you know so when you pull yourself out of that environment you kind of got to learn okay this isn't normal this is actually wrong like you know like okay okay yeah i can see it more now that it's wrong okay these people are victims it wasn't just me going around doing these things there was consequences to those actions and people around me were upset my family were upset and you know and and this is like veganism too it's like okay like i could have that burger it tastes good it's pleasurable and it's easy it's convenient but there's a consequence to that action too like i don't want to see animals be butchered and killed especially like when you're in the gang world you know people might rob you or they might have wronged you or your friend even though like it might not it might be a perceived wrong are they they've wronged me so i've got to retaliate or if we don't defend ourselves from this gang then we're going to be victims animals are truly vulnerable innocent beings they have not harmed anyone they're just living there we're trying to live their life or being forced into a life of slavery um so it's like the vulnerability of these animals and the innocence of these animals really plays on my mind too because even as like a gang member like i still wouldn't like to see the innocent deliberately harmed you know what what happened in gangs it was usually gang on gang i mean there was some innocence that got involved but generally speaking there were some codes you abide by like and if you seen someone just attacking a dog then you'd probably punch them in the head or something try to defend the dog so yeah like it's that aspect of the innocence that really plays on my heart that and do you feel the same way like it's yeah absolutely i mean even connecting it to the neighborhoods that we grew up in i'm not sure if it's the same way where you're from but you know non-active non-gang members they're they're civilians yeah and they play by a different rule you know they can speak to law enforcement or if they get happened to get hurt in the streets then it's it's a problem because they weren't involved they have this this sense of innocence that you spoke on yeah and in that sort of aspect these a hundred percent of the animals are fall under that civilian category they have done nothing to uri they have done absolutely they haven't done anything they're not you know causing problems or creating wars or writing laws that put people in jail systemically or anything like that we wage war on them simply because hey man bacon we love we love the way it tastes and to me that was so asinine that i just really was so disgusted about it i could never see myself putting money towards you know the the murder of innocent beings who have done absolutely nothing they just want to live in the same way that you know you or i or my sister wanted to you know my sister was just trying to raise children and do the best she could in the neighborhood that she lived in and she died as an innocent woman so now what i stand up for her in one aspect but then say oh you know what the animals f them sacrifice them for for whatever means it is you know it just doesn't make sense to me no no truly it's almost like there's a there's a level of discrimination between species that um and this discrimination has severe consequences for the animals it's like well they're a pig so yeah you know they can just be chopped up and who cares about their screams oh but you know uh there's a monkey here being exploited in a medical lab and most of the public oh no don't do that to the monkey you know but uh you know the chicken get rid of the chicken oh the bold eagle american it's just like this level of discrimination and it happens between human beings of course now there's a big anti-racism movement in america which is great it's getting people aware of racism and you know racism still exists and it's more i guess it's it there's overt racism but there's more covert racism and people are going to have to analyze that within themselves so they are they having these discriminatory views between humans and i want to i want people to extend that to these animals too like because this this discriminatory mindset is being used against animals having catastrophic results like where are three trillion humans a year being murdered i mean if you include sea animals this this is like a holocaust unlike any we've ever seen ever and you know i just think like the the results of this discrimination have been like just on another level and you know what's really mind boggling as well so like i would say let's say 80 to 90 to 95 percent of vegans all resonate one way or another with human rights issues whether it be racism classes and feminism whatever you want to whatever you want to pick but 95 percent of human rights activists don't even acknowledge veganism in fact if you go to one of these rallies you probably celebrate with you know cheese pizza or burgers or chicken wings and i don't really i that's it's been actually why is that why do you think that is because do you think that um because in one breath we say like you know groups that have been oppressed historically are more likely to resonate with other oppressed groups do you think maybe there's just a lack of education within these um other movements and if they had the education they would be more likely to because i guess like if you're a victim of racism that's more in your face you know if a police officer is targeting you you're going to be that's more in your face but with the animal oppression you know they they've fallen into the same indoctrination that everyone else has and you know there's just not the education do you think that these groups might be more susceptible to the animal rights message given the right if it was given the right light there i would really like to think so but as time goes on i don't really i lose faith a bit i hate to say that but yeah you know i see it just doesn't make sense to me you know if if you're battling one thing that's right in your face what's more right in your face than especially in the neighborhood that i live in every block chicken stand mcdonald's wendy's whatever you know spanish food Haitian food trinidadian food jamaican food fantastic celebrate your culture that's incredible don't forget your roots and know your history but at the same time let's be a bit more conscious of what we're doing and who we're supporting i mean even in fed hill which actually we're going to protest in a couple days they have a live chicken market nobody bats an eye and it's in like the most ritziest section of my city federal hill is like you know the biggest street for like the biggest restaurants and the italian culture is is is major there and a lot of money is generated in this part of the city right on the street live chicken market go in there pick your chicken pick your rabbit they'll uh they'll behead them right there for your skin them send them send you on your way with a bunch of packaged parts of animals and yeah i mean it's i'd really love to see more of the human rights activists uh you know including animals into the you know their circle of compassion i know the vegan movement is very big on intersectionality which in principles i think it's great to you know i don't think you should be anti-speciesism and pro-racism i mean that's just illogical and just there's no logic in that and you know i think that they need to be educated on i just don't see how you could make this the connection through speciesism and still be a racist i mean that i think speciesism helps unlock that discrimination i mean i'm sure it still happens some people are just they've got a blind spot um but yeah i think like the more we all think about all of these issues together and include the animals in this like include the animals in this because they're suffering beings as well um they're the better the world will be so what have you like what have you been doing in terms of your your activism and like because we've gone through your story which is an amazing story and you seem so strong and switched on and for going through such such a hard time and now you're using your voice for the animals as well um talk a little bit about that yeah so honestly the the fight for the animals has become probably my biggest purpose in life i'm more purpose driven than ever and i think you know folks like you or i who go through certain things we really need to find our purpose and find what resonates with us and then just follow that vision blindly and don't accept the the woes of society and just continue fighting that good fight so even connecting that to anti-human messages no matter how many times i spoke up against other injustices the second that i spoke about animals you know oh you're what are you anti-human or what you don't see the intersectionality of these other issues and it's like well no i can be i can be active in both sides but as time goes on i've i've learned to really tweak my approach and get more direct with it which is actually why you know you and i have been brothers way before this conversation never happened because you were one of the people who let me know that the feelings that i was having weren't necessarily wrong ones so i started off doing you know outreach just like anybody else would whether it be on my page you know talking to the camera getting out in the streets talking to people um i was big in event coordination from doing music you know growing up and i would i would do events for veganism you know vegan food and i ended up getting into nutrition not really directly connected to my veganism but because i was so sick that i wanted to self-empower myself i got you know certified in nutrition you know became i guess you would consider me a lifestyle coach and you have all these like i don't want to disrespect anyone but you know the ex-vegan crowd the the apologist like uh elise and ravano who made handfuls and handfuls and handfuls of money off of the insecurities of people doing life coaching when i believed in it so much i was doing free consultations you know two three four hours a day for people trying to go vegan people trying to eat more plants i would get on give people free hours of time and i was consistently doing this getting on the computer every day writing people recipes because i also grew up in a kitchen and i made the conscious choice of never while i cook another animal product or butch another animal again in my life so then i ended up moving into vegan restaurants and i've opened up multiple restaurants with owners and i worked in california worked here in providence numerous ones even the first vegan food haul i just opened last year i was a major part of that so i'm writing people recipes and i'm getting out there and i'm hitting the streets and i'm making you know coconut yogurt parfaits and giving them out for free and taking this approach of like everything has to be inclusive and trying to pander to people and not really be super direct about it like you know just whisper it in kind of sneak it in what do you do know about the animals right but have this parfait and have a lab and everything is so love and light as the spiritual crowd likes to say but you know even roses have thorns and you have to respect those thorns so over time i realized that i was doing a disservice to my activism and to the animals because i don't you know like i said i wasn't making money off of lifestyle coaching i don't work for anybody i work for you know like you said i work for the pigs you know i'm not here to become rich i stopped doing what i was doing before with my llc to do this full time my goal is to do this full time start touring and get more involved as much as i can so transitioning from being super inclusive to being more direct and holding a mirror stop using you know use stop using language that's soft euphemistic language you know and telling you exactly what it is being direct because that's that's real honesty and real love right there is is telling you exactly when i was making poor choices people were just enabling me yeah and you know nobody that wasn't a showcase of love that was just you know we want want keep you down here with us so now it's just i'm out there speaking my truth and living my truth my whole thing is if you don't live your truth you might get caught in a lie and i've lost a ton of followers a ton of friends and i'm okay with that you know it's like what's no longer serving me has to be shed and i'm not here to make abusers feel comfortable i'm not here to make you feel okay with the poor choices that you're making or give you you know good news on bad habits when i spoke up against domestic violence of my sister i would never tiptoe around violent and abusive men so that nobody feels shame or guilt you know but but guilt can be guilt can be important it can be effective in the sense of like hey i am accountable for these actions how can i make changes to stop these actions but if i never tell you or if you're never told or or you never taught that these choices are awful you're never gonna know i mean obviously the information is all out there and it's uh it's a great level of ignorance as well but that's yeah they're fighting a battle though like this is a thing like i think being direct is so much more effective because you save everyone a bunch of time and and you gotta remember the level of conditioning people are under like it's just it's just crazy so like the the lessening the amount of time you have to explain this to someone is good obviously you can be your use your own personality and you know you can be polite but you can be polite and direct you know and say hey you know an animal was butchered and killed for that do you know what happens in the dairy industry boom boom boom boom and when you pay for it you're you're sort of paying for something that you're morally against boom direct simple i mean i don't know how you could be upset with that some people still will be and i think like yeah obviously if you go too far the other way and pander too much and you've completely lost your message and what's the point right what's the point um you know and and like you said with domestic violence we don't we don't tiptoe around the issue i mean there's all there's psychological ways of you know addressing situations and you have to take certain things into account but you know people need to be held accountable for domestic violence and for you know i needed to be held accountable for my violence i was committing to people when i was in gangs and and you know i feel like i've learned and i've changed and i'm not doing that anymore but without any level of accountability without me getting thrown into prison with some real people or some real gangsters and going wow i don't want to be here man because i could get something could happen to me like i've done to other people you know um that that level of accountability we need to take that in order to change and if we don't have that any level of guilt for doing something why would we wouldn't even have a moral standard in society if there was no guilt you know of course you know people might think about reacting in a violent way but there's a there's a level of control because okay well i'll go to prison or i don't want to you know harm this person you know too badly there's always a level of guilt that keeps us in check and that's what our conscience is for so i think speaking to that in other people is powerful man it's powerful and you might lose some friends at the start but the real ones are the ones who are going to start going wow man he's speaking the truth this guy's a truth speaker and they appreciate that you know yeah you know what's crazy too is that a lot of people especially guys from my neighborhood are just people who have been following me for a long time and we're resonating with the message of you know self-empowerment taking care of yourself non-violence now they hear the message that i'm saying now like i just put up a video of a spoken word that i did called meet the victims and i edited the video because it's like i'm narrating a story so when i edit the video i put all kinds of images of of animals and how they're treated and in my opinion and i'm sure your opinion as well the the visuals that i chose were actually pretty tame you know we've seen some some pretty heavy stuff you much more than i and i got a lot of hate for it one person was like you know i this isn't the way so as we're we're debating i asked him well in your opinion what is the way and he said oh well it's all about education and teaching people that you know violence is bad and teaching people that our food system is rotten teaching people how to make better choices and i said you know what sure i respect that perspective so about that where are you teaching people or what are the people around you teaching people all right to eat animals all right cool let me go back to what i was saying and we'll start there you know because i'm just trying to teach people and just because you have the mirror held up to you and i don't do it in a way where i'm like insulting them personally this isn't something to get emotionally attached to what you should be getting emotionally attached to is the suffering of the animals why are you not seeing it and being like you know it's not about being right or wrong for me but just about oh no that's wrong i hear you i'm also angry so here i am with my voice you know and if you don't want to speak up at least just don't support it and start there align yourself with your moral compass you can't say one thing and then do the other and that even goes with the human rights as well it's like i don't really want to hear too too much about a lot of other things if we're not taking action and if we're kind of being a hypocrite as well and that's how i feel about it yeah no i don't think we should be consistent with that too and yeah i mean at what part of what you were doing was an education i mean it's all education um a level of responsibility has to come into education as well i mean if you're educating someone on racism and you're not just going to say hey the the system is racist without without addressing individual racism as well like i agree the system is bad for animals the system is bad for um these beings who are being systematically tortured and killed but they're the individuals also responsible as well and we could say the same thing about you know aspects of racism within the system and but we've got to tackle individual racism as well you know you know so the like addressing one without the responsibility factor is an error you know we're all responsible okay there's some things in a system that are out of our control but what is in your control is your personal contribution to you know what's going on and uh it's all it's education i don't understand understand why it's why it's not i think what it is is because when you hold someone else responsible then they have to be forced to change but if you just point if you just point to the problem out there there's no there's no motivation for that person to change but you're you're you're essentially motivating them and there's another point too like if someone's angry with you at the start it's usually it's usually because you said something true and um you know i've had a lot of people being angry angry with me initially but the more they watch me and they that emotion subsides uh that's when the message starts to sink in you know so that's probably what you will face too um but it's a long journey isn't it yeah and i'm here for i mean this is exactly what i signed up for i honestly think that i i don't use the word like wasting time but i do feel like i did a disservice by taking multiple approaches you know because honestly i just want to do what works best so whatever is going to you know flood the message out to the masses i'm there for that even if it's not the approach that i'm taking i'm willing to adjust and change so i tried all these other things and they just didn't seem to be working as much you know no one had a single word to say against me when i was doing free consultations and making food for people and spending my time writing all these recipes for people and going shopping with people i was like really trying to be by people's sides and helping the people and then i got to a point where i'm like is that even that is kind of a supremacy fallacy where i'm just focused on helping people and i'm not actually helping the animals as much i'm not really telling them exactly what they need to hear like sure um i know some activists don't like to hold people's hands and they're not going to tell you what to eat you know i happen to have a wealth of knowledge and a lot of experience in this doing this for over seven years and helping myself and many others so if you have a question or you know i can help you out it's in the right direction absolutely but that i can't let that delete my message or not even my message because i don't i don't have an ownership over but the message of let's end the senseless violence and this enslavement that's been going on for too long genocide is happening every single day and we just kind of brush it off as if it's not that important you know yeah yeah i agree i agree it's it's it's a fine balance you're trying to speak for the animals from their perspective and trying to navigate the human communication as well and you know i'm not always perfect you know because it's a hard it's a hard line to balance you want to be speak truthfully from the position of the victims you want to do them the justice and you want the listener to hear you so you don't want to do things that really stop them from hearing you but you we really want to you really want to hit that sweet spot and where is that sweet spot i don't know there's debate about that so i think just just follow your heart as well as long as you feel like you're speaking for the victims follow your heart we're all different personalities we've all led different lives um but like uh would you say that because of the struggles you've been through in your life uh the life that you've led has made you a stronger person today and maybe a stronger voice yeah absolutely i feel like that i have a value to the scene to this to this community and i'm honestly not here to please other vegans the funniest part is i probably engage in and combative communication with more vegans than anything you know you know obviously yeah you have non-vegans who you know can get a bit upset but a lot of the time it's within our own community where they're they're bashing on me or you know what approaches better is there a happy medium you know i don't want to just sit around and give out vegan cheese and not ever mention the animals you know that's just not what i want to do you know and i can speak from that speak on that from experience of like oh i've already done this and this is not working so let's move on to getting direct and especially as someone who has suffered you know and someone who has been oppressed someone who has been through a lot and i think that that makes me relatable you know when i used to do public speaking a lot of people would would resonate with me versus like you know some of the more privileged folks or some of the people who didn't have to go through adversity so i think that that is where i fit in as far as locally you know i can get into these neighborhoods and connect with brothers and sisters that i know or that i don't know and let them know that we've been doing a severe injustice in the same sense that the system has been doing a severe injustice to us that's that's what we need to really remove the blinders of amazing and and i think that you're a valuable voice in the movement because you can build rapport with people that others just can't build rapport with and this is why the the movement is vast and we have so many different personalities and so many different groups and so many people vote focusing on different things but i agree we need more people just focusing on the animals and the injustice and you know if they want to go to a vegan page for a recipe they exist as well so if you're an animal person and you want to speak for the animals speak for the animals if they need a recipe you can direct them to a vegan recipe page or if you're a recipe and an animal guide do both do both i mean if you're i like i like i don't know why we can't do all of these things but why would we exclude the most important thing which is the message that keeps people vegan that gets people understanding the injustice people are asking us to exclude that i don't i don't want to exclude recipe videos i think they're really valuable like once they learn that you know animal abuse is wrong they need a recipe you know right i don't i just think like don't we don't we should not exclude this message and and especially what will we call it the effectiveness of the message too like we don't want a diluted message we want it to be strong you know because it's a strong issue it's a very strong issue so we want it to be strong we don't want to dilute it to the point where it loses all its meaning and people don't take it seriously so yeah i mean in order to create radical change you have to address these things head on yeah you know we we wouldn't address other injustices with this little like tiptoe super soft language you know even i see the hypocrisy like we're talking about domestic violence it's it's normal to teach women how to defend themselves instead of teaching men how not to do horrific things to women and that's kind of the same core value that has with veganism of like oh well let's just talk about you know a 30-day juice cleanse let's talk about the fantastic recipes and i just want to be healthy when you're skipping over the entire foundation of the medicine we start with what we're not going to eat and why we're not going to eat it and then we move on to all right well you know i made the connection i made a change my life has shifted where do i go from here oh well check out abc and d you know if you like Ethiopian food here's a here's a recipe you know you like Caribbean food here's a recipe you like Italian food here's a recipe and then they're off on their way and then once you fall in love with it they can tell somebody else because like what happens when they don't want to do the health thing anymore everyone goes through peaks and valleys in their life they go through health journeys and not everyone sticks to a health journey long term like what do they do then are they going to go to the steak the beef burger because they weren't educated why they should avoid that or they're going to go to the vegan burger are they going to go get the the mock meat are they going to go get the vegan cheese if they want to junk food binge you know so i think the health message is is good and it's important but it's not the core message because the core message keeps people vegan and keeps people avoiding this injustice and speaking up for animals and understanding and then and then going out to spread the message we want people to spread the core message too to help animals and i think all these things are if you avoid that one core message i think that's a disservice for sure jakem do you have anything that you want to say to everyone listening as a final thought maybe to inspire them you know you've got a like i said you've got a full-on struggle in your background and you've overcome adversity and now you're out speaking for animals and human beings as well um would you like to leave a message with everyone i think it's important to just find your purpose you know everyone has his purpose driven in one way or another i think it's key that we resonate with the struggle of others whether that be the women in your neighborhood struggling you know whether that be the people who fall under the the classism umbrella whatever you want it to be but you also have to connect the animals into that we have victimized animals for so long that we don't even put them in the in the victim category you know like we think of them as the same as this microphone that i'm talking into and the screen that i'm looking at joey on right now and i think that's the problem we just need to reverse the idea that animals are commodities and once you can do that you can really align yourself to what you believe in and then once you do that hopefully try to be a voice for find your purpose and just speak your truth whatever way that is you don't have to be like joey you don't have to be like me find your outreach as an individual and just live your truth don't be afraid of what society is going to think and whatever negative out you know comments come your way because that's been that's been happening throughout history be you stay true to yourself and be true to the animals that's all i really have to say that's an amazing message thanks so much for coming on jakey but is there anywhere people can go to find you if they wanted to come check out your stuff yeah so right now it's at vegidemic v e g i d e m i c that's instagram that's youtube and i also have vegidemic dot com everything is being revamped right now as i said over the past year i've lost at least eight nine ten thousand followers and i started a whole new youtube channel to pretty much erase everything that i did before so i'm starting it from scratch it's been a bit of a struggle but i believe in it and i know it's going to all work out and fall into place accordingly so yeah connect with me anytime there i would really love to get you know your opinion as well others opinion on the spoken word that i just posted it's a quick watch but i think that it'll resonate awesome man we'll go check it out there we there we go thanks for coming on jakey thanks for sharing your story you've shown great resilience and you've been through such a struggle i resonate with it a lot i've been through struggles myself but you know i'm just really happy that you've made the turn in your life you didn't go down the wrong road you went down the right road and you're you're out here now to live your life and help make the world a better place no thank you for having me brother and if anyone is from the Rhode Island boston area please you know get together whether you want to do some cube with us or you want to just do some independent activism come and connect with your tribe and let your voice be heard again many thanks brother for holding space i really appreciate you and you know massive love