An Animal Rights/Vegan Activists' Strategies Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Sailesh Rao reflects on the inaugural Together Around Food in Jefferson County, Washington and explains how a food system based on this model can usher in a future of food equity and health for our planet.

Come Hungry Leave Inspired
From Sailesh Rao, ClimateHealers.org
July 2026

Image from climatehealers.org

“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra” – Jimmy Johnson.

Dear Climate Healers,

It was an extraordinary 15 days at the Tri-Area Community Center (TACC) in Chimacum near Port Townsend, Jefferson County, Washington. Fittingly, circumstances conspired to make the final day’s July 4th celebration also occur at the same venue, TACC, which had become a home away from home for all of us who worked on Together Around Food (TAF). Hugs were exchanged and tears were shed as we said our goodbyes to the many dear friends we made along the way.

Together Around Food in Jefferson County was a pilot demonstration of a new community-based food system as envisioned in Planet B. Unlike Planet A, which systematically deploys food as a tool for wealth extraction, or as some might say, as a weapon for class warfare, Planet B embraces all human beings as members of a community who enjoy free, delicious, gourmet, whole-foods plant-based vegan meals as a basic human right and a shared community responsibility, while they focus on restoring and maintaining the life-support systems of our planet.

If people wish to eat unhealthy foods on Planet B, they have to pay for it.

The good people of Jefferson County, Washington, embraced TAF and showed that our transformation to Planet B can be a joyous undertaking. The TAF execution team comprised of members from Climate Healers, the Human Ecology Project, the Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute and Loving Hut Vegan Cuisine, with support from local organizations, United Earth Networks and PTVeg. Our objective was to demonstrate that the waste-minimizing, health-promoting, resilient food system of Planet B can be readily implemented inexpensively with existing resources in almost any area of the world today.

For the most part, we succeeded. We served around 3500 meals over the course of 15 days, cooked largely with organic ingredients for an average cost of about $3 per meal, retail. Patty, a local community organizer and a vital member of the TAF team, wrote:

“I want you to know personally that your work has changed me (NB: Patty lost 5 pounds and shaved 70 points off her serum cholesterol level in just 10 days on the program). Your book, your teaching, and this experience opened a door of awareness that I cannot close again. I believe many others in Jefferson County experienced something similar.

Over these fifteen days, we witnessed something remarkable.

More than 3,000 meals were shared. People from different backgrounds, generations, professions, and perspectives sat together at the same tables. I know that strangers became friends.

Conversations began around food, health, climate, agriculture, compassion, and what it means to care for one another and the planet we share. People came for meals and stayed for connection.

The program created exactly the kind of opening that I believe movements need — not simply information transfer, but human transformation.”

The transformation of the food system is vital to transforming relationships within the human family and between humans and other species. In the hyper-competitive, extract-and-hoard Operating System of Planet A, almost a billion people go hungry, while 3 billion people are overweight or obese through nutritionally deficient diets. The food system on Planet A mechanically extracts six times as much food as we need from the planet by dry weight, and yet produces these adverse outcomes. Nutrition misinformation is widespread on Planet A while its chemically drenched industrial food production processes routinely poison people and the planet.

Planet A is an outdated, corrupt, complete mess and it is currently in hospice as hardly anyone believes in its promises any more.

In contrast, when deployed widely, Planet B and its Together Around Food system can mitigate all 7 planetary boundary transgressions identified in the Planetary Health Check Report of 2025. This is because Planet B is founded on empirical reality and systematically designed to restore planetary health and achieve world peace.

The adoption of Planet B would enable the world to meet the 17 UN Sustainable Goals, with the exception of the invalid goal, SDG #8 (Economic Growth), which is substituted with Beyond Cruelty Foundation’s SDG #18 (Zero Animal Exploitation). This means that the 195 members of the United Nations who signed on to meet the UN SDGs by 2030 can actually meet their obligations with engineering precision, when they choose to honor their commitments.

With our video documentation and testimonials of the TAF implementation in Jefferson County, Washington, we can now truthfully tell these national delegates at the UN,

“Please know for a fact that it can be done. Or conversely, please don’t even think about pretending that it cannot be done.”

There were some aspects of our execution in Jefferson County that we could improve upon in the future:

1. We could provide more advance information on what TAF is all about so that the local community is better prepared.

2. We could elevate the education component during TAF with more time for round table discussions and community engagement.

3. We could improve on the TAF website and tools to allow continued engagement of the community beyond the initial 15-day period.

4. We could involve more local volunteers in the TAF implementation so that the continuation of the program is more seamless.

Finally, I am truly indebted to the dedication of the TAF team members, especially the elderly volunteers from the Loving Hut kitchen team, who traveled from afar and gave their all to make TAF a success beyond my wildest expectations.

As a result of their incredible generosity and commitment, the TAF experience in Chimacum, Jefferson County, Washington, will forever be etched in my memory until my last breath.

With much love,
Sailesh on behalf of the Climate Healers Core team. (Alex, Alison, Amit, Anne, Carl, Dakota, Dani, Deborah, Debra, Gabriele, Gerard, Giva, Jamen, Jim, Kelly, Ken, Krish, Krishna, Lisa, Liz, Madhuri, Maggie, Marco, Mike, Paige, Pareen, Paul, Ray, Rebecca, Sailesh, Sarah, Shankar, Stacey, Suzanne, Tami and Vega, the Cow and Climate Healer and her Veguitas)

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: July 13, 2026
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