ACTIVIST OF THE MONTH

Philip has been an ethical vegan and animal advocate for over 20 years, and a pioneer in the music industry. As a drummer, Philip played in the critically acclaimed animal rights band Consolidated he co-founded. Consolidated released five albums and is notable for being the first band to have an animal rights themed video air on MTV. http://www.youtube.com/user/sicknature Consolidated was also one of the first bands to project images of slaughterhouses and animal rights issues on TV screens during their live performances. The band toured extensively throughout North America and Europe during the early to mid nineties where they also had booths of information about animal rights and other social issues. Consolidated won the Genesis Awards first Doris Day music award for their animal rights song and video "Cutting" in 1996.

Philip worked with In Defense Of Animals in the early 1990s speaking at rallies against vivisection, talking with college students about going vegan and fighting the trapping and killing of non native foxes by environmental groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. While working at IDA , Philip produced the well known fundraising music compilations In Defense Of Animals vol. 1 and vol. 2 which featured The Beastie Boys, Bjork, Moby, Pearl Jam, Michael Stipe, Sara McLachlan and others.

Besides his passion for animal rights Philip continues to create, record and produce music in many different genres. He has been nominated for 3 Grammy Awards and has continued producing music for Film,TV and advertising.

Philip's Music Page
http://www.mcdman.com/steir.html

Philip joined Animal Acres this year, and is committing his tremendous talents, resources, and time to promote our farmed animal rescue and protection efforts. Philip is the author of the new blog, Vegan Sanctuary, which provides tools, resources, and information to encourage compassionate living, and he served as our Stage Manager for the 2009 Gala. We are honored to have Philip join us at our Guest Speaker for our Thankful Turkeys event on November 21st, where he will be giving a presentation entitled: "We Are What We Feel" from his blog Vegan Sanctuary

"When we can go straight to the emotional aspects of how it feels for us to live on this planet with so much violence against non humans and how it feels to have our hearts broken over and over again every day we can begin to make our experience personal for others. When we layout what we feel regarding our reasons to not participate in the exploitation of non human animals and allow the meaning to become rooted in who we are, it provides us a much greater opportunity to ignite the awareness of those questioning our veganism." - Philip Steir