This article aims to clarify why we, the Vegan Motorcycle Club, have consciously chosen to position ourselves strictly as a community-focused club, prioritizing the nurturing of social relationships among vegan motorcyclists over vegan advocacy, political change, or profit generation. Below, we explain our reasoning and the importance of clearly identifying an organization's core purpose.
Understanding Organizational Types
Clearly distinguishing between a community, a social movement, a political organization, and a business is crucial to ensure contributions align with intentions and expectations.
A Community: Relationships and Belonging
A community exists primarily to foster healthy relationships and to satisfy our fundamental need for social interaction. Examples include social clubs, hobby groups, churches, and specific interest groups like ours at Vegan Motorcycle Club.
Mike Monteiro explains beautifully in his newsletter "How to Build a Better Mosh Pit":
"A club is mostly interested in community, while promising change and power as a way to gather that community. It’s also a more insular definition of community than the other two."
At Vegan Motorcycle Club, we recognize our primary purpose is precisely this: to create and strengthen friendships among vegan motorcyclists. Our community exists to provide enjoyable experiences, meaningful connections, and mutual support. We help each other discover cruelty-free motorcycle gear and enjoy riding together.
While we partner with animal-rights social movements, we leave advocacy primarily to them, offering support without compromising our central goal of relationship-building. We may occasionally support political leaders aligned with our values, but this remains secondary to fostering community.
A Social Movement: Values and Advocacy
Social movements advocate for specific values or ethics, aiming to influence society and culture, shift perceptions, and change behaviors and attitudes.
However, when animal rights movements prioritize community-building, political power, or profit-making, they often fail to advocate effectively for animals' right to life. Prioritizing community can dilute core values to accommodate members who don't fully align with those values. Prioritizing political change can lead to harmful compromises, as seen in animal welfare reforms that legitimize animal exploitation. Prioritizing business interests can cause ethical conflicts and dilute advocacy messages.
Effective social movements maintain strict adherence to their foundational values and clearly define their objectives, partnering with but never becoming another type of organization.
A Political Party: Power Above All
The core objective of a political party is to acquire and maintain power. Successful political parties win elections, control institutions, and pass legislation. This quest for power often involves shifting values, making strategic compromises, and sometimes sacrificing community cohesion.
Monteiro describes this well:
"A political party is mostly interested in power, and uses the promise of change to get it (while also being relatively comfortable changing its core beliefs to get that power), while rallying a community to gather that power."
Political parties must remain flexible to maintain alliances and power, something communities and movements cannot do without significant risk to their integrity.
A Business: Profit First
The primary objective of a business is straightforward: to generate profit. A successful business enriches its owners, investors, and often its employees. While businesses might tout values or community, their ultimate loyalty lies with profit. Companies often misuse terms like "family" or "community" to foster employee loyalty or extract more labor.
Your employer should not fulfill your deep need for belonging or identity; that's not its role. Capitalism inherently rewards those who prioritize profits, inevitably compromising values to remain competitive.
Why Knowing the Difference Matters
Organizations frequently interact and sometimes share members, but clarity of purpose is essential:
- Businesses that mimic communities or movements risk manipulation and employee dissatisfaction.
- Communities acting as businesses or movements fracture relationships.
- Social movements behaving like political parties compromise core values.
- Political parties operating as businesses risk corruption and diminished trust.
Organizations must clearly identify their core objective. While partnering with other groups can be beneficial, sacrificing their main objective risks obsolescence and failure.
Our Commitment at Vegan Motorcycle Club
At Vegan Motorcycle Club, we clearly understand that our mission is community first. We nurture connections and friendships among vegan riders. Although we recognize the opportunity to sell vegan gear, we explicitly choose not to become a business. Prioritizing profits could damage trust and relationships within our community.
Instead, our club remains committed to providing a platform for discovering vegan motorcycle gear completely free of charge. The website serves as a practical tool and guide to find vegan motorcycle gear, but more importantly, it's a means to foster community, helping more vegans enjoy riding motorcycles and become part of our supportive network of individuals committed to avoiding the exploitation of animals for their skin, flesh, or labor.
Any financial support we request—purely voluntary—will be solely to cover practical costs such as website hosting or printing stickers. Thankfully, our community members have generously volunteered to cover these expenses so far.
By understanding precisely who we are—a community dedicated to fostering connections—we ensure that Vegan Motorcycle Club remains a welcoming, supportive, and enjoyable space for vegan motorcyclists everywhere.