"Vegan Batgirl" Connie Spence, Part 1 of 4: The Giant Spotlight

In today's program, we will introduce you Connie Spence, an eleven-year vegan, who pushes the envelope to drive more conversations and eyeballs toward veganism. Noticing the constraints that exist in many activism events, requiring the presence of a large number of activists to create an impact, Connie Spence devised a unique way to reach multitudes of people, by spotlighting outsized vegan messages on building walls.

“I was one of those meat eaters that knew a few vegetarians, were annoyed by them, and said, and I quote, kill me if I ever turned vegetarian. And I, like a year later, turned vegetarian. So, you can’t really lose hope. Never lose hope on people that kind of have that strict stance about their meat-eating because you just never know.”

“I knew nothing about activism. And so anyways, all of a sudden, I would say in 2014, I started seeing people sharing activism events on Facebook, and I started getting involved with that.” After reading an article about a guy using light to show a printed message on a wall, Connie was thrilled about this idea and wanted to find out about the source he used.

“As an advertiser, I wanted to get as many eyeballs as possible on my message. Light isn't vandalism, which is fascinating to me. And so, I instantly started using that light with vegan messages.” Connie’s previous 15-year career in Advertising & Software Business Development helped her create the ‘Vegan Batman Light’ to project 70 X 70 ft messages of truth and compassion onto the sides of buildings in order to transform people’s attitudes.

The purpose of these messages was to reach a larger audience and help people make the connection between their purchases and the harrowing torture of innocent animals. “A lot of people loved watching the interactions. I was veganizing a lot of people and a lot of eyeballs could see these messages. I went to Vegas with it and put it on Vegas hotels, pretty much anywhere that there was a blank wall, I would put it on.”

Connie knew nothing about dealing with the police but had to interact with them at least 75 times. Her great knowledge of the law saved her from being shut down when she was using the light about 3 or 4 times a week.