Today we’d like to introduce you to Cami Hoffman.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
It’s hard to pinpoint precisely where my path toward consistent anti-oppression activism began, much less how that led to me becoming the Youth Director of The Raven Corps today. For now, I’ll say it started with a dog: Hayate. Hayate was a pittie bordering on 100 pounds of pure love and loyalty. I was twelve, and he was the first pit bull I had ever had the pleasure of sharing a home with. My family was fostering him for a friend, so our time together was short but sweet. During that time, I began to realize the bad reputation pit bulls have been dealt. Between passersby avoiding him on walks, adults widening their eyes when I told them I had a pit bull (often followed by a polite “I could never”), or just expressing flat-out negativity, it wasn’t hard to notice the public had an opinion about dogs like Hayate.
Oddly, I felt emboldened by this. I did my research about the history of pit bulls, their temperance, and why they were dealt such a bad hand. I gave a presentation to my seventh-grade English class about Hayate’s story and the injustices of breed-specific legislation. As the years went by, more species found their way under my umbrella of advocacy: orcas, pigs, elephants, cows, chickens, and all the rest. I found my home advocating for our more-than-human kin.
This theme, this drive to fight for the oppressed underdog (literally and metaphorically), is a consistent thread throughout my path as an activist. It’s what ultimately drove me to The Raven Corps. I found The Raven Corps on Instagram, reached out, and immediately became best friends with our Portland-based badass Executive Director, Claire Howe (who forever hates that title). She told me all about the work they were doing at the time and created opportunities for me to get involved. The Raven Corps offered me a welcoming community of like-minded youth activists that I could rally behind and with.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Taking a deep dive into advocacy work is hard no matter who you are. When I took that plunge, I was a freshman in high school struggling with my identity and toxic relationships. Getting active for issues that I cared about somehow healed me and broke me at the same time. I began recognizing my own power and potential and connecting with issues bigger than myself (and thereby connecting to communities I never had before). The downside: my sense of self-worth became dependent on my activism. If I ever skipped out on a protest or an outreach event, I would berate and criticize myself to no end. Unfortunately, I know my experience with activism is not at all unique in this regard. This unrelenting pressure played a big role in the development of my eating disorder, which put me in and out of treatment and hospitalization on more than one occasion. It unwittingly became the way I coped with everything life was throwing at me, from my interpersonal relationships to existing in the throes of intense activism. And, frankly, just being a young person coming-of-age and realizing how monumentally fucked our beautiful planet is. That’s where The Raven Corps comes in: I found a community I could relate to, talk about real problems with, and take action.
The Raven Corps had a bit of an identity crisis as an organization, too. Actually, we’ve had multiple. The Raven Corps started off as a Vegan animal rights club at a high school in Portland, Oregon, facilitated by Claire. Then it became a nonprofit for “people, animals, and the planet.” Most of our Operations were some form of educational outreach, vegan food samples, etc. As the state of the world grew more and more dire, we shifted focus again. This was right around when COVID-19 hit — we started building community and organizing online. We rebranded and focused in on consistent anti-oppression Vegan advocacy. That’s essentially the same as being anti-oppression, but we make a point to include animals in our stance. All of the struggles – both in my personal life and as an organization – have resulted in an incredible amount of growth and value alignment that would not have been possible otherwise.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
In a soundbite, The Raven Corps is a Vegan anti-oppression youth activist organization. We implement Operations (advocacy projects/campaigns) that strike at the roots of oppression, and we build a strong community in doing so. We also make Vegan nice crispy treats to help fund the nonprofit! It’s called Raven Corps Treats, and this project would not exist without Jesse: the human who single-handedly makes ALL our treats with love and care. These treats are another form of advocacy: each month, we ask a new Featured Raven from our community to come up with a flavor and an issue they care about, and they create a video about the issue, and a QR code to that video goes on the treat label. It’s a delicious way to incorporate some fun into work that can be emotionally taxing.
I wear a lot of hats as the Youth Director of The Raven Corps. In this role, I am the partner to our Executive Director. Our roles merge and diverge in a lot of ways. We, along with our small and mighty staff (affectionately called “The Conspiracy”), serve as the roots of The Raven Corps. We support our Ravens from the bottom-up rather than top-down. My main areas of focus are running our social media, supporting our team of Lead Ravens on our organization-wide Operation, networking, helping develop structures and resources for our community… and whatever other needs crop up as the organization changes. This job has a lot of variety and diversity day-to-day, and that’s something I love about it.
This year, we are focusing on an organization-wide campaign called “Operation: Mind Over Milk.” Cow’s milk is served in every public school across the country through the National School Lunch Program, and most students have no choice but to take it. This has direct negative consequences on not only the students’ lives, but also on the environment, the cafeteria workers, and of course, the cows supplying the milk. And that is not an exhaustive list. So, we onboarded a team of Lead Ravens and partnered with a coalition to make plant-based milk more accessible in school cafeterias. This is an ongoing effort, and it encapsulates what we’re all about as an organization: it is a multidimensional issue and we’re tackling it from every angle — for humans, our more-than-human kin, AND the planet. Being multidimensional (AKA “intersectional”) isn’t optional in effective advocacy. It’s necessary. We take that to heart in The Raven Corps, and that’s something I’m extremely proud of in the work we do.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
The need for the type of work we do is only growing. The sad thing is, not everyone recognizes that. We are giving young people tools to organize around real-world issues and empowering them to take action in their daily lives. This work is both timeless and more critical than ever. We’re striking change at the roots. This is essential in building a more just and equitable future for all.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.theravencorps.org | www.mindovermilk.org
- Instagram: @theravencorps and @ravencorpstreats
- Youtube: The Raven Corps
- Other: Raven Corps Treats website: ravencorpstreats.com
Image Credits
Eddie Hoffman
Margarita Bellah
