5 Minutes with Ingrid
Back in April, I had the great pleasure of attending an event with Ingrid Newkirk. Ingrid is one of the co-founders of PETA and she was putting on a presentation called “We Are All Animals” at the History Colorado Center. My husband, two sons and I all attended the event. The presentation was well put together and impressively delivered. Regardless of your feelings for PETA, they have had many accomplishments, and are still working hard for animals around the planet.
As an aside, I will tell you that back in 1989 I had spent one year (my second year of college) as a vegetarian. When I arrived home for the summer, I saw a commercial for PETA. I believe the ad starred Rue McClanahan of the Golden Girls. I was moved by it enough to write a letter and put it in an envelope, write the address, and lick a stamp (oh the olden days). That letter was to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Some weeks later I received a starter kit. In that kit, was a magazine. I read it front to back. It contained a horrifying article that explained how veal was linked to the dairy industry. That was enough for me. I was vegan, which I mispronounced for the first 2 months. I have intense gratitude for that gift that was given to me when I was 20 years old.
Back to Ingrid. When I purchased the tickets, I reached out to see if I might meet with Ingrid and get 5 minutes of her time. They responded letting me know they would look into it. Finally, I received an email from her assistant telling me Ingrid would be happy to give me some time after the presentation. I decided to just ask her a few questions and record.
“I am here with Ingrid Newkirk from, PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I just have a few questions…”
Alyssa: “What was your ‘Aha’ moment?”
Ingrid: “I had many Aha moments, I’m a slow learner. Including, I had a fur coat when I was 19… Bass weejuns were my favorite shoes. I gradually ran into various animals and stopped eating them. But for me as a vegetarian, the moment when I became vegan was when a man made fun of me for putting milk in my tea, and I had tea every morning. He said ‘do you eat veal?’ and I said of course I don’t eat veal. We hadn’t had veal in my house since I was 7. He said “but, you know, there is a piece of veal in every glass of milk”. I said what on earth do you mean, they don’t kill the cows. And, of course, he told me ‘well, do you think there are retirement homes for the cows. They take the calf away from the mother. That is why they created the veal industry, and your supporting the veal industry’. Of course I looked into it immediately and thought I can’t live without my morning tea with milk in it (that was before soy milk). But, it became easy because I couldn’t imagine hurting the calves and their mothers that way.”
Alyssa: “How did that become PETA?”
Ingrid: “I was working in an animal shelter and I was vegetarian and then I became vegan. With that revelation, I’d grown up my whole life caring about animals and if I didn’t realize that and I didn’t realize what … was happening to animals in laboratories... Maybe I better start a little group that could inform people who care about animals what’s going on. Do the homework for them. Find the alternatives, and back then there weren’t very many. Today there is an alternative to anything you could possibly want.”
Alyssa: “What is the biggest accomplishment?”
Ingrid: “Oh, I think hard work has produced so many young people today who are growing up in a world with products that didn’t exist when we started, and with choices that didn’t exist when we started. I think the biggest thing is the takeover… of the internet, of social media. Making sure those young people are seeing the videos and hearing the options all the time.
Alyssa: “PETA takes a lot of grief and a lot of attacks … how do you feel about that, how do you respond?”
Ingrid: “Human beings always fight with each other I try not to engage in it. We’ve got so much work to do. The last thing we need is to be sidelined into fighting with other people. I take my hat off to anybody who is honestly doing something for animals and I don’t allow it to bother me that people are critical. Usually they are critical because they don’t understand what we are doing…the thing is to get on with the work. The work is everything. The animals don’t care how we perform otherwise.
PETA organizes:
More Demonstrations More Investigations More Litigations More Negotiations
I am very grateful to Ingrid for spending some time with me. She is very open and forthcoming. She has a lovely sense of humour. She was also nice enough to go live on Facebook and answer 5 Burning Questions.
