PETA AU Global Issue 3 2020

Taking Animal Rights to a Presidential Podium By Ingrid Newkirk

Getting active for animals is easy at PETA.org/Store . PETA gear enables you to speak volumes before you even open your mouth! Say It Loud, Say It Proud! END SPECIESISM:

Squirrel: © iStock.com/GlobalP • Jimmy Carter Library photo: courtesy of Jimmy Carter Presidential Library Macaw: © iStock.com/cynoclub • Spray can: © iStock.com/malerapaso • Torn paper: © iStock.com/yasinguneysu

Man wearing t-shirt: ©iStock.com/Damir Khabirov • Lawn sign: iStock.com/nazdravieo

These thought provoking T-shirts will help you take a stand against speciesism every time you walk out the door.

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Your next cup of coffee will

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E arlier this year, C-SPAN’s Book TV filmed me giving a talk about Animalkind at The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Dozens of writers, activists, and scholars have delivered stirring addresses from that stage, and I was there to discuss one of the most pressing ethical issues of our time: speciesism. So I talked about squirrels. Yes, squirrels.

PETA’s hoodie makes it clear that we’re all in this together. I

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All Value Life and Fight the Knife I also recounted the time when President Carter’s envoy and I were both speaking at the International Nonviolence Conference in Bethlehem. The first night, on our way to a banquet, we passed a marketplace where butchers were slaughtering bleating sheep. When dinner came, everyone was served a lamb shank. No one connected the dots: The organizers were serving a violent meal at a conference on nonviolence.

Let Compassion Take Wing I shared another story in Bethlehem: The writer Loren Eiseley once trapped two sparrow hawks to ship to a zoo. But he slipped as he was moving them, and the male bit him on the thumb, allowing his mate to fly off. The next morning, as Eiseley was building a cage, he picked up the male hawk and could feel his heart pounding under his feathers. As the bird stared up into the sky, Eiseley decided to let him go. “He flew up into the towering emptiness of light and crystal that was so intense that my eyes could scarcely bear to penetrate it. There was silence. Then, from far up somewhere, a cry. When I heard that cry my heart turned over,” Eiseley recalled. “Coming straight out of the sun’s eyes, where she must have been soaring restlessly above us for untold hours, hurtled his mate. And from far up, ringing from peak to peak, came a cry of such unutterable and ecstatic joy that it sounds down across the years as I write. … Then they were gone forever somewhere into those upper regions beyond the eyes of men.”

Birds are capable of profound love, most stay with their partner for life, and they are great parents – yet many humans still treat them like unfeeling objects rather than fellow sentient beings. Who’s Watching You? It’s so simple to act compassionately, as Eiseley did. And just as with the squirrels, there’s usually someone watching us – someone we can inspire to be kind. Before I left Bethlehem, I spraypainted this message on the wall: “All beings want to be free!” The children watching me vowed to stop eating meat. Our job is to guide people to the slippery slope of thinking about animals, which leads to caring about them, and finally to push them over the edge toward working for the rights of all animalkind. Take Action Now Visit PETA.org.au/AnimalkindBook to order your copy of Animalkind and read jaw-dropping stories about who animals are and how we can help them. Order extras for friends, libraries, and schools!

I did share anecdotes about President Carter, but then I described how squirrels bury their nuts using the position of the stars and how they are so self-aware and smart that if someone is watching, they use sleight of hand, pretending to bury the nut but actually hiding it somewhere else. My point was that animals aren’t just like us – they are us, and they deserve to be treated with respect.

Before I left Bethlehem,

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The next day, speakers described being imprisoned unjustly, losing their land to seizure, and enduring other violence. Each ended by saying, “Please respect us. We are human beings.” But I thought about something my mother often said: It doesn’t matter who suffers – it matters that they suffer. I ended my speech with these words: “One day, I hope all of us will say, ‘Please respect us. We are living beings .’”

I spraypainted this message on the wall: "All beings want to be free!" The children watching me vowed to stop eating meat.

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