www.ambiente.us DECEMBER |DICIEMBRE 2008
OPEd | PETA | Change can happen
By Ingrid E. Newkirk
When President-elect Barack Obama was born, numerous states would
have prohibited his black Kenyan father from marrying his white Kansan
mother. The Voting Rights Act was still a few years away, and the
Supreme Court’s order to desegregate schools was being fought tooth
and nail. Look at how far we have come. Who alive then would have
believed that just a few short decades later, Americans would elect
their first black president?
We have broken through a significant barrier, but we cannot stop
there. We must now break down the barrier that prevents us from caring about all
the “others” who are “not like us,” regardless of race, regardless of gender—and regardless of species.
Prejudice and oppression come about because of a belief that “we” are important and that “they” are not.
In the days of slavery, for example, not so long ago, some people honestly believed that African men did not
feel pain as white men do, that African women did not experience maternal love as white women do. And so
it was quite acceptable to brand men’s faces with a hot iron and to auction off slaves’ children and send
them vast distances away from their mothers. All evidence was to the contrary, yet highly educated people
defied their own eyes and ears and common sense by denying the facts before them. Society accepted this
horrible exploitation, and then, as now, it takes courage to break away from the norm, even when the norm is
ugly and wrong.
Today, we have abolished human slavery, at least in theory. But we continue to enslave all the others who
happen not to be exactly like us but who, if we are honest with ourselves, show us that they experience
maternal love as we do, that if you burn them, they feel the same pain as we do, that they desire freedom
from shackles as we do.
In their natural homes, elephants live in complex multigenerational social groups, mourn their dead and
remember friends and relatives from years past. Yet we tear them away from their families, confine them with
chains to stinking, squalid boxcars and beat them into performing ridiculous tricks for our amusement.
Rats are detested, yet even these tiny animals,
mammals like us, have been found to giggle (in
frequencies that can’t be heard by the human ear)
when they are tickled and will risk their own lives
to save other rats, especially when the rats in peril
are babies. Although no mouse or rat bankrupted
our economy, invaded Iraq or set poison out for us,
we dismiss their feelings as inconsequential and
somehow beneath our consideration.
Mother pigs sing to their young while nursing, and
newborn piglets run joyfully toward their mothers’
voices. On factory farms, a sow spends her entire
life surrounded by the cold metal bars of a space
so small that she can never turn around or take even two steps. Chickens raised for the table fare even
worse and have their beaks seared off with a hot blade. They will never enjoy the warmth of a nest or the
affectionate nuzzle of a mate.
The time has come to stop thinking of animal rights as distracting or less deserving of our energy than other
struggles for social justice. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere.” All oppression, prejudice, violence and cruelty are wrong and must be rejected no matter how
novel the idea or how inconvenient the task.
And for those who think that we will never be able to achieve the dream of liberation from oppression, not just
for human beings but for all beings, regardless of race or gender or species, I have just three words for you:
Yes. We. Can.
Ingrid E. Newkirk is the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and author of the
new book One Can Make a Difference; 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.
Copyright © PETA & AMBIENTE MAGAZINE. Do not reproduce without citing this source
OPEd | PETA | Change can happen
By Ingrid E. Newkirk
When President-elect Barack Obama was born, numerous states would
have prohibited his black Kenyan father from marrying his white Kansan
mother. The Voting Rights Act was still a few years away, and the
Supreme Court’s order to desegregate schools was being fought tooth
and nail. Look at how far we have come. Who alive then would have
believed that just a few short decades later, Americans would elect
their first black president?
We have broken through a significant barrier, but we cannot stop
there. We must now break down the barrier that prevents us from caring about all
the “others” who are “not like us,” regardless of race, regardless of gender—and regardless of species.
Prejudice and oppression come about because of a belief that “we” are important and that “they” are not.
In the days of slavery, for example, not so long ago, some people honestly believed that African men did not
feel pain as white men do, that African women did not experience maternal love as white women do. And so
it was quite acceptable to brand men’s faces with a hot iron and to auction off slaves’ children and send
them vast distances away from their mothers. All evidence was to the contrary, yet highly educated people
defied their own eyes and ears and common sense by denying the facts before them. Society accepted this
horrible exploitation, and then, as now, it takes courage to break away from the norm, even when the norm is
ugly and wrong.
Today, we have abolished human slavery, at least in theory. But we continue to enslave all the others who
happen not to be exactly like us but who, if we are honest with ourselves, show us that they experience
maternal love as we do, that if you burn them, they feel the same pain as we do, that they desire freedom
from shackles as we do.
In their natural homes, elephants live in complex multigenerational social groups, mourn their dead and
remember friends and relatives from years past. Yet we tear them away from their families, confine them with
chains to stinking, squalid boxcars and beat them into performing ridiculous tricks for our amusement.
Rats are detested, yet even these tiny animals,
mammals like us, have been found to giggle (in
frequencies that can’t be heard by the human ear)
when they are tickled and will risk their own lives
to save other rats, especially when the rats in peril
are babies. Although no mouse or rat bankrupted
our economy, invaded Iraq or set poison out for us,
we dismiss their feelings as inconsequential and
somehow beneath our consideration.
Mother pigs sing to their young while nursing, and
newborn piglets run joyfully toward their mothers’
voices. On factory farms, a sow spends her entire
life surrounded by the cold metal bars of a space
so small that she can never turn around or take even two steps. Chickens raised for the table fare even
worse and have their beaks seared off with a hot blade. They will never enjoy the warmth of a nest or the
affectionate nuzzle of a mate.
The time has come to stop thinking of animal rights as distracting or less deserving of our energy than other
struggles for social justice. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere.” All oppression, prejudice, violence and cruelty are wrong and must be rejected no matter how
novel the idea or how inconvenient the task.
And for those who think that we will never be able to achieve the dream of liberation from oppression, not just
for human beings but for all beings, regardless of race or gender or species, I have just three words for you:
Yes. We. Can.
Ingrid E. Newkirk is the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and author of the
new book One Can Make a Difference; 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.
Copyright © PETA & AMBIENTE MAGAZINE. Do not reproduce without citing this source
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