THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 18, 1996 TAG: 9606180490
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 191 lines
Fifteen years ago, there were two, meeting in a Maryland basement: a stockbroker and a college student interrupting his studies.
Today there are a half-million believers worldwide, making fervent comparisons between animal rights, the Holocaust and slavery.
Then they put on chicken suits and dance in the street.
That is the paradox of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which moves its headquarters to Norfolk's Front Street on July 1. Leaders of the world's largest animal-rights organization have a serious message, yet they choose an entertaining way to get it across.
``We're an abolitionist organization. It's very simple to know where we stand,'' said Ingrid Newkirk, the former stockbroker, now the group's vice president. ``If it's cruel, we say find another way or don't do it. We're an anti-slavery movement. We don't think any being belongs in chains, in cages or in service to a more powerful group.''
Newkirk, 46, was arrested for disorderly conduct in May when she and other ``PETA people'' crawled up a New York sidewalkwearing steel-jaw traps on their arms and legs, calling out for people to stop trapping animals for fur. The protest was during designer Karl Lagerfeld's fashion show.
``It was a very exciting visual,'' Newkirk said. ``It actually made Time's international magazine. The police were delightful. I tried to make the case that they should go into the show and arrest everyone because trapping is a more serious offense, because it is cruelty to animals.''
Hampton Roads should not expect to see such a demonstration unless Lagerfeld holds a show here, Newkirk said. But she wouldn't say what Hampton Roads should expect from its new neighbors.
``Hard to say,'' Newkirk said. ``I think there will be some fun things in Norfolk that everybody can appreciate. Some musician friends have said they might wish to perform, and a couple entertainment celebrities want to have a party at the office to open it.''
Among PETA's supporters are musicians like Pearl Jam and Chrissie Hynde, and actresses Kim Basinger and Mary Tyler Moore, but Newkirk didn't say who might appear in Norfolk.
This weekend, the week before PETA moves to Norfolk, animal rights advocates from around the world will gather in Washington for a three-day conference and a march on the Capitol. The hundreds of different animal organizations have not met to show unity since 1990, arguably the peak of the animal-rights movement in the United States.
``I think what has happened since then is there's been kind of a shakedown in the movement,'' said James Jasper, a New York University professor and author of a book on the animal-rights movement. ``Some groups have gone out of business, other groups like PETA have expanded their membership. There's been a kind of concentration within that movement which could make the movement stronger, could make it more efficient.''
PETA, a sponsor of the March for the Animals, says the movement doesn't need revitalizing because it never dropped off. Certainly, PETA didn't. It grew from a 1989 budget of $6.5 million to a worldwide organization with a 1995 budget of $12 million.
Of that, $11 million came from donations. The organization said a little more than 81 percent of its budget went to stop animal exploitation. About 15 percent went to fund raising, and about 4 percent was for operating expenses.
PETA grew due to direct mail and media coverage, as celebrities lined up to pose naked rather than wear fur, to hug turkeys rather than eat them.
Glitz and wackiness. The buttered side that makes the evening news.
The plain bread beneath is rarely featured, but behind the scenes PETA quietly donates clothing and shoes to homeless shelters, provides supplies to animal shelters, gives free makeovers to women at job fairs. The anti-cruelty message comes across because the shoes are not leather, and the cosmetics are from companies that do not test their ingredients on animals.
``We usually have lots of things that we give away,'' Newkirk said. ``There are lots of fun things, they're not wacky, they're just useful and they show people there are two ways to do it: You can do it with kindness or you can do it with cruelty.''
PETA is best known for wackiness: hurling pies at Ronald McDonald, stripping to underwear to protest the wearing of fur, dressing in cow, bear and elephant costumes.
``PETA antics,'' the staff calls it.
On the other hand, Newkirk has given an interview that drew a comparison between the Holocaust and the billions of chickens debeaked, cramped in cages and genetically altered to grow bigger muscles for the dinner table. PETA's co-founder, Alex Pacheco, has tramped through the Hawaiian jungle for weeks, snipping 700 wire snares off Nature Conservancy property to stop that conservation group from killing wild pigs, goats and deer on its lands.
``You can be made fun of for trying to make it a less violent world,'' Newkirk said. ``It's not going to intimidate us, that's for sure.''
She described running onto the shooting field at Hegins, Pa., where pigeons are released from cages to be shot as targets in an annual community fund-raiser.
``I don't think you'll find people (in PETA) who are very faint-hearted. They may be soft-hearted but they're not faint-hearted,'' Newkirk said. ``You can't be if you see the amount of cruelty that crosses our desks.''
Cruelty to animals has always stirred some people to action. In 1895, a small band of dedicated people attacked the fashion industry, agitated for animal protection, changed the way society dressed and saved a few million birds from exploitation.
It was the beginnings of the National Audubon Society, founded on the notion that society dames should not wear dead birds pinned to their hats, and that wild birds should not be slaughtered for their feathers. Now, Audubon's focus is the protection and wise use of natural resources. It acts through lobbying and close association with state and federal agencies.
PETA takes a broader approach: Animals are not ours to wear, eat, experiment on or use for entertainment. Members are undeterred by those who ridicule their methods.
``They do raise the dialogue, sometimes to the level of absurdity, but I think they have been very useful in mainstream issues,'' said Kathleen Rogers, an attorney who heads Audubon's endangered species campaign. ``In the scientific community, people always speak of them with contempt in their voices.
``I've never had anything but respect for people who go out on limbs. One man's terrorist is another man's hero. My personal perspective is that they've been very useful.''
PETA hasn't hesitated to turn its ire on environmental groups like The Nature Conservancy when it disagrees with their stance on animals. Even within its own circle of animal-rights activists, PETA gets its share of criticism.
``The young radicals consider us quite fuddy duddy, and the purists, the very pure animal rights people, think we're too gimmicky,'' Newkirk said. ``But we're very youth-oriented and we believe animal rights is going to be in the mainstream and it's our job to get it there, just to provoke conversation if nothing else.''
PETA is likely to provoke more than conversation in Hampton Roads. Jasper, the New York professor, predicted that PETA will make its presence known.
``They are quite happy to use convenient local sites at which to protest,'' Jasper said. ``Frankly, if I were running a research hospital or university that did a lot of biomedical research, I would be a little worried. I would go in and make sure that there weren't any labs that were doing especially unpleasant things to the furry end of the animal kingdom.''
PETA says it has never broken into a lab to liberate research animals, but it has, at least in the past, had connections with animal activists who did. PETA served as publicist for several of the underground Animal Liberation Front's first break-ins, and Newkirk wrote a fictionalized biography of its American founder, based on personal interviews with the woman she calls ``Valerie.''
Still, she says, PETA sticks to civil disobedience.
``We don't break into somewhere, but we will have a sit-in,'' Newkirk said. ``And we've been known to chain ourselves to things. We break the law peacefully.''
Even the Audubon Society, which works quietly through lobbying and negotiation, respects the passion that fuels PETA's flamboyance.
``They kind of put their money where their mouth is,'' Rogers said. ``They really, really believe in something.''
Education is the key to that belief, PETA says. Before embracing a cause, PETA people examine it, including the details that most would prefer to ignore.
``In general, people in the animal rights movement really are incredibly thoughtful about their lives and the broader effects of their lifestyles, something most of us try to ignore,'' Jasper said. ``We don't really want to know what river gets polluted to make the soap that we use or what animals get killed or what toxic wastes get made to create the plastics we use. A lot of protesters really do want to know.''
PETA's newest campaign is to ban fishing, for both cruelty and health reasons. It's an uphill battle against such a popular sport. But PETA has faced similar odds in its fights against circuses, meat entrees, leather shoes and medicines tested on animals. Still, the organization does not give up.
``I truly feel that human beings have got great kindness in our hearts,'' Newkirk said. ``We're slow learners and we don't like to change our little habits, we're somewhat lazy and we're quite greedy and we're capable of being selfish. But if we want to be proud at the end of our lives, we want to be proud not of grabbing everything we could, but of being as good as we can.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
A PETA ad with movie star Antonio Banderas is one of several
examples of high-profile people lending their faces to PETA's
animal-rights campaigns.
Graphic
A HISTORY OF PETA
The World Congress for Animals will be held Thursday through
Saturday, and the 1996 March for the Animals will be held Sunday,
both in Washington.
Sponsored by more than 70 animal protection groups, the gathering
is expected to draw between 50,000 and 100,000 people. A charter bus
will carry marchers from Hampton Roads to the Sunday event.
The conference will feature speakers such as chimpanzee
researcher Jane Goodall, scientist Carl Sagan and animal protection
advocates from organizations such as Sea Shepherd, the Humane
Society of the United States, the Fund for Animals, People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals and many more. It will be held at the
USAir Arena in Landover, MD.
The march will begin around 10 a.m. Sunday. Speakers at the march
are expected to be rock singer Chrissie Hynde, actress Rue
McClanahan, author Cleveland Amory, author Peter Singer, and
government officials from England and India.
On Monday, animal protection advocates will lobby Congress.
For more information about the event, call the National Alliance
for Animals, 703-810-1085.
For information about riding the bus from Hampton Roads, call
Doreen Dykes, Alliance for Animals, at 464-5284.
KEYWORDS: ANIMAL RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS HISTORY by CNB