JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us what you want the public to know about your recent completed project or the one you are actively working on. What is it, why is it, and how was/is it done?
INGRID NEWKIRK: To mark PETA’s 40th birthday, I wrote a new book, just out now: Animalkind: Remarkable discoveries about animals and the revolutionary ways we can help them. The first half of the book offers examples of the jaw-dropping talents, abilities, intelligence and emotional complexity of animals – from elephants, who can use their trunks as snorkels as they swim up to 30 miles for the sheer fun of it; to dogs who can detect not only the scent of a pending epileptic fit or cancer in a human body, but seek out heat with their noses; mice who giggle when tickled and “talk” at subsonic levels; to monkeys who lay sticks at intersections to help laggardly troupe members choose the right path; and snails who do such things as build a window out of slime so they can seal themselves inside their shell during winter storms. The second half shows how easy it is to change any habit that might, even inadvertently, harm animals. You can be as poor as a church mouse or rolling in money; a student, lawyer, royalty, there are lots of things you can do that mean the difference between life and death for an individual who may not look exactly like you but under the skin, fur or feathers, is the same in every important way.
JS: What kind of audience will this project interest? What new audience are you also seeking? Why to both questions?
IN: This book will interest anyone who, like me, cares about and is in awe of individual animals and the animal nations, and wants them to be protected. However, I am hoping that people will buy the book to give to someone who hasn’t connected the dots, perhaps someone who hasn’t yet figured out that it they are appalled at the prospect of eating a dog, they should rightly be just as appalled to eat an equally sentient being, like a chicken or pig; and that if you are a vegetarian, you can’t wear wool, leather, fur, or anything stolen off an animal’s back because the meat and dairy industries depend on the profit from those parts of the animal. And that no-one can justify removing a loving mother from her child because you want what the child needs, as in taking the calf from the cow and stealing the milk meant for that calf so as to put cow’s milk cheese on a pizza. I would like the book given to university and high school students who might be ready to explore how speciesism (human supremacism) is a scourge and to open their minds to the idea that we are not gods but simply one kind of animal among many in the “Great orchestra of life.” If we wish to grow our movement for animal liberation from human domination, and make more kind choices available, to move forward more quickly, we need to open everyone’s hearts and minds.
JS: In what ways was/is this project easy to do and in what ways was/is it difficult to realize? How long did it take and why that long?
IN: I collect information about animals, so I already had drawers and files full of fascinating facts, that was the easy part. I had to do more research and that was fascinating and a great diversion and a rest from the very ugly undercover investigation videos I have to watch and the disgusting reports of abuse I have to read. I devoted my evenings and weekends, when I wasn’t traveling for work, to getting it done, and then the difficulty was what to leave out or it would have been several books instead of one.
JS: How are you planning to promote, market, and sell this project to the public?
IN: Amazon is doing the heavy lifting, and book stores are carrying the book, and peta.org has blurbs about it, including a beautiful picture of PETA’s Person of the Year, Joaquin Phoenix holding the book and saying he loves it. He’s a great ambassador for animals, of course, and now for the book.
JS: Please give us a brief autobiography, some stuff about yourself, that is relevant to this project.
IN: I grew up adoring and voraciously reading about animals, lived with a dog who was like a brother to me when I was child (and I hope I was a decent enough sister to him) but, that said, there was no animal rights movement and I ate and wore animals. My mother dressed me in so much wool, I probably had more on me than the poor sheep who had it taken from her. My travels in Asia exposed me to animal suffering and only later did I realize that it went on everywhere in the world, just mostly hidden away in places like Europe and the U.S. I inspected laboratories for the government and that disabused me of the naïve idea that there were only a few animals, kept comfortably, and used specifically in life-saving research. Gradually, the film fell from my eyes and I saw what we are doing and realized animals are downtrodden, expendable slaves in so many of our thoughtless pursuits.
JS: What’s next in your creative life?
IN: That would be telling but my daily obsession is to persuade people of their enormous power to influence others, but the materials we leave in our wake (think seat back pockets, bulletin boards, in the gym and doctor’s office, you name it), the conversations we decide to have with others about animal issues (in the lift, the supermarket check-out line, there’s always a way), and the practical gifts, like food, we give to those who need to see there are alternatives to every animal-based thing.
JS: Any final words?
IN: Please, please, please, if you have an ounce of breath (to speak to others), can lift a finger (preferably a typing finger), know anyone who might learn from your knowledge of how animals are abused (family, friends, strangers), use those wonderful powers to spread information (put PETA videos on social media), so that you will forward the cause and not be on your deathbed regretting a life wasted.
