Thursday, May 15, 2008
A month after asking Timothy McVeigh to die a vegan, the president and co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals dares you to say she cares more about animals than people.
Apr 30, 2001 | At first glance, urging the murderer of 168 innocent people to give up meat, eggs and dairy out of consideration for animals seems either insanely optimistic or crassly exploitative. For Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, her group's letter to Timothy McVeigh made perfect sense. In a nation that matter-of-factly slaughters 9 billion animals a year, Newkirk and her colleagues must maintain an incredible amount of hope.
The letter to McVeigh, penned by PETA staffer Bruce Friedrich, reads as a sincere expression of concern not just for animals but for McVeigh's own spiritual well-being. Friedrich writes:
"I believe that your decision to go vegan would help the movement for compassion toward animals, and I am certain that if you made the choice prayerfully, it would profit your soul. As a Christian, I believe in acts of repentance, and it seems to me that you might benefit very much from such an act."
If it sounds like PETA's getting more ambitious, it is. In order to better pursue multinational juggernauts, PETA has opened offices in Britain, Germany, Italy and India in recent years. Fast-food chains, clothing designers and even U.S. presidential candidates know the bitterness of the long, hard P.R. winter that is a Newkirk-directed campaign. Tofu cream pies are thrown at CEOs, gruesome billboards go up near corporate headquarters and throngs of vocal protesters dog profit margins at the wave of Newkirk's hand. McDonald's, General Motors, Calvin Klein and, most recently, Burger King have all buckled under the strain in one way or another.
Newkirk, who served 25 years as a Maryland state law enforcement officer in addition to co-founding PETA in 1980 with Alex Pacheco, hopes the public will see past the organization's sensational tactics. It's the substance of the mission that still drives her after two decades: endeavoring to end what she perceives as humanity's moral divorce from much of the animal kingdom.
Bruce [Friedrich] was quoted in an Associated Press story as saying, "I don't know what it means for the vegan movement if Timothy McVeigh in his final days adopts a vegan diet." Judging from the media coverage, it seems like a vegan McVeigh could go a long way toward permanently relegating vegans to the wacko column in many minds.
I'm never afraid of that. I can't imagine why anyone would wish or hope that McVeigh continues to be violent until the very last minute. That's mean and rotten at the core because it means people don't really want him to change. If there's anyone you would want to change, it would surely be someone who has demonstrated the active capacity to hurt and to kill.
I can't imagine why anyone would root for him to have a steak -- that would make him the poster boy of the hunting and fishing community. He's very proud to say he does hunt, which puts him in the same league as all the school shooters, almost without exception. They either hunted themselves, or used their parents' hunting guns, or were familiar with hunting. So he couldn't be the poster boy for veganism when he's lived his entire life being a hunter, and a meat-and-potatoes man, but it would show that there's hope for absolutely anyone.
It also draws attention to the fact that even in the federal prison system, you can now get vegetarian meals. It will be food for thought and debate for several years to come if he does this. The federal prisoner who was executed before him took as his last meal an olive with the pit so that an olive tree, a symbol of peace, could grow out of him when he was buried. I think he was sending a message that nobody is irredeemable in a Christian context. Maybe this is the first time Timothy McVeigh has had his violence questioned in a context where he can actually start exploring what he does.
Have you had any feedback from the families of the bombing victims?
No. When Jeffrey Dahmer was eating people, we did hear from one of the victim's family members. She herself had become a vegetarian after thinking about what the animals go through every day, and what somebody close to her had gone through for someone's bizarre behavior and taste. Obviously everyone's heart goes out to the families of victims -- as Bruce says, "You can't even remotely imagine what they must be going through." But this is not disrespectful of them. If anything it's trying to stop future violence.
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