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This article first appeared in the Virginian-Pilot, Dec. 3, 2000, and is reproduced with permission. © 2000 Landmark Communications Inc.
By
Bill Sizemore
For 20
years, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has waged a brutal
war in the name of kindness.
It
champions the welfare of animals with a flinty, take-no-prisoners
strategy that has alienated a growing group of humans. Among them are
the likely cast of hunters, meatpackers, dairymen, furriers and animal
researchers. Perhaps more surprisingly, the list also includes fellow
animal advocates, some of them former PETA employees, who complain of a
zealous culture that has little tolerance for the squeamish.
"They're
brutal on their people,'' says John Newton, formerly of Meower Power, a
local organization that cares for stray cats. He uses the term "cult-like''
to describe PETA. "If you're not radical enough, they drive you out.''
PETA
crusaders plot their outrageous, sometimes illegal antics from the
organization's headquarters overlooking the Elizabeth River in downtown
Norfolk. They often use shock, insult and even nudity as their hook.
The
resulting press coverage fans the organization's recruitment and fund
raising. It's that media savvy, PETA loyalists say, that has vaulted the
organization into the world's most recognized and effective animal
rights group.
Leading
the charge and setting the tone is PETA's co-founder and president,
Ingrid Newkirk, whose wispy frame and soft British lilt mask a will of
iron and an unbending demand for allegiance to the cause.
"Ingrid
Newkirk runs PETA like a guru cult,'' says Merritt Clifton, founder and
editor of the national animal protection newspaper Animal People. "Sooner
or later, everyone who questions her or upstages her in any way, no
matter how unintentionally, ends up getting shafted in the most
humiliating manner Newkirk can think of.''
Newkirk
is unapologetic. She acknowledges that "we have disgruntled employees
who've left here. There is a little club of disgruntled employees.'' But
she says the people she's fired over the years were fired for good
cause.
"It is
true, I am tough,'' she says. "I believe we should be - and I say this
at staff meetings - a lean, mean fighting machine. This is not a rest
home for people who just have warm feelings about animals.''
An
office thick with tension
Sue Perna of Chesapeake went to work for PETA as a receptionist soon
after the organization moved to Norfolk from suburban Washington in
1996. She says she found a high level of turnover and job anxiety.
"The
tension was so thick you could feel it,'' Perna says. "Everyone was so
scared for their jobs at one point, we began to call the office
telephone list Schindler's List.''
Firings
came frequently and without warning, she says.
"It
was done so capriciously and with such seeming zeal by Ingrid,'' she
says. "She seems to take joy in extinguishing people's careers.''
It's
ironic, Perna says: A woman who has dedicated her life to fighting
animal abuse is herself "an abuser of the human animal.''
After
a year on the job and several run-ins with Newkirk, Perna walked out.
She remains a dedicated animal rights activist - she was arrested two
years ago for climbing onto the roof of a McDonald's in Virginia Beach -
but she steers clear of PETA.
"Many
of us believe that the further we distance ourselves from PETA, the
better off the animal rights movement will be,'' she says.
Sue
Gaines tells a similar story. Gaines,
who moved to Hampton Roads from Connecticut in 1996 to take a job in
PETA's education department, says she found the work environment "quite
a shock.''
"It is
a very horrible place to work,'' she says.
During Gaines' tenure, PETA donated computer software to area high
schools to be used in biology classes as an alternative to dissecting
animals. At one of the schools, Green Run in Virginia Beach, a PETA
protester - dressed as a frog with its internal organs hanging out -
showed up with the software and was ordered off the grounds by school
administrators.
Gaines
got a call about the spectacle from the teacher she had been working
with.
"She
was almost in tears, afraid for her job,'' Gaines says. "I went in to
talk to Ingrid, and she laughed at me. It was of absolutely no concern
to her that that teacher might lose her job.''
Newkirk
denies laughing at the teacher's plight, calling the allegation "dirty''
and "scurrilous.''
As it turned out, the teacher kept her job but Gaines lost hers - fired
by Newkirk after a year at PETA.
"I think she thought I didn't have the guts to be a PETA person,''
Gaines says. "I can't paint with a broad brush like they do. I don't
think meat eaters are evil. If that's what it takes to be a PETA person,
I guess I'm not one.''
Kim
Bartlett, publisher of Animal People and wife of the editor, Clifton,
worked for PETA briefly in the 1980s. "I admire Ingrid in many
respects,'' Bartlett says. "She's done some amazing things.'' But she
also describes Newkirk as "totally confrontational. She doesn't
understand the concept of compromise.''
Mary
Beth Sweetland, director of research, investigations and rescue, who has
been at PETA 13 years, says the attacks on Newkirk by departed employees
are unfair and inaccurate - even though her own sister, Judy, was among
those fired.
"I
don't think it's anything but sour grapes,'' Sweetland says. "I think
they need to get over it.''
Judy Sweetland says she harbors no ill will over her firing. "Not
everybody is cut out for PETA,'' she says. "It demands a high level of
energy and dedication. . . . They are unapologetic about helping
animals. They take a hard, fast line, and that demands that you give 110
percent.''
Low
pay, high profile
PETA's claim to be a "lean, mean'' charity is borne out by the numbers
as well as its antics. Most employees earn less than $25,000 a year. The
biggest salary listed on the organization's most recent tax return is
$62,370 for the director of media relations. Newkirk herself makes only
$25,000. She lives frugally in a Norfolk apartment and does not own a
car.
Most
of PETA's revenue comes from small donations. It gets uniformly high
ratings from charity watchdog groups for spending less than 25 percent
of its budget on administration and fund raising.
PETA's low salaries are offset in part by an unconventional package of
employee benefits, including health coverage for gay partners and
bereavement leave for deaths of "companion animals,'' PETA's term for
pets.
Employees
are encouraged to bring their pets to work. Most employees are
vegetarians or vegans - those who avoid all animal-derived foods,
including eggs and dairy products. That's not a condition of employment,
Newkirk says - but don't show up with a ham sandwich or a leather purse.
No animal products are allowed in the building.
PETA
settled in Norfolk because that's where it found the most affordable
office space. It acquired its four-story building for $2.2 million.
PETA's
penny-pinching ways have helped it grow from a ragtag band of volunteers
into a $17 million-a-year organization with 132 employees - 96 of them
in Norfolk - and branch offices in England, Italy, Germany and India.
PETA's donations are about twice those of the American Humane
Association, one of the country's oldest national animal welfare groups.
The Humane Society of the United States is the largest, with a budget of
about $35 million.
For
PETA, success has meant altering the behavior of multi-billion-dollar
corporations from General Motors to McDonald's. It has cajoled, bullied
and embarrassed world-famous fashion designers, research hospitals and
medical schools into changing their policies. It has won endorsements
from dozens of Hollywood celebrities.
"People
now know that if they do something ghastly to an animal, they can't
necessarily get away with it,'' Newkirk says. "When we started, nobody
knew what animal rights meant. . . . Now, it's an issue.''
Key to PETA's results-oriented strategy is manipulating the media. It
has learned that the more outrageous, provocative - even offensive - its
methods are, the more attention it gets. Attracting that attention is
the job of PETA's campaigns department, which has one of the largest
staffs at the organization's Norfolk headquarters.
Press coverage translates into donations, volunteers and clout. Even
PETA's enemies concede that its strategy has worked.
"PETA
thinks there is no such thing as bad media coverage,'' says Rick
McCarty, director of issues management at the National Cattlemen's Beef
Association. "And they're very unrepentant about it.''
Just last month, PETA activists stripped in front of the White House and
displayed a banner reading "I'd rather go naked than wear fur,''
continuing a campaign launched in 1991. The day after Thanksgiving, they
got naked outside MacArthur Center in Norfolk to protest leather, one of
PETA's latest crusades.
Last
year, PETA enlisted the help of actor James Cromwell, who played the
kindly farmer in the movie "Babe,'' to narrate an undercover video that
showed farmhands bludgeoning sows at a hog farm in Camden County, N.C.
PETA's investigation resulted in the first-ever felony indictments
against factory farm workers.
PETA's
list of detractors has grown well beyond those in the livestock trade.
In its 20th year, PETA has managed to incur the wrath of - among others
- AIDS activists, the mayor of New York and Mothers Against Drunk
Driving.
"If it
didn't work, we wouldn't do it - if there was another way where we
didn't have to embarrass ourselves,'' says Newkirk, 51. "You know, I was
still going naked five years ago, at 46. You think that's not
embarrassing? When I first started doing it I used to think, `Oh,
please, don't let my father see.'
"But it works.''
Cracks
in the movement
For years, PETA's allies watched its antics with tolerance - if not
amusement. When PETA people parade around naked or shove a tofu cream
pie into the face of someone like fashion designer Oscar de la Renta or
chicken king Frank Perdue, it is, after all, hard not to crack a smile.
But
some are no longer grinning.
J.P.
Goodwin, founder of the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, lashed out
at PETA in an online forum in June, charging that its "goofy stunts''
are turning people off and obscuring the movement's core issue, animal
suffering.
"We
are right on the issues,'' Goodwin said. "However, some people have
positioned the movement as flaky, based on silly claims and goofy
stunts. It's time to say no to pie throwing, manure dumping, and naked
models, and get back to talking about animals.''
It was
two high-profile PETA campaigns this year that seemed to push some
people over the edge.
First, just in time for spring break, PETA blitzed college campuses with
its "Got beer?'' ads, which suggested that, based on nutritional value,
students would be better off drinking beer than milk.
When Mothers Against Drunk Driving went ballistic, PETA pulled the ads.
Next,
after New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced that he had prostate cancer
and ended his campaign for the U.S. Senate, PETA put up billboards
depicting the mayor with a milk mustache over the caption, "Got prostate
cancer?'' The message was based on research suggesting that dairy
products may be linked to the disease.
The
Giuliani ads were hatched in one of the weekly brainstorming sessions
where Newkirk and her colleagues dream up PETA's media stunts.
Newkirk says her original idea was a billboard featuring her father, a
prostate cancer victim who died in March. Then Giuliani, in a press
conference, announced he had the disease.
"I
thought, here's this man now using his prostate cancer - because he was
going on and on about it; he's no shrinking violet,'' Newkirk says. "I
thought, why use your prostate cancer for political purposes? You could
actually use your prostate cancer more effectively than I could use my
father to get people to think about the dietary causal relationship.
"So we were in a meeting and I said, `What if we put Giuliani's picture
on this billboard?' ''
The
mayor struck back, threatening to sue and taunting PETA by drinking a
glass of milk for the cameras and praising its health value.
To
those who found the ads insensitive or cruel, Newkirk makes no
apologies.
"It
didn't occur to me that this was hurtful to a man like Giuliani, who is,
like us in a way, a press slut,'' she says. "He's out there all the
time, just doing whatever he needs to do to further his agenda.''
As for the "Got beer?'' campaign, Newkirk - a native of England who grew
up in India - says it taught her something about American public
opinion.
"I had
thought the most offensive thing you could do was go naked - or
something to do with sex,'' she says. "But apparently beer is worse than
sex. This was a huge revelation to me.''
Drawing
the line at violence
Is there anything Newkirk won't do to get her message out?
Yes,
she says: "I won't cause physical pain and suffering unnecessarily to
any living being - man or mouse.'' PETA people will, however, break the
law. Newkirk estimates she has been arrested between 40 and 50 times.
Many of her followers have also been jailed.
Some
PETA foes say that while the organization doesn't engage in violence, it
doesn't publicly discourage it either.
One of
those is Jacquie Calnan, president of Americans for Medical Progress, a
Washington-based interest group that promotes animal research. Funded
primarily by pharmaceutical companies, the group was formed in 1991
specifically to counter PETA's message.
"Every week I hear of some scientist getting a threatening letter, phone
call or e-mail,'' Calnan says. "None of it is under PETA's signature.
But PETA is contributing by its notoriety, by its demonization of
scientists.''
A year
ago, anonymous animal rights activists calling themselves "The Justice
Department'' sent threatening letters booby-trapped with razor blades to
more than 80 research scientists.
No one
was injured. But the act touched off a bitter war of words.
Within
days, Newkirk sent letters to the editors of several newspapers in
cities where the scientists lived. "Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a
nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their
victims for the first time in their lousy careers,'' she wrote.
Newkirk
was "basically cheerleading the violence,'' Calnan says. "She did not
denounce the violence. She's part of the rhetoric of polarization, the
rhetoric of hatred.''
Newkirk
says she wasn't cheerleading the mailing of booby-trapped letters,
merely using it to make a point. "We didn't do it,'' she says. "We don't
advocate it; we never would. It's not what we do. . . . All I did was
comment on it.''
Calnan
and other critics say that by seeming to condone that tactic and others,
including vandalism and firebombing of animal laboratories by radical
animal advocates, PETA helps foster a chilling effect on animal
research.
"Very
promising students are choosing not to go into the life sciences,''
Calnan says. "Even of those who go into the life sciences, some will
choose not to work with animals. Some folks say we have lost a
generation because of the animal rights influence, and specifically
PETA's influence, in the schools. PETA will say that's a victory. I say
that is a blow to medical progress.''
When
scientists become targets
PETA has earned the enmity of the animal research community with a
series of explosive undercover investigations.
A case
in point was the work of Edward Walsh and JoAnn McGee, a husband-wife
team of scientists at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Omaha,
Neb. The two studied congenital deafness by cutting open the skulls of
kittens and severing a bundle of nerves, which caused the kittens to go
deaf.
PETA
argues that such experiments, besides being cruel, are unnecessary.
Prompted
by an employee's complaint, two PETA investigators got jobs as security
guards in the lab and collected evidence for a year. In August 1996,
PETA filed a 53-page complaint with government regulators, accompanied
by nearly 10 hours of videotapes showing the head incisions and kittens
walking around in circles in a wobbly gait, wailing incessantly.
The
government found the lab in compliance with federal policy except for
recordkeeping deficiencies that were subsequently corrected. But as a
result of the PETA-inspired publicity, Boys Town stopped experimenting
on kittens. Walsh and McGee now do their research on mice.
Four
years later, Walsh remains bitter about the experience.
He and
McGee were the target of death threats, bomb threats and harassing phone
calls - some of them directed against their 5-year-old son and Walsh's
elderly mother, who was visiting at the time. Pickets marched outside
their home, and brochures were distributed to their neighbors.
"It was an extraordinarily stressful time,'' Walsh says.
As for
PETA, he says, "they simply cannot disconnect themselves from the more
radical elements of this movement. PETA is the voice of the movement,
and it is, therefore, by my way of thinking at least, responsible for
the actions that the organization inspires.''
Can
it be kind to kill?Some people who had bought into PETA's campaign
for kindness to animals were surprised last summer by the revelation
that PETA kills animals.
The
controversy shed light on a major rift within the animal rights movement
between those, like PETA, that support euthanasia and those that don't.
According to statistics kept by state regulators, PETA euthanized 1,325
of the 2,103 animals it took in during 1999.
"For
an organization that feels there's a place for every fish in the sea, I
could not believe that they would kill healthy cats,'' says Dr. Gail
Furman, a psychologist at the Department of Veterans' Affairs Medical
Center in Hampton.
Furman
is part of a loosely organized community of local animal lovers who take
care of stray cats. She estimates that over the years she has picked up
as many as 100 strays and had them spayed or neutered.
PETA
has angered stray-cat caretakers by trapping strays, hauling them to
PETA headquarters and euthanizing them. PETA argues that euthanasia is
kinder than leaving cats on the street, where they are subject to
injury, disease and freezing cold.
"It's either a quick, painless death or a slow, uncomfortable death,''
says Newkirk, who worked as an animal control officer in Washington
before founding PETA. "The difference, I think, between us and many of
the `no-kill' people is that we don't pretend to have a magic wand.''
The "no-kill''
debate may have contributed to the quiet departure last year of Alex
Pacheco, who as a young political science student helped Newkirk found
PETA 20 years ago.
Pacheco
left PETA to found a new nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles,
the Humane America Animal Foundation, which lists as its No. 1 mission
the creation of a "no-kill nation'' by promoting aggressive spay-neuter
and adoption strategies.
Pacheco
declined to talk with The Virginian-Pilot, but in an interview with
Animals' Agenda magazine he said his split with PETA was driven in part
by a concern that PETA's confrontational tactics didn't immediately
result in saving large numbers of animals.
"I
could've stayed and argued my case, but I stopped when things started
flying across the room,'' he was quoted as saying. "I didn't want to
cause a civil war.''
Newkirk
acknowledges that she and Pacheco were frequently at loggerheads.
"Our
differences go back to the very beginning,'' she says. "We were like
Jack Spratt and his wife. We argued about everything.
"In
the end we both decided that we had to have a professional divorce.''
Conceding
that "I'm no diplomat,'' Newkirk adds: "One of Alex's strong suits is,
he made an extremely good lobbyist. It's a bit awkward, when he's up
arguing in the halls of Congress, to have us out on the street dumping
manure or going naked."
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