One Can Make a Difference: How Simple Actions Can Change the World

by Ingrid Newkirk

“People say, ‘Oh, it’s easy for you to make an impact. But I’m no one of importance. No one would listen to me.’ If I have learned anything, it is that they are wrong. Dead wrong. The world is just waiting to hear from them, just as it is waiting to hear from you.”
—Ingrid Newkirk

When Ingrid Newkirk almost single-handedly set into motion the largest animal-rights organization in the world, she knew that one person can make a difference. In this book, Ingrid has collected the wisdom, stories, and insight of dozens of activists and world-changers who have proven that one person can make a movement. This engaging and enlightening collection is a call to action for readers everywhere.Because one can make a difference.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Animals, Inspirational

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 17, 2008

About the author

Ingrid E. Newkirk is a British animal rights activist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world's largest animal rights organization. She is the author of several books, including Making Kind Choices (2005) and The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble (2009). Newkirk has worked for the animal-protection movement since 1972. Under her leadership in the 1970s as the District of Columbia's first female poundmaster, legislation was passed to create the first spay/neuter clinic in Washington, D.C., as well as an adoption program and the public funding of veterinary services, leading her to be among those chosen in 1980 as Washingtonians of the Year.

Newkirk founded PETA in March 1980 with fellow animal rights activist Alex Pacheco. They came to public attention in 1981, during what became known as the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Pacheco photographed 17 macaque monkeys being experimented on inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. The case led to the first police raid in the United States on an animal research laboratory and to an amendment in 1985 to the Animal Welfare Act. Since then, Newkirk has led campaigns to stop the use of animals in crash tests, convinced companies to stop testing cosmetics on animals, pressed for higher welfare standards from the meat industry, and organized undercover investigations that have led to government sanctions against companies, universities, and entertainers who use animals. She is known, in particular, for the media stunts that she organizes to draw attention to animal-protection issues. In her will, for example, she has asked that her skin be turned into wallets, her feet into umbrella stands, and her flesh into "Newkirk Nuggets", then grilled on a barbecue. "We are complete press sluts", she told The New Yorker in 2003: "It is our obligation. We would be worthless if we were just polite and didn't make any waves."

Although PETA takes a gradualist approach to improving animal welfare, Newkirk remains committed to ending animal use and the idea that, as PETA's slogan says, "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment". Some animal rights abolitionists, most notably Gary Francione, have criticized PETA, calling it and other groups "the new welfarists". Some members of the animal advocacy movement have responded that Francione's position is unnecessarily divisive. Newkirk has also been criticized for her support of actions carried out in the name of the Animal Liberation Front. Newkirk's position is that the animal rights movement is a revolutionary one and that "[t]hinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out". PETA itself, however, "maintains a creed of nonviolence and does not advocate actions in which anyone, human or nonhuman, is injured". Newkirk and PETA have also been criticized for euthanizing many of the animals taken into PETA's shelters, including healthy pets, and opposition to the whole notion of pets, and her position that "There's no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy," as well as seemingly seeing eradication as a goal. PETA has responded to this line of criticism.

Reviews

[Linda Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you browse through this book in the company of great world changers and activists, a clarity of purpose emerges within. It's a great nibbler because each story carries an opportunity to put it down and relfect on the difference between those who believe and commit to a cause, and the rest of the world who justs 'gets by'.

More important, for me, was the realization that money, property and prestige plays no part in each persons ability to make a huge difference in their own, and in other's lives. As long as we are cursed with our 'unbelief', we are incapable of making changes for the better in our own lives, in the lives of our family, or in the world.

Inspiring belief makes this book almost perfect, and it is an easy read.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to read how people can make a difference in the world sometimes by starting something that takes off and becomes a big deal, and sometimes by making a small change that is meaningful. A lot of the people whose stories are told here are celebrities, but there are some ordinary people who made a big difference starting off small and building on it. For example, the British woman who started helping an impoverished hospital in Africa.

[Natalie Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could go back and read this book again. Simply inspirational. Loved learning about all the small (sometimes big) ways that one person can make a difference in the world. I loved that these things covered a wide range of justice issues (animal rights, youth delinquency and rehabitlitation, literacy, public health, poetry). There are a million different ways to change the world, you just have to find what you love and do it.

[donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

In reading these stories it inspires one to go out and make a difference. Although many of these essays show a small act of kindness, it always seems to snowball and turn into something huge. I think that we should all try to follow the examples set out in this.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of stories from people such as The Dalai Lama, Stella McCartney, Kevin Bacon, Dr. Henry Heimlich, Oliver Stone and so many others. Ingrid introduces each and they tell their stories. It is an incredible, inspiring read.

[Mariam Elsadek]

I don't really finish it, I read chapters and I don't like the way the stories about people who do make difference was told.
I think it's not the best book that talk about how to make impact.
But, it's small, nice and has a good qoutes...

[Cathy]

Looking forward to reading this book.

[Gheeta · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok, not great or as inspiring as I thought it might be. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right place to read these reflections...

[Ashley Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found thins book very motivating. Though some entries in this book not everyone can relate to but stick with it because every essay has its own message behind it.

[Mansi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amazing , inspiring stories of working for a change .