{"id":149309,"date":"2019-12-09T12:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=149309"},"modified":"2019-12-08T10:18:52","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T10:18:52","slug":"joaquin-phoenix-is-petas-2019-person-of-the-year-kind-and-committed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/12\/joaquin-phoenix-is-petas-2019-person-of-the-year-kind-and-committed\/","title":{"rendered":"Joaquin Phoenix Is PETA\u2019s 2019 Person of the Year: Kind and Committed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Standing in the spotlight doesn\u2019t interest Joaquin Phoenix. As the buzz, critical acclaim, and Oscar talk surrounding his performance in Joker<\/a> swirl, he\u2019s been steadfastly ensuring that the spotlight is on what he cares about most deeply: animal liberation. His lifelong dedication to ending speciesism has brought him another award: He\u2019s PETA\u2019s 2019 Person of the Year.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Just before the Joker<\/em> premier, Joaquin\u2019s compelling anti-speciesism ad with PETA went up in Times Square and on Sunset Boulevard, proclaiming, \u201cWe Are All Animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we look at the world through another animal\u2019s eyes, we see that inside we\u2019re all the same\u2014and that we all deserve to live free from suffering.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since he first appeared in a charming pro-vegan ad for us just before Thanksgiving<\/a>, no request has ever been too much for Joaquin. \u201cCan you spend hours hanging out in a field with a flock of sheep to promote wool-free suits?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cWill you watch and narrate our gruesome undercover footage of dogs being killed in the leather industry<\/a>?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d (He later called it \u201cone of the worst things I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d) \u201cWould you be willing to deprive yourself of oxygen in a swimming pool to show how fish suffer when they\u2019re caught?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Ij3W0BetI60<\/p>\n

That kind of dedication and determination has persisted throughout his entire life. His advocacy started at age 3, when he went vegan after watching a fish caught and gutted on a ship\u2019s deck, and it\u2019s continued for the past four-plus decades of living an animal-friendly life, seizing every chance to help others experience that same awakening.<\/p>\n

Days after the Joker<\/em> premiere, photographers followed him to a Los Angeles slaughterhouse, where he joined PETA\u2019s friends in the Save Movement<\/a> to give water to thirsty pigs and comfort them in their final moments<\/a>\u2014no doubt the only act of kindness they had ever known.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/laanimalsave\/posts\/1507793049362512<\/p>\n

When he was being honored at the Toronto International Film Festival, Joaquin took members of the media to the St. George Subway Station to photograph him standing next to animal rights murals<\/a>. And he\u2019s been injecting animal issues into interviews, offering insights such as:<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me it just seems obvious. I don\u2019t want to cause pain to another living, empathetic creature. I don\u2019t want to take its babies away from it. I don\u2019t want to force it to be indoors and [to be] fattened up just to be slaughtered. It is absurd and barbaric.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now there is The Animal People<\/a><\/em>, a documentary for which Joaquin was the executive producer that follows six activists who took on Huntingdon Life Sciences, a laboratory that PETA exposed for cruelty years ago.<\/p>\n

Animal rights films are not new to his repertoire. Back when everyone was talking about Walk the Line<\/em> and he was earning his second Oscar nomination, a BAFTA nod, a Golden Globe Award, and a Grammy, he was busy promoting Earthlings<\/a><\/em>, the documentary he narrated that made almost everyone who saw it go vegan.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s my life, and it has always been my life, and it\u2019s really one of the most important things to me.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Earlier this year, Phoenix and his fianc\u00e9e, Rooney Mara, carried the bodies of animals killed by the meat industry in their hands<\/a> as they led advocates in the National Animal Rights Day March. And so much more.<\/p>\n

For using his fame to put the spotlight on animals in need; for helping create films, billboards, and videos that wake people up; for loudly protesting against cruelty and quietly comforting animals during their last moments on Earth; for exemplifying compassion and respect for all individuals; and for serving as a living example of the end of speciesism, PETA is honored to name Joaquin Phoenix our 2019 Person of the Year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 peta.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Standing in the spotlight doesn\u2019t interest Joaquin Phoenix. As the buzz, critical acclaim, and Oscar talk surrounding his performance in Joker swirl, he\u2019s been steadfastly ensuring that the spotlight is on what he cares about most deeply: animal liberation. His lifelong dedication to ending speciesism has brought him another award: He\u2019s PETA\u2019s 2019 Person of the Year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":149312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[229,1208,786,619,915,444,1679,831,991],"class_list":["post-149309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-rights-vegetarianism","tag-activism","tag-animal-cruelty","tag-animal-justice","tag-animal-rights","tag-art","tag-nonviolence","tag-peta","tag-veganism","tag-vegetarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}