Beliefs lead to activism

The last time Benjamin Goldsmith ate chicken was during his junior year at Salt Lake's West High School. He lunched on McDonald's McNuggets, and that afternoon he talked with a friend who is vegan.

Goldsmith questioned his friend. He listened and questioned some more. Then his friend showed him a video, "Meet Your Meat." After that day Goldsmith never ate meat — of any kind — again.

Goldsmith graduated from West in 2000 and left Utah for college. These days he lives in Virginia and works for PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

As part of his job, he travels the country staging protests against big corporations. Goldsmith targets fast food outlets that, according to PETA, contribute to the inhumane treatment of animals. Having made progress with McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King, several years ago, PETA's current target is Kentucky Fried Chicken. The bulls-eye this Wednesday will be the KFC on south State Street in Salt Lake where Goldsmith and some fellow activists will spend the noon hour telling and showing the lunch crowd that the growing and processing of poultry in the United States doesn't come close to being humane — let alone just letting a chicken be a chicken before it becomes food.

Goldsmith says he became a social activist not only because both his parents are social activists, but also because they raised him in the Jewish faith.

If you knew Ben as a boy, his parents say, you would not be at all surprised to see him on State Street this week. "Ben was always very earnest and committed," says his mother, Janet Wolf. "He has always been a lover of things lesser and smaller . . . always loved animals." When her son became a vegan, she knew it was not a passing phase.

Goldsmith's father, Stephen, says, "Ben is nothing if not intense." He's passionate, yet logical, and "I learned as a parent to pay attention to that."

His religious upbringing taught him to respect others and to have integrity, he says. He doesn't see his social activism as a replacement for his faith, but rather as an extension of it. "Jewish law is very firm on the humane treatment of animals." Especially at Passover, he says, he feels the connection between his religion and his career.

In his family there were many conversations about God and morality and the right way to live. He talked not only with his parents but with his Goldsmith grandparents. His other grandparents, the Wolfs, lived in Chicago and died when he was too young to really know them. Yet they had an effect on him, surely, his mother says. It is hard not to be effected by grandparents who survived the Holocaust.