NAKED WOMAN—CHAINED AND ‘BEATEN’—PROTESTS RINGLING’S ARRIVAL IN PORTLAND
NAKED WOMAN—CHAINED AND 'BEATEN'—PROTESTS RINGLING'S ARRIVAL IN PORTLAND
'Bruised' and Sprawling on Ground, PETA Beauty Bares All, Including Truth Behind Circus's Phony Claims
For Immediate Release:
September 14, 2004
Contact:
Brandi Valladolid 757-622-7382
Portland, Ore. — Wearing nothing but shackles and covered in "scars" and "bruises" as a result of violent "beatings"—an everyday reality for animals in circuses—Wendy Girard, a tall, curvy blonde, will protest the arrival of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with a banner that reads, "Shackled, Lonely, Beaten," and directs onlookers to PETA's Web site Circuses.com. The protest is a live reenactment of a PETA billboard ad featuring Australian supermodel Imogen Bailey that was banned in cities across the country. Some activists will show footage of elephant beatings on "body screen" TVs, while others will pass out leaflets. The action comes in the wake of the death of yet another animal at the hands of Ringling:
Date: Wednesday, September 15
Time: 12 noon sharp
Place: Ankeny Plaza, S.W. Front St. and Ankeny
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PETA Media Center > News Releases
NAKED WOMAN—CHAINED AND 'BEATEN'—PROTESTS RINGLING'S ARRIVAL IN PORTLAND
'Bruised' and Sprawling on Ground, PETA Beauty Bares All, Including Truth Behind Circus's Phony Claims
For Immediate Release:
September 14, 2004
Contact:
Brandi Valladolid 757-622-7382
Portland, Ore. — Wearing nothing but shackles and covered in "scars" and "bruises" as a result of violent "beatings"—an everyday reality for animals in circuses—Wendy Girard, a tall, curvy blonde, will protest the arrival of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with a banner that reads, "Shackled, Lonely, Beaten," and directs onlookers to PETA's Web site Circuses.com. The protest is a live reenactment of a PETA billboard ad featuring Australian supermodel Imogen Bailey that was banned in cities across the country. Some activists will show footage of elephant beatings on "body screen" TVs, while others will pass out leaflets. The action comes in the wake of the death of yet another animal at the hands of Ringling:
Date: Wednesday, September 15
Time: 12 noon sharp
Place: Ankeny Plaza, S.W. Front St. and Ankeny
On August 5, Ringling destroyed an 8-month-old elephant named Riccardo after he suffered irreparable fractures to both hind legs when he fell off a circus pedestal. Riccardo was undersized when he was born to Ringling elephant Shirley, who was also still a baby—just 7 years old—at the time. Last month, a young, healthy, Ringling lion named Clyde died in a transport cage aboard a train crossing the Mojave Desert in 109°F heat. According to veteran Ringling employee and lion handler Frank Hagan, Ringling's train master refused repeated requests to stop the train to water the lions during the scorching trip from Phoenix, Ariz., to Fresno, Calif.
In order to force wild animals to perform stressful and often painful acts, trainers use metal bullhooks, whips, muzzles, and electric prods. PETA has obtained shocking undercover video footage—some of which it has used to develop a public service announcement—of elephants being beaten with bullhooks by a circus trainer. The violent training methods shown in the video are commonly used in circuses, including Ringling, which is a chronic violator of the federal Animal Welfare Act and has an abysmal history of deaths of animals in its care.
PETA has U.S. government documents showing that Ringling paid $20,000 to settle charges of failing to provide veterinary care to a dying baby elephant. In less than two years, two baby elephants have died, a caged tiger has been shot to death, a horse used in the circus despite a chronic medical condition has died, and a wild-caught sea lion has been found dead in her transport container.
"This cruelty, these beatings are what the circus is desperate to hide from the public," says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. "These animals are not volunteers. They have been deprived of their precious freedom and beaten for a lifetime of cheap tricks."
Broadcast-quality footage of animals abused in circuses and U.S. Department of Agriculture documents detailing Ringling's animal deaths are available. For more information, please visit PETA's Web site Circuses.com. A copy of the billboard that will be reenacted follows.
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homepage: http://www.circuses.com/
phone: (503)-249-9996 IDA
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Why sidetrack the debate with false arguments? No one is trying to censor PeTA's legal right to discredit their cause. However, it needs to be labeled what it is: Reactionary bigotry and the cooptation of an organization.
Another concern of particular importance at this time is using sexualized women draped in red white and blue in pro-war/government advertisement and propaganda campaigns are a particularly volatile and dangerous alignment with conservative patriotic fundamentalism. If you haven't checked in about how these forces are limiting people's civil rights lately you had better hurry up and do so? People are being slaughtered all over the world because of it.
PeTA's come out exorbitantly pro-war. Ingrid Newkirk is talking about how great the Armed Forces are, how "vegan" food is being dropped on Afghanistan, how the Army offers vegan options, and that PeTA had a link from their site. Wow! This is PeTA's idea of political success?
PeTA: Where Only Women Are Treated Like Meat:
"The thing about PeTA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" campaign, now in its ninth controversial year, is that it's meant to be a little tacky, inappropriate and even exploitative. That's the whole point."
--Gear Magazine, July-August 2002
Happy Valentine's Day to PeTA from the US Government:
The upper half of the PeTA advertisement pictured below (Kimberly Hefner less the dildo) originally read "to go vegetarian" appeared as a cut-out poster in "Stars & Stripes," the most widely circulated newspaper on military bases around the world. PeTA hopes to turn the men killing the people in Afghanistan, and around the world, into vegetarians.