In NYC, Hundreds Protest Nike’s Kangaroo Slaughter
The News
Accompanied by a giant mobile billboard, several hundred animal rights activists descended upon the Nike store in Soho to protest the company’s use of kangaroo skin in its soccer shoes. It was the fourth and largest protest staged in New York City as part of the Center for a Humane Economy’s global #KangaroosAreNotShoes campaign. During two of the previous protests, activists disrupted business inside of the store, but NYPD officers and Nike security guards blocked the entrance as the activists who were participating in the 2022 Animal Rights March arrived at the store.
“Nike’s dirty little secret is that its commercial hunters chase down hundreds of thousands of kangaroos in the dark of night, shoot them in the head and steal their skin to make soccer shoes,” said Donny Moss of TheirTurn, an organizer of the NYC protest. “Instead of massacring innocent animals and using their skin as fabric, Nike should make the obvious switch to cruelty-free materials.”
The protest comes two weeks after the Los Angeles Times published an editorial calling on the California state government to enforce the law banning the sale of “k-leather” and encouraging consumers not to buy the contraband. “There are plenty of quality soccer shoes in material that doesn’t require killing kangaroos.” California is the only U.S. state to ban the sale of kangaroo products, including skin, but The Kangaroo Protection Act, federal legislation introduced in 2021, would ban the importation of kangaroo products into the entire country.
The massacre of kangaroos in Australia represents the largest slaughter of land-based wildlife in the world. According to the Center for a Humane Economy, 70% of the approximately two million kangaroos killed each year for commercial purposes are used to make soccer shoes for sportswear companies like Nike.
Some of the female kangaroos who are shot have babies (joeys) in their pouches or by their side. Code dictates that hunters either decapitate or bludgeon to death the joeys who are in the pouches. The joeys who are not in their mother’s pouch often die slowly from exposure and predation. Each year, an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 joeys die during the nightly kangaroo hunt.
Animal rights activists in Los Angeles, Portland, where Nike is headquartered, and several Australian cities have also staged protests inside and outside of Nike stores.
Several retailers, including Nordstrom, Gucci, Prada, and Versace, have stopped selling kangaroo skin products. Animal rights activists plan to continue protesting Nike and other clothing and shoe manufacturers that use kangaroo leather, including Adidas and Puma, until they remove it from their inventory voluntarily or a nationwide ban.
The Center for a Humane Economy, which is leading the #KangaroosAreNotShoes campaign, has a petition calling on Nike CEO John Donahoe to “stop profiting from the largest slaughter of land-based wildlife!” Approximately 77,000 people have signed the petition to date.
I donnie support this. make it stop.
Well done protesters but the thing is the professional shooters could only shoot so many animals in one night and would only shoot male kangaroos now the farmers are shooting more kangaroos that are on there land which can be three or four times more than the professional shooters are allowed to shoot so more dead kangaroos than before. Plus’s more female kangaroos are dying and left to rot the professional shooters collect the dead kangaroos they shoot and send them to the processing centre were the meat is used for dog food and the skin to make shoes
how can we stop these horrible people ?
how can we stop this ?
This is pure animal abuse! we were not put on this earth and blessed with nature and life too abuse, torture, and kill these or any helpless animals…. you all should be ashamed and will answer to your true maker one day! Stop the killings and abuse now!
Great to see this happen. This massacre has always taken a back seat in NYC behind the fur protests, but glad to see it getting the attention it deserves here. Will never buy another Nike product. Of course they use countless other skins of many animals, so the best thing is to buy brands who only use faux leather.
No wonder why these shoes are so comfy
Thank you for your powerful protest demonstration against Nike’s wilful cruelty to kangaroos and their young. One of the first articles I remember reading when I joined the animal rights movement in the 1980s was about the perpetual mass-killings of kangaroos in Australia and how the babies would crawl up the dead body of their mother seeking comfort and slowly dying. The Australian government and its citizen allies have been at war against kangaroos and emus forever.