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Animal rights activists staged a disruption inside of Nike’s flagship store in New York City as part of a “Global Protest Day” against the company’s support of the mass slaughter of kangaroos for soccer shoes. Organized by the Center for A Humane Economy, a Washington-D.C.-based advocacy group leading a campaign to end the use of kangaroo leather, the protest called on Nike to stop hunting kangaroos and stealing their skin.

After chanting on megaphones for 30 minutes and distributing information to customers, the activists exited the store, with prodding by the NYPD, and unfurled a banner at the entrance – “NIKE PROFITS. KANGAROOS DIE.”  The protest continued on Fifth Avenue, where activists engaged with customers and pedestrians.

Animal rights activists with the Center for a Humane Economy, NYCLASS and TheirTurn protest Nike’s use of kangaroo skin at the company’s flagship store in Manhattan

As part of the Global Protest Day, animal rights groups also staged #KangaroosAreNotShoes disruptions in Portland, Oregon, where Nike is headquartered, and in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide.

As part of the “Global Protest Day” against Nike’s support of the mass slaughter of kangaroos in Australia, animal rights activists in Portland staged a #KangaroosAreNotShoes protest at a Nike store near the company’s global headquarters.

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, approximately two million kangaroos are killed each year for commercial purposes. Seventy percent of them are used to make soccer shoes.

Nike make soccer shoes from the skin of kangaroos in Australia who are hunted down at night and shot in the head

Animal rights groups argue that killing wild kangaroos is especially cruel because an estimated 40% of the victims don’t die instantly. In some cases, the wounded kangaroos escape and die slowly from the gunshot.

Each year, hunters in Australia kill an estimated approximately two million kangaroos for commercial purposes.

The mass killing has secondary victims. When mothers are shot, their babies (joeys) typically don’t die with them. In accordance with government guidelines, the hunters bludgeon them to death. Some of the babies escape, only to die slowly from exposure and predation. Each year, hundreds of thousands of joeys die during the nightly kangaroo hunt.

“Slaughtering mothers and their babies in the dark of night is an atrocity,” said Edita Birnkrant, the Executive Director the animal rights group NYCLASS and an organizer of the NYC disruption. “How do Nike executives sleep at night knowing how much pain and suffering they are causing?”

Nike supports the mass slaughter of wild kangaroos in order to use their skin to make soccer cleats

According to The Center for a Humane Economy, Nike rationalizes the mass slaughter of wild kangaroos by engaging in green washing and humane washing. Nike states, “Suppliers must source animal skins from processors that use sound animal husbandry and humane animal treatment/slaughtering practices whether farmed, domesticated or wild (managed) . . . If wild caught, [kangaroos] must be sourced from actively managed populations with government agency oversight.”

Animal rights activists, including young children and senior citizens, disrupted business in Nike’s flagship store in NYC over the company’s support of the mass slaughter of kangaroos to make soccer cleats

The sale of kangaroo parts is banned in California. The Kangaroo Protection Act, federal legislation introduced in 2021, would ban their sale nationwide. Several retailers, including Nordstrom, Gucci, Prada, and Versace, have stopped selling kangaroo skin products.

All ethical vegans fighting for animal rights want the same thing — total animal liberation — but our paths to achieving it take us in different directions. In the past two years, a new and confrontational approach has gone mainstream in the U.S. and is spreading globally. Does the approach reflect the natural evolution of all social justice movements? Does it stem from the desire to expedite change for animals? Did it emerge to help activists stand out in an era of information overload? Whatever the motive, the approach is breathing new life into the animal rights movement, jolting  consumers where they least expect it; capturing the attention of the media; and triggering activists to exit their comfort zones on behalf of animals.

DxE protests Chipotle’s for marketing animal farming & slaughter as humane. (Photo: DxE)

The big change, propagated by the global organization Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) and embraced by NYC-based Collectively Free, is taking the protests inside of businesses that exploit animals. Let’s face it: many people pay no attention to activists demonstrating on a sidewalk, but they are a captive audience when seated in a restaurant or waiting in line at the grocery store. It’s an approach that, on the surface, appears ineffective or even counterproductive to some people. But in a compelling article about the approach, DxE’s founder, Wayne Hsiung, explains why disrupting and agitating inside are key ingredients in any successful social justice movement.

In his blog, Hsiung writes that Naomi Wolf, the pioneering feminist who studied dissent and protest in America, argues that, throughout history, activists have succeeded only when they disrupted “business as usual” and that today’s protests have become so “bureaucratized, institutionalized, and integrated into the fabric of ordinary life” that they are no longer disruptive.

Rosa Parks agitated by illegally sitting at the front of this bus, which is now a symbol of the Civil Rights movement.

Following are a few short excerpts from Hsiung’s blog:

“Dissent is vital to achieving social change, and that dissent is only effective if it is powerful, confident, and . . . disruptive.”

“Passersby, customers, and even multinational corporations can easily dismiss and write us off, if we do not push our message in the places where it is most unwelcome. But when we transform a space where violence has been normalized into a space of dissent, we can jolt, not just individual people, but our entire society into change.”

ACT-UP, an AIDS activist group, would have been ignored in the 1990s if they didn’t stop traffic, chain themselves to fences and climb onto rooftops. (pictured at the NIH)

“Because we have expressed that our cause is important enough to violate a powerful social norm [dining], we leave a mark on people: “Wow, what the heck was that! They’re so outraged by something that they felt the need to come into the store to register their complaint.”

DxE breaks with the tradition of letting customers dine in peace.

“Speaking loudly and proudly in defiance of social convention . . . inspires others to do the same. And that is why we encourage our activists to step outside of their comfort zones . . . and into the stores that are selling the dead bodies of our friends.”

Please visit Direct Action Everywhere and Collectively Free to learn about, support and/or join their provocative campaigns to expose the truth about animal farming and promote a cruelty-free lifestyle.

People who exploit animals for profit or entertainment should know that animal rights protests come with the territory and are a cost of doing business. But instead arguing their point of view, exploiters often resort to vulgar personal attacks that validate the very argument that the activists are making — that they are abusive people.

Horse-drawn carriage driver in New York City

Personal attacks are quite common, but they’re rarely caught on camera. The few incidents that have been captured show the true colors of people who gratuitously exploit and abuse animals:

Fur vendor says, “Drop dead, you faggot. Get AIDS and die.”

Horse-drawn carriage driver says to Latina protesters, “What a whore you are. Are you a married woman with children, or are you barren? This one might have six or seven kids because, you know . . .”

A rodeo supporter in Canada says to a protester, “I like the color you are because it comes out of my ass. I will fucking blow your country up, you fucking shit-skinned goof.”

https://youtu.be/BXss9yuwZRQ

A horse-drawn carriage drivers says, “You are one of those faggots. I’m not into guys, man. I don’t fuck guys.”

In the early 1990s, the Ku Klux Klan conducted membership drives at pigeon shooting events. In a video highlighting some of the violent attacks against them, the animal rights group SHARK noted that “the kind of people who shoot pigeons tossed out of boxes are the perfect candidates for those hate organizations.”

KKK at pigeon shooting event

Perhaps some animal exploiters employ personal attacks because they can’t argue on the merits of the issue. Activists, on the other hand, have the truth on our side. We should therefore stick to the issue and avoid the temptation to fight back with personal attacks in the heat of the moment.

Animal rights activists are accustomed to being harassed and threatened during protests, but the worst abuses are rarely caught on camera because they are usually random acts – a punch thrown; a shove; someone spitting, etc.

From left to right: Vigil participant, UCLA researcher

On January 18th, however, activists with Progress for Science recorded several harrowing minutes of bullying and physical intimidation — by academic researchers, no less. On that day, 11 activists holding a peaceful vigil to honor 11 monkeys being abused for redundant and needless government-funded research in UCLA labs were met with viscous attacks by counter-protesters.

This video, which has been seen by only 11,100 people, should have gone viral when it was first posted – not only because of the shocking behavior of the UCLA researchers, but also because of the bravery of the activists. They courageously put themselves in harm’s way – on behalf of the animals who were being harmed.

The video also inadvertently teaches an important lesson: As activists, we must keep our rage in check because outbursts and aggression, shown by the experimenters in this case, shift attention away from the animals, which is where the spotlight should shine.

Please visit Progress for Science to help bring an end to the archaic animal experiments being conducted at UCLA.

Activists in 26 cities in 8 countries from an organization called Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) are conducting monthly protests against the vegan-friendly fast food chain Chipotle because they believe that their marketing campaign, which exposes factory farm cruelty and suggests that their animals are humanely raised and slaughtered, is fraudulent. As one of the campaign organizers states, “The company is trying to market killing as humane, but there is no escaping the reality that slitting an animal’s throat is violent.” According to an article in Salon.com, “DxE’s protests raise the question of whether, in the frenzy to market and consume more humane animal products, we are completely ignoring the fundamental moral issue. Why, for example, is cutting off chickens’ beaks unacceptable cruelty, but cutting their throats is perfectly fine?”

Millions of the animals slaughtered by Chipotle come from the same factory farms that Chipotle claims to oppose. When Chipotle encourages consumers to pick them over other their competitors on the grounds that their animals are “humanely raised,” they are not only being dishonest, but they are also giving people a free pass to eat animals when they might have otherwise abstained. Even if Chipotle’s animals were raised humanely, which is impossible given the sheer numbers, they all meet the same grisly death. Slaughter is inherently inhumane, which is one of many reasons to advocate for a plant-based diet using free materials like those offered by Vegan Outreach. I would feel a whole lot better about eating Chipotle’s delicious vegan sofritas if they stopped saying that the millions of animals who they raise and slaughter had humane lives and deaths.