Calendar Item: PETA Founder’s ‘Naked Truth’ Tour to Hit Detroit on September 13
For Immediate Release:
August 13, 2014
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk will deliver the “naked truth” about the animal rights movement—and how it must reach beyond pelts and “pets” to persuade people to view all animals as fellow citizens worthy of respect—in a special address at Wayne State University.
When: Saturday, September 13, 2 p.m.
Where: McGregor Memorial Conference Center, 495 W. Ferry Mall (between Cass Avenue and Anthony Wayne Drive), Detroit
This event, which is part of Newkirk’s Naked Truth tour across the country, will also include a lively stage interview with questions from the audience.
Newkirk’s novel ways of defending animals command attention, whether that means spending time in a Pennsylvania prison for disrupting a pigeon shoot, taking over a fur designer’s office, pulling a horse carriage through the streets of Mumbai, or lying naked in a coffin in New York’s Times Square. In the more than 30 years since Newkirk cofounded PETA—whose motto states that “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any way”—the organization has grown to more than 3 million members and supporters worldwide, and Newkirk has been at the helm of groundbreaking victories, including securing the first arrest in U.S. history of a laboratory animal experimenter on cruelty charges, recently convincing the top 10 U.S. advertising agencies to ban the use of great apes in their ads, and bringing about the largest rescue of neglected rats in U.S. history and the largest seizure of animals ever in California (following a two-month undercover investigation by PETA).
“Sometimes you have to titillate, shock, and annoy people in order to call attention to an emerging social issue, as even surprising facts are rarely enough to get people to change their habits,” Newkirk says. “Everyone from schoolkids to former President Bill Clinton is going vegan, but there’s a breadth and depth to animal rights that’s still mysterious to many people.”
A high-resolution image of Newkirk’s tour poster is available here.