Local Teen to Lead Protest of Chrysler’s Iditarod Sponsorship
PETA and LION Supporters Will Pressure Car Company to Cut Ties With Deadly Dog Race
For Immediate Release:
February 29, 2020
Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-738
On Sunday, 14-year-old Long Islander Erin Ersoy will lead a group of PETA and Long Island Orchestrating for Nature (LION) supporters in a protest at a local Chrysler franchise. It’s all because a Chrysler dealer in Anchorage, Alaska, is sponsoring the Iditarod—a deadly race in which dogs are forced to run approximately 1,000 miles in subzero temperatures, leaving many exhausted, injured, ill, or even dead—and the race begins next week.
When: Sunday, March 1, 12 noon
Where: Town & Country Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram, 3156 Hempstead Tpke., Levittown
“When dogs used in the Iditarod aren’t being forced to run until their paws bleed and their bodies break down, they’re chained alone in the bitter cold,” says PETA Director of Student Campaigns and Influence Rachelle Owen. “Chrysler’s support of the Iditarod is a badge of shame, and PETA wants the car company to end it.”
More than 150 dogs have died since the Iditarod began, and that number doesn’t even include the countless ones who were killed for not being fast enough or who died while being chained up outside. PETA’s first-ever video exposé of champion mushers’ kennels revealed that dogs were denied veterinary care for painful injuries, kept constantly chained next to dilapidated boxes and plastic barrels in the bitter cold and biting wind, and forced to run even when they were exhausted and dehydrated.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
