Albuquerque Native Heads to Court for Protesting SeaWorld at Rose Parade

For Immediate Release:
January 30, 2014

Contact:
Sophia Charchuk 202-483-7382

When SeaWorld’s float hit the Rose Parade on January 1, it was met by a group of PETA supporters—including Albuquerque, N.M., native Cory Mac—who sat down in front of it in a peaceful protest against SeaWorld’s abuse of orcas. The protesters, holding posters that read, “Boycott SeaWorld,” and wearing “SeaWorld Hurts Orcas” T-shirts, were dragged from the parade route and arrested, and Mac will head to court in Pasadena, Calif., on February 3.

Cory Mac was a self-described “Army brat” whose father’s career took the family around the world before she had even entered junior high school. But as luck would have it, her father was able to return to the place where he grew up—Albuquerque, N.M.—to allow her to attend Wilson Junior High and Highland High schools and, most importantly, find a place that she could call “home.”

Now a teacher in Los Angeles, Mac is a coordinating member of Progress for Science, a Southern California group that works to end animal experimentation. And as a supporter of PETA and animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere Los Angeles, she has helped with dozens of demonstrations. But the SeaWorld protest at the Rose Parade marked the first time that Mac has ever been arrested.

How have people reacted to news of her arrest? She says that everyone who has heard about it has congratulated her—even strangers.  “My neighbor said to me, ‘Getting arrested isn’t normally so awesome!’” And as for Mac, she calls the experience “exhilarating.” “It reinforced for me the idea that a large group of people can come together and work to end a wrong,” she says. “It has given me hope that once people’s eyes are opened to the suffering of animals, when they truly come to be aware of its extent and the depths of suffering, they will actually try to end it.”