Woman Who Received Obscene Threats From Trolls Won’t Stop Her Rodeo Protests This Weekend

PETA Member Set to Tell Eventgoers: Bully Me if You Will, but I’m Here to Say That Tormenting Animals Is Not Entertainment

For Immediate Release:
March 9, 2018

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Wearing special-effect “bruise” makeup and wielding a sign that proclaims, “Your Ticket Funds Cruelty,” PETA member Dani Alexander will return to lead a protest of the Houston Rodeo on Saturday at noon despite receiving thousands of threats and vicious messages since her protests last weekend.

The angry and obscene messages include ones calling Alexander a “stupid c*nt” and others threatening to burn down vegan businesses and “chain you f***s to the back of our vehicles and drag your sorry a**es.” One man wrote, “You deserve every bruising on that face I seen in your pictures. I would beat the living s*** out of you,” and another said, “[Y]ou should go hang yourself and yeah die. Stupid b****.”

“It’s no surprise that the same men who bully and harm terrified animals would try to threaten into silence a woman who stands up for their victims,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA supports Dani Alexander and others who refuse to be silenced out of their right to protest. Violence is violence, whether the victim is a bull or a human.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—notes that rodeo employees use electric prods, sharp sticks, and painfully tight “bucking” straps to torment bulls into action. Common injuries to the animals include broken bones, extensive bruising, and massive internal bleeding. Severely injured bulls are sent to slaughter.

Alexander—a small-business owner, mother, and wife of a former military service member—previously led demonstrations against the meat industry, the fur industry, and circuses that use and abuse animals, among other efforts.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.