Saturday, our East Coast coordinator (and board member), the indomitable Jen Sully, organized a protest of the Preakness Stakes (of horseracing) out in front of Pimlico Race Course. Jen and HW communications specialist Bailey Chapman led a passionate army of some 50 activists. Multiple media outlets reported on the protest, underscoring again the power of taking social-justice movements to the streets. (This was in addition to the fabulous Baltimore Magazine article published ahead of the Preakness.)
Below, I’ve reproduced a Baltimore Banner piece on our action. (The original can be found here – you’ll have to scroll past their other posts on the day.) Thank you, Jen, Bailey, and all the resolute, compassionate souls who came out for the horses.
(I’ll have more on the protest later today.)
Outside Pimlico, protesters call for an end to horse racing
Clara Longo de Freitas |
3:30 p.m.
Dozens of protesters braced the rain Saturday as they stood outside Pimlico Race Course, calling out the industry’s horse death toll and what activists called solitary confinement of the animals.
About 40 protesters stood on the busy corner of Pimlico Road and West Northern Parkway, where many attendees walked by to reach the entrance of the racetrack.
Some averted their eyes from the protesters, looking straight down when an activist offered them leaflets or when they passed by signs with photos of injured horses.
“Horses die,” Jen Sully, a Maryland organizer with Horseracing Wrongs, a national animal rights organization, spoke through a megaphone.
“Ask us why,” the other activists chanted in response.
One woman in a flowery dress booed the protesters as she walked by. Another cussed them out under her breath.
The activists are used to the snickers and comments, and they brush it off. Sully said she has run protests at Pimlico or Laurel on a weekly basis, and people are more receptive then.
“On these race days, you’re gonna get more people who disagree with us being here because they want to go in there and they want to bet and party,” she said. “But the reality is that these horses are being killed.”
About 27 horses died last year in Laurel and Pimlico racetracks, according to the organizers. But she said public awareness has gotten better and she has noticed more support for the case in the last year.
“Having those conversations really engages us with the community and really helps people realize the truth of horse racing,” said Bailey Chapman, a communications specialist with the organization.
Chapman was critical of the plan to rebuild the Pimlico racetrack, whereby a state-run nonprofit will run the track and oversee the demolition and the construction of the new facility.
“Changing the trainers, changing the track, changing the ownership of the track does not change the fact that horse racing is animal cruelty,” Chapman said. “And, when you combine animals and money, the animals are always going to lose.”
Well done! 👍
Thanks to ALL of you 🙏
The negative reactions are from people who know, even in a small way, that horse racing is morally wrong, and they don’t like their conscious burned. We need to keep pushing the horrors into the eyes of the public until it’s the only thing they see when they look at these tracks.