Australian protester sets the fur flying

[Guest guest]

Australian protester sets the fur flying

 

The Age

Melbourne, Australia

 

By GAY ALCORN

WASHINGTON

Monday 22 January 2001

 

The Australian angle to the US presidential inauguration was nicely

irreverent.

 

Twenty-four-year-old Noah Mark, from Melbourne, stripped to his trunks in

horrendously cold weather and stormed the police barricades just as the new

President's motorcade came crawling down Pennsylvania Avenue from the

Capitol to the White House.

 

Mr Mark's protest was against not the Florida election fiasco but all the

fur coats adorning Republican women. Mr Mark, an intern with the animal

rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wanted to bring to

the attention of George W. Bush the plight of the minks, raccoons and

rabbits on the backs of the Republican revellers.

 

" It was cold but it was nothing compared to the torture the animals have to

endure before being killed for their fur, " he said. " It was just appalling.

I was so surprised that so many people were wearing furs. It's dead fashion,

and millions of animals a year are strangled, gassed or electrocuted for

their fur. "

 

Mr Mark, brandishing his Fur Free America banner, met a wall of Washington

police lined up along the parade route barely metres apart from each other.

While four other protesters, including three women in underpants, were

tossed back over the barricades, Mr Mark had a taste of inauguration

security.

 

" A whole wall of police just jumped on top of me, and I had a policeman

standing on my head and he said that if I moved he'd put his foot through my

head, " he said.

 

Mr Mark was taken to jail and charged with disobeying a police order and

crossing a police line. He was fined $US50 ($A90).

 

JULIE SZEGO reports that Mr Mark's mother, animal rights campaigner Patty

Mark, said in Melbourne last night that she was excited and proud to hear of

her son's actions.

 

" Of course I've been arrested by police many times but you don't want your

children following in your footsteps, " she joked. " I'm so proud at his

strength of conviction. He's really come into his own. Instead of from

father to son, in our case it's from mother to son. "

 

Ms Mark founded Animal Liberation Victoria in 1978. She said her son had

been in the US since November on a six-month internship with the

700,000-member People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

 

" He's the opposite of me. He's very quiet, always reading, always into

philosophy ... But Noah's philosophy is more radical and it's based on the

notion that animals aren't property, " she said.