Animal Rights

We have been campaigning against Skanska for over a year. On January 1, 2015, Richard Cavallaro took the position of CEO and President of Skanska USA, succeeding company veteran Michael McNally. The campaign to stop the Animal Research & Care Facility had recently been consolidated under the banner No New Animal Lab, and we made the point to inaugurate Richard with a simple letter, which urged him to cancel Skanska's contract with the University of Washington and all plans to build an underground torture chamber for animals. Unfortunately, we had no hope that Richard would be diverted from his profit-seeking motives, and so we began efforts to #StormSkanska.

Official #StormSkanska Swarm New York video, hosted on Vimeo

On the 15th of January, the #StormSkanska protests kicked off in NYC with an estimated 150 protesters outside their offices at the Empire State Building. Skanska is a huge multinational construction corporation which is building a high-security, underground vivisection laboratory for University of Washington. Activists are determined to prevent this torture facility from ever being finished no matter what it takes. The Jan 15 office demo is just the beginning of a furious weekend of action against Skanska at their New York City offices.

On the 14th of December, the National Park Service issued a press release claiming to have shot and killed 26 deer in Rock Creek Park in a one-night operation. That would have to have been Dec 7, when they shut down operations in the face of protesters setting up. Either they shot deer earlier in the evening to evade protests or they waited out protesters and post-protest patrols, then returned.

On Black Friday, the 27th of November, the in-store protest at Miller's Furs ended in a police attack on the protesters. Two were handcuffed and two more were detained. Three escaped the scene entirely, as police arrived well after protesters had exited the store and as they were leaving the entire area. A total of 12 police cars showed up with sirens screaming. During the detainment, one of the cops mentioned having received a report that protesters were smashing windows at the store. None were broken or even hit in reality. If this report came from Manny Miller, he is guilty of filing a false police report.