An International Affair - New York Demo Report

The fight to stop Oxford University expanding its animal abuse capabilities has taken on a truly International perspective. The following report was received from our friends in the US. Oxford University and any company wishing to collaborate in the building of the animal research facility can be assured that the fight to stop this scientific folly from ever being built will not be just exclusively contested in the UK.

Opposition is growing both nationally and internationally. The coming months will see a widening of the campaign. The fight against the new plans has now become an unstoppable force, the vivisection world are watching the outcome, an outcome that could ultimately decide the future of vivisection worldwide.

At SPEAK would like to thank our friends in New York for their support.

On Saturday, January 29, 2005 activists with Win Animal Rights/W.A.R. gathered at the New York City offices of the Oxford University Press and the Oxford Alumni Association of New York. The activists, in solidarity with the dedicated campaigners of SPEAK, held signs reading: "No Oxford Animal Lab", "Vivisection: Science Gone Mad" and "No More Cages". Passersby on busy Madison Avenue stopped to chat with demonstrators who distributed SPEAK literature and educated the public about why construction should not be resumed on the new animal lab. Building doors were locked but a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier was given literature and he delivered it to the Oxford Press employees that cowered in the locked and secured lobby of the posh office building.

Later that evening, activists visited a low rent Chinatown restaurant, Wo Hop, where members of the Oxford Alumni Association of New York were meeting for dinner. Most of the members were late, but we did manage to converse with an early arriving Oxford Alumnus who accepted SPEAK literature and who invited us to attend their next dinner meeting. He told us that he believed that Oxford Alumni would be interested in what we had to say about the construction of the new animal lab. We assured him that we would make it a point of attending future Alumni Association functions.