The sixteen PETA activists that were injured last weekend at an animal rights demonstration in Modesto, California are "all doing fine", says Mercy Hospital's chief orthopedic surgeon, Wallace Fenturi. Fourteen are scheduled to be released sometime this week. Robbie Palmer, 21, and Stacey McLair, 18, who are still in intensive care, are expected to fully recover from their injuries.
Stanislaus County Sheriffs are looking at a speech Julian Bond gave at a PETA conference in San Francisco just a few days before the incident. Bond, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the sixties, and now on the board of the NAACP, spoke on the theme of civil disobedience. An excerpt from his speech:
"One must show dedication to a cause by giving the full measure of one's soul, one's belly. Throwing paint on fur coats worn by a few defenseless white women in high heels as they exit Saks Fifth Avenue is like me sitting at a Woolworth's counter forty years ago in Albany, New York- instead of Albany, Georgia. A weak and wasted effort. You must sail into that storm and lose those oars if need be, walk that tightrope without the safety net."
After the conference, at least forty members of PETA drove from San Francisco to Modesto in time to catch the final day of the fifth annual Modesto Bike Rally, an event that draws forty thousand motorcyclists to the Central Valley. Chad Hentworth, 23, who can't speak right now because of the brace in his jaw, wrote: "We headed for there because most commercial leather comes from innocent cows. And that sure was a place we would find a lot of people wearing leather."
Bystanders say all hell broke loose after a bucket of white paint was thrown in the direction of some bikers. Amazingly, not one drop landed on a rider; but a lone bike- a classic Harley Softail -was totally splattered. It was owned by Charles Dennis of San Francisco, a black businessman who rides with an African American group of buddies on weekends. Ironically, the group doesn't wear the black leather associated with the predominately white Harley crowd, but sport denim coats. And then in a spirit of racial harmony, a congregation of black, white, Hispanic, and Asian riders united as one to mercilessly beat up the PETA activists. Stanislaus County Sheriffs are still investigating the case.
