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Contact us SHARK NEWSLETTER December 28, 2011 Join our Email list
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The SHARK 2011 Year in Review:
What We've Accomplished With Your Help
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DEAR FRIENDS,
2011 was a momentous year in SHARK's efforts to save animals.
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Meet Achillies, a wounded pigeon SHARK rescued at Wing Pointe this year. He was left to die a slow and painful death. He is alive and well because of your support.
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It was just over one year ago that we began documenting live pigeon shoots at the Wing Pointe canned hunting club. We are happy to report that due to our efforts attendance at Wing Pointe pigeon shoots have dwindled dramatically. After months of efforts by SHARK, only a handful of shooters still attend Wing Pointe shoots, and the shoots last only a fraction of the time they used to. Thousands of lives have been saved.
A major reason for our success is that we made the difficult decision to invest tens of thousands of dollars into high-tech equipment that we needed to do the job right. We purchased cameras so that pigeon shooters can be seen more clearly than ever before. This boosted our already intense efforts, including our Operation Bright Light campaign that focuses on individual shooters, and our consistent presence and videotaping at shoots. All these efforts combined have helped to severely reduce attendance at pigeon shoots.
 Pigeon shooters have also shown great fear in the face of our "Angels" - a fleet of remote controlled aircraft that are used to document live pigeon shoots from public, navigable airspace. Our Angels even recorded personnel at Wing Pointe illegally burning tires along with the bodies of pigeons that were killed during a shoot (left). We reported it and Wing Pointe was forced to clean up their property and warned never to do that again. We shouldn't really be surprised that Wing Pointe cares so little for the environment - they don't seem to care about anything but supplying death to their rich and twisted patrons.
Our battle against Wing Pointe has not been easy. Our opponents have reacted violently to our campaign. Robert Olsen, an employee of Wing Pointe owner Joseph Solana Jr., pulled a loaded handgun on me on a public street (bottom left). Stephen Spaar whipped me in the head with a metal-tipped dog leash (bottom right). Wing Pointe pigeon shooter Robert Boyd physically assaulted SHARK activist Janet Enoch. Fredrick Campbell, another employee of Joseph Solana, deliberately drove his car into me as I stood outside the Wing Pointe property.
A man hitting a woman. An assault that left me bloody. A hit and run driver. A loaded gun pointed right at me. These are the trials we've had to face to protect pigeons, but we've never wavered and we've always stood our ground.
And if you think there was some justice done, forget it. The two District Attorneys, John Adams in Berks County and David Heckler in Bucks County, who held authority over these cases have financial ties to pigeon shooters. The perpertrators of all this violence received special protection (Olsen wasn't even given a firearms charge) while we, the victims, were charged with crimes. There aren't many in our movement who would stay and fight faced with this violence and corruption, but that's why SHARK is different.
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SHARK Engaged in a Number of Important Campaigns Against Rodeos
This Year
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In 2011, SHARK documented extreme cruelty for the two weeks we were at the
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Check Mate, a horse that was killed at the 2011 Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. SHARK recorded his tragic death for the world to see.
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Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo (CFD) in Cheyenne Wyoming, including the deaths of three horses.
* When Sheryl Crow announced she was going to be playing CFD, we raised so much public awareness about what this supposed animal loving singer that she announced she was giving a portion of her profit from the show to a horse rescue group. Crow tried to spin this into a positive, but SHARK exposed the hypocrisy of taking money from a rodeo that kills horses and trying to wash the blood money away. That story gained international media attention.
* Activists in China, inspired by SHARK's efforts against rodeos, flew myself and SHARK Investigator Mike Kobliska to China to help fight "Rodeo China," a plan by American rodeo thugs to bring their violence to China. These superb activists fought hard and won; Rodeo China was indefinitely postponed!
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Steve Hindi being interviewed by a Hong Kong TV station.
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* The National High School Rodeo, which SHARK has long fought against, will not be returning to Springfield, Illinois as had been previously planned. While the state is claiming cancellation of the rodeo is due to budget cuts, the negative publicity generated by SHARK's expos� of the rodeo's animal cruelty year after year certainly played a very significant part in the decision.
* SHARK took on Coca-Cola, GEICO and Super 8 hotels (of the Wyndham Hotel chain) for their sponsorships of rodeos. We launched a campaign against Discover/Diners Club for their support of bullfighting. When corporations condone cruelty, SHARK is there to speak for the animals that are abused and killed.
SHARK's YouTube videos have been viewed more than 25,000,000 times, making us one of the most viewed non-profits in the country. Our ability to expose cruelty to a worldwide audience, while also being on the ground, working hard to save lives, makes us a unique organization that we hope you will continue to support.
To help continue our nonviolent war against animal abuse, please consider making a generous donation. You can donate online HERE.
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YouTube Pulls Wanted Video
Not long after SHARK uploaded our YouTube video offering a $1,000 reward for the identity of one of the two people who attempted to shoot down SHARK's Angel aircraft on August 6, 2011, YouTube pulled the video due to a complaint. Clearly someone is running scared! And they should be; in just a few hours this video was seen more than 30,000 times! We've already uploaded the video to other sites. Watch it HERE. |
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The Philadelphia Gun Club Wall Tumbles Down
A few months ago, the Philadelphia Gun Club built a huge cloth wall which they thought they could hide behind and commit their brutal acts of animal cruelty. In recent updates, we've shown you how that wall has been falling apart. Yesterday we took a ride to see what the current state of the wall was and we could not believe our eyes; a large section of the wall had collapsed leaving a huge open gap. What a disaster! Check out the degrading state of the wall in the pictures below.
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Summer 2011
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The wall starting to break-up on December 17, 2011.
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The wall collapsed on December 27, 2011.
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Kindest Regards,
Steve Hindi and Your SHARK Team
"Kindness and compassion towards all living beings is a mark of a civilized society. Racism, economic deprival, dog fighting and cock fighting, bullfighting and rodeos are all cut from the same fabric: violence. Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves." - Cesar Chavez, civil rights and labor leader, founder of the United Farm Workers
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