Young Activist in Ann Arbor, MI Takes Her Protest to the Street: Girl, 14, Spends Hours a Week Demonstrating Against Cruelty of Kentucky Fried Chicken

This is for the youth out there – see, you’re not alone.

Article:

Young animal rights activist takes her protest to the street Girl, 14, spends hours a week demonstrating against cruelty

http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?

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Saturday, February 25, 2006

BY KHALIL E. HACHEM

News Staff Reporter

Ally Brooks is an animal rights activist at heart, and hers is a very young heart.

Last year, the 14-year-old says, she was suspended for three days from school for objecting to the dissection of squids.

This week, while other teenagers were hitting the malls or watching television during their winter breaks, Brooks and some of her friends were protesting in the name of animal rights in front of a local fast food restaurant.

"Animals are defenseless. They can't speak for themselves,'' said Brooks, an Ypsilanti Township resident and ninth-grader at Lincoln High School. "They need someone to speak for them.''

A vegetarian for three years, Brooks said she has spent two hours a day this week outside the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant on Washtenaw Avenue, protesting the way the company handles and prepares poultry.

The restaurant manager declined to comment on the protest.

Brooks said that she realizes people are going to kill animals to eat meat but it can be done with more humane methods. She said she has for the past two years spent much of her free time protesting the treatment of animals at poultry plants. She has distributed fliers, written to members of Congress and recruited friends to help her.

In school last year, she staged a verbal protest over the dissection of 10 squids during a science fair because the school could have used computer programs to teach animal anatomy instead of real animals, she said.

Brooks said she was suspended for three days after the protest.

Lincoln Consolidated Schools trustee Jeffrey Stokes said the district does not release the names of students who are disciplined.

Christina Felek of Ypsilanti Township, also a ninth-grader at Lincoln, stood with Brooks on the sidewalk in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken store Friday, waving signs protesting the mistreatment of animals. She said she eats meat but was inspired to join in by her friend.

Brooks has loved animals since she was a little girl, said her mother, Cathy Brooks-Mull; she would bring in stray cats and animals and care for them. The teenager now has several animals including cats, mice and rabbits.

As the cold wind blew Friday, Brooks flashed a smile when drivers honked their horns in support of her protest.