SEAL HUNT PROTEST- 2005 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA Location: Canadian Consulate General 550 South Hope Street Los Angeles, CA Time: 11:30 am- 3:30 pm See what happened at other events around the world!

Quick synopsis:

Overall comment is that the event went very well. Although we wanted thousands of people to show up, that never happened... Nevertheless, we were still pleased with the turnout. (especially compared to last year's event)

Best estimates (by various people) of the amount of activists throughout the day ranged from between 75-100 protestors at the apex of the event.

The event was peaceful. We had 4 corners covered, plus the sidewalk of the Consulate General and surrounding areas. Most of the time was passed with getting passersby to sign the petition (we collected over 700 of them!) and handing out brochures and educating scores of people about the plight of the seals that were completely ignorant of the issue.

At times, we had a few chants going, and of course we were also constantly waving around many signs and banners and alerting people to their messages.

(Although some of our protestors brought their own signs, the rest of them were supplied by HARPSEALS.ORG and HSUS. Turns out, we made just enough... The 3 banners that were there were of HSUS (brought to us by Bill Dyer of In Defense of Animals, Harpseals.org, and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.)

Throughout the day, I also did 2 radio interviews (KPFK and KFWB am) and a betacam interview with the Associated Press.
(I am busy trying to obtain copies or information on where to find these media snippets.)

At the end of the event, myself, Tim Midgely, the International Director of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and Scott Sheckman, our local PR expert and Sea Shepherd Coordinator, met with Eric Pelletier, the Canadian Consul, or man in charge. He was accompanied by a woman named Rosalind Wolfe who has a card with a title of "Sr. Officer of Political/ Economic & Public Affairs.

That meeting was interesting yet predictable. We told him what we were doing there and about the boycott, unified opposition, etc... We gave him photocopies of several hundred signatures on the petition and told him that was what we could do in just a few hours work...

Although we do respect him for coming down and spending some time with us (pre-arranged by us), Mr. Pelletier answered us in what seemed like (to me) standard, non-impressed answers- sort of just doing his job. (We want to believe that he has to at least report to SOMEONE superior to him about what happened in front of his building today?)

I tried getting him to be an "insider" by making a promise to me to place an email directly into the hands of Paul Martin, the PM of Canada, but he wasn't buying it... He told me I had to go through the "channels" of contact available to all...

Regarding the threat of an impending seafood boycott, I will paraphrase his basic sentiment here:
"Bring it on... Show us what you can do, we'll believe it when we see it"....

So, yeah, let's take these turkeys up on their challenge!


The Canadian Seafood Boycott WILL WORK IF WE WORK IT!

Get involved and save seals.

-Ian Robichaud
Harpseals.org