PETA protester shows her stripes
Half-naked lady joins many who have made their point at the Alamo
11:52 PM CDT on Thursday, June 3, 2004
SAN ANTONIO – By noon, the day's heat began rising from the limestone walkway in front of the Alamo, just as the half-naked lady showed up.
At first, no one noticed. Tourists were busy capturing every angle of the venerable Alamo chapel in digital images for the folks back home. Raspa vendors hailed the cooling powers of shaved ice and sticky-sweet syrup in 10 flavors. Day-care kids climbed out of a crayon-yellow bus for a day of Texas history.
That changed after Annie Judah of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals climbed into a wire cage to protest animal abuse. She wore black bikini bottoms, painted-on tiger stripes, furry cat ears ... and a smile.
She chose a shadier part of the plaza, a few dozen yards south of where the Alamo battle once raged in 1836. She's not the first to use the plaza to get a point across. It has long been a magnet for public gatherings of all types.
Political candidates dating to Teddy Roosevelt have used the Alamo as a backdrop for stump speeches. President Gerald Ford famously forgot to de-shuck a tamale before sampling it on the plaza. Civil rights marches have ended here, as did a neo-Nazi rally and social gatherings by the hundreds.
To anyone's memory, however, Thursday's protest was the first to involve partial nudity in daylight. It certainly caught Officer Quinton Ritchey by surprise.
"I was two blocks away when someone told me there was a naked woman on Alamo Plaza," he said. "I thought I'd better get over there to check it out."
Ms. Judah, of Norfolk, Va., has made similar protests on behalf of PETA. Her action hopes to focus attention on what she called cruel training techniques used by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
The self-proclaimed Greatest Show on Earth will open a six-day show June 30 in San Antonio. Circus officials denied their animals were mistreated.
Anyone hoping for a peep show was out of luck. For the hourlong protest, Ms. Judah concealed her bare breasts with a cardboard sign proclaiming: "Wild animals don't belong behind bars."
Asked why she conducted her protest nearly nude, Ms. Judah replied, "We all do what we can for the animals."
Most people took the protest in stride. Most walked by without comment or watched briefly from across the street. A few braver souls took a closer look, accepting the PETA brochures in return. A few tourists forsook the Alamo, turning their cameras toward Ms. Judah.
"Well, it's not what we expected to see in San Antonio," said Roger LeVesque of Thunder Bay, Canada. "But it doesn't seem to be causing any great commotion. At least there's no traffic jams."
He can thank Officer Ritchey.
"Oh, the protesters weren't any problem at all, but I had to keep the cars moving. Drivers were slowing down and not watching where they were going," he said. "If that young lady had dropped that sign, we'd have had a major accident."
E-mail dmclemore@dallasnews.com
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