Animal rights activists planned two separate protests in conjunction with the May 20-22 Fur Fashion Week designer shows, but neither was effective in making the news media take their eyes off the fashions and pay attention to increasingly bizarre and desperate extremist stunts. In New York, on the sidewalk in front of Parson's School of Design, where a built-in crowd of journalists and photographers were attending the shows, a sprawl of about 30 costumed and "bloodied" …showed first 75 words of 628 total…

…showed last 75 words of 628 total…d media attention. Skip Lea, president of Fur Commission USA, said that acts of civil disobedience and illegal are backfiring on activists and damaging the credibility of the animal rights movement. "According to a recent survey conducted by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 96% of Americans disapprove of the tactics of the animal rights movement. Stunts that include arson and trespassing give the public even more reason to reject their extreme, anti-human agenda," he said.