Don’t Stand for Injustice

In 2016, Kaepernick put a national spotlight on the racial inequality that plagues the U.S.—and PETA applauds him for doing so with the simple yet powerful and peaceful act of taking a knee.

PETA worked with a talented group of advertisers and artists who came up with the idea for our beautiful ad, with a message of inclusion and respect. The spot features art depicting several species of animals—including a fox, a snake, a human, a dog, and a bald eagle—kneeling to the tune of the national anthem, inspired by Kaepernick’s movement. Positively acknowledged by Kaepernick himself, this project pays homage to all movements that remind us to open our hearts and minds and reject all forms of injustice, including sexism, ableism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and speciesism.

PETA attempted to run this ad on FOX during Super Bowl Sunday, but the National Football League apparently found it too daring and pressured FOX to snub the commercial. Instead, PETA pushed it live online the Friday before the big game and it got a lot of attention, including hitting the top 15 trends on Twitter. Across PETA social media platforms, the ad was viewed more than 4 million times and PETA’s online feature hit over 35,000 page views. PETA’s ad broke exclusively with TMZ, and was then covered in nearly 70 outlets around the world. Top U.S. press included USA Today, WSJ, Yahoo!, and Reuters. We also saw on Google Trends that the ad prompted a spike in people searching the term "speciesism." Thousands of people were seeing the term for the first time and learning that speciesism—like any form of discrimination—is a supremacist worldview. It allows humans to disrespect other living, feeling beings and to treat their interests as unimportant. The ad prompted a movement of people who believe in equity and justice to expand their circle of compassion and reject speciesism.