Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington ran two days, Thursday and Friday, September 24 and 25. On Thursday, the day the White House welcomed him, our campaign truck spent eight hours making sure he had company. From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. it drove through Washington, D.C., starting on Constitution Avenue, making stops around the White House, and parking outside the Embassy of the People's Republic of China at 3505 International Place NW. The whole time, its screens cycled between our uncensored video footage, stills of cats under torture, and our campaign poster.
The poster is on the rear screen in the photo above. It reads A NEW CAT TORTURE VIDEO EVERY 2.5 HOURS over the image of a victim, and underneath it states the fact this campaign is built on: China has no national animal cruelty law. That gap is why Ma Fei, who tortured and killed an estimated 1,500 cats over four years, was punished with ten days of administrative detention, as we reported in Ten Days for Fifteen Hundred. The side screen carried our emblem, NO MORE CAT TORTURE, and the address of this site.
The footage ran uncensored. We chose to include graphic material because we believe people need to see the reality of what these animals endure, and a blurred version of it asks nothing of anyone. To our knowledge, it was the first time the uncensored reality of cat torture has been put directly on the streets of the U.S. capital.
At the embassy, the truck met up with a demonstration by Lady Freethinker. While we were there, Felipe Vegan King pointed our truck out during a live video, which carried the footage well past the people standing on International Place.
The truck came from DC Mobile Advertising, and its driver, B, has earned his own paragraph. He was in constant contact with our team from the first stop to the last, and by the end of the day he had become our unofficial representative on the ground. If you need a screen on wheels in Washington, call them.
The truck was paid for by donors, who raised $1,600 to put it on the road. Over the past few weeks we worked with Can Last Productions to bring our video to Washington, and our design team produced both the video and the poster it played alongside. Where the money goes is published on our cashflow page.
The response started before the truck did. Our press briefing ahead of the visit drew a reply from The Washington Post, and we have sent them the full campaign materials. Once the truck was out, photos and video went up on Instagram, X, and Reddit, and Instagram is where people engaged most, especially with the video. The picture from the day we keep returning to is the one at the top of this page, the truck parked on Constitution Avenue with the Capitol dome behind it. Our post from the day is below.
This is the first stop of our next campaign, and it was built the same way as the Atlanta billboard: people read a dispatch, put money in, and a message about China's cat torture industry ended up somewhere nobody could scroll past it. The next stop needs the same thing. You can donate toward it, or spend five minutes on the letter campaign, which asks the brands that manufacture in China to use their influence there. If the post above moved you, share it.