Animal Rights Activist Disrupts Basketball Game, Can Only Get a Single Foot on the Court Before Learning Painful Lesson
An animal rights activist trying to disrupt an NBA basketball game barely made it onto the court before she was taken down by security guards and quickly removed.
The stunt was the third animal rights protest at Minnesota’s Target Center in the past 10 days, according to the New York Post.
Protesters are targeting Glen Taylor, a major stockholder of the Minnesota Timberwolves, over conditions at an Iowa chicken farm owned by Taylor.
Timberwolves were just awarded 10 more free throws for the tackle of the protester
— Lang Whitaker (@langwhitaker) April 24, 2022
The Iowa Department of Agriculture said that the Iowa county where Taylor’s farm is located is one where several million birds were killed to stop an outbreak of avian flu.
Here’s the whole protest thing – Protesters sitting right behind Glen Taylor before one ran out on the floor pic.twitter.com/yw9AJGWqKM
— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) April 24, 2022
Since then, members of the group Direct Action Everywhere have been protesting at the Target Center, beginning with a woman who glued her hand to the court.
That protest was followed by one in which a woman chained herself to a support holding up the basketball net.
On Saturday, as the Timberwolves were playing the Memphis Grizzlies, a woman who was sitting in a second row courtside seat behind Taylor and was dressed in the garb of a referee pushed her way onto the court with 10:44 left in the third quarter.
Also, I talked with a longtime stadium security consultant about the two protests at the Minnesota Timberwolves game.
Here’s why NBA arenas are more susceptible to these on-court interruptions.
For @wccoradio:https://t.co/5KW57r8p58
— Paul Hodowanic (@PaulHodowanic) April 19, 2022
The protester, identified as Sasha Zemmel of St. Louis, barely had a foot on the hardwood when security guards sprang into action and tackled her.
The game continued until the referees stopped play.
Zemmel was quickly hauled away.
Zemmel’s jersey had the number 5.3 on it “in honor of the 5.3 million chickens killed” after a bird flu outbreak at the farm Taylor owns, the animal rights group said.
The group’s release said Zemmel “attempted to whistle to stop play as she approached Taylor at his courtside seat, to issue a ‘technical foul and ejection’ along with a ‘fine.'”
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