For Immediate Release:
February 9, 2022

Contact:
David Pearl 202-483-7382

Chicago – PETA has just learned that Millennium Hotels and Resorts is ending its nearly 30 years of support of the Iditarodthe notorious dog-sled race in which more than 150 dogs have died—so the group is turning tomorrow’s planned protest at the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel Chicago into a victory party! PETA and Chicago Alliance for Animals supporters in party hats will pop champagne and rally passersby to give a “round of appaws” for Millennium Hotels, which now joins ExxonMobil—a former major sponsor that paid the race $250,000 a year—as well as Jack Daniel’s , Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Alaska Airlines, and dozens of other brands in cutting ties with the Iditarod.

“The champagne corks will be popping in the Windy City tomorrow over the news that Millennium Hotels and Resorts is checking out of the Iditarod’s cruelty to dogs,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is celebrating this huge blow to the vile dog-sled industry and will now turn its attention to the shrinking number of sponsors that are still willing to bankroll a race that has run dogs to their deaths.”

Millennium’s decision follows a massive PETA campaign that included appeals from nearly 500,000 PETA supporters, PETA ads on buses in Anchorage during the 2021 Iditarod, “Milhellium” print ads in hospitality magazines in summer 2021, a Billboard near Millennium’s New York Times Square hotel in June 2021, and dozens of protests around the world.

Where: Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel Chicago, 163 E. Walton Pl., Chicago

When: Thursday, February 10, 12 noon

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebookor Instagram.

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