Animal activist Michelle Doers was reading Animal Times when she first learned about actor James Cromwell's arrest at the University of Wisconsin (UW) for protesting its heinous experiments on cats. That's when she remembered reading about something else in the PETA publication: a woman who wrapped her car in an ad to raise awareness about animal issues. So Michelle decided to turn her own car into a moving billboard for animals.

For the next two months, Michelle will be using her car to speak up for animals in laboratories and encouraging others to buy only cruelty-free home and beauty products. After that, she plans to change the wrap on her car seasonally. Her next message will encourage people to boycott Ringling Bros. for its abuse of elephants.

Another stellar activist and PETA supporter, Anne Feingold, helped coordinate a joint letter through her cat rescue organization that was signed by more than 150 cat advocacy and rescue organizations from nearly all 50 states. The letter, which unequivocally condemns UW's cruel experiments on cats, was sent to the leadership of the university as well as to the federal funding agency that enables this abuse. Anne also showed impressive initiative and dedication by contacting local media in Madison, Wisconsin, to alert them to her efforts.

Are you inspired by Michelle and Anne? Want to help animals from your computer and in your community? Join our Action Team! And if you're an activist younger than 21, check out peta2's Street Team! 

At PETA, we know that some rules (such as being quiet in meetings) are meant to be broken, but anti-cruelty laws should never be ignored. That's why when we heard that Ringling Bros. was going to Columbus, Ohio, and taking elephants and abusive bullhooks with it, we wrote to the mayor asking him to enforce a law that bans electric and other prods and similar devices from being used on animals in circuses. And what do you think Mayor Michael B. Coleman said in response? Not a peep.

So we showed up outside City Hall—bullhooks in hand—with signs reading, "Mayor Coleman: Enforce Anti-Cruelty Laws" and "Beating Elephants Is a Crime."

After seeing the bullhooks in person—with their sharp steel hooks designed to dig into elephants' flesh in the most sensitive areas (such as the soft flesh behind the ears and inside the ear and mouth)—here's hoping Mayor Coleman straightens up and enforces the law.

Want to join us when PETA comes to your town to help animals? Join our Action Team!

This year, we have something to celebrate as we commemorate World Week for Animals in Laboratories. After 30 years of pressure from PETA and other organizations, Harvard Medical School's New England Primate Research Center is shutting its doors. This milestone victory proves that even the mightiest can fall—or do better, move on, or modernize. And it illustrates why it is crucial that animal advocates keep working to end the suffering of animals in laboratories. 

One group of animal rights advocates in Italy made headlines this week when they occupied a laboratory at the University of Milan and removed many of the mice and rabbits who were caged there. Closer to home, there are numerous easy actions that any of us can take to help animals in laboratories:

1. Update your Facebook cover photo to a photo of an animal in a laboratory (try one of these), and ask your Facebook friends to purchase only cruelty-free cosmetics.
2. Make it harder for experimenters to get their hands on animals by asking Air France, one of the few airlines that will still transport primates to be used in experiments, to stop profiting from cruelty.
3. Be sure to purchase only cosmetics, personal-care products, and household cleaners from companies that don't test on animals. PETA's cruelty-free shopping guide makes it easy. And send companies that do test on animals a quick e-mail to let them know why you won't be purchasing from them.
4. Check this map to see if your state, city, school district, or college has a policy allowing students to opt out of cruel animal dissection. If so, be sure to request a humane teaching method when the time comes. If there isn't a policy yet, get one created to save the lives of some of the millions of animals killed for dissection every year.
5. Join PETA's e-mail drive to get the deadly cat laboratories at the University of Wisconsin–Madison shut down.

Please tweet this post to encourage your Twitter followers to get active for animals in laboratories, too. We can win the campaign to end the use of animals in laboratories, and we must. Millions of animals need us to.

In the '80s, people sang "We Are the World," but for Earth Day 2013, PETA gave that idea a very literal spin: Instead of wearing their hearts on their sleeves, these good folks took off their sleeves (and everything else) in favor of blue and green bodypaint for a demonstration in Vancouver. They reminded everyone who saw them that we can help the planet simply by choosing healthy and humane vegan foods.

So remember: If you want to save the world and its inhabitants (or just look your best without clothes), going vegan is the best way to start!

Come on—you know we couldn't let Justin Timberlake's performance at the White House go unmarked by a tribute to his immortal Saturday Night Live skit in which he (literally) sang the praises of vegan eating:

Are you thinkin' about your he-ealth, oh, oh? Then veg out! No meat, so chic.

PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk put her money where her mouth is—in a very literal sense—in an eye-catching protest outside British retailer Fortnum & Mason's Piccadilly store this week. 

The protest illustrated what geese endure while they are being raised for the foie gras sold in Fortnum & Mason stores. But in order to replicate fully how foie gras is produced, Ingrid would have had to be force-fed several times a day for weeks until her diseased liver had painfully swelled to up to 10 times its normal size.

The process is so cruel that it's illegal in the U.K., but Fortnum & Mason continues to sell foie gras imported from France, where a recent PETA U.K. investigation documented the confinement of geese to crowded, filthy pens and their slaughter while still conscious.

High-profile British venues, including the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Wimbledon, Lord's Cricket Ground, and all the residences of His Royal Highness Prince Charles, refuse to serve foie gras, and retailers Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, House of Fraser, and Jenners refuse to sell it. PETA UK won't stop until it has added Fortnum & Mason to that list.

How do horses show love? They nuzzle and groom each other.

How do people show love to horses? By refusing to ride in a horse-drawn carriage. 

On most Valentine's Days, record numbers of these sensitive, skittish animals are forced to drag carriages full of people across the hard pavement, dodging loud traffic and breathing exhaust fumes. But this February 14, PETA asked people to celebrate in a truly lovely way: taking a romantic stroll and leaving abused horses out of the plan.

Demonstrators explained that in the past year alone, there have been 13 accidents involving horse-drawn carriages. There were a barrage of supportive honks and thumbs-up signs, and a group of 50 high school students saw us and cheered.

And the efforts paid off: Few people climbed aboard the carriages.

Multitudes have called on New York to ban horse-drawn carriages. Please add your name to the list today.

Last week marked the end of legal public nudity in San Francisco—and you wouldn't expect PETA to sit it out, would you? Several all-star volunteers gathered full-monty style at City Hall to protest the theft of animals' skins by declaring that they are comfortable in their own skin. 

Unlike humans, who can (or at least used to legally be able to) choose how much skin to expose in public, animals raised and killed for their skins often have their flesh unwillingly ripped off their bodies while they're still alive. Please don't ever buy leather, fur, or other items made from animals' skins and fur—choose garments and accessories made from pleather, faux fur, and other cruelty-free materials instead!

The carcass-cooking food trucks that signed up for the barbecue competition at D.C.'s Meat Week got thoroughly smoked—by a pig, a cow, and some meat-free meatballs. 

PETA members and their costumed counterparts set out to give Meat Week attendees some flesh-free options, but as it turned out, meat-free was the only way to be: The food truck chefs couldn't handle the cold temperatures and retreated inside. The iron-fueled vegans, however, stayed out to greet passersby and share the secret behind their resilience: 

The event's organizers might not have been outside handing out meat, but they did have to hand it to our dedicated demonstrators. And in return, the PETA members offered the organizers a taste of compassionate fare that hopefully left them feeling a little warmer toward animals. 

Every year, people who exploit chickens and reduce them to bits in a bucket gather at the International Poultry Expo to congratulate each other on making money at it. So this year, PETA sent a flock of "birds" to suggest that attendees give a cluck about chickens:

Banging on pots and pans and shouting, "We are not nuggets!" the chickens got everyone's attention. A surprisingly large number of attendees accepted the demonstrators' leaflets and listened to explanations of how chickens suffer on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, including being mutilated and drugged, having their throats slit while still alive, and often being scalded to death. 

It was an educational expo indeed.