Associated Press Covers Our Campaign

Dallas, TX–The Associated Press did an article on our protest today–it has run in over two dozen newspapers and TV stations and can be seen here or below. The Dallas Morning News version is here. There is an active discussion board at the Houston Chronicle on the article–to join in, click here. Most of the people are sympathetic to our side, but there’s some loony over there pretending that all this is the work of what he/she calls “Glenn’s Cult.” Must be quite a cult–several thousand people have joined our protest, and our campaign has been formally endorsed by several dozen domestic violence authorities, mental health professionals, educators, family law professionals, and media figures. An added note–this campaign is also the work of Fathers & Families, with whom I’ve partnered to address this issue.
Advocate for fathers protests ads on Dallas buses Associated Press Oct. 27, 2008 DALLAS — A domestic violence shelter’s ad campaign on Dallas city buses has drawn the ire of a fatherhood advocate who said Monday that the campaign is “hostile to fathers.” One ad shows a smiling young girl wearing a tiara next to the caption, “One day my husband will kill me.” Another features a boy next to the caption, “When I grow up, I will beat my wife.” A Dallas Area Rapid Transit spokesman said the agency has received nearly 1,000 form letters by e-mail since Sunday night from readers of advocate Glenn Sacks criticizing the ads and calling for DART to remove them. “They are offensive to fathers and to families,” Sacks said. “Imagine your average father going to work on a DART bus, working hard and supporting his kids. He has to go there and be insulted by these ads.” The ads were created for the nonprofit domestic violence shelter The Family Place, which paid $25,000 for 45 bus-side ads and 300 bus interior ads. The ads went up Oct. 1 and will get taken down Nov. 30, said DART spokesman Morgan Lyons. The ads were not created by DART but were approved by the agency as “being consistent with community standards,” Lyons said. DART received no complaints about the ads until the e-mails began Sunday night and has no plans to take them down, Lyons said. Last week, The Family Place said the ads had promoted a few complaints, and two billboard companies refused to accept them. Sacks said a third of all domestic violence injuries are suffered by men, and that women are just as likely to strike men as men are to strike women. “I think they should take the ads down,” Sacks said. “Domestic violence is still a problem that affects women more than men, but it affects them both. I can guarantee you if the genders were reversed, there is no way DART would have accepted those ads.”