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Abstract
The militant wing of the contemporary animal rights movement has used destructive protest, such as liberating research animals or causing economic damage, in an attempt to influence public policy and set the legislative agenda. Although Congress has not passed enough favorable laws to determine how effective these destructive protests were in changing public policy, a significant number of bills have been introduced and this paper analyses the effect the destructive protests had in congressional agenda-setting. Using protest event analysis drawn from the New York Times this paper argues for a positive correlation between the destructive protest methods and bills introduced in the House of Representatives. As the number of the destructive protests rose, so did the number of bills introduced favorable to the Movement. The backlash against the destructive protest methods, and thus the Movement, was limited.
