ALERT: Anti-Vaccine Safe Minds Ad Playing in Some Theaters
Posted by mattusmaximus on December 26, 2010
This holiday season I am a bit bummed to share some bad news with you, but this is important… you may recall that a month ago I had announced that the anti-vaccination groups Age of Autism and Safe Minds were planning on running an ad in movie theaters. Also, you may know that thanks to the skeptical community’s quick action, we were able to get the ads pulled from AMC Theaters nationwide. That’s the good news, but the bad news is that, apparently, the Safe Minds ad is actually being played in at least some non-AMC movie theaters.
The news of these latest developments was broken by my skeptical colleague & one of the most awesome women I know, the scourge of anti-vax morons everywhere, Skepchick Elyse Anders…
Still playing at theaters near you: Safe Minds PSAs…
Last night, after I had a glass of wine and a delicious butter pecan cupcake, I got a disturbing text from fellow Skepchick Maria.
She was at Studio Movie Grill in Holcomb, Ga, and was about to enjoy some Christmas Eve movie wonderfulness when… BAM… in her face, 70 ft x 30 ft of nauseating news:
The Safe Minds PSAs, the ones we had pulled from AMC last month, are still playing in other theaters. (This may not be the exact PSA running, but the message is the same.) …
Boy, this sucks! But rather than curse the darkness, let’s light some candles, folks… to hell with that, let’s light a motherf***ing bonfire! We’ve been here before, and we know what works – the threat of a widespread boycott will work; the problem is that we have to know exactly what movie theaters to target for the boycott. And the anti-vaxxers are making it tougher this time because they haven’t advertised the theaters which are playing their ad. So what we have to do is find out exactly what theaters are and are not playing the ad shown above.
If you’d like to help out, I suggest that you follow Elyse’s advice:
… Before you go [see a movie], I ask that you call your theater and find out if they are playing the SafeMinds ads. If they are, find an alternate theater. AMC Theaters have agreed not to run these ads in any of their theaters.
If you do see these ads, please leave a comment here [on the Skepchick comment thread], or if you’d rather not leave a comment, contact me using the Link? Question? Comment? link on the left side bar or email me at elyse(at)womenthinkingfree.org.
Once we have a list, we can work on writing letters, making phone calls and organizing our boycott. Jamie Bernstein of the WTFF is working on compiling a list as best she can… which is difficult without calling every single theater in the country today. …
Please consider getting involved, somehow. We know that we can win these fights, but it takes commitment & persistence. We cannot do it without you.
The Skeptical Teacher 
David Richards said
A good concept, but here where I live in Southern California theaters only publish phone numbers for the recorded show times, there’s no way to get an ‘office’ phone number — you’d have to go to every theater in person to inquire — and that’s even assuming anyone at the theater knows what’s in the ads. In many theaters that preshow entertainment time is sold and managed by an outside agency, the content is delivered to the theater over a network, and the theater chain has little knowledge or control over the content.