For its impact, creativity, and powerful message, a 2018 ad starring Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA—reminding people to treat all animals with respect and compassion—has won the top spot in PETA’s first-ever March Adness showdown, a five-round competition among 32 of the group’s best ads, from an anti-fur message featuring the cast of The Golden Girls to a vegan Super Bowl ad starring James Cromwell.

“It doesn’t matter if we have fur or feathers or fins,” RZA says in the winning video. “We’re not different in any important way. We all have thoughts and feelings. We all feel love and pain and loneliness and joy.”

“PETA’s greatest ad of all time urges humans to recognize the similarities in everyone around them instead of focusing on their differences,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “The world is in urgent need of more empathy, which begins with seeing the individual and understanding that we’re all animals—and PETA has free Empathy Kits for anyone who needs a lesson in kindness.”

PETA’s recently launched nationwide platform, “Every Animal Is Someone,” draws attention to the fact that humans are just one animal among many and asks people to exchange hate and fear for empathy by looking into the eyes of the individuals around them—whether a cow staring down the slaughterhouse knife, a displaced person, or a lonely neighbor—and recognize that each one can experience love, grief, joy, and pain; wants to live; and has inherent worth.

PETA’s motto reads, “Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.” For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post ‘We Are All the Same’: RZA’s Plea for Animal Equality Is Named PETA’s Greatest Ad of All Time appeared first on PETA.