Protesters Shop for Audience at Malls : Dissent: Customers are the target of groups supporting animal rights and those opposing abortion and war.

Shopping malls may be well established as the hub of Southern California social life, but on Friday they became political parade grounds as well, where anti-abortion and anti-war protesters, animal-rights advocates and opponents of China’s Communist government demonstrated before crowds of holiday shoppers.

In San Bernardino’s Central City Mall, shoppers expecting to be welcomed by red-costumed Santa Clauses and holiday decorations watched as animal-rights protesters filed past in a solemn funeral procession for minks and foxes killed for their fur. Some protesters toted a cage similar to those used to hold fur-bearing animals. Others unfurled lynx stoles with the heads still on.

“I think it’s a wonderful day to have a protest,” said Susan Finsen, a spokeswoman for Californians for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “Better that shoppers see this now than later--after they’re stuck with these objects they’ll be embarrassed to wear.”

Fur protests have become such an annual post-Thanksgiving event over the past three years that pelt industry officials manned telephone lines Friday to counter such picket sign messages as “Fur Coats Are Worn by Beautiful Animals and Ugly People” and “Fur Free America.”

“I guess they do it because this is the No. 1 shopping day of the year and folks are deciding on their winter garments,” said Tim Sullivan, animal welfare director for Fur Farm Animal Welfare Coalition, a pro-fur organization.

Sullivan insisted that fur-producing animals are treated humanely. “Only good quality care,” he said, “can produce a fine quality pelt, particularly on an animal whose chief commodity is what it’s wearing on the outside.”

More than 30 anti-abortion protesters stopped patrons in front of Mervyn’s and Target retail chain stores in a Torrance shopping center, complaining that the stores were in league with abortion advocates. They were joined by similar demonstrations in San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange county malls.

Monika Moreno, 29, a spokeswoman for the Torrance abortion protesters, said that they took aim at Target and Mervyn’s because their parent company, Dayton-Hudson Corp., made a one-year, $18,000 grant to Planned Parenthood of Minnesota--a group aligned with abortion rights forces.

“The day after Thanksgiving and Christmas are traditionally the biggest shopping days of the year,” said Moreno. “We’re here to get to the shoppers.”

Target employees passed out a Dayton-Hudson leaflet insisting that the grant was not being used to support abortions and that the firm has taken no position on the abortion issue.

In Beverly Hills and Costa Mesa, animal-rights activists also marched against fur sales.

In Santa Monica, members of the Los Angeles Alliance for Survival held a news conference outside an Egghead Discount Software store to protest the alleged glorification of war in computer games. In Rosemead, Chinese pro-democracy marchers asked shoppers to boycott Toys R Us stores for selling toys made in China.

Unlike an animal-rights protest in San Francisco, where protester and rock singer Grace Slick looked on as six activists were arrested, there were no reports of arrests at any of the Southern California demonstrations.

Some shoppers--already braced for close encounters of the rude kind with other shoppers--were clearly not thrilled at the prospect of having to get past picketers on their way to post-Thanksgiving bargains.

“Some customers think it’s an inconvenience for them,” said Target manager Gloria Jost.

One 36-year-old nurse tried to ignore the abortion protesters and their signs. “A Christmas shopping area is not a place to express your political view,” she said angrily.

Others welcomed the protests as an interlude that allowed them to stop and think before they rushed into store aisles. Laurie Gonzales, 36, who had gone shopping with her daughter and just paid for Christmas gifts at Target, wished that she had seen the protesters before she entered the store.

“I shouldn’t be shopping here because I don’t support abortion,” she said, adding: “I feel guilty, but economic-wise, I have to shop here because it’s one of the cheaper retail stores.”