Saturday, September 26, 2009 Global Weekend of Action Against Escada & Central Park Carriage Horse Protest Demo #1: ESCADA - 715 Fifth Avenue As part of the Global Week of Action against Escada, Win Animal Rights marched over to Fifth Avenue to expose the company's role in the brutal fur trade. Escada continues to stomp on, skin alive, suffocate, and anally electrocute hundreds of thousands of animals every year for their tacky fashion lines. As always, pedestrians were appalled as they saw posters revealing the remains of once beautiful animals.  The peaceful but loud demonstration attracted a large number of onlookers (which included many tourists with cameras) and protesters distributed hundreds of campaign fliers. Escada employees did not attempt to harass demonstrators since they knew it would only bring further attention to the protest. It boggles the mind why a company would allow itself to be embarrassed. Escada, go fur free and the protests will end. Simple as that. Demo #2: Central Park Carriage Horse Protest Since the global weekend of action against Escada put us so close to the Central Park Carriage Horse base of operations, activists decided to educate some tourists about the inherent cruelty of the city’s nightmarish carriage horse trade. Activists lined up right alongside the hack line, in order to directly engage those tourists that were considering whether to tour the park in a horse drawn carriage or a human peddling pedicab. Signs depicting the death and injury of horses on the streets of New York City were held high. The abject misery of these poor horses is clear from their downtrodden appearance, hanging heads and sluggish gait. Activists witnessed horses with poorly cared for coats and hooves, carriage drivers breaking the law by overcharging tourists (which seems to be common practice) and driving while talking on their cell phone. In some cases, drivers were standing and turned completely around, so they could videotape the protest, while their carriage (full of lazy uncaring tourists) lurched forward into New York City traffic. Activists engaged both drivers and passengers. The driver’s response was to make lewd and crude gestures (if I see one more carriage driver grab his junk, I think I will puke), scream profanities including calling the activists “c*nts”, “c*cksuckers” (accompanied by the matching gestures) and there were more “F*ck You”s than activists could count. All of this happening while passengers, including young children, sat uncomfortably in the carriage.  The coup de grace was when one driver, while in motion, stood and bent over lowering his trousers and patting his ass. This would have been quite amusing (think carriage driver shows his ass), if their had not been a child in the back seat who witnessed the entire disgusting display. No doubt that family went home with a clear idea of how abusive and crude these carriage drivers can be. Abusing animals and abusing children go hand-in-hand. The toughest moment of the protest was when activists witnessed the injury of a pigeon that had been feeding under a carriage horse, The bird was obviously badly injured, when an attendant unceremoniously swept the flailing bird into his shovel and casually tossed the suffering pigeon into the manure barrel. Protesters approached, in order to determine if they could give aid to the injured bird. They were pushed away and told that the bird was “JUST GARBAGE”. Needless to say, activists continued to pursue the attendant until they were able to confirm that the pigeon had died and no longer suffered. This is their attitude toward animals……they believe they are nothing but garbage or animals to be used and tormented until they are no longer of any use. At that time, they are shipped to slaughterhouses. Video Clips: |
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