came out in favor of the legislation<\/a>, sending carriage horse operators reeling.<\/p>\nHundreds of people attended the hearing, which began at 10 a.m. and dragged on into the evening. They included many animal rights advocates who want to ban carriage horses from the city \u2014 as well as a cavalry of top hat-wearing carriage supporters organized by TWU Local 100, which represents the buggy drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aPublic hearings should exist to inform legislative decisions, not simply ratify decisions that have already been made like a kangaroo court,\u201d said TWU Local 100 Political Director Sharase DeBouse. \u201cOur members deserve due process. They deserve to be heard before the city council votes to eliminate their livelihoods.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s previous two mayors unsuccessfully attempted to ban carriage horses, largely due to the influence of Local 100, which also represents subway and bus workers. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has also said he supports ending the rides, so long as lawmakers help find new employment for the drivers.<\/p>\n
Despite affecting a small fraction of the city\u2019s workforce and public space, the massive turnout at Wednesday\u2019s hearing showed how sensitive a political subject the carriage horse industry has become in New York.<\/p>\n
The proceeding even brought out the stars.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aThey [carriage horses] have the right to a God-given, if that’s what you believe, life, just as we do,\u201d actress Edie Falco, known for her role in \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d said at the hearing as she testified in favor of the ban. \u201c\u200aThe fact that there’s anybody in this room that can look at an animal with the apparatus and the carriage and the people and the traffic and the sounds and the smells and the heat and say, \u2018Sure, yeah, that’s reasonable.\u2019\u200aThe first time I saw that 40 years ago, I thought, \u2018What is this?\u2019”<\/p>\n
The Council also heard testimony from Romanch Mahajan’s father, Deepak Mahajan.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI cannot properly describe to you the real true fear inside that carriage. It was shaking. It was speeding. There was no one holding the reins, and we could do nothing but hold on to each other and scream,\u201d Mahajan said over Zoom from India. \u201cMy wife fell. Romanch tried to help his mother, and he too fell. Then he hit his head on the ground, and he did not move.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, supporters of the carriage horse industry argued that the business is an essential part of New York City and should be reformed, not abolished.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aHorses helped build this very building 200 years ago,\u201d said Christina Hansen, a carriage horse driver and organizer for Local 100.<\/p>\n
She pointed to a painting of George Washington with his horse, Blueskin, in the Council chamber to emphasize her point.<\/p>\n
It remains unclear exactly how the proposed \u201cworkforce development program\u201d to find new jobs for the carriage horse drivers would work. Several drivers at the hearing doubted the city could find them a good job, noting they currently make around $60,000 to $70,000 a year.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI don’t need to be told to go work in a hotel or something like that,\u201d Hansen said. \u201cI am a horse person, so will the city be giving me a job with one of your police horses?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carriage horse industry supporters charged into City Hall on Wednesday to urge city councilmembers to say \u201cneigh\u201d to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-297198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}