A few dozen protesters gathered across from Gracie Mansion Tuesday and demanded that Mayor de Blasio fulfill his campaign promise to ban the city’s beloved horse-drawn carriages.
The members of the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages slammed the mayor for his broken promise during the rally on the Upper East Side at around 6:30 p.m.
“We’re very disappointed in Mayor de Blasio for not keeping his campaign promise to ban horse-drawn carriages,” said the coalition’s president, Elizabeth Forel.
“He keeps saying he’s going to do it, but it’s blind faith.”
The protesters ignored polls that show a majority of New Yorkers do not support a ban on horse-drawn carriages.
“I just don’t trust those polls,” Forel said.
Another member of the coalition, Donny Moss, said although one stable open for public viewing on 52nd Street is kept clean, there are others which are secretly hidden from the public eye.
“There are three other stables,” Moss said. “People would be appalled by their conditions.”
The protester said the horse are overworked and forced back into their stalls.
“They can’t graze freely,” he said. “They’re stripped of the ability to do anything horses would naturally do. They don’t belong here in the city. It’s in humane and unsafe.”