Maddie (animal welfare advocate) testifies supporting ban

Yes.

Okay.

I'm Maddie, a longtime animal welfare advocate, a trope.

biracial, multilingual New Yorker, a legal immigrant citizen like our mayor, and professionally an architect, landscape architect, and urban planner who has lived and worked in several countries across the world.

For those who say horse carriages are a part of old tradition, well, there was a time when flaying and beheading, drawing and quartering, and several methods of torture were also tradition.

So we keep those and bring the guillotine back too?

And chamber ports in lieu of indoor plumbing?

Evolve.

It's 2026.

There are far more ecological, sustainable, humane alternatives of tourist transport.

This is for the promising young man who lost his life due to this archaic, outdated industry, which has no place in this century in this busy city when so many other cities in Europe, in the US, in Asia have banned this.

It is beyond cruel to the horses, as several other panelists have pointed out, but if not even for compassion, merely from a safety perspective, this practice should be banned.

For the ones defending this practice, it means the loss of life of a young man does not matter to you.

Would you feel the same if the victim was one of your own kin and not a young man from South Asia, Romanch Mahajan, pronounced the name correctly?

Would the proponents feel the same if this was the son of someone who represents your kind of immigrant?

The water baptisms, comparing the deaths to car accidents, even a poisonous plant, are ridiculous.

I saw a display of gaslighting, lies, full-on projections, Machiavellian manipulation.

And sociopathy, and above all, DARVO, that is, deny, attack, reverse role of victim and offender, from the defenders of this obsolete, vicious practice.

Evolve, speak the truth, not lies.

So proponents of horse abuse, please get off your high horses.

Just like cat and dog holders claim they love animals while abusing them, riding horses to death and then sending them off to slaughter is selfish narcissism, not love for the horses.

The city has several jobs with way better benefits that can absorb those who leave the industry.

Okay, please, please summarize.

If Romantia's law does not get passed, I'm still going to hope that someday New York will truly ban this barbaric industry.

Thank you so much to the caucus and to all the council people who may choose logic, compassion, and common sense.

Thank you, Shakriya.

Dhanyawad.

Mercy.

Thank you very much.

Are you Patrick?

Okay, great.