Zohran Mamdani has decided that New York City has had enough of horses. Not enough of rats, not enough of subway crime, not enough of the smell of urine on the sidewalk, but horses. The tourist carriages in Central Park have to go by 2028 because one tragic accident and a bunch of PETA activists convinced the new mayor that 150 years of tradition is actually animal cruelty.
Drivers and union members showed up outside City Hall today with the most honest protest prop in political history: a bag of actual horse shit. One guy held it up and declared, "THIS IS HORSE SH*T." Hard to argue with the visual. While Mamdani and Council Speaker Julie Menin cut a deal to phase out the industry, the people who actually work with the animals are standing there with manure, reminding everyone that the real mess is the one the mayor is making.
Alley Owens has covered a lot of performative progressive nonsense, but this one has a certain poetry. The same city that can't keep its streets clean is now obsessed with whether a horse is having a good time pulling a carriage that tourists actually want to ride. The bill is named Romanch's Law after the 18-year-old who died in an accident this summer. Tragic. But turning one death into a reason to wipe out an entire industry that employs hundreds of people, many of them immigrants, is the kind of logic that only works if you've never had to make a payroll.
Drivers say the transition plan is a joke. Vague promises of job training and maybe some money if the city feels like it. No guarantees. Meanwhile the horses themselves have to be disposed of "humanely," which in government speak means they can't be sold to anyone who might actually use them for work. So the animals get "rescued" and the people who took care of them get unemployment. Classic Democratic math.
The protest with the bag of shit was perfect because it cut through the sanctimony. These are not abstract animal rights. These are working horses and working people. The carriages have been part of the park for generations. Tourists line up for them. The drivers know the animals. And now a mayor who ran on freezing rents and free buses is going to tell them their jobs are obsolete because some activist decided horses don't belong in cities. News flash: neither do most of the people who vote for Mamdani, but they're still here.
PETA is thrilled. The carriage drivers are not. Lawyers are already lining up to sue, arguing the ban is unconstitutional. City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino called it out as such. The vote is happening today and the fix is already in. Mamdani gets to look compassionate. The workers get to look for new jobs. And somewhere in Central Park a horse is wondering why the humans who used to feed it are now unemployed because a politician needed a win.
This is what progressive governance looks like in practice. You take something that works, something people enjoy, something that employs people, and you ban it because it makes the right kind of activist happy. Then when the people affected show up with a bag of shit and say the quiet part out loud, you call them uncompassionate. The closer is obvious: if your big idea for New York is replacing horse carriages with electric scooters and more empty promises, don't be surprised when the protest shows up with the real product of your policy. Horse shit. Literal and figurative. And the tourists who used to ride the carriages will just go somewhere else.
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