Animal advocates, together with mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, rallied at Metropolis Corridor on Thursday to help Ryder’s Legislation.
Photograph by Dean Moses
Transport Employees Union President John Samuelsen threatened on Monday to sue Republican mayoral hopeful Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder and an animal rights activist, for “defamatory and false” feedback the candidate at a Thursday rally.
In a Monday letter to Sliwa, obtained by New York News, Samuelson pointed to Sliwa’s comment on the rally that “there is money under the table to the TWU leadership” regarding New York Metropolis’s horse-drawn carriage trade. Samuelsen demanded in his letter that Sliwa “issue a written retraction of the statement and offer an apology to the members of the TWU whose leadership you have slandered and defamed.”
“If you choose not to act honorably by retracting the false statement, we will commence legal action against you for your actions forthwith,” Samuelsen wrote. “We will seek damages commensurate with the harm done to my reputation and to the reputation of the TWU.”
Samuelsen and the union gave Sliwa a Thursday deadline to subject the retraction and apology earlier than continuing with authorized motion. The letter additionally described Thursday’s rally as “lightly attended” and “underwhelming.”
“Sliwa spewed garbage, with a reckless disregard for the truth, to advance his political goals,” Samuelsen wrote in a press release to New York News. “It’s not protected by the Constitution, and he will pay for it.”
The remarks from Sliwa on the rally — the place the candidate additionally referred to as on the Metropolis Council to prioritize laws that may ban horse-drawn carriages in New York Metropolis — got here days after a jury acquitted Ian McKeever, a veteran carriage driver, of animal abuse prices. McKeever’s horse, Ryder, collapsed on the road in Hell’s Kitchen three years in the past, and McKeever was charged in 2023.
Metropolis Council Member Robert Holden (D-Queens) is sponsoring Ryder’s Legislation, which might prohibit new licenses for horse-drawn carriages and ultimately finish the trade within the metropolis. A handful of animal rights advocates referred to as for the passage of the laws at Thursday’s rally at Metropolis Corridor, the place Holden and Councilmember Erik Bottcher (D-Manhattan) additionally delivered remarks.
Ryder was euthanized a couple of months after the autumn “due to his medical conditions and age.” Ryder was later identified with most cancers, and the protection testified that McKeever and different horse handlers weren’t conscious of the horse’s sickness till after its collapse. After the incident, the union and the town confronted backlash for what some noticed as an absence of consideration on horses’ well being and well-being. Although the town beforehand employed a full-time veterinarian who labored with TWU and horse homeowners, the place has been unfilled for a number of years.
TWU started consulting with its personal veterinarian after Ryder’s 2022 collapse and has since labored to implement reforms in horse remedy.
