Saturday, March 11, 2006

Educational Outreach in NYC's Greenwich Village

Once again, we visited the home of Robert Schaffer of the Vertical Group. His rude and obnoxious realtor Harlan Goldberg had scheduled another open house to try to see Rob's 4 level $1.2 million apartment in Greenwich Village. As soon as activists arrived and began the process of setting up an educational table, an irate neighbor came down from his apartment and assailed the activists for being on his sidewalk. At that point, not a single voice had been raised in defense of the 500 animal slaughtered every day at Huntingdon Life Sciences. The only voice raised at that point was the voice of this grown man who berated and cursed at activists with his toddler at his side. We were shocked at the language that this parent uses in the presence of his own child.

Several times he told us to “Get the f**ck out of here”. Every other word out of his mouth started with “F”. When words weren't enough, he got in the face of one of an activist who is a middle aged woman and slapped her hand and made physically threatening gestures at other activists including shoving one young activist almost knocking him off his feet.

When police arrived in response to a call they had received, we explained what happened and the police officer said that if this person touched anyone again that it should be reported as this could be assault. The police officer said that we had every right to be there and to not be subjected to harassment by neighbors. The uncontrolled rage exhibited by this person was frightening especially considering the fact that he could not control his behavior in the presence of his very young child.

A peaceful demonstration followed with the police acting as a deterrent to further harassment and violence from the neighbor, who remained in his apartment.

Our next location was the nearby home of Brian Badertscher, executive with Bank of America. The Badertscher's did not appear to be home, so we set up an educational outreach table and held signs drawing attention to the plight of the 70,000 animals waiting to die in the HLS death camps. As usual, this neighborhood is so much more peaceful and socially conscious. They have always been supportive of our efforts and anxious to spread the word about Bank of America's blood money investment in HLS.