Animal rights activists protest at Golden Gate Fields.
Group calling itself Direct Action Everywhere wants track shut down over deaths of horses
Four people chained themselves together and lay down on the racetrack at Golden Gate Fields on Thursday, demanding that the track be shut down over recent horse deaths and forcing the day’s races to be canceled.
The protest also forced a coronavirus vaccination site near the track to shut down for about two hours.
Seventeen people from a Berkeley-based group called Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) held blueand-gold placards as they gathered near the entrance to the racetrack at Interstate 80 and Gilman Street. Four others found their way onto the track and lay down in what a news release from the activists described as “heavily weighted PVC pipes.”
The protest started around noon. The banner and placards outside the track read “Shut Down Golden Gate Fields” and the protesters chanted, “It’s not entertainment,” and “There’s no excuse for animal abuse.”
The four who went onto the track were identified by 33-yearold Almira Tanner, the group’s lead organizer, as Jamie Cron, Omar Aicardi, Rocky Chau and Rachel Ziegler. As of 3:30 p.m., the four chained protesters were still on the track along with police, who arrived shortly after the protest began.
“These beautiful animals live lives of exploitation and abuse
for the sake of profit,” Chau said in a statement released by the group. “Then they’re killed for the same reason. The public is increasingly aware of the reality of this barbaric industry and is demanding that we leave it in the past.”
The protest caused Golden Gate Fields to cancel all the day’s races. According to the track’s website, seven races were scheduled.
It also wreaked havoc upon the planned mass coronavirus vaccination that was scheduled to take place outside the racetrack in the parking lot. Authorities closed the vaccination site for several hours, but it reopened around 2:15 p.m.
“Golden Gate Fields is a firm believer in the right to protest,” the racetrack said in a statement just before 2 p.m. “However, the current actions of the protesters have forced the closure of the on-site COVID vaccination clinic, and hundreds of people have already had their vaccinations canceled. We respectfully suggest to the activists that there is a better way to have this conversation and air their concerns. We welcome the opportunity to have this discussion in the appropriate format.”
Said Keith May, the
Berkeley Fire Department’s assistant chief of special operations: “It’s because of those four individual protesters that we had to close it. You don’t know the intent of the protesters until they’re out there.”
Direct Action Everywhere said via Twitter that it supported the reopening of the vaccination site, and a press coordinator for the group wrote that the shutdown of the site was “a desperate attempt to deflect blame and attention from the horror show that GGF is for horses and humans.”
The outside group was small because it did not want to disrupt traffic at Gilman Street and the entrance and exits of I-80, Samantha Eachus of Santa Rosa, one of the protesters and a professed horse owner, said.
“We expect them to continue racing and training. We hope they will do the right thing,” Eachus said in reference to shutting down the track. “They could use the land better to serve the public.”
Tanner said the four people on the track were prepared to be arrested, but as of 4 p.m., authorities had not announced any arrests with the protesters still on the track.
Tina Etcheverry, a Berkeley Hills resident and biochemist who said she had a COVID-19 vaccination appointment delayed by the
protest, called the entire fracas chaotic.
“I’m pissed at the racetrack, I’m pissed at the city of Albany and I’m pissed at these guys,” Etcheverry said of the protesters, though she said she agreed with their message against animal cruelty.
During the protests, a track worker pulled over his car and threw two eggs at the larger group of protesters gathered outside the facility. He then charged the group, yelling about workers’ livelihoods. Track security grabbed him and escorted him back to his car.
Other people screamed obscenities at the protesters.
At least five horses have died at the racetrack this year, according to a state database of racehorse fatalities.
In 2020, more than 20 horses died on the track, causing the Berkeley City Council and Mayor Jesse Arreguín to request a special investigation on behalf of Berkeley residents.
The California Horse Racing Board’s website listed four of the deaths as training-related, with the fifth labeled as “other.” That meant the horse’s death did not occur during racing or training.