Union Square, New York City: full of tourists, angry honks, religious chants, break dancers, bustling shoppers and… anti-vegan protesters eating cow brains?

Last Tuesday night was bizarre, even by Union Square standards. The Vegan and Vegetarian Meet Up group held a “pay-per-view” activism event where they paid pedestrians $1 in exchange for watching a 4-minute video that exposed animal cruelty in factory farms. About an hour into the event a man with a large knapsack and a protest sign that read "Down with the vegan agenda! Veganism is destroying the environment" appeared and began shouting anti-vegan sentiments. The man whipped out a large raw cow head out of his sack and ate the brain out of the skull, flesh chunks flailed about. The activists stared, dumbfounded, unsure of what to do. Some were instantly reminded of the "sausage wielding" far right extremists that chucked sausages at patrons at a vegan restaurant in Georgia during May.

One of the group organizer’s stood directly in front of the brain eater in an attempt to shield him from the quickly forming crowd. The anti-vegan head-butted the organizer screaming "don't touch me, don't touch me". Some onlookers found the scene amusing, others horrified, and a few heckled the anti-vegan protester. Eventually, after about ten minutes of complete absurdity, the police ushered away the brain eater. The full video is here, but take caution-- the footage is disturbing (and the title/description rather biased).

The scene touches on some controversial and thought-provoking topics. The protester defended himself against the police with a "free speech" argument. Since the anti-vegan may not have been breaking the law per se, were his rights violated when he was ushered away? Should police intervene in potentially traumatic or unsanitary, yet peaceful protests? Did the anti-vegan help or hurt the "vegan agenda"?

As a disclaimer, I was one of the vegan activists and the experience of feeling relatively "normal" was amusingly unique. As the saying goes, only in New York.