A new relationship with animals, nature and each other.

Newark Mayor Receives Humane Award

Says he became vegetarian to show sympathy toward animals

Newark Mayor Cory Booker was one of the people honored at a gala dinner last week, put on by the Humane Society of the United States. He was presented with the Humane Public Servant Award.

Booker said he’d become a vegetarian to show sympathy toward animals.

Six months ago, after the rescue of Patrick the pit bull, who had been starved almost to death and then put in a plastic bag and dropped down a garbage chute, the mayor took up his cause – and the cause of all abused companion animals.

Booker made it known that his “birthday wish” was for the city to be able to build a no-kill shelter that would be called Patrick’s Place “so that Newark will be known as a city that cares not only about its people, but its animals, too.”