Last Saturday afternoon, a very young, very earnest-looking Andrew Quintana stood on the street outside the Kentucky Fried Chicken on 41st street, trying to convince Miami – indeed, the world – not to eat there.
“KFC tortures chickens!” he called out to a car that slowed down as the driver gaped at his sign: it depicted a bloody, mutilated-looking chicken hanging upside down with the words “KFC tortures animals,” printed in big block letters. “850 million chickens die for this bucket every year,” Quintana said. “And they don’t even make an effort to make their lives better.”
It was his very first protest ever.
“I was on vacation with my family, and I saw this little baby pig,” the 8th-grader explained. “And I thought, ‘How can I eat this pig?’” He’s been a vegetarian since that pivotal moment -- “I’m working on becoming a vegan.”
But Quintana was not left to protest alone – no no: Mr. Clucky, the famed chicken oft-seen bicycling around South Beach with friend Mark Buckley, was there to see him through. “Mr. Clucky is helping out,” acknowledged Buckley. “Mr. Clucky knows all about torture.” (Buckley has long believed that when Mr. Clucky stumbled out of a nearby shrub and into his life, he had just escaped a Santeria execution).
Quintana’s mom Tania was there too, holding a sign. She’s proud of her son -- “I didn’t do anything to set this up – I’m just supporting him.”
