Self-Styled Boat Rocker Proposes Renaming Humboldt Park For Harambe
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A man who thinks wild animals don't belong in zoos has launched a petition to rename Humboldt Park after Harambe, the gorilla shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo in May after a child got in the ape's enclosure.
"It is a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing, but that's what makes it so funny," Peter Bono told WBBM Newsradio's Steve Miller.
Bono, who also goes by the name Vince Mici, started the petition drive to change Humboldt Park to Harambe Park, and has collected more than 600 signatures at change.org.
His petition drive is part performance art, part protest over Harambe's killing, part rocking the boat of the status quo.
One commenter lashed out against the effort, citing ongoing gentrification in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.
"For those unaware of Humboldt Park's gentrified history, it is not only insulting to the native residents of Humboldt Park to systematically push them out their homes and erase their culture but to also change the name of their neighborhood is only a bigger insult. This is privilege to the extreme and I would think that we would be more caring and educated than this about the neighborhood, especially given the racial tensions already transpiring in America," said a commenter identified as Normal Shields.
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Bono said angry posts like those are the best thing about the comments on his petition drive.
"2016 is the age of people getting offended by things, and this is just kind of like, 'Hey, take it easy. Let's put this in a petition.' You know, make it seem like it's legit, and just see what happens," Bono said. "People get mad about this. They voice opinions on something that's just so little. It is a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing, but then again it does have its message behind it."
Bono, 21, said the message of his petition drive is simple: animals don't belong in zoos.
