New York City Hall Pelted With Pizza in Anti-Woke Wood Oven Backlash

A protester pelted New York City Hall with pizza slices on Monday, shouting "Give us pizza, or give us death" following reports pizzerias in the city will be required to slash carbon emissions in a move that could hit coal and wood burning ovens.

The demonstrator, conservative artist and activist Scott LoBaido, posted a video of the incident on Twitter, where it racked up more than 1.6 million views and was retweeted over 9,000 times.

LoBaido's protest follows a draft proposal from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which would require pizza joints to cut emissions by up to 75 percent in a bid to improve air quality.

The protest began with LoBaido walking up to a gate outside the City Hall in lower Manhattan with four boxes of pizzas.

Speaking to the camera from a script he comments: "The woke-ass idiots who run this city are doing everything in their power to destroy it. We have naked men with their t****** bouncing around all over the city yesterday in public, in front of children. We have the most violent raging crime rate ever.

"We are being invaded by illegal immigrants who are being treated way better than our homeless veterans. Our teachers and first responder heroes who were fired [are] still not compensated because they didn't take the Fauci injection.

"Our city schools produce the dumbest kids, and the woke-ass punks who run New York City are afraid of pizza. The world used to respect New Yorkers as tough, thick-skinned and gritty. Now we have become p********. It's a damn shame. You heard of the Boston tea party? Well, this is the New York pizza party. Give us pizza, or give us death!"

LoBaido then begins throwing pizza slices over the gate, getting onto the third box before two police officers intervene.

On Twitter LoBaido later said he "just got a summons," adding: "Cops were great."

Commenting to Newsweek by email the campaigner later said: "I've been doing this kind of thing for 30 years, I have gotten a lot of traction on some of my battles against the PC [politically correct] b*******. But this was the biggest one [so] far. A battle cry, a shot heard round the world.

"As usual I leave it up to the people that I hopefully woke up to continue the fight on their own. Just a summons was received and I plan on fighting it as the pizza was a creative prop I used to express myself as an artist to make a statement. Nothing got broken pizza is biodegradable, etc."

According to the New York Post, the DEP's draft proposal would require pizza ovens installed before May 2016 to be fitted with expensive emission-control devices, which one store owner told the publication had cost him $20,000 to fit and maintain.

Speaking to the publication Ted Timbers, a spokesman for the DEP, said: "All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air, and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality.

"This common-sense rule, developed with restaurant and environmental justice groups, requires a professional review of whether installing emission controls is feasible."

Newsweek has contacted the New York City Hall for comment via email.

Earlier this month New York City Mayor Eric Adams claimed climate change had "accelerated" conditions which led to much of the city being blanketed by smoke, due to raging wildfires in Canada.

Much of the U.S. north-east coast was hit between June 3 and 8, with New York's air quality rocketing to a score of over 300 on the EPA's Air Quality Index (AQI) on June 7, briefly giving it the worst result of any major city of the planet.

Update 6/28/23 3:05 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with comment from Scott LoBaido.