NEW YORK (AP) — For decades, a giant, inflatable rat with beady eyes, sharp teeth and a pustule-covered belly has loomed over union protests, drawing attention to various labor disputes.
But in the era of TikTok and influencer culture, middle-aged Scabby faces a new challenge: staying relevant.
“It’s kind of unfortunate, changing times, older members of the public know exactly what the rat is for,” said James Smith, union activity administrator for the NYC District Council of Carpenters. “The newer generation sometimes doesn’t — one person thought that we were protesting a building that needed an exterminator.”
Nevertheless, Scabby isn’t collecting hard-won retirement benefits just yet. Most recently, he has been making the rounds at various picket lines in New York for the Hollywood writers strike organized by the Writers Guild of America East and other unions.
Scabby is the “true rat czar of New York City,” said WGA East communications director Jason Gordon, referencing the more fun title for the city’s new director of rodent migration.
At the picket line near HBO and Amazon’s New York offices on Wednesday, screenwriter Lisa Kron, 61, said she was “thrilled to see that we were being chaperoned by Scabby the Rat.”
She’s seen Scabby out and about during her four decades living in New York, but this was her first time picketing with the rat.
“It’s one of those great enduring symbols, it’s a great piece of visual protest,” she said. “It’s got humor and it’s got a shaming kind of message. And it’s very New York.”
“It’s an attention grabber,” said Benjamin Serby, a professor at Adelphi University who has written about the history of Scabby. “It’s something that just is very effective, for whatever reason, at making people walking by or driving by, stop and ask: ‘What’s going on here?’”
Although having a rat as a mascot seems quintessentially New York, Scabby the Rat was actually invented by…
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