In his extraordinary encyclical “Laudato Si,” Pope Francis calls upon us to reconsider how we are living, to look our values and goals. “Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur.”
It is really a moral value to drive the animals out of our everyday world to make more room for office towers, cars and more money for developers and politicians? It is really justifiable to drive the last remaining domesticated animals out of our cities and replace them with expensive cars? Who in the world will benefit if the horses are taken from New York? Not the horses, who will be sent out into peril and danger. Not the hundreds of people who love them and earn a living from the and connect with our most wonderful park with them? Not the tourists, who come to New York to see them. Not the children, whose eyes widen at the sight of them, or the lovers, who cherish the memories of them? Not the park, for which the horses were designed.
We are called up now to treat the animals well, and to live in harmony and respect with our fellow human beings. We will find a way to treated one another with dignity, or we will perish together. That is the message of the carriage horses, the meaning of the controversy, the plea of the Pope.
Astonishingly, the great onslaught against the New York Carriage Trade is a spectacular, if largely unremarked upon, disaster for the people who claim to speak for the rights of animals, but do not. No one really knows how many millions of dollars NY Class, PETA, and a coalition of animal rights groups have spent trying to mobilize public support for the carriage horse ban and bullying the members of the City Council to pass the mayor’s carriage horse ban.
The city’s notoriously aggressive media, so happy to pass along unchallenged and false stories of cruelty and abuse, have not yet noticed that the horses have won one of the great victories in the awful history of animals struggle to survive in the face of human cruelty and greed. The ban is failing.
In the last week alone, these groups have mailed out hundreds of thousands of glossy color posted sized pieces showing dead horses (some of them from New York, some from elsewhere) to people for days in a row. They are organizing expensive phone channeling telephone calls from all over the country. They are following carriage drivers with video cameras, trying to catch them violating city regulations, they have hired private detectives to follow them, they have released a series of videos on you tube, and enlisted various naive and poorly informed Hollywood stars who think they are being hip and progressive.
They have established a network of blogs and fund-raising websites using photographs of dead and injured horses, most from unknown places outside of New York to raise tens of millions of dollars from people who believe they are saving or rescuing animals, rather than sending them off to languish or die. They have spent millions of dollars on direct-mail marketers, publicists and street organizers.
NYClass, the group spearheading the horse ban, has spent nearly three-quarters of a million dollars developing a vintage electric car that would replace the horses in Central Park, a proposal the Central Park Conservancy has said would be unacceptable, dangerous to the park and it’s environment.
The Teamsters Union, champions of the carriage trade and veterans of countless political struggles, say they have never seen anything like it, not in the rich history of New York City. In 1900, there were 130,000 carriage horses in Manhattan Alone, now there are 200, too many for the mayor and the real estate developers and the makers of vintage electric cards which sell for $160,000 apiece. Is there no place in our world where safe and well-cared for animals can remain?
The animal rights groups have organized hundreds of demonstrators – some paid – to gather at the carriage horse lines in Central Park, hand out thousands of pamphlets, intimidate children, tourists and horse lovers, to shout insults at the carriage drivers and call them murderers, to secretly tape them in the hopes of catching them saying something controversial or angry.
In the meantime, the mayor has refused to visit the stables, meet with the stable owners, negotiate with the representatives and lobbyists for the carriage trade. He has tried to dehumanize the carriage trade, calling it immoral, refusing to speak with the people whose families have worked in the trade for generations. It is budget time in New York. The mayor and his very powerful lobbying staff is dangling all kinds of civic projects in front of the council members, talking to them about playgrounds, new schools, parks and street repairs if they will support the carriage horses ban, threatening them with the withholding of support and local projects if they do not.
Even that didn’t work. The quite amazing thing is that the horses have stood their ground. The animal rights lobbyists have turned out to be the gangs that couldn’t shoot straight. They remind us that big money doesn’t always trump over human rights and human values. When the mayor promised two years ago to ban the horses on “Day One” of his administration, two thirds of all city residents said they opposed the carriage grade Ban. The last poll, taken a few weeks ago, found that number to be unchanged. The onslaught against the horses – these groups seem to have unlimited funds – do not seem to have changed a single mind in New York. All three newspapers oppose the ban. The last time all three papers agreed on anything was when the Trade Towers fell on 9/11. So has the Chamber Of Commerce, the Central Park Conservancy, the Teamsters Union, The Central Labor Council, the Working Families Party.
Legions of journalists, behaviorists, veterinarians and equine advocacy groups have found the campaign against the horses to be filled with misrepresentations, outright lies and distortions. It is a cruel campaign, elitist, very personal, increasingly irrational, and sometimes overwhelming. A year ago, it seemed to be unstoppable.Nobody was betting on the horses. It is a miracle that the horses and their humans have withstood it. In the City Council, there are not even enough votes to get the mayor’s legislation out of committee and to the full council for a vote.
The legislation seems to be dead, at least for this year, but no one expects the animal rights groups to quit. The next chapter in this disturbing drama will be – should be – to stop the intimidation, harassment and abuse of the carriage trade, it is unconscionable that is occurring, and that the city government appears to be supporting it. It is the next great struggle in the new national movement to return some moral values to our world and honor our obligations and debt to the animals, our partners in the earth.
The plight of the carriage horses seems to have spawned a social awakening among animal lovers in the country. The animal rights movement, founded in good faith to defend the rights of animals, has evolved into something disturbing, something profoundly anti-democratic and intrinsically abusive to people. They are not saving animals, or protecting their rights, they are driving them out of the world and out of our lives. They are invading the privacy of people, destroying their work, taking animals away from us, rather than saving them. The real abuse is occurring to the carriage trade, not the horses.
It is not clear what, if anything the carriage trade can or will do to stop this campaign of harassment and intimidation, held outside of the law, science, or reason. The animal rights ethos has become in some ways a fascistic, not a progressive one. It’s targets are the poor and the working class. It despises the democratic process, and it dehumanizes it’s targets and treats them in ways that are beyond the pale of a democratic and civil society.
Speaking only for myself – I do not know if anyone in the carriage trade agrees with me – I think it is time for good people, progressive people, democratic and conservative people, animal lovers and citizens who value privacy, dignity and freedom to join the next chapter of the carriage horses: to stop this awful campaign against the people of the carriage trade, their lives are being ruined.
It is my belief that the people seeking the ban the horses – the mayor included – are vulnerable to legal action that possibly involves defamation, the overreach of government, campaign finance corruption, real estate development and bribery, misleading non-profit fund-raising solicitation and spending, and the violation of constitutional guarantees of due process and equal justice under the law.
The carriage trade has hired two prominent civil rights attorneys, he has been working with them for some time now. The mayor has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the exact amount of money he was given by animal rights groups like NYClass, what promises he made in exchange, why he meets regularly with the people seeking to ban the horses, but has never met once with the carriage trade.
Civil rights are the rights of individuals to freedom and social equality, to be free from unfair treatment or discrimination or to be excluded from due process. That is the story of the carriage trade in New York. They are being denied their freedom and their social equality, the treatment of them has been characterized by unfairness and discrimination, they have been totally excluded from the due process granted everyone else in this painful controversy.
The animal rights groups are powerful, they have a lot of money. But the horses have triggered a great social awakening. It is important to have a discussion and debate about the future of animals in our world, but this vicious campaign against the carriage horses is not it. The mayor has disregarded the public will, violated his oath to represent all of the citizens of New York, and embraced practices that are at the very least unethical, and at the worst, illegal. The animal rights organizations ought to be called to account for the false things they have said, for accusing the carriage trade of abuse, thievery and wanton cruelty and neglect.
Almost all of those accusations have been repeatedly shown to be false, the accusers of the carriage trade – and their mayor – ought to be h held legally accountable for the damage they have done and continue to do. Americans who obey the law and work hard have the right to live in peace and freedom, and keep their property and way of life. When those freedoms are denied them without cause, they have the right to turn to the courts for redress and compensation.
A few years ago, the courts ordered the A.S.P.C.A. and other animal rights groups to pay Ringling Bros. nearly $21 million in court costs because they admitted they had paid witnesses to lie about the treatment of the elephants in the circus. Reading through these court documents, I believe the carriage trade has a much stronger case even than Ringling Brothers. I believe in truth and facts and I believe in justice, this case can only ultimately be resolved in the courts.
And even though the mayor and his supporters in the animal rights movement have access to mountains of money, they may not be aware of the growing number of supporters beyond New York City, all over the country and the world who have been anguished by this conflict, who have awakened by the ferocity of the assaults on the horses and on many other animals, and people and farmers and animal lovers.
Horse and other animal lovers have flooded the mayor’s office and City Council with letters, calls, e-mails supporting the carriage trade. They are a gathering army all of their own. They may not have millions of dollars to spend on slick videos and pamphlets, but they will fight for the right of animals to remain in our world, for the decent treatment of other human beings. And they are. They have helped the carriage trade, the Teamsters, and the people in New York who love the horses to win a great, if tenuous, victory over anger and greed.
They have made the lives of the carriage trade Hell sometimes, but they have, I believe, unwittingly with their crude campaign awakened forces larger and more powerful than they know. The carriage trade has won a great moral victory this year over the forces of rage and greed and ignorance.
There is no hope or joy in the animal rights war against the horses, no compassion or reason or humanity. It is a grim campaign, filled with accusation and rage and fanaticism. It does not speak to the good in people, or their hope. It is filled with debasement and fury. Whatever one thinks about the horses, this is not the way to decide on the future of animals in our world, no mayor ought to stand alongside this kind of persecution.
So no time to celebrate this victory of the horses. It is time for the next struggle, to win their lives back and to fight for the very democratic values of freedom and the the right to live and work in peace. It is the business of government to protect these people from the loss of their freedom and property, not to take those things from them.
I hope the carriage trade will turn to the law to cement their victory and protect their future, and the future of every animal and animal lover in the world. There is no doubt what Mother Earth would want, how she would vote, what would be best for her.
The horses speak to us of a meaningful past and a brighter future. The people who do not see it are lost, stuck in the old ways of confrontation, greed and power, they hurt people every day, and would harm or kill the horses if they had their way. The horses call upon us to awaken, to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our delusions of grandeur.