“And as we go riding in the damp foggy midnight

You snort, my good pony, and you give me your best

For you know, and I know, good horse,

‘mongst the rich ones

How oftimes we go there as an unwelcome guest.”

– Woody Guthrie, The Unwelcome Guest.

The New York Daily News editorialized today that New Yorkers are coming to understand that there is something especially troubling and increasingly obvious about Mayor de Blasio’s plans to ban the Central Park horse carriages. The mayor, the paper said, is putting the  contested, even imaginary welfare of animals over the very real welfare of human beings, of 200 carriage drivers and their families as well as the stable owners, groomers, stable hands who have maintained an iconic tradition for generations. I would add to that list the hundreds of thousands of additional victims,  if one counts horse owners and lovers, tourists, children and the many people who love to see animals in Central Park. This  preserved and mystical world  would be greatly diminished by the mayor’s plans to force these beautiful and valued animals out of our world and replace them with fake antique electric cars.

The editorial was perceptive. In recent days there has been a dramatic awakening in New York, perhaps one that is long overdue.

Liam Neeson’s trip to the Clinton Park stables focused a great deal of attention on the stunning irony of the “progressive” renaissance  supposedly underway in New York. Suddenly, many people saw the very poignant spectacle of honest and hard-working individualists being sacrificed to “save” “animals – among the best cared-for and regulated animals in the world –  who need saving only from their rescuers.

These horses, claims the mayor and his supporters in the animal rights movement, must be saved from New York City so that they can either spend the rest of their lives eating hay and dropping manure or, as is more likely, be slaughtered in order to fulfill the strange animal fantasies of people who should be banned from ever claiming they support the rights of animals. It is not a right of animals to be patronized, misunderstood, deprived of meaningful work and sent away from human beings who are willing to pay for their care and well-being. It is not the right of healthy and content horses to be taken from people who work in partnership with them and sent to vanish into rescue preserves or add to the slaughter of the more than 155,000 unwanted equines  who die each year in Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses.

Leeson and many of the city’s most influential unions and merchants have pleaded with the the mayor to reconsider the ban. The horse owners and drivers have begged him to talk with them.  A Chamber of Commerce poll taken this week found that 74 per cent of Manhattan’s business owners are opposed to banning the horses, and yet another survey found a clear majority of New Yorkers – 61 per cent – want the horses to stay in the city. A survey of the city’s  tourists and visitors and park lovers would probably find that number closer to 100 per cent.

To all of this outpouring, a man who campaigned as the workingman’s candidate has turned his back on the working men – and women – and proposed destroying their work in favor of this idea that the horses are being poorly treated. The mayor won’t talk to the stable owners, he won’t visit the stables, he won’t consider any of the new information pouring into this debate from all over the world, he won’t spent a minute thinking or re-thinking about what will happen to the horses or the people who own and drive them if they are banned. He won’t listen to the impassioned testimony of horse trainers, owners, veterinarians authors, researchers, journalists and true animal rights advocates who  almost universally argue that it is not unhealthy or cruel for working horses to work, it is essential to their health and their survival in our world. The mayor could be trying to figure out how to keep the horses safely in New York, but  has instead rejected the role of the  leader in favor of joining the cultural and political  jihad that has been waged against the horse carriage trade for years now.

The horses, says just about every single person who has examined them, vets, horse lovers, reporters, writers, police, inspectors –  are well-treated and safe,  there is absolutely no credible evidence or substantiation for the charges that they are being chronically, or even occasionally,  abused. The stables have been found to be clean and well maintained, the horses are well socialized and always among other horses, and only one horse in two decades had been killed or seriously injured as the result of New York City traffic (New Yorkers also seem to be discovering the mayor’s curious priorities – 250 New Yorkers were killed in road accidents last year alone.)

Talking to journalists in New York and many of the carriage people, I have been hearing a lot of suggestions that the mayor is tied to real estate developers who are lusting over the stables, a secret motive for his almost fanatic and unbending hostility to the carriage trade. I’ve seen no evidence for this, and can’t really speak to it. Bloomberg News reported recently that the specter of real estate looms over the fate of the carriage horse industry. The push to outlaw the 150-year-old carriage trade, says Bloomberg, has drawn developers like flies. “The highest and best use of this real estate is not as horse stables,” said Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services. “The development rights are worth a heck of a lot more than the buildings currently there.”

It would seem that progressives – especially those who campaigned against real estate developers and their ties to city government – might applaud men like stable owner Cornelius Byrne, who has seen billions of dollars  poured into his neighborhood, but who refuses offers of many millions of dollars to sell out, choosing instead to keep his family and drivers in the horse carriage business. But Byrne is not a hero in this curious city, he is repeatedly condemned as an animal abuser, callous and indifferent,  told he needs to be put out of business, ignored by the mayor who won’t visit with him or speak to him.

I don’t recall ever seeing people who love animal rights or the environment so entwined with the cause of real estate developers  and politicians, and so hostile and destructive towards the natural world.

“No fat rich man’s pony can ever overtake you

And there’s not a rider from the east to the west

Could hold you a light

in this dark mist and midnight

When the potbellied thieves

chase their unwelcome guest.”

– Woody Guthrie, The Unwelcome Guest

It seems to me that what New Yorkers have not yet awakened to, for better or worse, is the fact that their mayor isn’t just in league with the so-called animal rights movement, he is a committed member. The carriage trade people, innocent in the ways of urban politics and media,  don’t seem to quite realize this yet – they keep thinking the mayor will come to his senses and come and speak with them. They struggle with constructed and projected animal fantasies about the horses,  and the ever-changing reality of their critics. Sometimes it’s abuse, sometimes the stables, sometimes horses are dropping dead, or lonely, or pining for grass, sometimes it’s traffic, from a distance it’s clear there will always be something. But there isn’t much sense in the websites the mayor has endorsed so enthusiastically, if you read them carefully, and I have.

I’ve been poring over these blogs, websites and statements for weeks now and I don’t think the mayor’s position is either mysterious or conspiratorial.

Mayor deBlasio isn’t parroting what others believe when they say work is cruel and the only life for animals like horses is on rescue farms, he really believes it. Like many people who have never been around real animals, he has the strongest feelings about what they ought to be doing.  In December, he told a fund-raising gathering of animal rights activists – including those spearheading the horse ban – that he was “proud to be a member of this movement.” He has stopped accusing the carriage owners of abuse, he now utters vague platitudes about the horses no longer belonging in the city. If he has any evidence for this, he is not sharing it. It is all over, he keeps telling reporters, it’s been decided, it’s must a matter of how. Except it doesn’t seem to be nearly over.

The animal rights groups are quite brash these days, they know who belongs to who, they understand where their mayor stands. “Finally,” trumpeted the website of NYClass, leader of the movement to ban the horses after the election, “a mayor who is one of us.”

But NY Class does not always seem all that media savvy, they most often seem just self-righteous and nasty.  After Liam Neeson’s  visit to the Clinton Park Stables Sunday, the group – widely credited with playing a major role in deBlasio’s election –  put up a big jeering headline in response: Real Men Have Compassion For Animals, accompanied by photos of men cuddling their cats and dogs.  I thought of a different headline might be more relevant: Do Real Men (And Women) Have Compassion For People As Well As Animals?  The NYClass photo package was not nearly as persuasive as Mr. Neeson,  I thought that the last thing I would ever want to do in a battle with Liam Neeson is to counter his image with an image of me cuddling my dog or cat.   As always, there was no discussion of the issues raised by Neeson, just some middle-school name-calling and the suggestion that no one cares about animals in all of the world but their members.

But allll of this juvenile jeering and snarling misses the point of animals. For me, the gift of animals, the reason to treat them well, as St. Thomas Aquinas preached, is that they teach us how to love people,  how to be better humans. I was touched at the stables Sunday witnessing the great love the carriage horse people have for one another. They know how to love. People like that do not mistreat animals as a rule.

What New Yorkers and the people in the animal world beyond the city are also awakening to,  is what this all really means for them, for animals. It doesn’t matter what the facts show or what the truth is, the Daily News was correct: a fringe movement’s fantasies about how animals should live seems to be much more important to the mayor  than the lives of needy human beings. He might have time to attend animal rights fund-raisers, but he has no time to get driven over to the stables.

Perhaps inadvertently, Neeson exposed another  truth in his brilliantly-staged visit to the stables.

The assault on the carriage horses is anything but progressive. If Woody Guthrie were alive today, he would not be standing with arrogant politicians and real estate developers, he would be in the stables singing to support the sons and daughters and grandchildren of the Irish immigrants who know all about horses and came to America to build new lives for themselves. He would sing against the developers and the politicians and against the people who are trying to take their work away for no decent reason. The tactics used against the carriage trade – the big lies, the personal attacks, the refusal to negotiate,  the cruelty, the intrusion of government into private lives –  are a lot closer to Mussolini than to  Guthrie, who was one of the authentic defenders of working people, if anyone is looking for a role model.

What is so important about this conflict is that it marks what is a new high-water mark of the people who call themselves animal rights advocates, it is the first time one of their members have been elected to run a major American city. It tells people like me –  I consider myself a progressive and an advocate of animal rights – that is no longer possible to dismiss these organizations as fringe extremists. The lives of animals and their true welfare depends on us telling a different story about animals than they wish to tell. The very term animal rights has been stolen from the people who deserve it. If anyone in this painful drama could rightfully carry the title of animal rights activist, it might to be the people who are fighting to save the carriage horses, not the people seeking to destroy their work and lives.

I did not take these people seriously, I was aware of angry people constructing ideological fantasies about rescuing animals, I did not think anyone in a position of authority took them seriously. Reading their goals and philosophy has been a shock to me and a disturbing one. The carriage horses have awakened me, too.  I have never known of people who speak so much about animals and know so little about them, who speak only in the most absolute terms and arguments but seem to have no interest in facts. They seem to me utterly disconnected from the reality of animals in our world, from their magic, mystery and wonder, from the people who really know them. A driving force on almost all of these sites seems to be the idea that animals exist to be rescued from evil and uncaring human beings, and so this idea of animal welfare is fueled by hatred for human beings, a demonizing of people. For the movement to make any sense to anyone, people have to be evil/

There are really no other goals that I can see, there are few ideas that would actually improve the lives of animals and keep them in our world.  In my life with animals and in writing my books about them,  I have found that it is impossible to love animals and hate people, one makes the other impossible. I have never seen a happy animal living with an angry person. The mayor seems to be struggling to reconcile this ideology with his role as a leader, where he is, in fact, expected to care about all of the people – not just the ones who gave him money – as much or more than contented horses. That’s what great leaders do.

The campaign to banish the horses is a serious thing for anyone who loves animals, and the horses may well pay for it with their lives. Sooner or later this kind of thinking will touch the life of every animal and every person who loves or lives or work with them. Politicians are not leaders, they are followers, and if this mayor gets his way, this idea that animals can’t live and work with us anymore will be parroted everywhere, it has already spawned a movement to ban carriage horses in Chicago. It is critical for the people who really love animals and care about their rights to speak up for them, to be heard.

From my perspective on Bedlam Farm, I am grateful for the horses, they have reminded me of what I care about in my life with animals, what is important. Like Woody Guthrie, I look at these angry and righteous  and powerful people, and I say they are unwelcome guests in my world, in the world of animals. They could do much good, animals desperately needs rights, but they have chosen to do much harm instead.

People who know and love animals are in shock watching this catastrophe unfold, it is simply hard to believe the delusional ranting coming out of the mouths of the people and politicians  trying to ban the horses:

work for animals is cruel, the animals are lonely and don’t have the chance to socialize, horses are dropping dead in the streets from fumes, heart attacks and strokes, all horses should be living in the wild eating grass, living on rescue farms and preserves. The animal people keep asking: what about the police mounted unit? K-9 patrols. Border collies herding sheep? Seeing Eye Dogs? Search and Rescue and Therapy Dogs? Bomb-sniffing dogs at Penn Station? For that matter, what about the hundreds of thousands of dogs living extremely unnatural lives in New York City apartments, living and walking on the same streets as the carriage horses?

Every day, I see and learn another example of the loss of reality and perspective in this controversy. Yesterday I talked about the claim that the horses are lonely and can’t socialized, quoted constantly in the media, even though the horses are never alone and are constantly around other horses. Another example today:

Hannah Galantino-Homer, a senior investigator in the Department of Clinical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania School Of Veterinary Medicine contacted me after reading my blog, she said she wanted to support the people who rely on the horses for their livelihood and are giving the horses work they are especially well suited to do.  Veterinarians, she said, are overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the horses in work and “gainfully employed” instead of adding them to the growing unwanted horse population or sending them on a long trailer ride to a Canadian or Mexican slaughterhouse.

As an equine advocate, she said she wanted to insert into the debate what she said was an “extremely important fact,” that not working a horse, especially draft horses that have been selectively bred for work, is dangerous for them. There is a well-established causal link, she said, “between equine obesity, insulin disturbances (very similar to overweight humans with pre-diabetes/metabolic syndrome) and laminitis (inflammation of sensitive laminae in the hoof of a horse).
“As with people,” wrote Galantino-Homer, “exercise is extremely important in the management of weight and metabolism in the horse.” Additionally, she said, overgrazing in lush pasture – the only thing horses should be doing, according to the animal rights organizations – is also a well-established risk factor for laminitis due to the effect of grass sugar content on insulin levels and other grass sugars that can upset the digestive systems of horses.

It seems that almost every day we learn that another of the urgent and humane reasons for banishing the horses and exiling them collapses like a popped balloon, is constructed mostly of emotion and fantasy. I am no wizard and seer, the facts are lying on the street, as big as the horses, they are as ignored as the truth. Why would supporters of animal rights send 200 healthy horses into harm’s way?

We live in a mad world, a woman named Alice wrote me the other day. Yes, Alice, this is true. The carriage horse controversy leaves us with another Alice, this one in Wonderland, the White Rabbit holed up in the mayor’s office. If there is no abuse, and the horses are not unsafe, and no human beings are being harmed by them, and they are healthy and well fed, and their stalls are clean and well within the regulations for ethical stabling, and they don’t work in the heat or the cold, and they aren’t dropping like flies in the streets, or being shipped on long trailer rides to foreign slaughterhouses, and they get five weeks of vacation a year, and they are named and loved, and the experts all say they need to work to be healthy and sound, and they are healthier eating hay than eating grass all day, and they have never, ever in their history been free to roam on grass or lived in the wild, then what, precisely, White Rabbit, are we doing here?

My favorite character in Wonderland was not Alice or the rabbit but the Knave of Hearts, who always seemed to me to take the role of the writer, shaking his head in wonder at the logic of the rabbit. I think of the Knave Of Hearts  when I think of the White Rabbit leading the charge against the carriage horses of New York.  I remember his question – what are we doing here? – addressed to the authorities gathered all around him:

“So, do you mean to tell me we’ve come all the way here on the word of a narcoleptic rabbit?” The answer, he was surprised to learn, was yes.

But the rabbit would not talk to him or listen to the Knave, he just kept running around and around in circles, making statements, rushing to appointments. “My, oh my,” he said, “I cannot talk to you, I have very important work to do.”

**

“And they’ll take the money and spread it out equal

Just like the Bible and the prophets suggest

But the man that go riding to help these poor workers

The rich will cut down like an unwelcome guest.”

– Woody Guthrie, The Unwelcome Guests.