The carriage drivers have risen, they are coming back, not with press conferences, angry blogs, insults and accusations. Just words, just standing in their simple truth. They remind us that authentic words are the strongest weapons in the world.
Long assaulted in the most abusive way, the drivers have become stronger by the day, strong enough to assert the humanity and dignity that was nearly taken from them. They have begun to say “we are people;” people who have done no wrong, who are proud of what they do, who deserve to be heard, who are good and law-abiding people who worry about their bills and their children just like everyone else.
The assault on the drivers has always been a central element in the attack on the carriage horses and the movement to send them away. It has always been a curiously disconnected campaign. Hardly anyone takes seriously the claims that the horses are mistreated, perhaps this is why the primary argument of the animal rights groups is now that the carriage drivers are evil, unfit to care for animals. These claims seem to come out of reality, detached from fact or truth, mostly in the emotions and fantasies of the accusers. To my knowledge, no animal rights volunteer or worker has ever spoken to a carriage driver – as opposed to shouting at them – visited the carriage stables or even touched or come near a horse.
The idea that the carriage drivers are too vicious or greedy to treat the horses well seems now to be a tactic, an invention, It has been rejected and thoroughly disproven by legions of equine experts, writers, trainers, behaviorists, horse lovers, veterinarians and visitors who have come to the stables to meet the drivers and see the horses. Yet it is still being repeated by scores of naive and exploitable journalists.
To deny people their human rights – their right to freedom, to their way of life, to their sustenance, to their property – is to deny them their humanity, and that is what is at stake and what has always been at stake in the struggle over the carriage horses, whose own lives and well-being are in peril as well.
__
Publishing videos may seen like a simple and undramatic thing, but it is not. Photographs don’t lie as easily as the claims of spokespeople, they permit us to see for ourselves and judge for ourselves. We can hear them speak of their humanity in their own words, we can judge for ourselves.
The carriage drivers have watched in fear and horror as their humanity and identity has been stolen from them, but adversity is a curious thing, as I have learned in my own life. It can destroy you or it can make you strong. It seems to have made the carriage drivers strong. They have weathered the storm, they are fighting back – and winning. They seem reborn.
The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce is one of the many civic and private organizations in New York – the city’s newspapers, 61 per cent of the public, the Teamster’s Union, the Central Park Conservancy, the Working People’s Party – that have rallied to the cause of the carriage drivers. The chamber has been putting out a series of short videos in which the carriage drivers tell their story in their own words and express their humanity.
The videos are refreshingly simple, free of the blarney and indirectness that have sometimes obscured and characterized the carriage cause. In it, we see three people – more are coming – who talk about their lives in the carriage trade, what their horses have meant to them, how their lives will be upended if the carriage horses are banned. The videos do what needs to be done, they remind us that the carriage drivers are very human, not simply objects to be demonized.
I happen to have met all three of these men and talked to them. All three are intelligent, articulate, humane and very authentic. These are not the people who abuse animals, they are not greedy and immoral torturers.
The videos, all up on You Tube, are well done and effective. The most striking thing about them is that they show that the best antidote to being dehumanized is to assert one’s humanity. In this, the drivers are heroic, they are being heard above the nasty din that has shrouded the fate and future of the carriage horses. Come and see for yourself how Conor McHugh speaks so well for himself, and his 27 years of driving carriage horses in New York’s Central Park. And about what would happen to his family and his three children if the horses are banned. You don’t get a lot more human that that.
Come and see for yourself his calmness and clarity – and the absence of anger and hatred – even in the face of a ferocious campaign to take his work, property and way of life from him without cause or hearing or due process.
___
During my 10 months of writing about the New York Carriage Horse Controversy, I have been surprised to encounter many lies, accusations, distortions and much cruelty. But the worst thing I have seen has been the long campaign to dehumanize the New York Carriage drivers, to label them as torturers, abusers, as greedy, as greedy and immoral beings that are other than human, that do not deserve to be heard, talked to, or given any measure of respect or consideration.
The social scientist David Livingstone, author of “Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others,” writes that when people dehumanize others, they must first conceive of them and represent them as subhuman creatures. Only then, he says, can they unleash their aggression and exclude the target from the moral community.
Only then can they attack their target in a way that is itself immoral and justify this to themselves and the wider world. This has happened in New York. The city’s new mayor has enthusiastically joined in the campaign to dehumanize the carriage drivers, he refuses to meet with them or speak with them, and when a carriage driver approached the mayor with his young son as a public event to ask him why he was seeking to banish the horses, the mayor said “because your work is immoral,” and then turned his back and walked away.
Steven Nislick, the head of NYClass, the lavishly funded animal rights group leading the movement to ban the horses, has called the drivers “random people,” suggesting they are not substantial or worthy of respect. He has dismissed claims that the drivers will lose their work, saying they can drive “eco-friendly” vintage electric cars if the horses are banned. But no one has asked the drivers if they wish this to be their work or will do it. I wonder how Nislick would respond to being told his organization would be shut down for raising money under false pretenses, and that it had been decided by the mayor and his millionaire friends that he will drive a bus instead.
___
Angel Hernandez has been a carriage driver for 15 years, his work supports his two children. He came to this country from Mexico, he plans on going to college. If the horses are banned, he says, all of his plans and dreams will be shattered. And he does not understand why. Come and hear his story in this brief video in his own voice.
__
I am a writer, and the story of the carriage horses has touched as deep a nerve as anything I have written about. I hear from people all over the world, some animal lovers, some lovers of freedom and truth. In January, when I first visited the stables, I did not believe the carriage drivers had even the smallest change to stand up against the mayor, millionaire developers and an angry mob of people who call themselves supporters of animal rights. The carriage drivers have reaffirmed my faith in the power of words and the determination of truth to survive, even against overwhelming odds.
Words are the most powerful force available to humanity, there are no weapons that are stronger. The philosopher Yehuda Berg has written that we can choose to use words constructively, to employ the language of truth and encouragement, or we can destructively use words of despair and hatred. Words have the energy and power to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to be humble.
The words coming from the mouths and blogs of the people who call themselves supporters of animal rights have been almost uniformly harmful, used to hate, wound, humiliate and dehumanize. I have found too many lies in their words to even count. I commit my own words to the carriage drivers, and their bravery and determination in the face of awful odds.
Today, I do not believe the people seeking to ban the carriage horses have a chance. The people who own the horses and and drive them are winning with words, support for them grows stronger every day.
__
Stephen Malone’s family has been in the carriage trade for 47 years, Malone has been driving a horse carriage for 27 years, his three sons wish to follow in his footsteps, he says driving a carriage has been the only job he has had in his adult life, if the horses are banned, he will be on the street. The anxiety he has faced, he says, sometimes feels insurmountable. You can hear his voice and his words here.
__
It is a stirring thing for me to hear the voices of the New York Carriage Drivers, voices that been lost in the hysteria and ugly witchhunt that the carriage horse debate has become. Good words are coming out of them. This is what at stake, this is the heart of it. Human beings, trying to live their life and do their work, as human beings have with horses for thousands of years.
The cruelty of this struggle is the bad news. The good news is that the carriage drivers have risen, they have resurrected themselves, found their voices, asserted their humanity. The campaign against them is failing, as it must do, it is founded on nothing but air and anger. Words are the most powerful force available to human beings to express their humanity, and the carriage drivers are now using them to great effect. They have risen in a chorus to tell the world that they are people, too, and they will no longer be silent in the face of the movement to degrade and dehumanize them.
I would not care to get in their way.