Dear Carriage Drivers,

I thought this might be a good a time to write you a letter, we have been talking to one another for nearly a year, mostly through  my blog, sometimes on my visits to New York. I am moved to tears when you call out to me in your carriages, recognize me, give me the thumbs up, thank me. Perhaps it is a time to get more personal. I want to  lift your spirits high, sometimes words can do that, and in my soul I want to feel the power of fairness and justice.

So here we are, in that hard winter of fear and uncertainty, our stomachs churned and  hearts sank with you when we heard the news, released in the middle of the night, just before Christmas. The battle lines seem to be drawn, it is no longer a time just to talk, but a time to fight. And fight. And fight some more.  I was wondering what you might have said last night to your wives, your kids, your husbands – your horses – as you now and officially live in that awful community, the people who are targeted by other people.  “Kids, they want to take the horses away, they want to make me to drive green cabs far from Central Park.”

How, I wondered, would you explain a government that seeks to take freedom and property away, not protect it, how could you describe people who claim to speak for the rights of animals but instead exploit them as a way of hating and harming human beings?

I hope you tell them not to despair. There is a ragtag Army out there, they are waiting to hear from you, eager for your signal. They are waiting to send money, sign petitions, march in protest. They are not soldiers or brave warriors, but they are, I suspect, a mighty army, waiting to march on behalf of the things they  hold dear: animals, the freedom to live in peace, a way of life, dignity and love, for people, for horses, and dogs and cats and the other animals with whom we share the planet.

I read through the media stories in New York yesterday, they mostly seemed bemused. The New York Times said the controversy was a “steeplechase” now, not just a controversy, they thought the whole thing a cute little chuckle. I wonder how amused the reporter would have been if the mayor had banned newspapers because he didn’t like what they say and if they offered him the chance to drive a cab in Brooklyn or the Bronx instead of being a reporter, and if he had to explain to his children that they might not be able to keep their house any more, or go to college.

Be careful, I wanted to say to the reporter, you might not be laughing in a couple of years.

The Gothamist website joked: “Who is going to tell Liam Neeson?” So odd, I thought, I am not a humorless man, but am I so out of touch that I can’t really see the laughter in this fear and uncertainty for you, in the danger facing the horses, in our betrayal of these wonderful animals,  in the loss of magic, mystery and romance in the great park in our great city? In another broken contract with the animals who are our partners on the earth and who share the joys and travails of our lives?

It is hard to bear the thought that this joyless and angry and cruel little army could actually win. So they must not. Nils Desperandum, wrote one of my readers. Never despair.

For you, facing this bleak holiday, these are the times that will try your souls, and those of your families, life with an ax over one’s head is not freedom, is not the American Dream, is not why your parents and grandparents – or you –  made their way to America. For most of them, it was a chance to get under from one ax or another. None of them could have dreamed that an angry millionaire and a self-righteous mayor would try to take the horses away without reason, discussion or cause.

The Facebook soldier and the sunshine warrior will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of the horses. But he or she that stands by you now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman, and of every horse and animal on the earth struggling for a way to live with us and survive on our damaged Mother Earth. Persecution and arrogance, like Hell itself, is not easily conquered, yet there is this consolation and hope: the more difficult the conflict, the more meaningful and glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly. It is the dearness of the cause that gives every thing it’s value.

Heaven only knows how to put a price upon our freedom, our way of live, our beliefs. The horses call to us to be mindful that the so celestial a thing as our partnership with animals should  be highly valued, is  worth fighting for, and fighting some more. If we lose our way of life and  freedom and dignity in the world, then what else is there worth fighting for?

The only real prison is fear, said one brave protestor in a brutal country in Asia. The only real freedom is freedom from fear. Nils Desperandum. Never despair.

Fairness is a winning cause. The case against you is manufactured, unjust, cruel and dishonest. You have a winning cause.

I do not believe in urging other people to fight while I sit hundreds of miles away on my farm. My hope is that you do fight, soon, and with the full fury of the just and the wronged. I hope you unleash the lawyers you have been talking to and take your good case to the law, the final arbiter of a conflict that has become eternal. I hope you do it now. I wish you the strength and the courage to fight and fight. And to fight some more. You are surely not alone. It is time to try the souls of your tormentors, to stand up and say, “this is enough, it has gone on long enough, it is wrong and we will no longer accept it as the status quo, this ugliness and harassment can never be accepted or considered business as usual.”

Government is better than this, so is democracy.

Since yesterday, many people have written and messaged me, asking – some demanding – that I organize petitions and letter-writing campaigns, raise money for lawyers, organize demonstrations for the horses.  That is not my proper role, I deal in words, in facts and ideas. The rest is up to you. You know, I suspect, that no one can fight this fight but you. If you do not care to fight, the cause is lost for certain. People wonder if the carriage trade will really fight, has the will or the money to hire good lawyers. I hope you answer them and quickly.

A woman posted a message on my Facebook page saying “horses do not belong in the city.” I wrote her back, I said horses have helped build every great city in the world from Rome to New York City, they were in cities long before green taxicabs and vintage electric cars. May we one day come to understand that they belong in our cities as much as we do, and it is a sacred mission to keep them there.

I have come to love many of you and know you well. I love hearing your laughter, listening to your stories, soaking up your gossip.  Individuals, living the free lives of individuals. If the horses go, a way of life vanishes with them. I know you love your horses, love your families, obey the law, cherish your way of life. I know many of you come from a long tradition of people who work with animals and care for them. I know you have been cruelly dehumanized and diminished. I believe you are coming to see that your rights have been trampled and violated. You have reluctantly joined that dark tradition of American life,  people who have to fight for the rights and freedom long granted to others.

All day yesterday, I kept thinking of the poet Langston Hughes and his magical writing about our place at the table. You have been banished from the table, they will not invite you, sit with you, speak with you. They laugh at you and your suffering. So it is for you to laugh back, be strong, to be at the table when company comes.

“They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed –

I, too, am America.”

–– Langston Hughes

Thank for listening, your friend, Jon Katz