29 January

Tawni Angel’s Triumph: Saving The Rights Of Animals In Our World. And People.

by Jon Katz
Tawni Angel's Triumph
Tawni Angel’s Triumph

For me, the most painful part of writing about the New York Carriage Horses has been the often unfair and untrue allegations of cruelty and abuse made against them for years in the cruelest and often most irresponsible of ways. They have struggled to figure out how to respond, they are still struggling over how to respond. The carriage trade is tribal, there is no one leader, no unified position, these are individualists and free spirits, many elements with many different ideas. How does one respond to false allegations made without regard to fairness or fact?

If the brave and determined Tawni Angel is successful in her very just lawsuit, then she will have created a path for the growing numbers of people who are being victimized by the movement that calls itself a movement on behalf of animal rights. There are many people who abuse animals in America, and many people who do not are are increasingly accused of abuse and worse. In her struggle to keep her ponies and save her livelihood, Angel was accused of torture, neglect, cruelty, abuse, bigotry, alcoholism and of loving to shoot off guns in the woods.

It was not enough for her persecutors to take her work from her and endanger her ponies. They sought to destroy her reputation as well. In what is now a familiar scenario, timid political leaders panicked and betrayed their trust and responsibility. This is the dilemma of the New York Carriage Trade, seeking, like Angel, to preserve their freedom, property, and way of life.

I wish for them the clarity and strength that Angel has found, I believe it will ultimately carry the day for her.

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Tawni Angel is not part of a large group or association, she lives week-to-week off of the money she earns on her popular pony rides at the Santa Monica, California Farmer’s Market. Two months ago, the City Council, bowing to pressure from a small group of animal rights protestors who decided that it is torture and abuse for ponies to give rides to children, canceled her contract. She decided to fight back, she got a lawyer and sued the demonstrators for defamation of character, arguing that the animal rights activists accused her falsely of abuse, and knew that the charges were false.

Several lawyers I spoke with yesterday they believed the ruling in the first round of the court case could be significant and far-reaching, depending on how closely watched it is, and what the final ruling is. To me, it has considerable relevance to the New York Carriage Horse controversy and many other conflicts involving animal rights organizations and animal owners throughout the country.

“It could be very significant,” a Boston civil rights attorney told me yesterday, “because it is one of the first times that an individual is holding animal rights organizations accountable for the specific claims they make.”  In permitting Angel’s lawsuit to go foward, the judge said had a good chance of succeeding. That, she said, could be encouraging to many animal owners and lovers loving for a way to fight back when similar accusations are made against them. The animal rights groups in New York have made similar assaults on the people in the carriage trade, accusing them at various times of cruelty, abuse, torture, greed, callousness and dishonesty.

The carriage trade, divided by many different factions and instincts,  is still groping for the proper way to respond.

Tawni Angel seems to have figured it out.

In the ruling, Superior Court Judge Lisa Hart-Cole ruled that  Angel had demonstrated a “sufficient probability of prevailing” on the question of whether she had been defamed. The judge found that there was “sufficient evidence” that the target of the lawsuit  had made false statements about Angel’s treatment of the ponies with “actual malice,” knowing the statements were untrue.

At the heart of Angel’s lawsuit is a report by the Santa Monica Police that found that Angel’s ponies were “healthy, well- watered and in comfortable conditions.” For years, animal rights organizers and demonstrators have arbitrarily sought to redefine what abuse it – generally using it so recklessly and indiscriminately that it has no meaning at all. It is most often used against people who work with animals. For the first time in most of human history, this work of animals with people – pony rides, carriage horses, farm animals,  circus elephants, – is being considered cruel and abusive.

In fact, abuse is a crime, it is not an opinion or argument. It refers to cruelty and neglect of animals to the point of grievous injury or death.

In an exchange of e-mails with me, Don Chomiak, Angel’s attorney, said it was important not to overstate the significance of the ruling. “There’s a distinction to be drawn between someone saying that pony rides are animal abuse as a general concept, and a specific allegation of animal abuse made against a party based on facts that turn out to be false,” he said in an e-mail. “If Ms. Winograd (the subject of the lawsuit)  is found liable for defamation per se, it will be because she alleged Tawni’s ponies had cracked hooves and that her animals were given filthy water when this was not the case, coupled with Ms. Winograd’s innuendo in citing to the sections of the California Penal Code relevant to the crime of animal abuse while discussing these false factual allegations.”

Animal rights groups in New York have made literally hundreds of very specific allegations against the carriage trade that have turned out either to be false, misleading or unprovable. When a horse took a walk down Eleventh Avenue while being groomed, one group said the horse ran because it was being abused – cold water was used to groom him, even though no one asked about the temperature of the water or tested it.

When a horse carriage tipped over, animal rights groups claimed the horse was spooked by a bus, then held down cruelly by drivers eager to save money on a damage carriage, then forced to go back to work. None of these charges turned out to be true. In one celebrated case, a veterinarian being paid by animal rights organizations admitted she lied about the condition of a well-publicized horse who died of a heart attack. There was, she admitted, no evidence of mistreatment or abuse.

Just as the Santa Monica Police told animal rights demonstrators that the horses were healthy and well cared for, so have a score of equine associations and independent  veterinarians testified to the city and the public in the same way  in New York: the horses there are healthy, content and well cared for. There is enormous documentation for many sources to support that the horses are among the most fortunate equines anywhere, they are not in need of rescue.

To me, everyone who loves an animal or lives with one owes Tawni Angel support and thanks. She is fighting for  her ponies who, like the carriage horses, face a dangerous and uncertain future if they are banished. She is fighting for her way of life. She is fighting for the right of all of us to live in a world with animals, and to preserve and respect the beauty and wonder of the work animals have done together with people. It is one of the greatest and most inspiring stories in the history of the planet. If Tawni Angel wins back the right to give pony rides to children in the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market the rights of all of us to live freely and in harmony with the surviving animals in the world will have won something as well.

You can help Tawni Angel by signing her petition to get her work back here: It is a good and just cause.

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