The Third Way

I live about three hours from Joshua Rockwood and his farm, West Wind Acres. He is not a neighbor, or even a friend yet.

I would be happy to have him as a friend, as notorious as he suddenly is. But he will be busy for a good while defending himself from charges that he has abused his farm animals. He is determined to keep his farm, he is trying to put his disrupted life back together. It is an awful thing to be accused of abusing animals.

I spent an afternoon with him last week, talked with him, saw his farm. I am here to tell you from the heart that he is not, to me,  an abuser of animals, or any kind of criminal. In fact, he seems quite incapable of abuse or harm. His goal in life is to sell locally grown and healthy food to people, and to do it on his own farm. He was off to a good start, he has a CSA farm and his business was growing, people seem very happy with his pork, beef, lamb and chicken. That should be a happy story, the town might once have considered giving him an award.

At the moment, it is not a happy story, he got a hearing date instead. Joshua’s real crime is that he is young, inexperienced, and not wealthy enough to have installed a six-foot deep frost-free water system on a leased farm during one of the worst cold waves in American history. He never imagined it. Neither did any other farmer I know of. He tried to make do with bowls and tubs and streams. It worked, too, until the temperature got into the – 20’s, and even with all that, he got all of his animals through it.

I am not a judge or animal control officer, I am not here to try the details of his case. The truth will reveal itself. I am not part of any movement that judges people or tells them what to eat or do or think or how to vote.

Joshua is almost literally the man who could be us, any one of us who farms, lives on a farm,  lives with horses, dogs, cats, donkeys, sheep, cows, pigs or chickens. I believe he has been called, as I have been, to help take us to a new and better place, a better understanding of animals in our world, while there is still time to keep the survivors of our greed and destruction here. So far, he has raised more than $50,000 online, the money will go to pay his legal expenses and help pay the bond to get his horses back. You can see his fund here.

Joshua’s case speaks to the need for the much imagined “Third Way” of saving the animals. The First Way was to see them as dumb beasts of burden, to overwork them, underestimate them,  and take them for granted. The “Second Way” has been to see them as piteous and helpless, to know them only in terms of their occasional abuse, and to take them away and hide them from us.

The “Third Way” is my choice, Joshua Rockwood’s way, Blue-Star Equiculture’s Way. That is, a wiser understanding:  to see animals as an alien species, neither our dependents or children but as our partners in the joys and travails and work of restoring the world and our own broken and angry spirits.  We are connected to them, our lives entwined with theirs, our fate as well. That is, of course, what they do and have always done – worked with us. The donkeys, the camels, the elephants, the dogs, the cats, horses, the sheep, the oxen, the cows, the chickens. They are spiritual beings, mystical spirits. From the birth of human beings, they have always worked with us, protected us, hunted with us, fed us, watched over us and given us clothing and food and support, love also.

They do not need to be saved from us, we need them to stay with us,  to save us.

What we do to the horses and the elephants and the farm animals and the ponies and dogs and cats is a symptom of our broken contract with nature and the earth. And with them. To send them away is a betrayal. We can take them from their people and banish them from sight, we cannot hide from our responsibility for what we have done to their world.

That is  the message of the New York Carriage Horses in their fight to survive in New York City. They have, in fact, triggered a new awakening.  Our mission now is to save the animals. Joshua Rockwood is part of it, people have rushed from all over the country to support him, they know his story is important,  perhaps he is more important than he yet knows.

The Idea Of Animal Rights

The idea of animal rights – the idea that animals are entitled to valued as humans are and given their same rights – is  new in American culture, and in the world,  as powerful as it has become.

The animal rights movement came out of the liberation movements in the 1970’s,  and has much earlier roots in Christian theological concern about mercy and the welfare of animals. The term “rights” was never  used by the early Christian philosophers or conceived of by them,  and is a controversial term to many people now.

Christian writers like St. Thomas Aquinas believed that human beings needed to be merciful to animals because it made us better humans. Our treatment of animals, he argued, was a reflection of our own humanity. The great Greek philosophers – Plato and Socrates – believed in the merciful treatment of animals, but they cautioned that animals must never be considered equal or superior to human beings. What made humans special, they argued, was our conscience, the ability to tell right from wrong, and to seek to do good. In their day, the creative spark in people was worshiped, we worship animals now in many ways.

Since no animal has a conscience, Plato said, they could not be considered as being equal to humans. Aristotle agreed, he thought it was demeaning to compare human beings to animals, then considered stupid beasts of burden. The ancient rabbis said it was the duty of Jews to treat their animals decently, and it was forbidden for animals to work on the Sabbath.

The idea that animal life had the same, or even greater value than human life was advanced not by farmers or animal lovers but by academics like Tom Regan and Peter Singer in the late 1970’s. It was a time when most Americans were leaving family farms, leaving rural life, leaving animals and becoming disconnected from them except as a political or ideological idea.

To understand the tension surrounding the animal rights movement and people who live and work with animals, it is critical to understand that the literature and ideology of the movement  very clearly states that there is no substantial difference between the rights of human beings and the rights of animals.

They are to be considered one and the same, equal in every respect. Before the animal rights movement, organizations like the U.S. Humane Society (H.S.U.S.) and S.P.C.A. saw themselves as promoting animal welfare. The Central Park carriage horses drink every day from a fountain donated to the horses in Central Park by the S.P.C.A.  They were worried about their thirst. That organization and H.S.U.S. Is now closely linked to PETA and is now supporting the effort to ban the same horses. They consider their work to be a form of abuse.

Animal welfare is very different from human rights, it promotes the idea that animals should be well cared for and humanely treated but does not argue that they should have the rights of human beings, or that they are equivalent to human beings.

Animal welfare lobbyists organized to prevent abuse as defined by the law, then and now: the extreme neglect or mistreatment of domestic animals leading to severe suffering, grievous injury, or death. Animal rights activists have expanded the idea of abuse to essentially be an opinion held by anyone. Every day now, the work being done by animals for thousands of years is now considered to be a form of torture and enslavement.

The movement is honest about its core beliefs, even though many people who contribute money to the movement do not understand its ultimate goals, which are not always made clear: Animals should not work for or with people, they should never be eaten by them or entertained by them or exploited by them in any way. They should not be the pets of human beings.  If they must be pets, they must be treated in heavily codified ways. They should never be bred by human beings, or used to uplift or amuse people.  They must never work with people. Not on sleds, looking for bombs, searching and rescuing, herding sheep, doing therapy work, guiding the blind.

Animals belong in nature, and in the wild, according to this movement. Even the chickens should be set free. I do not care to think of chickens in the wild.

Free The Dogs

This ideology offers by far the most radical change in the human view of animals in human history.

Since it directly conflicts with much of the interaction between people and animals, it confronts the very foundation and tradition of the human animal bond. It goes against almost every grain and feeling and experience humans and farmers and animal entrepeneurs have had for animals for thousands of years. It utterly rejects the powerful tradition of animals doing work with people. It also turns countless people who live and work with animals – farmers, circuses, carriage horse operators, researchers, animal lovers, dog breedes, owners, trialers and hunters, sportsmen and women – into an enemy of the movement that claims to speak for the rights of animals.

Thus, people are oppressors, abusers, even criminals. It has also, through intense political contributions and lobbying campaigns, drawn government into the middle of a relationship that has always been private, even sacred – the relationship of humans to their animals, from carriage drivers to falconer to farmers to pet owners and circuses. Local governments have buckled to lobbyists to pass countless new laws restricting the movement of animals and dictating their care. Police have  been drawn into the middle of yet another social conflict that is beyond their training or experience.

The many people I have met who work with animals love their work far more than any person I have ever met in a low-paying, always vulnerable job in a modern corporation where so many Americans now work. Instead of celebrating this kind of opportunity, or even expanding it,  we destroy it over and over again, the tragedy of vanishing animals is compounded by the tragedy of broken human dreams.  And we have lost sight of the idea that it is an awful thing when people lose their life’s work, their freedom and security and the gift of a life working animals.

A cherished way of life is being destroyed. For it is not cruel for people to love horses or ponies or elephants or live and work with them, if they are well cared for. It is a beautiful thing. We have forgotten that in our righteous zeal.

Suddenly,  traditional ways of caring for and being with animals became evil, unacceptable, even illegal.  Joshua Rockwood was cited for having an unheated barn, and the police did not know that farm barns are never heated and even pigs in shelters and barns can get frostbitten ears in temperatures so cold. If they can come for him, they can come for you.

People who had lived and worked with animals for years in a particular way or in service of a long tradition – the Irish carriage trade – suddenly became Orwellian targets, sub-humans, “unpersons,” people not to be spoken to or negotiated with. Animal rights organizations were among the first (and best) fund-raisers on the Internet. Images of suffering animals are one of the most powerful fund-raising tools imaginable, and they are all over the Web. There are countless images of abuse online every day, accompanied with desperate pleas for money.

Many of these stories of abuse turn out to be exaggerated, distorted or completely unfounded. Photos of horses who died of heart attacks in Arizona  and are pictured lying on the ground dead or injured are used on websites in New York City every day to raise millions of dollars used  to ban carriage horses, who are portrayed as living in horrific circumstances, “cells” too small to lie down in, illnesses untreated, overworked, beaten, fed rotten and rodent infested food. There is no evidence that any of those accusations are true.

A generation ago, it would have been unthinkable – and illegal – for the police to raid Joshua Rockwood’s farm and arrest him because his stream froze and he didn’t get to the farm in time to chop a hole in the ice, and his horse’s hooves were too long. It happens all the time, that’s why nearly 300 farmers turned out to support Rockwood at his first hearing. And every one of them said the same thing: it could have been me.

The animal rights movement does not support or fight for ways to keep animals among people because it does not believe they should be with people.   Since it opposes work and amusement and the slaughter of animals for food, and believes animals ought to live in nature, it follows that the animals must be separated from humans. But there is a dreadful Catch-22 to that argument in 2015.

Since the animal rights movement was launched more than a generation ago,  the habitats of most domesticated animals have disappeared. The World Wildllfe Federation estimates that half of the  animals on the earth have vanished since 1970.  Climate change and global development , poaching and greed have destroyed the wild.The discussion of the future of animals takes on a new, mostly unconsidered cast, but the ideology has not changed.  The horses will be doomed if they are banned, the elephants and the ponies as well.

Work Is Their Salvation

Innocent people, with well-cared for animals, invaded by government and the police, harassed and intimidated, and forced to fight for their lives, freedom, animals,  and way of life. This is the tragedy of the Second Way.

Domesticated animals like horses and elephants are not wild animals. They attach powerfully to people, they love and need work and purpose, and people attach powerfully to them, just like humans with dogs and cats.  People and animals both suffer great trauma when they are separated, you can see it in Joshua Rockwood’s face. Only the animals will suffer more. They will soon be gone from the protection of their work and people, there is nowhere for them to go.

Work is their connection to us, and now, their salvation. Without it they have none, they are hidden away and driven from the earth. Today I heard of the story Kari Johnson, who runs a company with her husband called HaveTrunkWillTravel that raises and keeps (and seems to love) elephants and rents them out for various reasons.  For years, they have loved their work and their elephants. Until such work became animal abuse.

The group has been under continuous attack from animal rights groups who claim the elephants there have been abused in their training and care. The courts have found otherwise, as they have with Ringling Bros., but the company has been nearly overwhelmed dealing with accusations, assaults, videos and lawsuits. They have won all of their legal conflicts, but suffered greatly in the process.

I don’t know the Johnsons and have not seen their elephants. But their story is becoming disturbingly familiar to me, it reminds me of the long assault on Ringling Bros. Even though a court ruled that animal rights groups had paid witnesses to lie about the elephants and fined them more than $21 million dollars, the elephants are leaving the circus in three years. Ringling Bros. just got tired of the fighting, they never lost in court or were ever convicted of abuse, and never admitted it, but have been accused of it repeatedly. In the same vein, “Have Trunks, Will Travel” has not been convicted of any wrongdoing, yet they are under ferocious and continuous assault.

It does not seem to me that people who work with animals do so in order to mistreat and abuse them. That, I think, would be the exception, not the rule. And there are many employees and interns at “Have Trunk, Will Travel” who can testify to the conditions there.

“Until the past few years we mostly won the battles,” wrote Kari. “We are a hindrance and a threat to the extremist agenda…Repeated false accusations of abuse have taken a toll on our business. The threats and harassment by mail, phone, e-mail and in person at our events have taken a toll on our health and well-being as well as that of our employees and our family.”  I have investigated the claims of PETA against the New York Carriage Horses and found them to be false, time and again. I am wary of abuse stories on the Internet, everything one sees there is not necessarily the truth.

When Kari talks about her health, I think of the people in the carriage trade, the depression, drinking, anxiety, the heart attacks and corrosive rage. I don’t know her, but I know what she means. It is wrong to threaten and harass and intimidate people, especially in the name of animals. I hear those words  -“intimidation, harassment,” again and again, from farmers, pet owners, businesses who work with animals, the New York carriage drivers.

A Better Understanding Than This

We need a better understanding of animals than all this,  and a more thoughtful and humane idea about how to keep animals in the world. We need to find ways to transcend this ugly war over the animals and new Inquisition over abuse, and begin talking to one another, to the people who live with and love animals, and the people concerned about their welfare. There are no winners in this movement. The animals are disappearing, so are the people who care for them. I can’t help but wonder where they will come when the horses and the elephants and the ponies and the family farmers are all gone.

The First Way of looking at animals in the world was to see them as dumb brutes, unworthy of mercy or special care. The Second Way was to see them as abused and piteous beings who ought not to be in contact with abusive humans

There is a Third Way. First, it would set different goals. The first would be to keep animals with people. To find work for them.  To stop driving animals away from people, pitting the welfare of animals against the very people who own them and live and work with them. It is not possible to advance the rights of animals at the expense of people. We are not more important than they are, they are not more important than we are. We are partners, our lives are inter-connected, and we will share the fate of the earth with them.

If animals ought not be on the earth for the amusement of people, they surely ought not be on the earth to make people feel good about themselves and to be exploited once more, this time to harm and hate human beings. History is a pendulum, it swings back and forth. It is time to find a new way  to reach common ground, to treat them and the people who wish to be with them with love and respect and compassion. The Native-Americans say we are at a crossroads, we will either find a way to harmony or a path to ruin. They say this is the message of the horses.

People like Joshua Rockwood are exploring this Third Way, sometimes unconsciously. Joshua wants to feed healthy food to people, he honors them in this way, he says. Most of his animals will go to slaughter. Others – his sheep dogs, his horses – get to live with him, will be seen by people, will feed people, for much of human history an honorable fate and work.

He is part of  desperately-needed local food movement, a new system drawing young people to farming for the first time in generations, and offering new and healthy food sources to an agricultural system dominated by giant conglomerates who treat animals brutally and make unhealthy foods transported over great distances at high cost. They work in league with politicians and regulators. Joshua Rockwood is not a criminal.

In the Third Way,  government and the police and the community would support people like Joshua Rockwood, not arrest them, talk to farmers, not harass them, seize their animals and threaten their livelihood. Perhaps Joshua needed advice, perhaps he needed help in chopping a hole in the ice or hauling a heated tank to his barn. He can’t do those things in jail, and if his farm is destroyed, 100 animals will be homeless.

It seems to me that if people’s animals are not in extreme suffering, grievously injured or dead – abused as defined by law, not Facebook  and Twitter –  that is the boundary, the line that should not be crossed. It is no one’s business what else happens between them.

Separating people from animals is not a side-affect of the animal right movement, it is the point. Nothing about the movement makes sense without understanding that.  That is the root of this fundamental and deepening conflict. Many millions of people want animals to remain with them, and wish to be free to live with them freely and in privacy as long as they treat them well. We need to make it easier for people to have animals, not more difficult, expensive and frightening.

To understand the Third Way, consider learning about and supporting the Blue-Star Equiculture Farm in Palmer, Mass, a horse rescue and organic farming center that works to find healthy work for working animals like horses,  rescues animals in distress and works for their humane care and treatment. I believe they are the future, the best hope and model for keeping animals in the world and respecting the rights of people. Blue-Star also understands that people and animals belong together, and works to find ways of keeping them together. They practice compassion, not intimidation, for people and for animals.

Animals, like people, can not live in a vacuum. Joshua Rockwood’s animals will do only as well as he does, will be treated only as well as he is treated, will have only some of the rights that he is given.  Animals are not like people, they are very different. If we lose sight of this truth, they will suffer and we will lose them.

Animals cannot survive in our world only on rescue farms or in the mythical wild. So we fight for them, one animal at a time, one carriage horse, one elephant, one farmer, one human victim after another. We are bound together with them in our lives on the earth. If we cannot live in harmony with one another, and treat each other with understanding and empathy, then we cannot live in harmony with them, or with the Mother we all share, the earth.

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You can contribute to Joshua’s gofundme campaign here.