Dear Progressives,
The mayor of New York City, Bill deBlasio, is seeking to be the national leader of the progressive political movement rising up across America. I am not keen on labeling myself – labels are a national disease to me – and I like many of the things the new mayor of New York City is doing, especially his efforts to bring more low and middle-income housing to the city and to provide day care to hundreds of thousands of kids.
His campaign to ban the carriage horses, however, has soiled his progressive credentials, and I am writing this to urge you to consider the truth about the carriage horses – I have worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Boston Globe and CBS News and take the truth and facts seriously – is disturbing, dishonest, and elitist, it is anything but progressive and calls into question his integrity, humanity and courage.
The carriage horses are not being abused, the people who own them and drive them are being abused and savagely.
Here are five things I hope you will consider about the long and very cruel campaign to ban the carriage trade from New York City, all in the name of progressivism and the love of animals.
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l. Is it progressive to kill the carriage horses in order to save them? There are more than 200 carriage horses in New York City. Equine rescue groups estimate it would cost approximately $24 million to feed and care for them for the rest of their lives. More than 155,000 horses in America were sent to slaughter last year in Canada and Mexico under the most brutal and cruel conditions. The mayor and the animal rights groups seeking to banish the horses claim they have a home for every one of them, they will not provide the name of a single rescue farm, nor will they offer any details on where the money would come to care for them. Every reputable equine rescue person in America believes there are few places that could care for these horses, they weight between 1,500 and 2,000 lbs, especially in these times, and no one with any kind of credentials believe a good home has been found for each one of them. Nor does anyone believe their care and health would be better than it is now.
2. Is it progressive to put more than 300 working, law-abiding people out of work and endanger their families, mortgages and the future education of their children. The mayor says jobs have been found for each one, but that is an especially cruel lie. The mayor proposes that the carriage drivers be offered jobs driving “green” taxis in the outer boroughs of New York. It is not clear that any such jobs are available, and even if they were, driving a green car in Brooklyn is not the same thing as driving a horse carriage in Central Park. The presumption that these animal lovers and individualists – many coming from immigrant families that have worked with horses for centuries – would want these jobs or take them is raw elitism. It is not progressive.
3. It is progressive for the mayor to take a lot of money from a notoriously sleazy real estate developer – in this case Steven Nislick of NYClass – and then suddenly declare that banning the carriage horses was the number one priority of his administration and would be accomplished in his first week of office?
Nislick has spent millions of dollars in his effort to destroy the carriage trade. He has dismissed the carriage drivers as “random people,” and said the horses would be better off dead than pulling carriages in Central Park.
According to the New York Post, he hired private detectives to follow the drivers for weeks in the hopes of finding violations, he threatened to punch a New York Daily News photographer in the face after the paper opposed the carriage ban, he took part in eventing, the most dangerous sport for animals in the Olympics, he and his organization have subject the members of the carriage trade to a campaign of dehumanization, exclusion, harassment and the ugliest and most personal kinds of insults, intimidation and physical demonstrations.
Is cruelty and abuse towards humans in the name of loving animals progressive?
4. Is it progressive to lie about the safety and welfare of the horses, and their role in the life of New York City? The mayor and his supporters in the animal rights movement claim the horses are endangered and dangerous to life in the city. In 150 years, no human has ever been killed by a carriage horse (nearly 300 New York residents died last year in motor vehicle accidents.) In the past 30 years, three horses have been killed in traffic accidents, three of out millions of trips and rides.
5. It is not progressive to claim the horses are abused and mistreated and unhealthy, as the mayor has. It is simply not true. The North American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Association Of Equine Practioners, the two most prestigious equine medical organizations in North America reported last year that the New York Carriage Horses were healthy and well cared for, there was no evidence of abuse or mistreatment.
On the contrary, reported the two organizations, the carriage horses are among the best cared for and most fortunate equines in America. The NAVMA and AAEP joined more than a score of veterinarians, behaviorists, trainers and horse lovers who examined the horses and found them healthy and well cared for.
6. It is not progressive for government to overreach it’s authority and mandate and threaten the freedom, way of life and property of innocent people who have paid their taxes, worked hard, committed no crimes, broken no laws and violated none of the hundreds of regulations (and five different city agencies) legislated to oversee their work and the animals in their care. Of the thousands of animal cruelty and abuse regulations reported to the city government last year, not one was a complaint about the carriage horses. John Locke, the creator of the idea of modern democracy, wrote that the primary function of a democratic government is to protect freedom and property, not to arbitrarily take them away without cause. The mayor seeks not only to destroy an industry, but a way of life. There is nothing progressive about that.
7. It is not progressive to destroy a business that has been beloved and profitable for more than 150 years without cause or due process. All three city newspapers have opposed the carriage ban, so do a majority of city residents – 62 per cent in the last poll – the Chamber of Commerce and the city’s Central Labor Council. Every age, gender and racial element in New York supports the horses. Is is really progressive to brush off the popular will and dismiss it? There is not a child, tourist, or lover in the world who would favor banning the New York Carriage Horses, an iconic part of the city’s soul for so long a time. The mayor, especially arrogant for a so-called populist, refuses to visit the stables, meet with the carriage trade, talk to a driver. One carriage driver approached the mayor with his young son and asked him why he was seeking to ban his livelihood. Because, said the mayor, walking away, the work you do is immoral. Is elitism progressive? The mayor has dehumanized the people in the carriage trade in order to destroy them, placing them outside the moral community that governs the city.
8. It is progressive for the mayor to despoil the history and environment of Central Park, one of the great urban and environmental achievements in American history, by replacing the carriage horses with large and expensive ( and quite ugly) vintage electric cars, as the mayor has proposed? The animal rights activists and the mayor have made environmental history by proposing for the first time anywhere than energy-powered electric motor vehicles are more friendly to the environment than draft horses. Central Park was designed for the carriage horses, they are as natural an element there as trees. It would be an environmental and cultural tragedy to send the horses out into peril while bring more motor vehicles into the great park, which was not designed for any of them.
9. Is it progressive to abuse human beings in the name of loving animals? The Native-Americans have been saying for many years that we will either learn to live in harmony or we will perish together. We are at a crossroads, and the horses call to us to come together and treat people and animals with dignity. That is the theme of the Blue Star Prophecy, a symbol of which is held above by the artist Maria Wulf and Pamela Rickenbach, co-founder of Blue Star Equiculture, a draft horse sanctuary in Massachusetts and a supporter of the New York Carriage Horses.
The mayor is especially sensitive to his progressive image, he already seems ambitious for a higher office than mayor of New York City. That is his vulnerability. If you wish to do the right thing, to support honest people in trouble, to further the true values of a democratic culture, to keep animals in our world and save the New York Carriage Horses and keep them in their safe homes, please consider writing the mayor a letter at this address: Mayor Bill deBlasio, City Hall, City Hall Park, New York, N.Y., 10007.
Injustice and cruelty are not progressive goals. Neither are sleazy politics in the name of common sense. You can help.
If you are so inclined, please request that he either honor the true values of the progressive movement, or leave the carriage horses alone and in New York City, where they belong.