I spent some time with Joshua Rockwood yesterday, and I want to be honest and say I am worried about him.
Joshua is the kind of person who will never admit to being worried about himself, but I could see the weariness and concern in his face, his eyes, hear it in his voice. When he left me, he went to the butchers and picked up some meat. Then two of the planned buyers backed out without warning. One said the reason was the controversy surrounding his farm.
He has to make more room for frozen and now unsold meat. It never happened before his arrest on charges of animal cruelty. He was picking up new customers every day. But it has happened since.
A government that should be helping his farm grow and prosper is trying to destroy it.
So let’s think about Joshua.
It is an awful thing for you and your family to wonder if you will have to leave your business and your children and go to jail because your farm water tanks froze in -27 degrees, and because you are young and inexperienced, because you store your food and hay a mile from your farm.
It is an awful thing when the government that is supposed to protect your property and freedom decides to try and take both away.
It is an awful then when your reputation is savaged in the public media for weeks and months before you ever have a chance to defend yourself, and knowing that most journalists and most people will never know or care that you did nothing wrong, even if you are found innocent.
It is an awful thing to be a life-long lover of animals, a farmer whose livelihood depends on healthy animals, and to be accused of being cruel and abusive to your animals, when not a single one has died or suffered any kind of serious injury.
It is an awful thing to see the police and town government, upon whom you depend for safety and protection, co-opted by wealthy ideologues and drawn into a deepening conflict that has nothing to do with justice or the well being of animals.
It is an awful thing to see that government waste hundreds of thousands of dollars and precious resources on a prosecution that should never have occurred, and occurs only in the name of being politically correct and joining a mob hysteria. It is a dangerous thing when people who are utterly ignorant of farming or animals presume to regulate both.
It is an awful thing to have your life upended by ideological extremists speaking for the love and rights of animals while serving neither.
It is an awful thing to have your horses taken from you by people who demand tens of thousands of dollars to return them, even if you are found innocent of any wrongdoing.
It is an awful thing to see your hard work and growing business stymied, bled and threatened by legal fees, judicial delays and technicalities, the distractions of a legal proceeding, shallow and cruel publicity, and an Orwellian system that places the rights and well-being of animals far above the rights and well-being of human beings.
It is an awful thing to live in fear and uncertainty. To hear your children ask why their are now living in a prison rather than a home. To tell your spouse and family every day that it will be all right, that nobody can take your children away, that no one can take your home away, that the secret informers driving by your home and farm day and night with their cellphone and video cameras cannot harm you, cannot find you making a mistaken, or coming upon a sick animal, or seeing a frozen water bucket in the middle of winter.
And then wonder if all of those assurances are true.
It is an awful thing when your mind, plans, and ambition are all sacrificed to hundreds of hours of meetings, research, strategies and possibilities. When your customers say they will no longer buy your meat because they saw you on the news that you were arrested.
I’ll tell you something. It is nearly impossible for Joshua Rockwood, a man who is suffering from all of these things, to ask for help. He is stubborn and convinced he has already asked for enough help. I am more stubborn and am working to persuade him that he should ask for as much help as it takes for him to triumph, get his life back, and stand in the name of the growing number of victims of this kind of cruel persecution – I hear from them every day.
I am a long-time supporter of the rights of animals, I imagine if I must be labeled, it would be as a person whose politics are progressive. I can say with conviction that this case is an outrage, a brutal attack on a good citizen, his family, and his livelihood. It is also a tragic distortion of the idea of animal rights. While nine billion animals suffer and die on corporate industrial animal farms throughout the country, including Joshua’s home state of New York, the powerful apparatus of the animal rights movement, a town police department, and a county prosecutor’s office bring the full weight of their power to bear on a young man working hard day and night to raise healthy animals who produce healthy food, grown locally.
And who did not lose a single one of his hundreds of animals to one of the worst winters in the history of the Northeast.
Joshua can tell you where the meat you buy from him is coming from.
All of his animals are free-range and pasture fed. Every one of them leads a better and healthier life than any one of the animals whose meat you buy at your local supermarket, or whose awful lives exist only inside animal farm factories, or who languish in the backyards and basements of people without the resources to care for them. There are no teams of police and secret informers pursuing them.
In our hysteria over animal abuse, and our disenchantment with human beings, we have lost perspective. Joshua Rockwood has been abused in a far crueler and more destructive way than any of his animals were.
He and I are going at it about this question of help, and I believe there are ways to help him that he can accept. One is to e-mail him at [email protected] and let him know he is not alone, he has many friends, admirers and supporters. Another is to watch for the gofundme project he is putting together – reluctantly – this week on his website. I will also post about it here, as will many other people.
I believe that will be ready by the end of this week or early next week.
Joshua needs to win this struggle, for him, his family, for us, for our lives with animals, for our lives as free citizens. He needs to join the New York Carriage Trade in it’s successful struggle to keep the mayor of New York City from destroying their historic business and sending 200 draft horses out into peril. This is a new social awakening, a new movement.
Joshua needs and wants to stand up for what he thinks is right, and I will stand up for what I think is right. Government has no business destroying a citizens’ life in this way.
What has happened to Joshua is not about the rights of animals, or their welfare. It is a much older story. It is about arrogance, ignorance and the abuse of power. I believe he can win and will win. If it comes down to it, I cannot imagine any jury would convict him on the lazy and politicized evidence gathered against him.
I can’t imagine it even getting that far, even though it never should have gotten this far.