I think it is true that the emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it.
Last week, a victory for the people in the New York Carriage Trade. The mayor cut and ran from his bumbling and failed effort to drive them from their historic and beloved work in Central Park. In the two years that I’ve been writing about this story, I have to come to know some horses and some carriage drivers well (Liam Neeson has not yet invited me to lunch or stopped to chat with me about the old country.)
A victory for the people. For the children. For the lovers. For the tourists. For those who dream and laugh and still see the magic and mystery in the world.
If you take the trouble to meet the now famous carriage drivers, they may surprise you. Most of them are wonderful people, funny and caring and real, they are not the people the mayor talks about as being immoral, or the animal rights people speak of as being murderous, greedy, racist, homophobic, sexist and abusive torturers.
Many of them have called me or messaged me in the past week, they are wondering if they can or should celebrate their hard-won victory, some are wondering if they can call it a victory at all. “I feel great about it, but is it okay to feel great about it?,” asked Tommy, ” they will be after us the next time a horse trips on the sidewalk.”
I am wondering if it is possible for the people in the carriage trade to heal the many wounds inflicted by this very cruel conflict, now in it’s ninth year. The idea is important, it has implications for everyone who lives and works with animals like horses, elephants, ponies, dogs or any kind of working animal. But a short while ago, no betting person would have given them odds. It’s different now. Truth to power, big time.
Can you celebrate when you have lost your dreams, your heritage, the future of your children, the sense of security that was once the heart of the American Dream? When you will always be a target, your peace of mind in the hands of any cultural terrorist with a cellphone or video camera?
There was a lot of talk of celebrating the victory, but the carriage trade is not a unified force, it is a collection of different tribes – ethnic, cultural, geographic, who often war with one another. The animal rights coalition seeking to ban the horses is quite unified, they all are pursuing the same goal – destroy the carriage trade. The end always seems to justify the means. Some in the trade want to celebrate, some don’t.
“We are afraid if we celebrate that it will just make the mayor more determined to come after us, again, it’s an awful thing to say but we don’t feel free to speak openly or honestly, it’s dangerous for us,” one driver messaged me. Some secret celebrations are being planned, and one very influential driver told me he is going to seek a permit for a healing ceremony in Central Park for the carriage trade in September. I want to go for that.
Some people in the carriage trade are broken, bitter, cynical. They have been through too much, been too disappointed, seen their own dreams and security shattered, been harassed, insulted, patronized, roughly treated by the elitist media and political ethos in the city, which has dehumanized them and never seemed to grasp or care about their suffering.
The other day, a former carriage driver named Eva Hughes messaged me, she said it was pointless to celebrate, she did not crack a smile when the news of the mayor’s retreat came to her. “When I heard/saw the news, I did not whoop, holler, yell to my daughter upstairs, get on the phone, or run to FB to post a hurray status, or even smile. I pursed my lips and said internally, “hmmm….now what?”
She made me think of Rose Kennedy, who suffered so many awful loses in her lifetime and who shared Hughes’ view of suffering.
“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree,” said Rose Kennedy. “The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
I think t here is much truth in that. The wounds inflicted on the carriage trade, an immigrant culture steeped in pride and tradition, unaccustomed to humiliation and abuse, will perhaps never be gone. In this controversy, the media and political communities have taken no responsibility for the damage the have allowed to be inflicted, year after year, on mostly innocent, animal-loving people just trying to keep their way of life and care for their families. The worry, the drinking, the anger and hurt, the worry, cancelled plans, lost dreams, broken traditions.
The animal rights groups, already having spent millions trying to shut down the carriage trade – I tremble to think of how many truly abused animals could have been helped with that money – are not likely to stop. I talked to a psychiatrist at the Yale School Of Medicine, she studies hate groups and extremist organizations and has written about the New York Carriage Horse conflict.
She says it is not likely the campaign against the carriage trade will stop or move on, although she did point out it will be much more difficult for them without the involvement of the mayor, and without his control over the police and regulatory agencies. “Most likely, they will turn their anger on him now, he and the carriage trade may end up on the same side. He may become a stand-in also, another man who is cruel and abusive. And without the mayor, the media is likely to move on also. They can’t keep parroting the same story over and over again, especially when nobody seems to be accepting it.”
An interesting idea.
“The hallmark of fanatics is always pretty much the same,” she said. “They are humorless and unrelenting. They do not ever negotiate or surrender or reason, they abhor expertise, they can’t withdraw or retreat, they pride themselves in being unpopular and even on failing – it is sort of the point.”
She said organizations like the ones pursuing the carriage trade so determinedly can’t be understood through the conventional laws of politics – compromise, give-and-take, negotiation, accepting some losses in exchange for some wins. They aren’t conventional, they do not follow the common civic rules and civilities, they are not democratic.
“You have to remember,” she said, “that object of their campaigns are not what they say or think they are. In this case, the animal rights groups in New York seem to care little about animals or horses – you will never see them touch one or feed one or adopt one or own one. It’s about their own rage, their own abuse, their own sense of being disenfranchised and even abused. The campaign to ban the horses can’t end because it isn’t about the horses, it’s about the damage to their own psyches, their own particular view of the world as a hostile place filled with abusive people, usually men. The carriage drivers – most of them big and burly men, are stand-ins. You see the difference in the mayor’s response, he is a politician, he probably does not care about the horses either, but when it’s clear he’s lost, he’s willing to move along and cut his losses. For the animal rights activists, the losses are the point, the losses justify their fury and their lack of entitlement. They can’t stop, and they have gotten enormous attention in the media, which reinforces them. Losing makes them even more righteous and embattled.”
I had a long talk with my carriage driver friend about the idea of a healing ceremony. I like it a lot. My own belief is that the carriage grade has won a great victory, however temporal, and I am sorry they feel too cautious to celebrate too openly or too publicly. That happens when you have been attacked, often viciously, for so long. Caution trumps freedom, it chills openness. A sad thing in a democratic society. I believe we live in a transparent society, I wish they could be more open about what they are feeling and doing. They are very appealing, very real, they would, I think, do themselves great good if the people of New York could see them as I have seen them and as I know them.
They are not all saints by any means, they are just very human, hard-working, and their love of their horses is not a political stance or posture. It is very evident.
Celebrating is different from healing. I don’t believe the people in the carriage trade can heal until the moral community in a city that prides itself on being moral and progressive acknowledges the abuse they have suffered, treats them with dignity and respect. The mayor meets with animal rights groups almost weekly, he goes to their dinners and fund-raising balls, talks to their lobbyists and representatives, rushes to their press conferences. He has never once visited the carriage stables, talked with a driver or a stable or horse owner, defended a carriage driver, met with a lobbyist or representative, or once acknowledged a single one treated their horses well. Last year, a driver came up to him at a public event with his eight-year-old son and asked him why he was so determined to ban the carriage trade.
“Because your work is immoral,” snapped the populist mayor, turning his back and walking a way.
There is a profound difference between celebrating and healing.
There is a lot of quiet celebrating going on right now. I don’t know about healing, that’s not a Teamsters specialty.
They deserve a celebration, and they have the right to it. They need healing even more, that is perhaps the next step in this cruel and unnecessary conflict. They need to tell their stories, acknowledge their very real pain, their lost dreams, the ugly names they have been called, the awful things they have been falsely accused of, their lost dreams. A lot of them are hurt, some are broken, sacrificed to the very new idea that it’s okay to abuse people in the name of loving animals, that it’s okay to put the rights of animals far above the rights of people.
My own belief is the one Rumi expressed in one of his poems. The wound is the place where the light enters you. I have learned so much from my wounds, especially about how to heal. When I met the carriage drives, their backs were to the wall, they were discouraged and resigned.
I believe they are very different now, In all of the anger and the pain, it might be easy to overlook how much stronger they are, how much wiser, perhaps even more sensitive. Their wounds may well be the place where the light has entered them, and helped them to heal. They understand better than ever the importance of caring for their horses, they are treating them better than ever.
If my driver friend gets his permit and holds his healing rally in September I will be there. If the animal rights protesters scream and yell and disrupt a healing ceremony, it will be yet another gift to the carriage trade, they have been given so many in that way. I will be there for that, to celebrate their victory over greed and callousness and cruelty, and to honor the pain and struggle they have endured.