All over the country, animal rights groups and misguided animal lovers are targeting the carriage horse industry, as well as many farmers and people who give pony rides to children and people who are poor or eccentric or who have a different view of their lives with animals than some of the people who claim to speak for the rights of animals and force their very rigid notions on the rest of us.
Why, then, did the New York Carriage Horses survive two different efforts to ban them in a single year, especially in one of the most politically correct communities in America? For the sake of animals and their future in the world, it is worth studying and considering. There is a lot to be learned from it.
Eva Hughes, a retired carriage horse driver and one of the architects of the carriage trade struggle to defend itself has argued that the horses have triggered a new kind of social awakening, a re-evaluation of the very idea of animal rights and animal welfare, and a growing rejection of the rabidly angry ideology that is driving so many animals away from people and into oblivion, irrelevance or extinction.
Hughes saw the larger implications of the carriage horse controversy, she has been battling in the trenches of this war for a long time.
If you spend any time at all with the carriage drivers, or in their stables, or in Central Park, and you know the smallest thing about domesticated animals, you can see right away, and for yourself that the horses are healthy, content, much-loved and well cared for. There is nothing more abusive for large working animals than to be denied work, that is neither humane nor healthy for them, or for us.
Science and truth seems to matter little in the animal wars raging around the country, sparked by a liberation movement that does not believe animals should ever be owned by, work with, entertain or amuse human beings, or live close to them.
The animal rights movement is characterized by rage, humorlessness and a belief that people are not fit to care for animals. It is dangerous to generalize about so large and vocal a movement. But the movement demonstrates an outrageous ignorance of the real needs and lives of animals. They seek to arbitrarily redefine abuse without foundation, history or any kind of research. If you examine the rhetoric and statements of the groups spearheading the effort to ban the carriage horses, it is instantly apparent that the effort was not grounded in facts or reality.
The carriage trade attracted a small but dedicated army of warriors in various fields and media – actors, videographers, writers, photographers, animal lovers – who supported them, told their story, went on social media to fight for the horses and defend the drivers. Over time, they changed some minds and began to challenge the animal rights story. The media – especially papers like the New York Daily News – began to rouse themselves and actually go see for themselves. Working people identified with the carriage drivers and resented the arrogance and cowardice of the mayor – he refused to meet with the carriage trade or visit the stables.
Liam Neeson drew 200 reporters to one of the carriage horse stables, a place no reporter had bothered to visit in years. The reporters were quite shocked to tour the stables and see how well the horses were treated, how clean the stables were, how committed the driver were to their work and the horses care. This was not what they had been told or expected to see. The narrative began to change.
Bill deBlasio, the mayor, took the lede in promising to ban the carriage horses on his first day in office. From the first, he was his own worst enemy.
He also took a busload of money from NYClass, the animal rights group fighting for the ban. Since the group is headed by a real estate developer – he owns a string of garages, some near the stables – the campaign was tainted almost immediately by the appearance of impropriety. Since the mayor had never once ridden a horse, owned a pet, taken a carriage ride or mentioned the carriage horses in his long and very public political career, his sudden passion to get rid of the horses seem bizarre. And very suspicious. Whatever it really was, it looked like a bribe.
The mayor turned out to be a disastrous choice to campaign against the horses. A so-called progressive who promised to fight for the little guy, he began his tenure by picking on some of the best-loved little guys in a tough city – the carriage drivers, who have driven many kids, tourists, lovers and officers workers around the park.
Nobody really bought into the ludicrous idea that they were cruel thieves and drunks and abusers of animals, charges repeatedly leveled by NYClass and other animal rights groups.
The multi-million dollar campaign against the horses – coming at a time when the city faced so many staggering social problems – alienated many residents of the city. There were much bigger things to worry about, and a slew of equine advocates, veterinarians and behaviorists came to New York and unanimously found the horses were the luckiest horses in the world, the carriage trade had become a model for keeping the horses in an urban area safely and humanely.
The mayor ought to have given them all medals, rather than try to take away the property, livelihood and way of life of the immigrant families who have worked in the trade for more than a century. It just didn’t work. When the mayor began his campaign against the horses, 64 per cent of the city supported the horses.
A year later, and after an ugly and expensive and prolonged assault on the carriage trade, 64 per cent of the city supported the horses. Not a single voter changed their minds or bought into the nasty propaganda.
A visiting friend suggested recently that the carriage horses were saved because people in the city liked them. But that doesn’t make sense to me. Most people in New York had little to do with the carriage horses and rarely, if ever, even saw them. Carriage horses have been banned in a number of other communities, people in some of those cities accepted the idea that work for working animals is abuse.
I believe the animal rights wave has peaked, it no longer seems relevant or rational to the lives of animals, and to the growing concern of animal lovers to keep animals among us, rather than take them away because humans are believed to be too weak or vulnerable or cruel and lazy to care for them in populated areas.
This is a movement that calls for animals to be returned to nature, and doesn’t seem to know that there is no longer any nature left for animals to return to. We have ruined almost all of it. Nor do they understand that there is no greater gift for a working domesticated animal than work. The real abuse comes when the work is taken away, not when it is offered. New Yorkers seemed to grasp this idea.
If the horses leave New York, they will never be seen again in our greatest city. The last domesticated animals – they helped build New York and inspired Central Park itself – will vanish, they might as well be sent to slaughter. This was a mistake that could never be undone.
The mayor missed a glorious opportunity to affirm the importance of animals in our lives, and it would have taken little. He could have been a progressive hero by standing up for the idea that horses are just as important as cars, and have been helping humans for a much longer time.
He could have done a lot with very little: some special traffic lanes, a development deal with a greedy real estate developer on the West Side (the NYPD got a spanking new stables built into the basement of a car dealership in exchange for a development deal. The mayor never explained why that was not abusive, but a carriage ride in Central Park is.)
He seemed unable to see beyond the money he was given or the outdated and very narrow vision of the people who gave it to him.
I believe Eva Hughes grasped the real significance of the carriage horse controversy. All over America, animal lovers are waking up to the damage done by the movement that claims to speak for the rights of animals, but does not. They are tired of the bullying, hypocrisy, elitism and cruelty that has characterized a once well-meaning and important movement. The movement just doesn’t work any longer, if it ever did. It has no real vision for the future, in the new and awful reality of animals.
Animals need rights, but not our rights. They need the right to survive in our world and live and work among us, as they have for centuries. Animal lovers are now demanding a movement that treats animals and people with love and dignity and respect. No movement that uses animals to promote the hatred and persecution of people – innocent farmers, carriage drivers, pony ride operators, elephant trainers, cat and dog lovers – can promote the rights and welfare of animals.
This is a movement that harasses farmers and homeless people with dogs but seems powerless against the giant industrial factory farms that are homes to more than nine billion animals, many of whom – not all – live in horrific circumstances.
If we do not all work together to save them, they will not be saved. Even as the animal rights movement came to prominence in the 70’s and grows fat on the donations of gullible animal lovers and Hollywood stars, animals continue to vanish from our world at a horrifying pace. The World Wildlife Federation reports that half of the animal species in the world have disappeared since 1970.
The animal rights movement is a case study in denial and bigotry, it rejects both science and truth. It has no plan or program or vision to save the animals in peril. The Native-Americans believe the horses called the furies down on the mayor and his allies. Their victory was so resounding it may well be true.
New York is our biggest stage, and the horses have won a very powerful victory. I believe is the first victory in the new awakening, their own Appomattox.
And, for animal lovers, ours as well.