Search Results for: I Saw An Angel Last Night

 Yesterday, I got this sad message from Tawni Angel in California: “Hi, Jon, it’s been a little while, I hope this e-mail finds you well..I wanted to let you know that yesterday, “Mother’s Day,” was it! The last day for pony rides at the Santa Monica Main St. Farmer’s Market, it was a very emotional day, lots of my customers who have become so much more than that, my friends..brought goodbye cards, hugs and tears, so sad to see the ponies go. Many of the parents were trying to explain to their toddlers that this was the last time they would see the ponies at the farmer’s market. It nearly broke my heart. It’s just so sad. I wanted to thank you again for all  your kind words and support! So thank you, Jon, Tawni Angel.”

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It was thoughtful of Tawni to send me that message on such a hard day for her, we have never met, but have been talking to one another online for months. I was heartbroken as well, Tawni’s sustenance has been taken from her, and the lives of her ponies are in danger as well at the hands of the people who would save them. The media, which swarmed to relay every unfounded accusation against her, has melted away, drawn to yet another hysteria. She has a hard road ahead of her.

I am sorry to tell you that this past Sunday, Tawni’s Ponies and Petting Farm, Inc. ended it’s 12-year time at the Santa Monica, Calif., farmer’s market. Last September, the Santa Monica City Council voted to end all animal activities at the market and cancel Tawni Angel’s concert.

This February, a  survey of customers at the Farmer’s Market showed that 92 per cent of those who commented on the pony rides favored keeping them at the market. On Sunday, more than 250 people, many in tears and many with children, came to say goodbye to Tawni Angel and her ponies. Many of the parents wondered if their children – many of whom came every week to ride the ponies – would ever see a pony again.

This story will be all too familiar to the good people of the New York Carriage Trade, their mayor has scheduled June hearings before the City Council so that he can try to pass legislation that would ban the carriage horses from New York. As in Santa Monica, there is no evidence of any kind that the horses in New York are suffering or being mistreated, and an overwhelming majority of the city’s residents want them to stay. As in Santa Monica, it doesn’t seem to matter much what the truth is or what the people want, or whether or not people are being treated with cruelty and neglect.

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In the Spring of 2014, a handful of people who call themselves supporters of animal rights appeared suddenly at the farmer’s market and called the police, claiming that a pony was injured. The police found no evidence of an injured pony. In May, another demonstrator called the police to say one of the ponies had a cracked hoof, the police came and found that this was not so. Other demonstrators claimed the ponies water was filthy and that the ponies were tethered too tightly, and that it was too hot for ponies to be giving rides to children.

Tawni Angel had given thousands of rides to children on her ponies and there had never been a single complaint of mistreatment or abuse in all of that time.

The police department conducted a thorough examination of the ponies at the market and found, as so many veterinarians and experts have found in New York, that these horses were well cared for and healthy. As in New York, this did not seem to matter to anyone involved. In fact, the more evidence that showed the ponies were find, the more intense the persecution of Tawni Angel got.

Animal control specialists from the police department  found that the water was clean, and that the animals were tethered properly, and found the animals were doing light work in temperatures that were well within their comfort and safety range. Three different police investigations found that the ponies were  healthy and well cared for.

The assault against Tawni Angel, who has a five-acre farm near Santa Monica,  turned especially ugly and personal after the police failed to support the demonstrator’s puzzling claims that it was “torture” for ponies to give rides to children. Evidence just didn’t seem to matter. It was necessary to dehumanize Angel in order to destroy her business and way of life. This kind of cruelty to people in the name of preventing cruelty to animals is increasingly familiar, it resembles an Orwellian inquisition more than a civic or legal process.

You can ask Joshua Rockwood, the New York carriage horse owners and drivers, Tawni Angel, or thousands of farmers struggling to fend off accusations that they are subhuman creatures,  abusing their animals because soldiers in the new army of animal informers call the police and say so.

Yesterday, Rockwood scored a significant victory in his fight to save his farm and his reputation from people who seem to know nothing about farms or animals. A judge said he did not have to pay the people who seized his horses many thousands of dollars in care and boarding costs since there was no evidence he had abused them or should have ever been seized. But also yesterday, news of an especially poignant defeat for Tawni Angel and her ponies and the children of Santa Monica.

And for every animal we wish to keep in our world and our everyday lives. The sorry truth is that those of us who love animals and respect freedom and property are in a deepening struggle with people who do not believe animals should remain among people and work and live with us in our world.

There will be victories and defeats, that is the awful sad nature of conflict, as we saw yesterday.

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The campaign against Tawni Angel was uglier and far more cruel and unfeeling than any cracked hoof on a pony. When they could find no proof of wrongdoing, the so-called animal rights activists went after her reputation. Animal rights protestors scoured Facebook looking for personal political opinions or comments from Angel and her husband that they decided might be offensive or controversial in very liberal Santa Monical, and mailed them to City Council members, some of whom have close personal ties to the demonstrators. They found a photo of Tawni Angel holding a glass of vodka and suggested she was unfit to be around Santa Monica’s children. (Angel is suing one of the protestors for defamation in what could be a significant case in the animal rights wars). They found a photo of Angel with a gun and suggested she was dangerous and unstable (she likes to shoot.)

These communications were conducted in secret and out of public view.

The City Council caved in the face of this sudden controversy,  as politicians most often do, they held an unscheduled late night meeting, they revoked Tawni Angel’s contract with the farmer’s market. As usual, no one expressed any concern for the future welfare of the ponies, who need to find work in order to survive, or of Tawni Angel, faced with serious loss of income despite the fact she loved her ponies, treated them well, and gave many children the only contact they ever have with the natural or animal world. You can read her lawyer’s account of the case here.

I have talked with a half-dozen people who know Tawni Angel. She is a good person, a loving wife and mother, she is honest and she loves her animals dearly, and is committed to working with children to keep nature and animals in our consciousness. She had fashioned a life for herself with animals, just as the people in the New York Carriage Trade have done. What happened to her is a travesty, and please make no mistake about it. It can happen to you if you have a pony, a horse, a dog, a cat, a chicken, a cow, or love to see the stupid tricks in the circus.

Like Joshua Rockwood, Tawni Angel is brave, and like Rockwood, Tawni Angel is fighting back. Still, her way of life and the fate of her ponies, both anchored by her contract in Santa Monica,  is in grave doubt. She is a poignant example of the growing number of victims of what has become an irrational and especially cruel hysteria over animal abuse, and which is driving animals out of our world and towards extinction. It is also hurting many people badly.

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And so here, in the name of preventing cruelty to animals, is a powerful example of how we are doing animals no good and  inflicting cruelty on people, innocent people at that. Tawni Angel told me she is looking for another location in the Santa Monica area for her pony rides. She has found a mall 50 miles away from the market where she is offering 20 rides one night a week, but it is too far and through too much traffic for most of her very loyal Santa Monica customers.

This is what you need to understand about  Tawni Angel. She has loved and cared for ponies for years, they have given her the resources to live with animals, she has given them as good and healthy and meaningful life as domesticated animals can have in or world today. She has broken no law, violated no regulations, paid her taxes.

Her world has been shattered, if not destroyed, despite the fact that she has been found guilty of absolutely nothing and likes vodka. This is not just a story for animal lovers, it is a story for anyone who cares about compassion, truth and freedom from cruelty, whether it be by so-called activists or by government. Her freedom and way of life have been unjustly taken from her, she may well lose her ponies, they may well lose their lives. Tawni Angel’s story reminds us that any movement to end cruelty to animals is bankrupt and immoral if it is built on being cruel to human beings and lying about them.

This is the final message to me yesterday from this alleged animal abuser, this torturer, this person who is so cruel that she must be banned from public spaces and lose her livelihood and resources for caring for her animals: “I will make sure all my ponies are taken care of and there is no way I would ever let anything happen to them. I will figure it out, one way or another.”

I think Tawni would love to hear from people who love animals and who care about people. Her e-mail is [email protected]

Today, an opportunity to join a new social movement that hopes to speak for the rights of animals and the people who own, live and work with them in a humane and loving way. You can sign a petition, I think of it as the Magna Carta of the new awakening.

Tawni Angel is asking the Santa Monica City Council members to reconsider their decision to exclude all animal activities from the Main Street Farmers Market in that city, and allow Tawnis Ponies – her  company – to “continue providing pony rides and farm animal interaction to children in your community.”

She is asking friends, supporters and people who support the real rights of animals to sign her petition.

She is seeking 2,500 signatures on her petition. At stake is the way of life, sustenance and reputation of an honest and hard-working human being and animal lover. Also at stake is the right of animals to remain in our world, and a rejection of cruelty, the abuse of people, the false accusations and profound ignorance about animals and their rights and welfare that has come to characterize the most powerful elements of the animal rights movement.

What happened to Tawni Angel has happened to thousands of people – farmers, circuses, research facilities, students, carriage horses, owners of dogs and cats, too often innocent people persecuted without due process or fairness. Animals are not being saved, simply driven off. The animal rights movement in its current form is killing many more animals than it is saving.

What happened to Tawni Angel has happened to the New York Carriage Trade who, like Tawni, is fighting back. In New York City, perhaps our most progressive city, the horses and their drivers are turning back the campaign against them. It  has also been marked by false accusations, personal attacks and cruelty.

In August, in a hurried late night meeting, the Santa Monica City Council voted 4-0 to end Tawni Angel’s decade old contract with the farmer’s market, where she was offering pony rides to an average of 300 children a week.  In all her years working at the market, there has been no evidence of any kind of mistreatment of her animals.

The council acted after a small group of animal rights activists began suddenly picketing the pony rides,  declaring that the ponies were being abused by carrying children in rides, that the rides were the equivalent of “torture” for them, that they had no fresh water, were working in extreme heat, had cracked hooves and were chained too severely to move their heads properly. These activists had simply redefined our understanding of abuse, which is a crime, not an argument or opinion on Facebook.

At least three inquiries found every single one of the charges against Tawni Angel to be false. So the animal rights activists – one a former unsuccessful congressional candidate who said she was certain her accusations were true because she had three rescue cats – changed tactics and began poring through Tawni Angel’s Facebook and social media posts and photos on her blog. In secret messages to members of the Santa Monica City Council, they reported that Angel drank vodka, liked to shoot guns, and opposed President Obama’s immigration policies.

Tawni Angel was not informed of these accusations, nor given a chance to review them and respond. The many people who have met Angel and known her for years eagerly testify that she is a wonderful mother and wife, and a lovely human being with a lot of passionate ideas about life. By every account, she is a responsible and loving animal owner.

Scores of children signed petitions on her behalf asking the council to keep the rides which are, for many of them, their only encounter with real animals that are not pets. In fact, say many parents who brought their children to the rides, Angel has always emphasized the proper and gentle handling of animals to her  young riders. She sees her role  as educating the young about the true nature of animals, most of whom have vanished from their lives. Many of them, she says, have never seen a chicken.

People like Tawni Angel are defending a way of life, just like the New York Carriage Horse owners and drivers. They do not make a lot of money. She lives week-to-week on what she earns at the farmers market. The rides are her sustenance and her way of maintaining her five-acre farm. If her contract is not renewed, she will have to seek new homes for her ponies at a time when 155,000 horses a year are being slaughtered in Canada and Mexico.

Animals are rapidly vanishing from our world, especially animals who cannot find work and meaning for people. Tawni’s ponies are among the safest and best-cared for animals on the earth – and the luckiest. One of the very startling arguments advanced by the protestors was the idea that animals should never be used for the pleasure or entertainment of people. It is hard to fathom the idea that it is wrong for children to enjoy being with animals and riding on horses – a beloved tradition and pastime for many thousands of years.

On Sunday July 13, Angel’s husband, Jason Nester, called 911 to report that a group of protestors were blocking the sidewalk at the farmer’s market, protesting the pony rides. Sgt. Mike Graham, a former horse owner and the former supervisor of the Santa Monica Police Department’s Animal Control Unit, was sent to inspect the pony rides and look for evidence of animal abuse.

Last week, I read Sgt. Graham’s  report, these are his own words:

“I examined the ride set-up. The horses appeared in to be in good condition – their body weight appeared normal, their fur was clean and brushed, their manes and tails were brushed and healthy, the ground around them was clean and evenly flat, they walked on sawdust shavings, and there was no visible urine or feces. The equipment – saddles, bridles, and (thick) pads were in good condition. The horses were “quiet” and well behaved. I saw nothing to make me believe the horses were ill-treated, unhealthy, malnourished, injured, or in discomfort. The horses did not appear hot, were not sweating, and were on a timed (30 minute alarm,) water-break schedule.

It is, in the most literal sense, a nightmare without end. The New York Carriage Drivers have been living it for years now, so have thousands of other people in many different places – farmers, college students, researchers, carriage horse drivers, circus and farmer’s market operators, Hollywood producers.

Now it is Tawni Angel’s sad fate to be living it. There are people who abuse animals, and there are people who do not. The  social movement that says it speaks for the rights of animals no longer seem to know the difference between the two, or cares. For many of them, the law has no meaning, justice no value; politicians hide, leaders collect their donations, a system fails. In this disturbing and Kafkaesque world, there is no difference between the guilty or the innocent, animals and people are left without rights or protection.

 “What I fear most,” wrote the great writer Isabel Allende,”is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.”

   There is no evidence that Tawni Angel has ever abused an animal in her care. It is she who is now frightened, who has been abused, and who is now fighting for her sustenance and very way of life against accusers without reason.

Here is one way to understand what has happened to Tawni Angel and to so many other animal lovers. Imagine for a moment that you are a school teacher and someone drives by your class while you are out in the schoolyard and calls up the police and the principal and accuses you of being a child molester and an abuser.  She didn’t like the way you talked to the students, the way you touched one on the shoulder. The children looked frightened, she said, they were quiet, it was too hot for them to be outside, they were clearly abused.

The accuser offers no evidence of any kind, talks to no authorities, experts, seeks no other resources but makes her accusation publicly and in the media. There is a series of frightening but immediate investigations triggers great publicity and concern, even hysteria, but yields no evidence. You are cleared, but the accuser refuses to accept the finding, she continues the accusations as if they have never been made. Time after time you deny it, the authorities say you are innocent, no evidence is ever offered to support the accusation.

None of the children report being abused, saw any abuse, show any signs of abuse. They are questioned again and again, by administrators, by the police, by psychologists and social workers. After living in dreadful fear and limbo, you are cleared again and again of any wrongdoing. But this does not matter to your accusers.  It took years, cost all of your savings and your health and that of your husband. Your children show signs of stress and acute anxiety, your fear and worry have permeated the house and their lives.

Over time, you are horrified to realize that the accuser will never go away, will never accept the results of the investigations, will never stop accusing you of the awful crime of molestation, will never stop picketing, carrying signs calling you a “child molester” or an “abuser” in public, never stop posting  ugly things about you on the Internet, talking to parents and school officials, rooting  though your private life, your political views,  all of your comments on social media,  seeking the one ugly or foolish one that they will use to define you, broadcasting it the school, your employers, your neighbors, demanding that you be arrested, fired, disgraced.These accusations are not shared with you, you are not given an opportunity to explain or respond.

Because molestation is an awful crime, the accusation hangs over you like a storm cloud that never leaves, it is in the faces of the students, it frightens and disturbs your family, upsets your children. You live in fear and confusion, and that is not the worst of your nightmare. The worst is that  you come to see there is no reasoning with your accuser, no evidence she will accept, no reasoning that will work.

You will not get the promotion you sought, perhaps will be denied tenure, it is clear everyone in the school would be happier if you were gone. It doesn’t matter what the evidence shows, or what the truth is.  You will have to leave, your teaching career is over. You will never get the pension you planned for, have the career you loved.

There is no winning or losing in a nightmare like this. The accuser always  wins, just by making the accusation and by repeating it your life is damaged and changed.

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Child abuse is not the same thing as animal abuse, but there is a similarity between that accusation and the monstrous charge of animal abuse. In the animal world, animal abusers are the equivalent of child molesters.

Abuse, like child molestation, is a crime.  It destroys lives and reputations. It is the most awful accusation one could make against a person who loves or lives or works with animals, and it speaks to the sad and disturbing degradation of the animal rights movement into a rogue fringe culture that embraces Stalinist notions of justice, not  American values of fairness and freedom. In this world,   if you are accused you are guilty. Evidence, truth and the law simply don’t matter.

According to the Legal Dictionary, cruelty to animals is  “the crime of inflicting physical pain, suffering or death on an animal, usually a tame one, beyond necessity for normal discipline. It can include neglect that is so monstrous (withholding food and water) that the animal has suffered, died or been put in imminent danger of death.”

What future does a person who works with animals have after being accused of  monstrous behavior towards animals?

In Santa Monica, California, animal rights activists showed up suddenly one Sunday in front of Angel’s pony rides carrying signs accusing her of abusing her ponies. They said the ponies had cracked hooves, were suffering in the heat,  had no fresh water, were tethered too tightly and without enough room to move. They said it was “torture” for ponies to give rides to children.  They started a petition and collected signatures (Tawni Angel collected three times as many signatures in support of her pony rides). Three different and very official and thorough investigations found out that the charges were false, there was no truth to any of them.

Tawni Angel had been offering pony rides to children in Santa Monica for years, and hosting a petting zoo as well. She often brought her ponies and animals to birthday parties and public events. She was immensely popular with the children and their parents, she gave 300 rides a week without trouble or complaint. The demonstrators refused to believe the veterinarians or the police, their unanimous finding that Tawni Angel had committed no abuse meant nothing to them.

In a rational culture, the activists and the City Council might have apologized to Tawni Angel for the pain and suffering the accusations and investigations and awful publicity had caused.

No one has apologized to Tawni Angel or even expressed concern about her welfare or well-being.

The activists – they seemed unable to process the mounting findings of Tawni Angel’s innocence – simply moved on, they looked for other evidence, invading Tawni Angel’s privacy and personal space as well as soiling her reputation. There had to be abuse, and if there wasn’t any, they would simply find other crimes to accuse her of. The new animal rights movement in America appears increasingly elitist and intolerant, both traits quickly surfacing in the case of Tawni Angel.

They searched through her Facebook pages, found out that she liked to shoot guns, that she didn’t agree with President Obama’s immigration policies, that she voices strong opinions in a way they thought offensive. And worse yet, that she drank vodka. Her messages were copied and sent to city council members without her knowledge or any chance to see the charges or to reply.

How could such a racist and bigoted person, said the activists, how could someone who liked guns and opposed the liberalization of immigration and who drank vodka possibly be trusted to be around the children of Santa Monica? She was not, they wrote, the kind of person “we” wanted around our children, not the right example for them. Beyond being an animal abuser and dangerous bigot, they whispered, Tawni Angel was probably an alcoholic and a person who did not respect the ethnicity of other people. They thought the council members should know.

Thus, Tawni Angel, who had operated her farm and lived with her animals and run her business lawfully, successfully and peacefully was now, at the word of a handful of people who knew nothing about ponies or the real needs of animals, accused of animal cruelty and abuse, alcoholism, of being a menacing gun nut, and of committing racist and ethnic slurs. She was not only an abuser of ponies, but was no longer fit to even be around the children of Santa Monica.

The council members did want to know. Although her neighbors and many friends wrote letters and signed petitions – hundreds of them – testifying that Tawni Angel was a loving mother and wife and loved her animals and cared for them well – the council members heard enough. They scheduled a vote on Tawni Angel’s contract without telling her and canceled it late at night, in great confusion.  They did not want someone who had been accused of animal abuse working in their farmer’s market, they did not want someone who shot off guns and drank vodka and disagreed with their politics anywhere around.

In this, the city council of this community – it claims to be progressive – became a kangaroo court, and that is also a definition worth pondering in the case of Tawni Angel:

According to Wickipedia, “a kangaroo court is a judicial tribunal or assembly that blatantly disregards recognized standards of law or justice, and often carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides. Merriam-Webster defines it as a “mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted.”

The definition could hardly fit the Santa Monica City Council proceedings any better. Tawni Angel, who was accused of everything and convicted of nothing, was found guilty, a vote for Alice’s White Rabbit. Her contract with the city was revoked, as of next May.

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It is important to understand that this case is not about animals, just as the New York Carriage Horse controversy is not really about horses. While Tawni Angel’s life is threatened and damaged, the life of a single animal was not saved or improved after months of protests, controversy and fruitless investigation. Increasingly, it appears that the animal rights movement – of which I have long been a supporter – has degenerated into a community that attacks the lives of people rather than improve the rights or lives of animals.

The thing is, no one came to Tawni Angel and said the horses needed more room, a better space or shelter, could the city provide it? No one suggested ways to make the horses even happier and more comfortable, even though every expert said they were both. No behaviorists, trainers or horse lovers were consulted by the activists or invited to come and see, no outside advice was sought.

No city official brought her complaints and suggestions and asked her what she thought of them. And there was no accusation, really, for her to answer. She had done nothing wrong. She was not accused of any wrongdoing, none of the investigators who came to inspect her ponies found any kind of abuse. She was not guilty of abuse by any accepted definition, but she was accused of it every single day, on the Internet, in the market, through signs and e-mails and petitions and interviews.

When I was a young reporter, my tutor and mentor, old Jack Boucher, a veteran of many years and a lot of whiskey and vodka, told me I always had to be careful in my reporting about passing on accusations that could not be proven or substantiated.”Shit stinks, kid,” he told me, “once it gets on people it may never come off.”  He warned me to be careful about people’s reputations, once damaged, they were hard to restore. Reporting has changed, reporters seemed happy to pass on unfiltered or investigated allegations about Tawni Angel, they were online and in the papers every day for months, you can Google them and see them being repeated today.

Shit does stink, and false accusations stink all the more.

Abuse is a crime, it is not an opinion or an argument. False accusations of abuse, just like false accusations of child molestation, are a libel, a stain and a stink that innocent people will fight all of their lives to get off. Tawni Angel, an innocent person who has been accused of no crime, has broken no law,  violated no contract or regulation, faces the ruin of years of hard work, the loss of her sustenance and livelihood, and she may have to seek new homes for her safe and well-cared for ponies, if they can be found in difficult times for horses. The very real possibility that people who love animals and want to see and ride ponies will never come near her, or hire her, or trust her again.

Because abuse is a crime, the people who accuse other people of it falsely ought to be held responsible for their cruel words and for the awful damage they do. To me, ruining a blameless person’s life in the name of loving animals is the real crime.

And the question for all of us, animal lovers or not, is this: Does the law mean anything? If we obey the law and follow the laws, and if the people who enforce the laws state clearly that we are innocent of wrongdoing, can we still be wrongly and endlessly persecuted as if we were criminals? And if this is so, what is the difference between criminals and us?

Do we really wish us to live in a culture where laws have no meaning and expertise and knowledge is irrelevant? Do we wish people who have nothing but contempt for laws or truth or the welfare and reputation of a human being to decide the fate of the animals left in our world?

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Tawni Angel e-mailed me last night to thank all of you for the support and love you are showing to her. “Oh, my goodness,” she wrote, “you alone have made this national news. You have readers in Canada and Australia sending me support and love not to mention the hundreds of folks in Florida, Vermont, Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota and on and on and on and on! Words cannot express my gratitude…your beautiful way of writing has inspired so many animal lovers and really given me the emotional boost I was needing. I really hope I have the opportunity to thank you in person and give you a huge hug! My family, including my animals, can’t thank you enough.” You can contact Tawni Angel at [email protected]

I was happy to get that message from Tawni Angel, I think I need to get out to Santa Monica if I can figure out how to do it, and see those animals and get that hug. I quoted her message to thank you for your support and to let you know that it has real meaning for her. I believe Tawni is the very opposite of a criminal. She is an ordinary human being called upon to find her strength and act like a hero. She is hurt and frightened, she is rising to it.

Tawni Angel’s Struggle: Not A Left-Right Thing, A Right And Wrong Thing.

Tawni Angel: Then, They Came For The Ponies.

 

Tawni Angel  is the latest victim of the hysteria against people who work and live with animals. She is in trouble. She faces the loss of her business and her animals as well as her  reputation due to an  ignorant and demonstrably false attack by people who call themselves animal rights activists but who seen to know nothing about animals or their needs.

She has been banned in precisely the same way the mayor of New York City and the so-called animal rights activists there seeks to ban the carriage horses. She has decided to fight back, for her rights, her way of life, her reputation, her animals, her sustenance and property. I believe she is also fighting for me, for my border collie, my donkey, my right to live with animals.

I first wrote about her several months ago, it was a piece called “Then, They Came For The Ponies.” It was sadly prescient. They did come for the ponies, and I am sad to say they will not stop there. If they can do this to Tawni Angel, they can do it to you and to me.

Angel was not seeking fame or notoriety, she loved her life and was grateful for it and worked very hard and honestly to get it. But it has been taken away from her, in the most unjust way.

So she has become a pioneer, perhaps even a hero, in the new social movement to save animals, to keep them in our world, and to define their rights and ours in a rational, loving and humane way. I don’t know her, and have not seen her ponies for myself, as I was able to do with the New York carriage horses. But I know many people who do know her, whose children have ridden her ponies.  And I have seen much evidence in support of her. Many children wrote to me trying to save her and their pony rides. If Angel is ultimately driven away, these children – like the children who love the New York horses –  will not likely get to ride ponies again or even see one.

I hope to meet Angel, to see her farm, to see her ponies, if she is able to keep them. She is a victim of an awful injustice, but she is standing in her truth, and in so doing, standing for everyone who loves animals and wishes for them to have a future in our world.

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I received an announcement late last night that Angel, the owner of Tawnis Ponies and Petting Farm, Inc., has filed a defamation lawsuit in California Superior Court against animal rights activists who accused her of animal abuse earlier this year and who badgered the Santa Monica City Council into canceling Angel’s pony rides for children, held at the city’s farmer’s market. Suddenly, there was this idea  that it was cruel abuse for ponies to give rides to children.  The council action deprived Angel of her means of making a living, and damaged her reputation. No one wants to do business with an animal owner accused of cruelty and abuse, even if the charges have been proven to be totally false.

The assault on her pony rides has also threatened the life and future of her ponies (most rescue animals) who may find themselves in urgent need of hard-to-find new homes.

Angel and her ponies had been inspected at least three times last year by police and veterinarians and no evidence was found of any kind of abuse of mistreatment of her ponies. The stomach sinks a bit.  Another person targeted who has done no wrong and committed no crime, more animals banished from contact with human beings who want and desperately need to see them, more cruelty to people in the name of animal rights. If the Santa Monica council members were awake, they would give Angel an award for keeping these animals in our consciousness and near our children. That would be a truly progressive act.

In America, the movement that claims to speak for the rights of animals often has no idea any longer about what they are like or need. They are  seeking to redefine the very meaning of abuse outside of the law or any reasoned legal, medical, expert or social convention. They are increasingly cruel and abusive to human beings.The very lives of working animals depend on their finding work with humans, those that don’t are vanishing from our world at a horrifying pace. Last month, the World Wildlife Federation reported that half of the animals on the earth had vanished since 1970. People who believe in the rights of animals ought to first and foremost fight for them to stay alive and in our world.

Every cared-for animal we keep among us is precious, even sacred.  But the movement that calls itself by the name of “animal rights” is removing and killing many and saving few.

You can follow this story for yourself, Google will take you there. Angel’s case is a classic example of the twisted morality of the contemporary animal rights movement: endangering animals in order to save them, driving them away from populated areas and the very people who might keep them alive. This is a movement that has no vision for protecting the rights of animals or the people who keep them. What happened to Angel is yet another travesty in the increasingly disconnected, Stalinist culture that goes by the name of animal rights.

The scenario is ritualistic,   sadly familiar now, at least to me, a supporter of animal rights and someone who thinks of himself as progressive.  Someone chooses a life with animals, a way to work with them, pay for their care and earn a living. Often they are following in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents, they have chosen work they love and a way of life. Suddenly, and usually without warning or any kind of due process, they are accused of criminal behavior – animal abuse and cruelty, greed and callousness. These people rarely have the money or resources to fight back against well-funded organizations who seem to mostly target the weak.

Fearless and ignorant politicians are panicked, and they have to choose between fighting for their lives at great expensive and trauma or giving up their animals, who often end up homeless or sent to slaughter.

Politicians, as politicians will, run to hide in their closets. Innocent people  – almost always without the means or know-how to defend themselves – face the loss of freedom, their way of life, their reputations and their property without cause or do process, and this in the name of loving animals and progressive politics.

Angel started her business in 2003, she loves animals and especially enjoyed offering pony rides to children who rarely, if ever, get to see animals in their lives in their urban environment. Marcy Winograd, a former congressional candidate and someone who calls herself an animal rights activist, decided it was “torture” for ponies to be forced to give rides to children at the farmer’s market. She cited no evidence for this theory, no trainers, behaviorists, veterinarians. She simply decided it was so.

“There, every Sunday, six ponies – some of them dragging their feet, having trouble walking – are tethered to a metal bar and forced to plod for hours in tiny circles on hard hot cement, while bands, often loud, blare next to the ponies’ sensitive ears,” Winograd wrote in a statement. More than a thousand people signed petitions in support of Angel and her ponies and petting zoo. Winograd posted photos online, claiming to show that the ponies also had cracked hooves. Investigators found no evidence of cracked hooves.

She also wrote in her letters and petitions to the City Council that it was cruel and abusive for ponies to be used to provide entertainment to children.
The Santa Monica City Council initiated at least three separate investigations into the treatment of the ponies, and all three found the animals were healthy and well cared for. Angel and her husband own a five-acre farm and – according to all independent accounts – scrupulously care for their animals, the ponies run free all week when they are not giving rides to children or going to birthday parties. Giving rides is the way Angel supports her farm and cares for her animals. Without that revenue – she lives week to week, like most animal lovers, and she may not be able to keep them. That is perilous for the ponies, who will face a world where 155,000 horses are slaughtered each year in Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses.

The conflict has many echoes of the controversy over the carriage horses in New York. Time after time, the police, regulators, health inspectors and veterinarians have founded the horses to be content, safe and healthy – none has found any sign of abuse of mistreatment, yet reality rarely seems to intrude on the people seeking to ban the horses.

It is the story now familiar to many thousands of animal people across the country. People who know and love animals have watched in shock and growing unease as the animal rights movement has run amok, trampling both on the true rights of animals and the rights of people. Almost invariably, the accusations are made by people with no understanding of animals and their needs, and no understanding of what abuse even is. Animals are disappearing from farms, circuses, Hollywood movie sets, farmer’s markets, private homes. Where do the animal rights people think all of these animals go?

On Sunday July 13, Angel’s husband, Jason Nester, called 911 to report that a group of protestors were blocking the sidewalk at the farmer’s market, protesting the pony rides. Sgt. Mike Graham, a former horse owner and the former supervisor of the Santa Monica Police Department’s Animal Control Unit, was sent to inspect the pony rides and look for evidence of animal abuse.

Upon arrival, Sgt. Graham said he was approached by Winograd and several demonstrators, who immediately began questioning him about what he saw, and asked if the horses were in the sun, drinking water, and free to move about the area.

Last night, I got hold of Sgt. Graham’s police report, these are his own words:

“I examined the ride set-up. The horses appeared in to be in good condition – their body weight appeared normal, their fur was clean and brushed, their manes and tails were brushed and healthy, the ground around them was clean and evenly flat, they walked on sawdust shavings, and there was no visible urine or feces. The equipment – saddles, bridles, and (thick) pads were in good condition. The horses were “quiet” and well behaved. I saw nothing to make me believe the horses were ill-treated, unhealthy, malnourished, injured, or in discomfort. The horses did not appear hot, were not sweating, and were on a timed (30 minute alarm,) water-break schedule.

I made one of the most wonderful and gratifying short trips in my life this afternoon, I drove over to George Forss’s gallery, found him in his darkroom/bathroom preparing to iron a gorgeous photograph that had been soaking in a tank and drying on a clothesline hanging from his ancient bathroom ceiling (I always think of the laboratory in Young Frankenstein when I visit George.) I came with good and exciting news.

The purpose of my trip to see George was to bring him a certified check for $8,200 that a donor who wishes to be anonymous decided to send him to match the goal he had set for his Kickstarter Project “The Way We Were,” which has become something of a sensation in its three days of existence, raising more than $11,500 dollars. To this he can now add another $8,200, his funding goal. And there are 27 more days to go for his project. George asked for the lowest amount possible to publish his book, he can use every other penny he gets. Last year, he struggled with a chronic heart ailment, he has no health insurance or pension of any kind. And he never rests.

The donor wished to remain a secret until George had met his funding goal – she didn’t want to deter anyone else from contributing – and wishes to remain anonymous because she wants no thanks, attaches no strings and always tries to help worthy people when the she can.

The donor e-mailed me on Friday and I knew right away she was genuine and sincere, it was clear from her message. She is thoughtful and sensitive, she attached a beautiful two-page letter to George to her check: “I asked Jon to be the middleman in this situation because I felt he would be able to explain it to you rather than a check showing up unexpectedly in your mailbox. He knows I am sincere. I hope you know that now too.” I am here to support you, George, she added, she said he was free to use the money in any way he saw fit.

The donor wrote that George’s work and his life touches her heart. “It is historically important as art and as documentation of a time that we won’t be able to recapture except through your photographs.” She wrote that she was also touched by George’s qualities as a man. “Your dedication to your family and your partner gives me hope for humanity. Your commitment to your faith gives me hope.”

It was an overwhelming thing for me to see that my writing about George captured his genius and good heart so well, that others could see in my photographs and writing what I saw from the first moment I met George. His generous spirit and brilliant soul emerges despite the greatest odds and the darkness and suffering that has sometimes  cast shadows his life. He accepts life with grace and love, I have never heard him complain about it or speak poorly of his life,  the creative spark shines brightly in him.

The check arrived today, I told George a check was coming from an anonymous donor but I didn’t tell him the amount or, of course, the identity of the donor. He always tries to figure things out, he called me several times this morning throwing names at me – George is an intuitive, he will eventually figure it out – but he won’t hear the name from me or Maria. I drove over to George’s gallery, found him in his darkroom where he has been busy all day getting to work on “The Way We Were.”

“It’s the candyman!,” I shouted, through the darkroom door, “get out here, crazy man, and face your destiny!”

He came out into the light, blinking. I handed him the check and the letter, I took out my camera, I promised the donor I would get a photograph of George receiving this check. George’s mouth opened, his jaw dropped. “This is for the whole amount,” he said softly, disbelieving. George processes things differently than most people, he is so articulate about photography and his work, he struggles sometimes to articulate how he feels, but I could see it in his moist eyes and the gleam that surfaced so brightly. He said he couldn’t make sense of this week, impossible dreams coming true each day. “I would pinch myself,” he said, “but I’m afraid I’ll wake up.”

Time to think about buying a computer, I said, so you can communicate with all of the people sending you money and buying your work this week. No need to rummage in trash cans and build another one.

“Why would someone do that?,” he asked quietly, then he said “wow, wow, wow, wow,” as the implications of this began to dawn on him. George’s hard life had just changed, his work would be seen, shared. For many years, people have told George he wasn’t famous anymore, his time had passed, his kind of photography was no longer in vogue, he needed to let other people try to figure out how to sell his work.

I have never scolded George or told him what to do, but I did give him a short lecture today. “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t sell  your work again,” I told him in his darkroom this morning. “You learned this week that people see the beauty of your work, they want to own it, buy it, it doesn’t matter if you are famous or not, it matters what you pull out of that tank and hang on your clothesline to dry.”  Look at this letter, I said this afternoon, look what somebody thinks of you. George looked at me as he often does when I say something he doesn’t quite know how to respond, he changed the subject and talked about a photo he took here or there, the lessons he learned. Often when George is anxious, he brings up the aiiens, talks about their messages to him. He was quieter today. So far, and to my surprise, he hasn’t credited the aliens with the success of his Kickstarter project.

He did launch one of his old stories, about a crazy man who taught him archival printing in the basement of his Brooklyn house.

“Oh,” he said. “oh,” as I finished my brief lecture. But he heard me, I could tell, he was going over it.

“Go in peace, George, with a smile,” the donor wrote at the end of her letter, “and just be you. Its time for your photos to be seen by a world that is now willing to open its eyes to what you have captured and continue to capture. Your eyes see for the rest of us.”

I am going to talk to this angel tonight or tomorrow – she is shy and quiet, sounds like a writer to me – and thank her for her generosity and sensitivity. I want to thank her for her contribution to George’s work and also for giving one of the happiest and most joyful trips of my life, one that reaffirmed once more that life is good, people are good, that genius  and creativity will triumph against the greatest odds.