Horses are Christina Hansen’s life, she drives for two stables (she taught history and drove carriages in Philadelphia), it is difficult to process the intensity and frequency of the abuse the carriage drivers say they receive when they take their horses to the park. People demonstrate, scream insults, wave placards in front of the horses to frighten them, and sing all kinds of chants.
Now, she is working to help the Carriage Horse owners and drivers fight back against the very powerful forces in New York seeking to eliminate their work.
One is: “Heartless tourists! LEAVE TOWN!”
“Greedy tourists! LEAVE TOWN!”
“Heartless drivers! LEAVE TOWN!
“Animal abusers! LEAVE TOWN”
The drivers all have horror stories of being yelled at followed, called names, been sent threatening e-mails.
One can honestly and earnestly debate and disagree about whether the horses should be in Central Park or whether their safety or working conditions could be improved, but there is something that feels very wrong about the cruelty and hysteria surrounding this issue, it feels so much more like a mob than a reasoned discussion. And this mob has real estate developers, screaming and angry people acting in the name of loving animals, and a mayor and City Council President. That alone is enough for me to side with the carriage drivers, I have never seen a mob on the right side of anything.
If you see the pain in these people’s eyes as they relate these horror stories of human abuse and cruelty, it reminds me that animal rights are important, animals desperately need advocates to call attention to their plight and fight for their rightful place in the world, it is theirs as well as ours. Yet I have to be honest, I have never seen a happy animal in the care of an angry person, and the people screaming at the carriage riders are not advancing the cause of animals, they are making the very idea of animal rights synonymous with rage, rigidity and intimidation. That does not help animals.
I believe it is not possible to love animals and hate people, one leads to the other, is part and parcel of the other. We are connected, if you can abuse people, you can abuse animals, and vice versa. They are the same thing, one flows from the other, if one is wrong, the other is wrong. Animals have helped me learn how to love people, to open up to them. By learning how to love them, they have helped me to love human beings. Watching Christina with the horses in the stable, I can say to animal lovers, we all know what another one looks like, she might be right or wrong in her views – I have to say I like her views – but she loves her horses very much, it is simply wrong to scream insults at her and others in the street for standing up for what they believe in, and anyone who loves animals has a stake in arguing against that kind of brute reasoning.
Animals deserve better, so do their rights, somehow we have to take the idea of animal rights back and give them to the people who truly believe in them..