There were two significant milestones yesterday in the deepening struggle over the future of animals in America: who gets to speak for them and decide their fate. They both suggest a dramatic change in public attitudes about the future of animals in our world and growing unease over the tactics and ideology of the movement that claims to speak for animals and their rights.
In New York City, after a bruising and year-long political struggle that has the mayor and people who call themselves animal rights activists pitted against the New York Carriage horses, owners and drivers, a new poll by the most respected polling firm in New York City reports that a record 63 per cent of New Yorkers opposes the mayor’s proposed ban on the carriage trade, and only 27 people of the city’s population support it.
That is a stunning statistic after years of relentless and increasingly personal and ugly attacks on the horse owners and drivers, and the many claims that the horses are mistreated, overworked, neglected, poorly fed and dangerous on city streets.
A tiny but loud and lavishly-funded group of people have held press conference after press conference, accused the carriage trade of every kind of brutality and neglect, made many claims that have not been substantiated, drawn the city’s mayor to their cause, and at the end of the year, been utterly rejected. Many more people in the city support the horses today than did at the beginning of the year. All three newspapers oppose the horse ban, and the issue has united the Chamber Of Commerce and the Teamsters, two groups rarely on the same side.
The support for keeping the horses in the city was nearly universal, it included every age and ethnic and gender and racial grouping in New York. New York is the country’s biggest city and a major stage upon which to act out the insistence of animal rights groups that domesticated animals like horses cannot live among people any longer, but must be isolated on private farms and rescue preserves.
To me, the poll was a stinging repudiation of the tactics and ideology of the animal rights movement. The groups in New York City seeking the ban have spent millions of dollars on political donations, websites, marketing and advertising campaigns against the carriage trade (they are credited with helping elect the new mayor) – and a half million dollars alone on building a prototype of an ugly vintage electric car they claim is more eco-friendlly than a horse.
It is disheartening to think how many animals might have been saved or helped with that money.
At the end of the day, they have persuaded absolutely no one and alienated many with their cruel and often disturbing demonstrations and claims.
In Santa Monica, Tawni Angel, who owns a small farm and petting zoo and has given pony rides to children at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market for a decade is fighting back against a handful of Santa Monica residents who also call themselves supporters of animal rights and who panicked the Santa Monica City Council into canceling her contract with the farmer’s market. In May, she faces the loss of her primary income and will have to seek new homes for her animals.
The residents said it was “torture” and abuse to force ponies to give rides to children. They said she gave the ponies dirty water and make them work in extreme heat. Three separate police and veterinary investigations found the charges were false and that the ponies were healthy and well cared for.
This is eerily familiar to the carriage trade in New York and to many thousands of farmers, circus owners, county fair and market operators, researchers and students around the country. In recent years, animal rights groups have simply redefined what abuse is, applying it in so scattershot and unknowing a way as to deprive it of it’s horrific meaning. Abuse is a crime, not an argument or opinion, and it speaks to the mistreating animals to the point of grievous injury or death. Tawni Angel’s ponies were not abused.
The group seeking to remove the ponies from the market repeatedly cited a petition they had circulated that had been signed by 1,451 people from all over the U.S. and the world over an eight month period. On Monday, November 17 at 5 p.m., Tawni Ponies started their own petition on change.org. Yesterday, the petition had 1,186 signatures in several days in support of Tawni Angel. She is seeking 1,314 additional signatures. The petition asks the Santa Monica City Council to reconsider their decision to ban all animal activities in the market as of next May.
Tawni Angel was not only accused of animal cruelty, torture and abuse but her personal life and social media pages were searched for private information that might harm her cause and reputation. The people who called themselves animal rights activists wrote private messages to City Council members reporting that Angel drank vodka, liked to shoot guns, and opposed President Obama’s immigration policies. It was not, they suggested, appropriate for her to be near the city’s children.
In an Orwellian twist familiar to many animal lovers, Tawni Angel was accused of many things, found innocent of all of them, and then ultimately found guilty and punished because the “controversy” was upsetting the feckless City Council members. To me, this is not a left-right thing, but a right-wrong thing, some things are not really gray, they are quite black-and-white. No animal will be helped by the long campaign against Tawni Angel, many may pay for their lives. It is not an easy thing to find a good home for a horse or pony at a time when 155,000 horses a year are sent to slaughter in Canada and Mexico. The people who claim to speak for the rights of animals do not seem to know that the New York Carriage horses and Tawni Angel’s ponies are among the luckiest animals in the world. They are not the ones who need rescuing.
The New York Carriage Horses, it turns out, are powerful spirits, and so is Tawni Angel. Both have awakened people who care about animals and who also care about right or wrong to the growing abuses of people and their freedom and well-being committed in the name of animal rights. The New York Carriage horse controversy has sparked a new paradigm, a new kind of social movement that believes animals – especially working animals – have the need and the right to live and work with people. And that a movement that treats people cruelly and unfairly cannot speak well for the future of animals.
We seek a humane and wiser understanding of animals, one that promotes dignity and respect for animals and the people who own them and seeks ways of keeping animals and people together in a troubled and threatened world.
That animals, people and government must all work together to keep animals safe and alive and present in the lives of people and children. I hope Tawni Angel gets her signatures and moves forward with her defamation suit against the people who accused her so wrongly and without any evidence of ugly crimes. The carriage trade has also chosen to stand and fight. They have my support, I hope they will have yours.
You can sign her petition here.