Last year, the Mayor of New York City and his supporters in the animal rights movement failed twice in their expensive and often cruel campaign to ban the New York Carriage Horses from the city. The campaign was based on the increasingly controversial and debunked notion that it is somehow cruel for working animals – dogs, horses, ponies, all elephants – to work.
The most experienced trainers and equine veterinarians in America were nearly unanimous in saying the New York Carriage Horses are among the luckiest animals in the world, they are loved, content and well cared for. Still, animal rights organizations persisted in their relentless assaults – many of them physical – on the carriage trader, the drivers and owners.
We know now that the horses are not abused, they are the most regulated and monitored working animals anywhere, five different cities agencies participate in regular checks and tests as to their well being.
Still, the attacks on the carriage trade continue. An animal rights activist punched a carriage driver as he was trying to load some children into his carriage. A carriage horses supporter was recently arrested on absurd charges that she grabbed a pamphlet from a vegan protester. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind that the horses are suffering in their light work in the city.
Today, a new page was launched on Facebook called “Friends Of The New York City Carriage Horses,” a place where supporters can gather and where animal lovers can learn the truth about the New York Carriage Horses.
In America, the truth is now under fire as never before, facts don’t matter, fake news and wildly false accusations are everywhere, people invent their own reality in the name of justice. Lies are not just. In New York, the animal rights movement has abandoned facts and truth, but the truth is ultimately more powerful than any lie. I will always believe that.
I know the people who are publishing this page, and the truth and facts live there. Check it out.
Everywhere in our world, animals are disappearing.
Here in our largest city, hard-working people, most with a long tradition of working with animals, have found a way to keep these magnificent animals among us in a humane and much loved way. Please consider supporting the carriage horses, liking their new page and joining them in what is by now a heroic and stunningly successful campaign to keep these working animals in our world.
Several years ago, a retired carriage horse driver named Eva Hughes, a warrior for the horses, told me that the carriage horses were triggering a new social awakening, changing the narrative that is so mindlessly driving working animals away from people, out of sight and out of our world. You can support this new awakening.
We need a new and wiser understanding of animals if we are to save them. The animal rights movement has failed to grasp the real dangers facing animals like the carriage horses – it is not staying in our sight and consciousness, it is being taken away. They are in good hands.
Many people seek to ban the work of working animals, but very few bother to wonder what will become of them when their work is gone. The answer is readily available, most die and are never again seen by human beings. There is no place for Asian elephants, 2,000 pound draft horses, ponies in farmers markets to go when they are taken away.
And there is absolutely no evidence of any kind that work is abuse for these animals or that they are being mistreated or neglected.
More than 200 draft horse have been saved from rescue farms and slaughterhouses by this new social awakening. But their struggle to survive is far from over. The carriage drivers have suffered greatly in recent years, they need all of the support they can get. So do the horses. If you love animals, please consider helping to save them. Please check out this important new page if you wish, it is about more than the carriage horses, it is about keeping animals in our world and among us.
It is quite clear by now to any rational observer that there was never any reason to ban the New York Carriage Horses from the city, there has never been any evidence that the horses are abused, or suffer in any way from working and living in New York City. There is no longer any doubt that here was never any justification for the cruel, unjust and continuing persecution of the carriage drivers and medallion holders.
In all of this year (and last) there was not a single official allegation of abuse or cruelty or neglect lodged or proven against a single carriage driver, according to the New York City Police Department, which monitors the well-being of the more than 200 carriage horses at the behest and direction of a hostile mayor and city government that would dearly love a reason to justify their outrageous persecution of the carriage trade.
A former carriage driver named Eva Hughes told me on one of my first visits to the carriage stables in New York that the horses were sparking a new social awakening about animals, a new narrative for our work with them and their survival. She was prophetic.
In my book Talking To Animals, out next Spring from Simon and Schuster, there is a long chapter about the New York Carriage Horses, I wrote about them for nearly two years before the disturbing, and often dishonest effort by the animal rights movement to destroy the work and lives of the horses and drivers failed so spectacularly.
As famed horse trainer Buck Brannaman wrote of the carriage horses, they are among the luckiest horses in the world.
The book calls for a new and wiser understanding of animals than we currently seem to have, and includes stories of my own efforts to communicate with animals and listen to them. The carriage horses are, to me, the heart of the argument. The horses could always have told us they were content and well cared for, if we only knew how to listen. Thankfully, some people did:
Here is a short excerpt from that chapter: “Our western culture has forgotten the long and precious history that people and animals have. If the horses leave, they will take the wind and rain with them. And much of the magic…
When someone asks me what the carriage horse controversy is truly about I say it isn’t about real estate or animal welfare or traffic safety. It’s about an attitude of the heart. The animals need us. Their most elemental right is the right to survive on the earth, and our most elemental task is to understand them well enough to know how to make that happen. If we ask them, they will tell us.”
Talking To Animals: How We Can Understand Them And They Can Understand Us, will be published next May. It can be pre-ordered now through Battenkill Books, my local independent bookstore. People who order the book through Battenkill will receive a signed and personalized book, a free tote-bag in support of independent bookstores, and also a chance to win a potholder or a Maria-designed Bedlam Farm tote-bag.
Battenkill takes credit cards and Paypal, and they are almost shockingly nice.You can pre-order here.
The Carriage Horse controversy in New York has always spoken to me of the need for a new and wiser and more truthful understanding of animals. Since World War II, 90 per cent of Americans have left farms and rural life – and the world of domesticated animals – to work and live in cities, the world of domesticated pets.
They have lost touch with the natural world, and with the world of animals.
There are two truths in conflict in New York. One view sees the horses as helpless, unable to speak in any way, at the mercy of utterly immoral and dishonest human beings.
The other truth sees then as healthy, content and unusually well cared for. The conflict is about which truth prevails. It is significant that the first truth is believed – without question or contradiction – by the city’s mayor. Two thirds of the city’s residents believe the second truth.
The people in New York City who are seeking to cannibalize the carriage trade and drive the horses out of New York believe that the horses are dumb, helpless and vulnerable. They believe (most, not all of them) that it is cruel for horses to pull carriages and that it is especially inhuman for horses to be working in New York City, going to and from their work on crowded and congested streets and breathing air polluted by cars. Given the choice of reducing the number of cars in the city, or reducing the number of horses, he city is seeking to move a certain number of horses into new stables in Central Park and banning them from the rest of the city forever.
If you have followed the controversy for any length of time, or seen the City Council hearings on the fate of the horses last Friday, you will have seen two strikingly different versions of truth regarding the horses. People may be forgiven for being confused, they hear the horses are safe and healthy and then read horror story after horror story online and in press conferences of horses being abused, tortured, worked to death. In our world, truth is elusive, facts seem to belong to the loudest voices sometimes, not necessarily the most truthful.
I have been living with animals, studying them, writing about them, reading about them, talking to trainers and behaviorists and veterinarians, written nearly a dozen books about them over the course of more than 15 years. I am by no means the most knowledgeable person about horses or any other animal, but I am aware of those who are knowledgeable and studied them closely. I believe in science, I believe in the value and integrity of veterinary care, I devour the books and journals of behaviorists and biologists and researchers and animal lovers.
It is my work, and to some extent, my life.
I can’t tell you what to believe or who to believe, I don’t do that. I can only tell you what I believe, and you must transcend all of the arguments and bluster and outrage and accusation and corruption and self-interest to rise above it and make up your own mind. That is the job of the citizen or the animal lover, that is how it’s supposed to work.
I do not believe the horses are stupid, weak or vulnerable. Horses have lived and worked with humans for thousands of years. I have been to the New York stables a dozen times to see for myself, I have read the reports of scores of well-qualified vets and trainers who have done the same. I know many horse lovers and talk with them often. I have a horse living on my farm, the second one to live here.
The animal rights movement often claims to speak for the horses. But horses can very clearly speak for themselves, just not in our words. It is very simple to spot a depressed or sick horse. You can tell by the coat, their eyes, their tail, the way they hold their head, they noises they make, the way they eat their food, hold their ears, the way they relate to people and being touched. It is not a sign of sadness for a horse to lower his head, it is a sign of calm.
It is not a sign of lameness for a horse to life – cock – a rear leg. It is a sign of safety and contentment. Abused and depressed animals are quite easy to recognize. So are healthy and well cared for animals. The much-monitored and regulated carriage trade has every reason in the world to keep their horses healthy and content, they have no reason to abuse them.
Working horses are not harassed or discouraged or exhausted by work. Like my border collies, they live to work, it is bred in their genes. They live to work with people and attach to them powerfully. Except in the most extreme weather conditions, it is never depressing or pitiful for working horses to work, or for working dogs or elephants to work. Every trainer will tell you that the cruelty comes when horses are ignored or abandoned on farms or rescue facilities, left to do nothing but eat and drop manure. Those are the ones to pity.
(For the record, so are the nine billion animals suffering in vast industrial factory farms, in many cases in horrible conditions. The demonstrators in New York might do well to take a weekend off from harassing the children riding in the carriages and bus on up to a factory farm and draw attention to the animals who really are being abused, do not get fresh food five weeks of vacation, exercise, attention and loving care.)
This idea of the horses as being pitiful and suffering is a human projection of our own needs and desires onto animals. We do it all of the time, especially to dogs. More than 300,000 dogs are now on daily medication for anxiety and depression, our latest mass projection of our human emotional garbage onto them. Now, we want to do it to the horses, moving them into lifeless ghettos without purpose or sending them to slaughter so we can feel good about ourselves. They are not us, they are not like us. That is the new understanding we need to face and fight for.
Since most of us know nothing about horses or other domesticated animals any longer, and they can’t speak to us in words, it is the simplest thing for us to project our own hurts and fears and emotions onto them. When the animal rights people speak of the horses, it is always to describe them as sad and suffering, helpless and victimized. When the speak of the carriage drivers, it is always to describe them in the most vulgar and ugly ways – drunks, thugs, abusers, torturers, greedy and uncaring, scheming and dishonest.
This is the first step in the de-humanization process, make the victims so despised and vilified it becomes easy to destroy and abuse them.
In this version of the horse is always suffering, the person is always immoral and reprehensible. The horses are always being injured and maimed and killed, the people who own them are always hiding it, no matter what they say, or the police say, or the inspectors say. This truth is absolute and unwavering.
There is no balance or nuance, a warning sign for those sincerely seeking truth. There are always greys, of course, the world is not black and white. Every horse is not adored, every carriage driver is not a saint. Things happen, to people and to horses – sickness, death, greed and bad fortune. It is not the whole truth, it is not the point. In New York, it seems clear the horses fear much better than many people. This is the toll on our lives, this is the toll for their lives.
In New York, 55,000 people have no homes. In New York, every horse has food and shelter. Every horse has a home.
Most horses in nature, or on farms live hard and short lives. Horses in the wild – there are virtually no horses left in the wild – suffer terribly from vicious competition within the herd, diseases, a shortage of food and water, exposure day and night to the elements, hunters, predators, injury, the complete lack of medical care. Without work, they are hunted and slaughtered. Many horses in nature are found starved to death, or ravaged by wolves, or killed by competitors in their herd. Many die of the many diseases that abound in nature, and from the absence of any care.
Horses without work are in grave peril in America. More than 160,000 were sent to often brutal slaughter in Mexico and Canada last year alone. Scores of Asian elephants will soon join them in the name of loving animals and giving them the right to die. Horses and other animals without work are without protection in our culture. A carriage horses who works in New York for five years is luckier than the tens of thousands of horses who are packed onto trailers and have nails drilled into their heads.
Horses in nature do not live longer or as long as carriage horses. There are no inspections by vets, no city regulations, no people to care for them. Working horses like the carriage horses have never lived in nature, they are too big and hungry to survive there. They have been bred to work and carry loads and pull carriages with people, they have never lived any other way and could not survive any other way.
Every horse trainer, owner, vet or behaviorist I have read about or spoken with – there are many – has told me the same thing. Working horses in the carriage trade are the lucky ones.
The horses in New York are not unsafe, none have been killed in traffic accidents in modern recorded history, four have been injured in accidents (three killed) in the past 30 years.
The mayor and the animal rights groups in New York City have chosen only to believe the First Truth, they will not consider any other: The horses can only be seen through the prism of abuse. If you talk to any of the animal right demonstrators in New York or any of the leaders of the animal rights groups, you will find that few, if any, have ever ridden a horse, or lived with animals who are not dogs or cats.
They seem drawn to emotionalizing animals and identifying them as victims, even when they are not. I can’t say without further examination what their issues are, but I can report that a psychiatrist who works with patients at Bellevue Hospital in New York and has studied the animal rights movement believes that most of the volunteers and demonstrators are so angry and dogmatic because they have suffered some kind of abuse and mistreatment in their lives and are quick to project their anger and suffering onto the horses and especially onto the mostly male carriage drivers. Invariably, they see as being evil and utterly without moral values.
“I haven’t examined the horses, I am not a vet,” she said, “but I am comfortable saying that kind of anger and rigidity is most often a symptom, not a political issue.”
So we all have a choice to make.
I have chosen the Second Truth, as have most New Yorkers, to the surprise of many: The real abuse is in removing the horses from their work and lives, not in keeping them there. The horses are happy, well-cared for and content. A hundred experts have come to New York to study them in recent years, every one of them has reached that conclusion.
That is also my conclusion, my belief. My truth.
If you really love a horse, get to know them a bit, and I believe you will see what I have seen and believe what I have come to believe: the horses belong in New York, there are among our last connections to nature, a symbol of our humanity and willingness to sacrifice cars and traffic and money for animals that have served us for thousands of years and can serve us for thousands more if we will only let them be and stop dumping our shit onto them.
I hope the City Council rejects the mayor’s proposal to remove the horses from the streets of New York and turn them into a tourists-only exhibit in Central Park, like the carousel or children’s zoo. The carriage trade is popular, well-regulated, successful and independent. I hope they stay that way, for the sake of the drivers, but also for the sake of the horses.
The carriage trade has pulled off something that is nearly unprecedented: they are keeping domesticated animals in a big city, treating them well, keeping them safe, keeping them among people who badly need to see them. And earning money, helping the environment and paying taxes, They are a powerful antidote to the greed and development that so many people say is choking the life out of New York. I believe the horses need to stay where we can all see them and know them and love them.
A sad and urgent story to report. Somewhat myopically, I thought the carriage horse fight had been won. The truth is that the effort to ban the horses was stopped, but I didn’t realize how much of a disconnected ideologue the mayor is or how little he cares about animals or the democratic process. Do not let anyone tell you he cares about people who work.
The latest news from New York could be awful news for the New York Carriage Horses, and for everyone who loves animals and wants to see and know them.Their situation is dire, the mayor is once again negotiating obsessively, secretly and in bad faith. He’s trying to ban the carriage trade without being blamed for it.
There is no deal close at hand, the carriage trade negotiators believe the idea of a stable for the horses in Central Park is a promising idea, but a fantasy.
I believe they are standing firm against this awful plan.
I quoted the Daily News the other day as saying a deal was close, that the city would build a new stables for the horses in Central park. That was inaccurate, it is not near to being close. But there is a great danger of a bill being railroaded through the City Council that would cripple the carriage trade, cost hundreds of people jobs, put many horses in danger, and close two of the city’s three stables without any certainty that a new stable will ever even be built.
It seems that if the mayor can’t kill the carriage trade outright, he wants to persuade the people who work in the trade to commit suicide.
Once again, the people who say they are for the rights of animals but are not, are close to driving away the beautiful draft horses from New York City, where they have worked and lived for hundreds of years. These horses are now in the gravest peril yet, all in the name of being saved. They are the luckiest horses in the world to be where they are, and the city seems to know it is blessed in many ways to have them. The mayor doesn’t know this, and the animal rights groups in the city have made it abundantly clear they know nothing about horses at all.
“We have no deal, we are not close to a deal,” said one person close to the negotiation. “The animal rights people are trying to make it look like a done deal. The mayor is unstable over this issue, he is obsessed with it, he is trying to ram through the City Council a bill that would essentially cut the number of licensed drivers drastically, put 150 horses out of work and in danger and restrict the trade in so many ways that we can barely function or make any money.”
The negotiators say the idea of a new stable in Central Park is what they are calling a “Trojan Horse,” essentially a trick to get council members to pass the new legislation. Humiliated by his failure to get a ban through the City Council after promising to get rid of the horses on “day one,” the mayor is simply (and secretly) trying another tack, an end run around any kind of open or democratic process.
The people in the carriage trade are fearful, angry and disheartened, they are fighting back with a proposal to introduce safe “horse lanes” from the stables to the park rather than take public land in the park. But mostly, they are fighting for time. The stables would be a wonderful solution, if the offer was real.
Person after person has described the mayor as being obsessed with the idea of destroying the carriage trade and there is growing concern that he will muscle this legislation past the City Council. He is repeatedly said to be disturbed on this subject.
NYClass, the animal rights group spearheading the effort to ban the horses, and the group that helped elect Mayor deBlasio is secretly supporting the bill that will essentially force two of the three stables into selling to hungry and very greedy real estate interests, cost scores of drivers their jobs, and keep only 75 to 77 horses in the city. They are said to be leaking the stories about a done deal, they want it to happen. I bit.
And this is without any assurance that a stable will be built in the park at all. If they can’t kill the trade with one blow, they will try and do it by a thousand cuts.
The public has overwhelmingly rejected the idea of banning the horses from the city, this new plan is a complete and arrogant rejection of their wishes. Should the public will matter to an elected mayor?
The Teamsters are fighting to retain the status quo until a stable is built and better terms can be agreed upon. It sounds grim. The mayor, say the negotiators, seems almost disturbingly obsessed with advancing the idea that these changes must occur right now, and he is hoping to rush the legislation through the City Council very soon, before the enormous support behind the horses can organize again. It is not clear if he has support for this measure in the council.
“We have no agreement,” said one member of the carriage trade, “we are being steamrolled.”
Essentially, the most important issue is this: the mayor wants to implement his program before it is really negotiated, before the new stable is built or completed or even funded. The carriage industry is expected to cannibalize itself without a new home or rational or safe work rules.
Secondly, under the new rules, the owners cannot rotate or replace their horses, no spare horses, no replacements. This will drastically reduce the number of horses available, and radically increase the workload of the surviving horses.
This is critical. This is what keeps the horses healthy, safe and profitable. This is what keeps them from overwork and exploitation, some owners have two horses, some have four or five. The restrictive new rules fly in the face of persistent complaints from the mayor and the animal rights groups that the horses are overworked. In fact, the toll on the horses will be dramatic. The quality of their work life will change immediately.
The remaining horses will have to to work more than twice is hard, more than 150 trained and able carriage horses will be sent away. None of the animal rights groups or the mayor’s office is yet willing or able to say where the horses will go or who will pay the millions of dollars it will cost to care for them. The only rationale for this rule is to cripple and weaken the carriage trade.
There are a number of good things about the mayor’s bill, but none of them really work unless and until the stables are built and the smothering new rules are softened or change. As best as I can tell, this is where we are now.
There is nothing humane about ripping the horses away from their familiar environments and human attachments. It is nightmare out in the world for horses, if there were room out there for more than 150 big draft horses, they wouldn’t be sending 160,000 horses a year to slaughter.
This is true abuse, of the horses, of the people who have cared for them. The carriage trade, almost alone in the animal world, has found a way to keep domesticated animals in the city, and keep them healthy and safe and well cared for. It defies any notion of animal rights and welfare to destroy this industry in this cruel and unnecessary way. There is nothing environmentally sane about removing horses from the city to make room for more cars and condominiums.
The irony is that the carriage trade likes the idea of the stables, and is open to negotiating a solution along those lines, but no one in the city government is willing to negotiate with them, or really deal with them at all. They have become the Orwellian “non-humans,” people considered outside of the moral community, people who don’t need to be treated with dignity, or even considered at all.
I am not a part of the negotiations, for me it is past time for the carriage trade to consider legal action that seeks to protect their rights against a government guilty of gross overreaching. The carriage trade has retained Norman Siegel, one of the best civil rights lawyers in the country. I have no idea what he is planning. Speaking only for myself, I think is time for him to come forward and address the serious civil rights issues that underlie this drama.
The mayor has refused to speak to the carriage stable owners or the drivers or meet with them. Animals rights organizations have contributed more than a million dollars to supporting his candidacy and defeating his opponents. The mayor has consistently worked with animal rights organizations but never been willing to talk to the carriage trade. The interests of the horses are not being protected.
The carriage trade has had no real representation or opportunity to negotiate for their jobs and livelihoods, and there is the perception of serious wrongdoing and corruption involved in the mayor’s truly curious obsession and involvement with the carriage horses. Here is a man who has never even owned a dog or cat, who suddenly makes removing horses from the city the major priority of his administration. A man who was given truckloads of money by a real estate developer who happens to head the animal rights group – NY Class – that has spent millions of dollars to ban the horses from the city.
You try and connect the dots.
Now, he is refusing either to budge or negotiate on these critical issues for the horses and the working people who depend on them. There is nothing progressive about his actions or the manner in which he is pursuing them. This remains a fight for anyone who loves animals, lives with them, or wishes to keep them in our lives. The fight against the horses is irrational and undemocratic. Every newspaper, major business group, working people’s party and gender, age and ethic group in the city has said again and again they want the horses to stay, and by overwhelming margins. The mayor has said again and again he doesn’t care. He is saying it again.
It would be awful to let these horses suffer and die. I hope to do everything I can to stop that. This when elected officials ought to be held accountable.
The bottom line, say the carriage horse owners and drivers, is that the mayor can choke the industry to death and remove them from their homes and base of operations without having to take the blame for banning them overtly. If you read the new law in its current form, it essentially bans the horses without admitting it to an angry public. They ought not to get away with this.
I am not an attorney but there is deep concern that real estate interests who seek to take over the stables have played a prominent role in the assault against the horses, who have been found again and again to be safe, healthy and well cared for. I hope there is some legal action to force the mayor and his dealings into the open. Here is a bill that would practically force two of the three stables to sell immediately, the third if and when the mythical stable is built. If the new rules are passed, the survivors won’t last too long either.
Civil rights also plays into the question of freedom in this story, the right of law-abiding people who have broken no laws and violated no regulations to keep their way of life and freedom of choice to pursue work that they love. The long and ugly campaign against the carriage trade is outrageous. When government overreaches, there is considerable precedent for seeking relief from the courts. The mayor seems out of control on this issue, he needs to be compelled to tell the truth and be open about what he has decided and why.
I hope they sue. I hope they drag the mayor into court and force him to tell the truth under oath about this campaign.
In the face of so much conflict and abuse of power, the meaning of victory changes almost daily. Once, victory meant leaving the horses alone. Now, it means keeping the status quo in place until it is clear what stables are being built, who will pay for them, and how many horses can be housed in them humanely while keeping this industry intact. No one will ever care for the horses more lovingly and well than the carriage trade has learned to do in recent years. They deserve support, not persecution.
The horses depend on us to keep their safe and important lives, and so do hundreds of jobs and a way of life, and the idea that animals belong with us in our every day lives, not only in private preserves, rescue farms and slaughterhouses.
This is another of those awful fights that should not be happening. The horses were not in danger, they pose no serious danger to others. But here it is.
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The vast majority of my blog readers live outside of the city, but many live in New York. I can’t tell anyone else what to do, but here is a list of members of the City Council Transportation Committee for those who wish to contact them:
A great day for working animals, for the idea of animals remaining in our world. I confess to being near tears as the mayor of New York City tucked his tail between his arrogant and elitist legs and ran from the New York Carriage Horses. I got a bunch of very lovely messages from carriage drivers, thanking me for writing about them.
I will be honest, and I am not being falsely modest, I have very little to do with this victory. The people in the carriage trade have been courageously – and very much alone – fighting for their lives for years. They remained steadfast, calm, civil and savvy. They overcame a media and literal onslaught against them, hired good lawyers – Norman Siegel and Ron Kuby and listened to them. The Teamsters Union stepped up and saved several hundred jobs and 200 horses from what almost surely would have been an awful fate. The people seeking to save them make it clear they were happy to kill them to do it.
As one political analyst wrote, the New York Daily News attached itself to the mayor’s leg and hung on, exposing one lie after another about the carriage horses. Journalism, very slow to awaken to the true meaning of this story, finally came alive, at least in one corner.
What was my role? My reporting instincts kicked in and I very much enjoyed digging out some facts and truth about this story, I think I did make a lot of people think about it who were not really thinking much about it. I was one of them. As to the impact of that, it was not very big in New York City. The mayor and the City Council are not readers of my blog, as far as I know.
When I entered the story, the carriage trade was embattled and discouraged. Nobody gave them a chance, the mayor and his millionaire buddies – this is a strange kind of populist – had made destroying them their number one priority. Liam Neeson began their comeback, using his celebrity to focus attention on the very big lie behind the mayor’s efforts to ban the horses – they were not being abused, they were content and well treated. I think just about every New Yorker understands this now.
Today, they were celebrating in their carriages. I urged each one who wrote me to plan a party. I will come. The mayor ought to be ashamed of himself, this was a low point in his tenure. He lied and lied, and never had the guts to meet with a single carriage driver and give them the dignity and decency of a face-to-face-talk.
Do not expect any wisdom or humility to infect the animal rights activists in New York City, their power is also their downfall – they can’t learn, quit, listen, or change. That is a fatal combination of flaws in cultural and civic history.
I am very proud of my role in this, but I also have no illusions about it, I was not a deciding factor in this campaign, the drivers and their representatives did an astounding job for themselves. You can speak truth to power, and you can win. They have suffered greatly, they deserve every bit of credit and glory there is in this moment.
A lot of you supported the carriage drivers and horses and I thank you. You did make a difference, your letters to the mayor were read and considered, you made hundreds, if not thousands of visits to New York to ride the carriages, I heard from so many drivers about how those visits boosted their morale and gave them strength and support.
You mattered. You are mattering again for Joshua Rockwood. I think we are in the vanguard of a new movement, a new way of understanding animals and thinking about them, a new and more humane way of keeping them in the every day world. We don’t have to ban them to give them good and safe lives, we don’t have to banish animals from the world and from their work because some have been mistreated.
And most importantly, we don’t have to use animals as a screen for battering and abusing people. That is the awful moral failing of the animal rights movement, a supposedly moral movement. It is not moral to harass innocent people, to bribe politicians to do them harm, to take away their jobs, to push animals our of our lives and into oblivion. We need a better way than that, a better understanding of animals.
The horses have sparked something larger than them, and i am proud to be writing about that.
