Greg, a horse lover from Oklahoma messaged me and asked me why I thought it was that the mayor of New York would not speak to the carriage horse drivers, negotiate or communicate with them in any way, meet with their members, lobbyists, or lawyers, invite them to his office or visit their stables. It seemed like he hated them, he said, as if it were personal.
I told him I didn’t really know what the mayor felt, lots of people speculate about it, but I am certain that if he did talk to them, he might find it difficult to hate them, he might lose heart in the blind and disturbing righteousness of his cause.
A carriage driver accompanied by his very young son approached the mayor recently at a public event and asked him why he was so determined to banish the horses. The mayor did not hesitate. He answered: “because your work is immoral.” He then turned away, not waiting for a reply. He did not explain why driving horses through Central Park – something that has been done for 150 years – or working with horses, something that has been done for thousands of years, is immoral work in New York City in 2014.
The mayor has run from the carriage drivers again and again, he will not talk with them or visit the horses. But his brief declaration to the driver and his son is perhaps his most revealing comment yet, because the mayor is correct. This is an issue of morality, it has been from the beginning.
If you know your history, it is a troubling thing for a political leader to dehumanize people, it leads almost invariably to injustice and persecution. It begins in small ways, and once people succeed in doing it, it evolves into much bigger things. History is pretty clear on that, so is today’s news. Hannah Arendt says the dehumanization of people is the true breeding ground of evil.
The leaders we love, admire and remember – Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Mandela, the Dalai Lama – did not dehumanize people, not even their worst enemies. That was the source of their greatness. In his exchange with the carriage driver, the mayor seemed very small.
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Before I met the carriage drivers, and like the man from Oklahoma, I heard a great deal about them, not a word of it good.
They had, in fact, been systematically and relentlessly dehumanized for years. They were – and are almost daily – described frequently and in many places – blogs, websites, press conferences, media stories, – as profoundly immoral: corrupt, dishonest, cruel. As thieves and greedy abusers of animals, as slave drivers. As people who rob tourists. They starve their horses, push them to overwork, put them into danger, tie them up in chains – never harnesses, lock them in cells, never stables, where they could not lie down or turn around.
The horses are slaves, we are told, the drivers force them into brute work and exploit them and deny them their true destiny to roam freely in the wild. The horses are depressed, dejected. They pine for the wilderness, for grass. They are sick, their wounds untreated, they are doomed to live unhealthy and short lives of abuse and mistreatment. People saw these stories and images for years and sent lot of money – millions of dollars. The drivers were slow to believe that anyone would accept these stories or believe them.
The people in the carriage trade, an ancient work known all over the world, stood by in anguish and confusion as their humanity was taken from them. They have been harassed, insulted, spit upon, doused with beer and soda, called murders and abusers in front of their customers and families, accused of various crimes on the Internet, almost none of which are true. They live in perpetual fear of losing their work and livelihood, their way of life, the food for their families.
I was a reporter for a long time, and I learned not to accept or embrace one dimensional descriptions of people. Not of criminals, not of police, not of women, blacks, kids, Muslims, Jews, priests, drunks, Muslims, politicians, not carriage drivers. I decided to go to New York and see the stables and talk to the carriage owners and drivers and see for myself, I was a good reporter for a long time, I love hunting for truth. In the carriage horse story, I found much truth, it was not the truth I was led to expect.
The mayor and the animal rights leaders who denounce the carriage drivers so cruelly are careful to never describe them or acknowledge them as beings capable in even small ways of pain, sadness, suffering, or compassion. They are not worthy of our concern, or the concern of society. The carriage drivers are, in the animal rights and mayoral lexicon, cartoon representations of evil, shallow portraits of cruelty, greed and corruption. They hurt animals willfully for money, and then laugh at their suffering, stuffing their pockets with gold earned from cruel abuse. You will never find a single word about them that is good in the vast archives of the New York animal rights movement, or a compassionate one from the mayor.
They are not people one needs to speak to or whose humanity one must acknowledge.
The mayor meets with all kinds of people all the time – sanitation workers, immigrants, laborers, movie stars, correction officers, community activists, ex-convicts, police officers, street vendors, and many times, animal rights activists. There is only one group in all of New York City that this progressive mayor refuses to talk to or meet with – the carriage drivers, the people who drive horses for a living.
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The carriage drivers, of course, are not other than human, they are intensely human. They are just people, like you and me.
They love their parents, they care deeply about their children, they pay their bills and their taxes, they worry about money. They talk about their mothers and grandmothers all the time, back in Ireland, in Russia.
They follow music, they love to laugh and drink together, they appreciate their horses very much as the source of their livelihood, they are always watching them, feeding them brushing them, talking to them. Some are mystics, some eclectics and spiritualists, some are working on the way to something else. Some are nicer than others. Almost all all of them love their freedom, love being outdoors, love being their own bosses in the great and beautiful park, love being around one another, love working with animals and getting paid for it, love chatting up the tourists and hearing their stories, trading them for their own.
They talk about their their wives and husbands, how they will pay for their children’s college, what they will do if they can ever retire, squawk about all of the inspectors and regulators who swarm around them. They seem to all want to have farms with animals one day, much like mine, they say. They ask me about my farm all the time, how much did it cost, how many animals, how must they be cared for? They are almost all avid readers, men and women, they always tell me of the books they’ve read, the things they’ve learned, they are full of quotes and lyrics and jokes and tales.
They are all good story tellers, it is part of their work, the drivers come from many places, but many are Irish, and no one in the world tells stories better than the Irish.
Their eyes light up when they talk about the animals. On weekends or days off, a few go and visit their retired horses on farms in New Jersey and Massachusetts and upstate New York, they bring them oats and feed and carrots, show them to their children.
They especially love regaling the people in their cabs with the stories of New York and it’s history – who shot what movie where, who gave what concert in what part of the park, where John Lennon was shot, who built what skyscraper when, what Frederick Law Olmstead had in mind when he built which bridge. They take cellphone photos of lovers and kids and tourists. I have been around animals a good long time, for much of my life and written many books about them, and I also see – it is quite apparent – that they care for their horses and would not harm them or exploit them or treat them as slaves.
Arendt says moral people are content with themselves, at peace when they look in the mirror. “Are you happy?,” I asked a carriage driver when I was in New York two weeks ago. “Do you love your life?” He looked at me for a few minutes, and he teared up very quickly and very slightly. “My grandfather loved this work. My father loved this work. I love this work. It is my wish that my son will love this work also. I have never done anything in this work or in my life to be ashamed of.”
The drivers seem tough to me, they are ferociously protective of their families, clannish and guarded. They text their families and kids while they wait for rides. They are anxious, battered by years of accusations and conflict, but they are also not running away anytime soon. They will fight for their livelihoods and their lives. “We have done nothing wrong,” Jerry told me, “we will not let them drive us off.” I should never, another driver told me, have to explain to the government that I am a good and moral person. “I have done nothing wrong. They lie about us every single day.”
If you want to know what the carriage drivers are like, go to the stables or better yet, go to the park, ask any of the drivers where Stephen, Paul and Frank are. Go and talk to them.
These three, in the photo above, are all from Ireland – Frank and Paul grew up in the same town and have been friends all of their lives, now they line up their carriages next to one another while they wait for rides in New York City, laughing and talk with the tourists and children and telling stories of the old country and their free and outdoor lives in the great park.
Stephen Malone’s parents – Jean and Paddy – came to America from Northern Ireland also and they found good lives for themselves and their families in the carriage trade. Paddy, his father, started cleaning the stables and then got his own carriage and passed on his medallion to his son. Steve chose to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a carriage driver, he loves his work and spends much of his time working to stop the movement to ban the horses from New York.
The carriage drivers are quick to laugh and smile, you can not fake warmth and humor.
You will never see an animal rights protester in New York City smile or laugh.
Can I tell you from the heart and without hesitation that every man or woman in the carriage trade is moral, doing moral work every day? No, of course not, how could I know. Some may even treat their horses poorly, as many people are not good to their dogs. Sainthood is not a requirement for carriage drivers for the horses to remain in New York. But I do know this. They are as moral, I think, as me, or you. As the mayor. Or police officers and politicians, bartenders or school teachers, soldiers or doctors. They are not more or less than us. They are us.
They came to America for the same reasons as my people and the mayor’s people did, in search of freedom and security, and it seems fair enough to say that at the very least, the mayor might go and speak with them before he tries to take their freedom and security away.
If the mayor came up to me at a book reading – not likely, as my agent would say – and asked me why it is that I write so much about the carriage horses, why I am so committed to helping to keep them in New York, I would say this to him:
Because it is the moral thing to do. Because it is moral work, a good and honest way to feed families, keep animals in our lives and live an independent life.
John Locke, who knows a lot more about morality than you do, sir, says a moral leader is one who protects the freedom and dignity and property of the people he serves. That, he says, is what a moral government does.
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My new e-book, “Who Speaks For The Carriage Horses: The Future Of Animals In Our World” is now available for $3.99 on Amazon, Bn.com and everywhere digital books are sold.