I am very happy to be going to New York City on Monday to join the rally there at 12:45 p.m. at City Hall in support of the carriage drivers, their jobs, the right of animals to remain with us in our world. The rally is being organized by the Teamsters Union. It is timed to precede the long-promised introduction of legislation next week by Mayor deBlasio to ban the carriage horses and replace them with vintage electric cars.
I believe this heralds the beginning of an important new phase in the increasingly significant controversy over the carriage horses in New York. I believe the people in the carriage trade have finally wearied of being threatened, harassed, libeled and dehumanized. I believe they have had enough, and will call upon their powerful spirits and those of the horses to save their horses, their jobs, their way of live, the right of animals to remain among people who live and love and work with them.
The mayor says the carriage trade is immoral. He refuses to visit the stables, meet with the drivers, negotiate with their representatives. He will propose to destroy their jobs and banish them from New York City three weeks before Christmas.
He wants the drivers to drive the green taxicabs that work in the outer boroughs of New York. The stated purpose of the rally is to ask the City Council to “Save Our Jobs,” and that is a worthy cause. I think the significance of the carriage horse issue goes far beyond that.
The drivers have been subjected to a cruel campaign of harassment, false accusation and uncertainty by a small and fringe group of animal ideologists who seem to have decided that work for working animals is the equivalent of torture and abuse. They have raised millions of dollars online by publishing photographs of injured or dying horses (from everywhere) and other animals under the rubric: “Stop Horse Abuse.”
These people – the media describes them as animal rights activists, but the only right they seem to be demanding for the working horses is the freedom to vanish into rescue farms and drop manure for the rest of their lives – spent millions of dollars to elect Mayor deBlasio, who is a supporter of their movement.
There are good reasons for every single animal lover and every progressive or responsible citizen to support the carriage drivers and their rally. Here, government has overreached. It seeks to destroy the lives and work and seize the property of honest and hard-working and family people who have broken no laws, committed no crimes, and violated none of the many hundreds of regulations that cover their trade.
The horses have been seen and examined by scores of veterinarians, behaviorists, police officers, health inspectors, trainers and animal lovers who have found them to be safe, healthy and well-cared for loved. No carriage driver is accused of abuse, animal cruelty or mistreatment.
In the last few months two pedestrians walking in Central Park have been killed by speeding bicyclists, many more injured. No city official has asked for bicycles to be banned from the park, which was designed in great part for the carriage horses. No New Yorker has ever been killed by a carriage horse. People from all over the world spend more than $15 million dollars a year to come and ride the old carriages through the beautiful park and millions more in the city.
The carriage drivers and their families have suffered greatly during this increasingly ugly and disturbing controversy, unsure if they can keep their homes, pay their bills, feed their families. They and their families have been subjected to the vilest accusations and slander. The campaign against them more closely resembles a jihad than a civic dialogue. Most are the children or grand-children of immigrants, or are immigrants themselves, working hard and legally to fulfill their dream of a good life in America. The mayor has no reason to take their lives from them because he has been given substantial amounts of money by animal ideologues who seem abusive to people and who appear to have no real knowledge or experience of animals beyond rescuing dogs or cats.
If it is cruel for 1,500 lb horses to pull light carriages in Central Park, then it is cruel for my border collie to herd sheep, cruel for Amtrak dogs to put themselves in danger sniffing bombs, cruel for the police to have mounted patrols, cruel for therapy dogs to work in nursing homes and hospitals, cruel for dogs to join in search-and-rescue patrols in the heat and the cold, cruel for blue heelers to move cattle around farms, cruel for donkeys to haul goods and people over deserts and mountains.
Horses have lived and worked in cities since the founding of Rome, New York in 2014 is one of the safest places they have ever lived.
Here is something to rally for as well: John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, architects of our democracy, have written that the function of government is to protect freedom and property. In New York, a city government with many serious things to do, has arbitrarily and without cause decided to take the freedom and property away from the carriage drivers. Private money should not buy the destruction of a legal and honest tradition, politicians and ideologues do not have the right to enter our lives and ruin them at will and without cause or due process.
The public has not been harmed in any way by the horses, the public is not calling for their removal. In fact, 66 per cent of New York City’s fractious residents have said again and again that they do not want the carriage horses banned. In a rational and democratic culture – one in which the will of the people reigns – that ought to be the end of this unnecessary controversy. The mayor has said that he does not care, he knows what is right and wrong, not the citizens of the city, and it is wrong, he says, for the horses to remain in the city.
I cannot think of too many causes that are better than this to march for. The drivers deserve my support, I hope they will receive ours as well. Monday morning, Maria and I are getting on a train. We will go to New York City to stand proudly with the New York Carriage Drivers. To save their jobs, support their work, and speak up for the true rights of animals – to remain safe and well-cared for in our world. And for the right of working animals to work.
The carriage horses have these rights already, good and caring people will hopefully go to New York and stand up for them, or help in whatever way they can. I’ll have my camera.
Animals deserve better than this, we need a wiser and more mystical understanding of them.
The ban needs to fail. It is wrong. This is not a left or right issue, this is a right and wrong issue.