The battle-scarred officials of the Teamster’s Union say they have never seen their members harassed and insulted and treated more cruelly than the New York Carriage Drivers have been treated in recent years during the long campaign to banish the carriage trade from New York.
They asked me to consider sharing the story of Ditmar, a carriage driver and a recent immigrant to the United States. A Teamsters Union official said they have never seen attacks like this on their members in modern times, so many, so relentless, so false and so cruel.
I believe them because I have witnessed a number of these attacks, including the taunting of one driver for the condition of her teeth, telling the children of one driver that their father was a torturer and a murder, and the taunting and terrorizing of tourists and children trying to take a carriage ride.
In America, we are not supposed to live in fear because we have come to work to earn a living. Our elected leaders are supposed to protect us from abuse and harassment, not support abuse and harassment. Remember that Ditmar has broken no law, committed no crime, violated none of the hundreds of regulations that govern the carriage trade.
If you are as disturbed by this and other stories like it, please write the mayor of New York City and tell him so. Your letters are beginning to come into City Hall, I am told they are being read, and they matter.
The mayor of New York, an ambitious politician who often travels outside of the city to spread his message. He seems eager to become the leader of the progressive political movement, and he and his advisers are now apparently deeply concerned that his irrational and unjust assault against the working union men and women in the carriage trade will come to the attention of people outside of New York – especially people who call themselves progressive. The mayor is eager to impress them. Many people across the country are beginning to wonder what is progressive about a plan to destroy the jobs and livelihood of hundreds of working people without any kind of cause or due process.
If you can, please write the mayor and tell him this campaign against the carriage trade is not progressive, and needs to stop: Mayor Bill deBlasio, City Hall, City Hall Park, New York, N.Y., 10007.
This week, a carriage driver named Ditmar, an immigrant from Bulgaria, wrote a Teamsters official and apologized for bothering her. He was asking for help in case he got into trouble for coming to work, in case an incident involving him made it’s way into the media. Rather than summarize his story, I decided to reprint it in his own words. It is a permanent stain on the honor and reputation of the mayor of New York that he would have associated himself so closely with this kind of treatment of citizens he is sworn to protect and to laws he is sworn to uphold. It is a wonderful thing to show concern for animals, it is a profoundly troubling thing when the people who do it lose any compassion and decency for human beings.
Ditmar -e-mailed me this morning: ” I came to here to pursue the American dream. To have a family and to take care of it. Horse and carriage is my passion and the job which I love. I was a country boy in Bulgaria so that’s what I love to do to take care of the animals and to show the tourists Central park.”
Ditmar encountered a person who said she is a supporter of animal rights on a Sunday night, when carriage horses are permitted to work later than on weekdays. It speaks to the climate of fear and harassment in the carriage trade that Ditmar felt compelled to ask his union for help, even though he had done nothing wrong, other than dare to come to work for a living in a country he came to because of the freedom it offered him to live his life.
Ditmar’s letter to the Teamsters: “I wasn’t planning to bother you, I decided to tell you what happened to me last night. Our opponents are getting really desperate. I parked the horse and carriage at the Rockefeller Center around 10:15 pm (we can be there legally after 9:00 pm Sundays, even earlier during the day) when some crazy women jumped from the back and started screaming that it’s against the law for me to be there, that I am son of a bitch, that she will take picture of my plate and so on.. .
I told her OK, take as many pictures as you want and how do you know the law? Her response was “I am the law, I am from the Coalition To Ban Carriage Horses.” And of course, I have started laughing… Some girl was giving the horse a carrot and she started bothering her with the regular nonsense: the horses are abused, they live in apartments etc.. I told her to leave the girl alone, and if she continues to harass her I will call the police. She calmed down a little bit and started asking her (the girl) if she is harassing her. Then the poor girl left. I told her” listen you can have your personal opinion and you can express it. This is America and that’s why this country is so great but don’t harass and bother the others with it.” She than just told me find another job and left while screaming it’s against the law for me to be there and she should call the cops on me. I simply told her “Madam Have a nice evening! ” I really doubt it she can do something with these pictures because I wasn’t doing anything wrong but if something stupid shows in some media can I rely on your back up?”
The carriage drivers have many uglier stories than this, but this one touched me in a particular way. It is an awful thing – especially for someone coming to our country from a troubled place seeking peace and a government that protects freedom, being shouted at, harassed, accused of breaking the law by someone with no authority or mandate to investigate him or frighten his customers or a friend of the horses. I am sorry that Ditmar feels so threatened in his every day work – and it is good and hard and honest work – that he has to live in fear. Carriage drivers are routinely accused of crimes by animal rights activists – abuse, torture, homophobia, alcoholism, theft, greed, immorality, even the murder of horses.
Demonstrators regularly shove placards in the faces of the carriage horses in the hope of provoking an accident, they scream at tourists and children riding in the carriages and at people petting the horses and giving them carrots.
None of these accusations have turned out to be true, although almost all have been widely reported by the city’s pliant media. I am not a reporter, I am an author, but I called the Coalition To Ban The Carriage Horses to ask them about Ditmar’s trouble, to find out whether they ask their members to harass carriage drivers. There is no phone number for the group, just an e-mail address. No one responded to my query.
If you are a person who sees themselves as progressive, or one who doesn’t, or a union member, or a person with a job of any kind, or an animal lover, or a citizen of what it supposed to be the freest nation on earth, where government protects freedom and property, please consider writing a letter to Mayor deBlasio and telling him that this is not what is great about America, the left or the right. Please ask him to do the job he was elected to do, and leave the carriage horses in the city. You might also ask him to stop the unconscionable persecution of Ditmar and the other carriage drivers, many who came to America to avoid overreaching and repressive governments: Mayor Bill deBlasio, City Hall, City Hall Park, New York, N.Y., 10007.
Your letter can make a real difference. I thank Ditmar for agreeing to share his story and the Teamster’s Union for telling me about it. The New York Carriage Drivers are members of the Teamsters Union.