This week, the mayor of New York City, who said banning the New York Carriage Horses was his most urgent priority, the first thing he would do upon taking office, on “Day One,” has surrendered.
He says he still supports the carriage horse ban, but that the animal rights activists pursuing it would have to get the votes they needed in City Council by themselves, he was essentially moving on to bigger and more winnable things.
Political observers in the city said it was clear that he was leaving the issue behind, and now clear that he was unlikely to ever pass such a ban in New New York City. It is also clear, they say, that he has much bigger and more difficult issues to face than removing a popular and well-regulated industry from the heart of the city.
The struggle altered my writing life, I was drawn very powerfully to the issue, and deeply troubled by the suffering and mistreatment of the carriage trade. I was profoundly shocked to learn that the claims of abuse directed at the carriage drivers were almost all entirely false or invented. It was just wrong, from beginning to end.
In New York, the country’s biggest stage, deBlasio’s withdrawal from his arrogant and ill-considered vow – the activists gave him wagonloads of money for his campaign – was an especially significant milestone in the deepening conflict across American between people who have pets, and people who have animals. It was also a staggering setback for the movement that goes by the name of animal rights, which spent many millions of dollars on the ban, and ran a long campaign against the carriage trade that was as hateful and abusive to people as it was dumb and unsuccessful.
From the beginning, the campaign was marked by lies, exaggerations, distortions and by personal harassment and cruelty. The mayor’s vow to ban the carriage horses sparked a nationwide effort to make work with horses in America illegal. If the ban had succeeded, the animal rights drive to remove domesticated animals – horses, elephants, ponies, dogs – from work with people and drive them to rescue farms and preserves or slaughterhouse would have been greatly advanced.
Two years ago, it seemed inconceivable that the carriage trade could win. They faced a multi-million dollar campaign against them, complete with marketing firms, direct mail programs, millionaire developers, expensive and sophisticated blogs and websites, and a multi-million campaign to pour money on politicians and lobby City Council members. Real estate interests drooled over the stable properties and the animal rights activists had raised unlimited funds, mostly from people online who thought they were saving animals.
It turned out to be a rout, but for the other side. The transparently false campaign against the carriage trade has collapsed of it’s own immoral weight.
The mayor and his allies even spent more than a half-million dollars to built a prototype of a disastrously ugly vintage electric car they argued ought to replace the horses in Central Park, where they have worked safely and have been much loved for more than a century.
From the beginning, the campaign was marked by a pointedly ugly kind of elitism. The mayor refused to meet with the carriage drivers or owners, he refused to visit the stables, or meet with any of the lobbyists or representatives of the carriage trade. Demonstrators harassed the drivers, followed them with video cameras, insulted their customers. Their plan was to force the drivers into jobs driving green taxis in the outer boroughs without ever speaking to them.
The support of Liam Neeson, the actor, was essential in drawing some attention to the misrepresentations of the animal rights groups. When the actor said he knew the horses were loved and well cared for, he had many friends in the carriage trade, 200 reporters were present to record what he said. It was the first time almost any of them had set foot in a carriage stable.
Also critical was the skilled and disciplined lobbying effort of the Teamsters Union, which represents the drivers. The Teamsters offered a pretty sound argument for the power and relevance of unions against very big money and power. It’s hard to imagine too many other entities that could have stood up to so much concentrated power.
The Teamsters campaign was a model of discipline, clarity and persistence, mostly out of sight and behind the scenes. They did their job, they saved a lot of jobs, helped keep food on a lot of working-class tables.
The carriage trade hired two experience lawyers and public brawlers, Norman Siegel and Ron Kuby, and listened to their advice.
It’s a big victory for animals and people who seek to save them and keep them in our world. I believe the horses have triggered a new social awakening, a new sense that animals are being driven from our world by people who claim to be representing their rights but know little or nothing about them. They have also called attention to the growing brutality and vigilante ethos of the animal rights movement, which has become extreme and detached from reality. A movement to save animals ought to support the people who live and work with them, not persecute and harass them.
It is becoming ever more fraught, even dangerous, to own and work with animals in America. Just ask the scores of farmers being harassed and persecuted for failing to meet the impossible new standards of animal rights and welfare being increasingly forced upon them. If you work, aren’t rich, are elderly, it is ever more difficult to adopt a dog or cat in America, this at a time when millions are euthanized because there are not homes for them. A true animal rights movement would make it easier to bring animals home, not more difficult.
The carriage horses were spared an almost certainly awful fate, the mayor and the activists insisted that they would all find good homes on horse rescue farms, but they would never say where the farms were or where the $24 million it would take to feed them for all of their lives would come from.
A rational world would see that the carriage trade has become a model for keeping domesticated animals in our everyday lives. A score of respected veterinarians and behaviorists have examined the horses and testified to their good health and good care. There was an Alice In Wonderland quality to the animal rights people, almost everything they said turned out to be false or the opposite of what they claimed. The carriage horses are are among the luckiest horses in the world, not the ones who are abused. It is not abusive for big draft horses to pull light carriages through Central Park.
So the horses delivered a big victory for the new Saving Animals Movement, in two years, the mayor and the people seeking to remove the horses did not change a single mind in New York City. More than two thirds of the city’s notoriously fractious residents agreed on keeping the horses, all three newspapers supported them, so did organized labor and the Chamber of Commerce.
Everywhere, animals are vanishing from our world, the result of climate change and a skewered and dogmatic view of animals rights. Keeping 200 horses in the everyday life of New York is a powerful thing.
We can keep animals in our world and give them good and meaningful lives among people, even in crowded urban environments. Now, another significant struggle in the animal world, the effort to save Joshua Rockwood, a Glenville, N.Y. farmer and his farm from the same ethos that sought to ban the carriage horses.
Joshua Rockwood has been charged with 13 counts of animal cruelty for struggling to keep his animals warm and watered in the brutal cold wave of March. Although none of his animals died or suffered, his farm and sustenance are threatened. I believe we will have two very powerful victories in the Saving Animals movement this week, Joshua is seeking $16,000 to prepare his water systems and shelter for this winter. The horses have changed the dynamic of the struggle over the future of animals.
The animal rights movement has squandered it’s mandate and moral authority through it’s arrogance, cruelty and rigidity. There is a new movement, it is the Saving Animals Movement, you can help Joshua win another great and seemingly impossible victory here.