In our kind of country, our kind of system, conflicts are supposed to be argued and resolved in the open, and then left alone. We are not supposed to live in fear or be relentlessly suffer hatred and harassment. Free speech is a right, but it is not the only right. Conflicts were never meant to be endless. Law abiding people are supposed to live freely and choose their way of life.

Two years ago, when I entered the carriage horse story, their cause seemed hopeless. Wealthy and powerful animal rights groups were howling for the heads of the carriage trade, they had millions of dollars to spend, they had hired platoons of publicists, marketers, lobbyists and rented a few TV stars.

They got themselves a supportive mayor, a millionaire real estate developer or two, and hundreds of  followers who actually believed – and still believe – it is cruel for carriage horses to pull light carriages through Central Park.

“Torture wagons,” film star Alec Baldwin called the carriages. “Immoral”, said the mayor, who refused to speak with the drivers or visit their stables or meet even once with their lobbyists or representatives.

Today, a different perspective, a different landscape. The campaign against the horses was a disaster, it failed miserably, the city stood quite resolutely behind the horses, so did animal lovers from all over the world. The bill to ban the carriage horses was never even introduced and brought to the City Council, there was not enough support to even vote on it.

In recent weeks a number of carriage horse supporters – me included – have been urging and hoping for a ceremony to mark this quite extraordinary turn, this unexpected victory, however temporal or fragile. I raised the issue on a carriage horse website I’m on, so have others in other forums.

A few of us may end up going to Central Park over the next few weeks to mark the moment and thank the many people who joined in support of the carriage horse ban and helped to save the lives of the very endangered horses and also preserve the jobs of the hundreds of people – including many children – who depend on them.

I will let you know if and when that happens. My suggestion was not met with much enthusiasm.

A lot of you were shocked when I started writing about the carriage horses, so many of you trusted me and stood with me, and ultimately, stood by them. You visited the stables, go on carriage rides, wrote letters, sent contributions, battled within your communities and on various websites. I want to thank you by being in a gratitude and hopefully, a healing ceremony in the park.

I can tell you there will not be many carriage drivers there, and I cannot say I blame them.

This is a conflict without any end, their opponents are not rational people of good faith, but mostly fanatics in a new kind of hate group.

The animal rights groups in the city have embraced a number of hate group and fascistic strategies:  they never listen, learn, negotiate, empathize or stop. They frequently lie and harass, they are cruel and abusive to people.

To be targeted by them is a kind of prison sentence, a life lived in perpetual fear and harassment. One of the drivers told me he was afraid to demonstrate in public – many of them are. For one thing, he said, he doesn’t want himself or his family to be targeted by the animal rights activists, they have already posted his name and photo online, made fun of his appearance and clothes, posted some photos online of his children standing with him. He has been threatened on the street, via text and e-mail, on blogs and portrayed on posters.  His wife has received threatening telephone calls at home.

“I’m just a driver,” he said, “I’m not a big shot or a spokesperson.”

He lives, as do all of the drivers, in fear.  He can never relax, especially at work. New Yorkers by the score are injured or killed in and around Central Park all the time, hit by bicyclists and pedicabs, run down by cars, trucks or buses, killed in the hundreds of deadly collisions that occur in New York City every day.

But in all of the city, only the carriage drivers are pursued every day, inspected every day (sometimes three times a day) videotaped day or night, followed by people with cell phone and video cameras. “We can’t make any mistakes,” said one stable owner, “we are the only business in New York that can’t make any mistakes.” How, he said, can they celebrate? They live a life of fear and danger and perpetual harassment. Inevitably, there will be accidents, they say, these are living things, there is no such thing as a perfect life, not in the city, not in the wild.

The carriage drivers have lived amid fear and hatred for so long many of them can’t remember a life without it, or imagine a future free of it.

It is wrenching to hear these statements and testimonies. The carriage horses are as stable and trustworthy as any domesticated animal is, but animals, like people, are not immortals. They have accidents, get sick,  sometimes get frightened or confused. In the past 30 years and on millions of rides, only three carriage horses have died in accidents on New York City streets. No living thing, human or animal, has a safety ride close to that.

According to the New York City Department of Health,  1,464 deaths occur to human beings in New York City on average every year. That means 7.6 out of every 100,000 New Yorker’s are killed in unintentional motor vehicle accidents. On average, 15, 435 New Yorker’s are hospitalized  every year due to motor vehicle accidents, there are 8.4 deaths in hospitals per every 100,000 residents.

Car and truck and bus drivers do not live in perpetual fear and harassment, pursued by video cameras and disconnected fanatics, many of whom  have seized on animal rights as a representation of their anger and sense of victimization, according to the psychologists who have studied them. Every time a New Yorker is killed in a car crash or run down in the street, the mayor and various political organizations and the media do not demand cars be banned from New York, or accuse automobile drivers of torture and abuse.

This is a profound moral inversion, and a wearing and poignant one for the people in the carriage trade. They are too embattled to celebrate their great victory or call attention to it, to them, it can only make a bad situation worse. They just want to do their work, live their lives in peace, as most Americans wish to do and are given the right to do. The carriage drivers do not experience that freedom, they have learned, they said, to keep their heads down and to always look over their shoulders.

“If one of our horses gets colic, or has an accident, or dies of a stroke or heart attack, or falls down in the street,  it could well be the end of us,” said one veteran driver. “The drivers are afraid, they live in fear. We have been living through this for years. “It would be all over the news for days, it would be the end of this “victory.” How can we celebrate, this will never be over? Nobody questions the existence of a car company when people are killed every day, but if a horse breaks his harness and runs down the block the mayor will call a press conference and call for our heads,” he said.

The carriage trade is a closed and tribal and clannish community, it is fractious and diverse, there is no single leader or spokesperson for them. They have never matched the money and the technical savvy the animal rights organizations have amassed. They never thought of hiring platoons of fund-raisers, or setting up expensive and efficient fund-raising operations online (mostly using photos of dead and injured horses from unknown places around America) or building money-trawling blogs.
The drivers and horse owners know they could be put out of business anytime and in a number of ways. The city could refuse to give them their medallions next year when they are due.

The mayor could re-instate or introduce the ban legislation at any time. If a horse runs off and injures a child, the hysteria and images in the media and from animal rights propaganda could be devastating to them. They are not held to rational standards of behavior or reality. If a car runs down a child, it rarely even makes the news in New York.

So I don’t imagine too many carriage drivers – many of whom have often written to thank me for my writing, and to express their appreciation for all the support they have received – will want to show up in Central Park when my friends and I go there to mark their great victory. We know the fight isn’t over, we know it may never be over. The idea for the ceremony came from some drivers, not from me, but I don’t wish to push them to be there. That is up to them.

Their fear helps me to see that I need to go to New York and stand for the horses and these good people in the park.

The fear and hatred is all the more reason to stand up and celebrate being free citizens. To exercise the precious right to stand in our space in the world and speak for the horses and the people who live and work with them. A lot is at stake beyond the horses themselves.  It could be any one of us. They have broken no laws, violated no regulations.

The people are the ones who are abused, not the horses. They are the ones afraid to exercise their own rights. That makes it everyone’s fight.  Fear is a kind of prison sentence, and one of the things I will think about and pray for is the day then are freed from it.