Search Results for: Tawni Angel

 Yesterday, I got this sad message from Tawni Angel in California: “Hi, Jon, it’s been a little while, I hope this e-mail finds you well..I wanted to let you know that yesterday, “Mother’s Day,” was it! The last day for pony rides at the Santa Monica Main St. Farmer’s Market, it was a very emotional day, lots of my customers who have become so much more than that, my friends..brought goodbye cards, hugs and tears, so sad to see the ponies go. Many of the parents were trying to explain to their toddlers that this was the last time they would see the ponies at the farmer’s market. It nearly broke my heart. It’s just so sad. I wanted to thank you again for all  your kind words and support! So thank you, Jon, Tawni Angel.”

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It was thoughtful of Tawni to send me that message on such a hard day for her, we have never met, but have been talking to one another online for months. I was heartbroken as well, Tawni’s sustenance has been taken from her, and the lives of her ponies are in danger as well at the hands of the people who would save them. The media, which swarmed to relay every unfounded accusation against her, has melted away, drawn to yet another hysteria. She has a hard road ahead of her.

I am sorry to tell you that this past Sunday, Tawni’s Ponies and Petting Farm, Inc. ended it’s 12-year time at the Santa Monica, Calif., farmer’s market. Last September, the Santa Monica City Council voted to end all animal activities at the market and cancel Tawni Angel’s concert.

This February, a  survey of customers at the Farmer’s Market showed that 92 per cent of those who commented on the pony rides favored keeping them at the market. On Sunday, more than 250 people, many in tears and many with children, came to say goodbye to Tawni Angel and her ponies. Many of the parents wondered if their children – many of whom came every week to ride the ponies – would ever see a pony again.

This story will be all too familiar to the good people of the New York Carriage Trade, their mayor has scheduled June hearings before the City Council so that he can try to pass legislation that would ban the carriage horses from New York. As in Santa Monica, there is no evidence of any kind that the horses in New York are suffering or being mistreated, and an overwhelming majority of the city’s residents want them to stay. As in Santa Monica, it doesn’t seem to matter much what the truth is or what the people want, or whether or not people are being treated with cruelty and neglect.

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In the Spring of 2014, a handful of people who call themselves supporters of animal rights appeared suddenly at the farmer’s market and called the police, claiming that a pony was injured. The police found no evidence of an injured pony. In May, another demonstrator called the police to say one of the ponies had a cracked hoof, the police came and found that this was not so. Other demonstrators claimed the ponies water was filthy and that the ponies were tethered too tightly, and that it was too hot for ponies to be giving rides to children.

Tawni Angel had given thousands of rides to children on her ponies and there had never been a single complaint of mistreatment or abuse in all of that time.

The police department conducted a thorough examination of the ponies at the market and found, as so many veterinarians and experts have found in New York, that these horses were well cared for and healthy. As in New York, this did not seem to matter to anyone involved. In fact, the more evidence that showed the ponies were find, the more intense the persecution of Tawni Angel got.

Animal control specialists from the police department  found that the water was clean, and that the animals were tethered properly, and found the animals were doing light work in temperatures that were well within their comfort and safety range. Three different police investigations found that the ponies were  healthy and well cared for.

The assault against Tawni Angel, who has a five-acre farm near Santa Monica,  turned especially ugly and personal after the police failed to support the demonstrator’s puzzling claims that it was “torture” for ponies to give rides to children. Evidence just didn’t seem to matter. It was necessary to dehumanize Angel in order to destroy her business and way of life. This kind of cruelty to people in the name of preventing cruelty to animals is increasingly familiar, it resembles an Orwellian inquisition more than a civic or legal process.

You can ask Joshua Rockwood, the New York carriage horse owners and drivers, Tawni Angel, or thousands of farmers struggling to fend off accusations that they are subhuman creatures,  abusing their animals because soldiers in the new army of animal informers call the police and say so.

Yesterday, Rockwood scored a significant victory in his fight to save his farm and his reputation from people who seem to know nothing about farms or animals. A judge said he did not have to pay the people who seized his horses many thousands of dollars in care and boarding costs since there was no evidence he had abused them or should have ever been seized. But also yesterday, news of an especially poignant defeat for Tawni Angel and her ponies and the children of Santa Monica.

And for every animal we wish to keep in our world and our everyday lives. The sorry truth is that those of us who love animals and respect freedom and property are in a deepening struggle with people who do not believe animals should remain among people and work and live with us in our world.

There will be victories and defeats, that is the awful sad nature of conflict, as we saw yesterday.

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The campaign against Tawni Angel was uglier and far more cruel and unfeeling than any cracked hoof on a pony. When they could find no proof of wrongdoing, the so-called animal rights activists went after her reputation. Animal rights protestors scoured Facebook looking for personal political opinions or comments from Angel and her husband that they decided might be offensive or controversial in very liberal Santa Monical, and mailed them to City Council members, some of whom have close personal ties to the demonstrators. They found a photo of Tawni Angel holding a glass of vodka and suggested she was unfit to be around Santa Monica’s children. (Angel is suing one of the protestors for defamation in what could be a significant case in the animal rights wars). They found a photo of Angel with a gun and suggested she was dangerous and unstable (she likes to shoot.)

These communications were conducted in secret and out of public view.

The City Council caved in the face of this sudden controversy,  as politicians most often do, they held an unscheduled late night meeting, they revoked Tawni Angel’s contract with the farmer’s market. As usual, no one expressed any concern for the future welfare of the ponies, who need to find work in order to survive, or of Tawni Angel, faced with serious loss of income despite the fact she loved her ponies, treated them well, and gave many children the only contact they ever have with the natural or animal world. You can read her lawyer’s account of the case here.

I have talked with a half-dozen people who know Tawni Angel. She is a good person, a loving wife and mother, she is honest and she loves her animals dearly, and is committed to working with children to keep nature and animals in our consciousness. She had fashioned a life for herself with animals, just as the people in the New York Carriage Trade have done. What happened to her is a travesty, and please make no mistake about it. It can happen to you if you have a pony, a horse, a dog, a cat, a chicken, a cow, or love to see the stupid tricks in the circus.

Like Joshua Rockwood, Tawni Angel is brave, and like Rockwood, Tawni Angel is fighting back. Still, her way of life and the fate of her ponies, both anchored by her contract in Santa Monica,  is in grave doubt. She is a poignant example of the growing number of victims of what has become an irrational and especially cruel hysteria over animal abuse, and which is driving animals out of our world and towards extinction. It is also hurting many people badly.

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And so here, in the name of preventing cruelty to animals, is a powerful example of how we are doing animals no good and  inflicting cruelty on people, innocent people at that. Tawni Angel told me she is looking for another location in the Santa Monica area for her pony rides. She has found a mall 50 miles away from the market where she is offering 20 rides one night a week, but it is too far and through too much traffic for most of her very loyal Santa Monica customers.

This is what you need to understand about  Tawni Angel. She has loved and cared for ponies for years, they have given her the resources to live with animals, she has given them as good and healthy and meaningful life as domesticated animals can have in or world today. She has broken no law, violated no regulations, paid her taxes.

Her world has been shattered, if not destroyed, despite the fact that she has been found guilty of absolutely nothing and likes vodka. This is not just a story for animal lovers, it is a story for anyone who cares about compassion, truth and freedom from cruelty, whether it be by so-called activists or by government. Her freedom and way of life have been unjustly taken from her, she may well lose her ponies, they may well lose their lives. Tawni Angel’s story reminds us that any movement to end cruelty to animals is bankrupt and immoral if it is built on being cruel to human beings and lying about them.

This is the final message to me yesterday from this alleged animal abuser, this torturer, this person who is so cruel that she must be banned from public spaces and lose her livelihood and resources for caring for her animals: “I will make sure all my ponies are taken care of and there is no way I would ever let anything happen to them. I will figure it out, one way or another.”

I think Tawni would love to hear from people who love animals and who care about people. Her e-mail is [email protected]

For me, the most painful part of writing about the New York Carriage Horses has been the often unfair and untrue allegations of cruelty and abuse made against them for years in the cruelest and often most irresponsible of ways. They have struggled to figure out how to respond, they are still struggling over how to respond. The carriage trade is tribal, there is no one leader, no unified position, these are individualists and free spirits, many elements with many different ideas. How does one respond to false allegations made without regard to fairness or fact?

If the brave and determined Tawni Angel is successful in her very just lawsuit, then she will have created a path for the growing numbers of people who are being victimized by the movement that calls itself a movement on behalf of animal rights. There are many people who abuse animals in America, and many people who do not are are increasingly accused of abuse and worse. In her struggle to keep her ponies and save her livelihood, Angel was accused of torture, neglect, cruelty, abuse, bigotry, alcoholism and of loving to shoot off guns in the woods.

It was not enough for her persecutors to take her work from her and endanger her ponies. They sought to destroy her reputation as well. In what is now a familiar scenario, timid political leaders panicked and betrayed their trust and responsibility. This is the dilemma of the New York Carriage Trade, seeking, like Angel, to preserve their freedom, property, and way of life.

I wish for them the clarity and strength that Angel has found, I believe it will ultimately carry the day for her.

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Tawni Angel is not part of a large group or association, she lives week-to-week off of the money she earns on her popular pony rides at the Santa Monica, California Farmer’s Market. Two months ago, the City Council, bowing to pressure from a small group of animal rights protestors who decided that it is torture and abuse for ponies to give rides to children, canceled her contract. She decided to fight back, she got a lawyer and sued the demonstrators for defamation of character, arguing that the animal rights activists accused her falsely of abuse, and knew that the charges were false.

Several lawyers I spoke with yesterday they believed the ruling in the first round of the court case could be significant and far-reaching, depending on how closely watched it is, and what the final ruling is. To me, it has considerable relevance to the New York Carriage Horse controversy and many other conflicts involving animal rights organizations and animal owners throughout the country.

“It could be very significant,” a Boston civil rights attorney told me yesterday, “because it is one of the first times that an individual is holding animal rights organizations accountable for the specific claims they make.”  In permitting Angel’s lawsuit to go foward, the judge said had a good chance of succeeding. That, she said, could be encouraging to many animal owners and lovers loving for a way to fight back when similar accusations are made against them. The animal rights groups in New York have made similar assaults on the people in the carriage trade, accusing them at various times of cruelty, abuse, torture, greed, callousness and dishonesty.

The carriage trade, divided by many different factions and instincts,  is still groping for the proper way to respond.

Tawni Angel seems to have figured it out.

In the ruling, Superior Court Judge Lisa Hart-Cole ruled that  Angel had demonstrated a “sufficient probability of prevailing” on the question of whether she had been defamed. The judge found that there was “sufficient evidence” that the target of the lawsuit  had made false statements about Angel’s treatment of the ponies with “actual malice,” knowing the statements were untrue.

Today, an opportunity to join a new social movement that hopes to speak for the rights of animals and the people who own, live and work with them in a humane and loving way. You can sign a petition, I think of it as the Magna Carta of the new awakening.

Tawni Angel is asking the Santa Monica City Council members to reconsider their decision to exclude all animal activities from the Main Street Farmers Market in that city, and allow Tawnis Ponies – her  company – to “continue providing pony rides and farm animal interaction to children in your community.”

She is asking friends, supporters and people who support the real rights of animals to sign her petition.

She is seeking 2,500 signatures on her petition. At stake is the way of life, sustenance and reputation of an honest and hard-working human being and animal lover. Also at stake is the right of animals to remain in our world, and a rejection of cruelty, the abuse of people, the false accusations and profound ignorance about animals and their rights and welfare that has come to characterize the most powerful elements of the animal rights movement.

What happened to Tawni Angel has happened to thousands of people – farmers, circuses, research facilities, students, carriage horses, owners of dogs and cats, too often innocent people persecuted without due process or fairness. Animals are not being saved, simply driven off. The animal rights movement in its current form is killing many more animals than it is saving.

What happened to Tawni Angel has happened to the New York Carriage Trade who, like Tawni, is fighting back. In New York City, perhaps our most progressive city, the horses and their drivers are turning back the campaign against them. It  has also been marked by false accusations, personal attacks and cruelty.

In August, in a hurried late night meeting, the Santa Monica City Council voted 4-0 to end Tawni Angel’s decade old contract with the farmer’s market, where she was offering pony rides to an average of 300 children a week.  In all her years working at the market, there has been no evidence of any kind of mistreatment of her animals.

The council acted after a small group of animal rights activists began suddenly picketing the pony rides,  declaring that the ponies were being abused by carrying children in rides, that the rides were the equivalent of “torture” for them, that they had no fresh water, were working in extreme heat, had cracked hooves and were chained too severely to move their heads properly. These activists had simply redefined our understanding of abuse, which is a crime, not an argument or opinion on Facebook.

At least three inquiries found every single one of the charges against Tawni Angel to be false. So the animal rights activists – one a former unsuccessful congressional candidate who said she was certain her accusations were true because she had three rescue cats – changed tactics and began poring through Tawni Angel’s Facebook and social media posts and photos on her blog. In secret messages to members of the Santa Monica City Council, they reported that Angel drank vodka, liked to shoot guns, and opposed President Obama’s immigration policies.

Tawni Angel was not informed of these accusations, nor given a chance to review them and respond. The many people who have met Angel and known her for years eagerly testify that she is a wonderful mother and wife, and a lovely human being with a lot of passionate ideas about life. By every account, she is a responsible and loving animal owner.

Scores of children signed petitions on her behalf asking the council to keep the rides which are, for many of them, their only encounter with real animals that are not pets. In fact, say many parents who brought their children to the rides, Angel has always emphasized the proper and gentle handling of animals to her  young riders. She sees her role  as educating the young about the true nature of animals, most of whom have vanished from their lives. Many of them, she says, have never seen a chicken.

People like Tawni Angel are defending a way of life, just like the New York Carriage Horse owners and drivers. They do not make a lot of money. She lives week-to-week on what she earns at the farmers market. The rides are her sustenance and her way of maintaining her five-acre farm. If her contract is not renewed, she will have to seek new homes for her ponies at a time when 155,000 horses a year are being slaughtered in Canada and Mexico.

Animals are rapidly vanishing from our world, especially animals who cannot find work and meaning for people. Tawni’s ponies are among the safest and best-cared for animals on the earth – and the luckiest. One of the very startling arguments advanced by the protestors was the idea that animals should never be used for the pleasure or entertainment of people. It is hard to fathom the idea that it is wrong for children to enjoy being with animals and riding on horses – a beloved tradition and pastime for many thousands of years.

On Sunday July 13, Angel’s husband, Jason Nester, called 911 to report that a group of protestors were blocking the sidewalk at the farmer’s market, protesting the pony rides. Sgt. Mike Graham, a former horse owner and the former supervisor of the Santa Monica Police Department’s Animal Control Unit, was sent to inspect the pony rides and look for evidence of animal abuse.

Last week, I read Sgt. Graham’s  report, these are his own words:

“I examined the ride set-up. The horses appeared in to be in good condition – their body weight appeared normal, their fur was clean and brushed, their manes and tails were brushed and healthy, the ground around them was clean and evenly flat, they walked on sawdust shavings, and there was no visible urine or feces. The equipment – saddles, bridles, and (thick) pads were in good condition. The horses were “quiet” and well behaved. I saw nothing to make me believe the horses were ill-treated, unhealthy, malnourished, injured, or in discomfort. The horses did not appear hot, were not sweating, and were on a timed (30 minute alarm,) water-break schedule.

It is, in the most literal sense, a nightmare without end. The New York Carriage Drivers have been living it for years now, so have thousands of other people in many different places – farmers, college students, researchers, carriage horse drivers, circus and farmer’s market operators, Hollywood producers.

Now it is Tawni Angel’s sad fate to be living it. There are people who abuse animals, and there are people who do not. The  social movement that says it speaks for the rights of animals no longer seem to know the difference between the two, or cares. For many of them, the law has no meaning, justice no value; politicians hide, leaders collect their donations, a system fails. In this disturbing and Kafkaesque world, there is no difference between the guilty or the innocent, animals and people are left without rights or protection.

 “What I fear most,” wrote the great writer Isabel Allende,”is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.”

   There is no evidence that Tawni Angel has ever abused an animal in her care. It is she who is now frightened, who has been abused, and who is now fighting for her sustenance and very way of life against accusers without reason.

Here is one way to understand what has happened to Tawni Angel and to so many other animal lovers. Imagine for a moment that you are a school teacher and someone drives by your class while you are out in the schoolyard and calls up the police and the principal and accuses you of being a child molester and an abuser.  She didn’t like the way you talked to the students, the way you touched one on the shoulder. The children looked frightened, she said, they were quiet, it was too hot for them to be outside, they were clearly abused.

The accuser offers no evidence of any kind, talks to no authorities, experts, seeks no other resources but makes her accusation publicly and in the media. There is a series of frightening but immediate investigations triggers great publicity and concern, even hysteria, but yields no evidence. You are cleared, but the accuser refuses to accept the finding, she continues the accusations as if they have never been made. Time after time you deny it, the authorities say you are innocent, no evidence is ever offered to support the accusation.

None of the children report being abused, saw any abuse, show any signs of abuse. They are questioned again and again, by administrators, by the police, by psychologists and social workers. After living in dreadful fear and limbo, you are cleared again and again of any wrongdoing. But this does not matter to your accusers.  It took years, cost all of your savings and your health and that of your husband. Your children show signs of stress and acute anxiety, your fear and worry have permeated the house and their lives.

Over time, you are horrified to realize that the accuser will never go away, will never accept the results of the investigations, will never stop accusing you of the awful crime of molestation, will never stop picketing, carrying signs calling you a “child molester” or an “abuser” in public, never stop posting  ugly things about you on the Internet, talking to parents and school officials, rooting  though your private life, your political views,  all of your comments on social media,  seeking the one ugly or foolish one that they will use to define you, broadcasting it the school, your employers, your neighbors, demanding that you be arrested, fired, disgraced.These accusations are not shared with you, you are not given an opportunity to explain or respond.

Because molestation is an awful crime, the accusation hangs over you like a storm cloud that never leaves, it is in the faces of the students, it frightens and disturbs your family, upsets your children. You live in fear and confusion, and that is not the worst of your nightmare. The worst is that  you come to see there is no reasoning with your accuser, no evidence she will accept, no reasoning that will work.

You will not get the promotion you sought, perhaps will be denied tenure, it is clear everyone in the school would be happier if you were gone. It doesn’t matter what the evidence shows, or what the truth is.  You will have to leave, your teaching career is over. You will never get the pension you planned for, have the career you loved.

There is no winning or losing in a nightmare like this. The accuser always  wins, just by making the accusation and by repeating it your life is damaged and changed.

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Child abuse is not the same thing as animal abuse, but there is a similarity between that accusation and the monstrous charge of animal abuse. In the animal world, animal abusers are the equivalent of child molesters.

Abuse, like child molestation, is a crime.  It destroys lives and reputations. It is the most awful accusation one could make against a person who loves or lives or works with animals, and it speaks to the sad and disturbing degradation of the animal rights movement into a rogue fringe culture that embraces Stalinist notions of justice, not  American values of fairness and freedom. In this world,   if you are accused you are guilty. Evidence, truth and the law simply don’t matter.

According to the Legal Dictionary, cruelty to animals is  “the crime of inflicting physical pain, suffering or death on an animal, usually a tame one, beyond necessity for normal discipline. It can include neglect that is so monstrous (withholding food and water) that the animal has suffered, died or been put in imminent danger of death.”

What future does a person who works with animals have after being accused of  monstrous behavior towards animals?

In Santa Monica, California, animal rights activists showed up suddenly one Sunday in front of Angel’s pony rides carrying signs accusing her of abusing her ponies. They said the ponies had cracked hooves, were suffering in the heat,  had no fresh water, were tethered too tightly and without enough room to move. They said it was “torture” for ponies to give rides to children.  They started a petition and collected signatures (Tawni Angel collected three times as many signatures in support of her pony rides). Three different and very official and thorough investigations found out that the charges were false, there was no truth to any of them.

Tawni Angel had been offering pony rides to children in Santa Monica for years, and hosting a petting zoo as well. She often brought her ponies and animals to birthday parties and public events. She was immensely popular with the children and their parents, she gave 300 rides a week without trouble or complaint. The demonstrators refused to believe the veterinarians or the police, their unanimous finding that Tawni Angel had committed no abuse meant nothing to them.

In a rational culture, the activists and the City Council might have apologized to Tawni Angel for the pain and suffering the accusations and investigations and awful publicity had caused.

No one has apologized to Tawni Angel or even expressed concern about her welfare or well-being.

The activists – they seemed unable to process the mounting findings of Tawni Angel’s innocence – simply moved on, they looked for other evidence, invading Tawni Angel’s privacy and personal space as well as soiling her reputation. There had to be abuse, and if there wasn’t any, they would simply find other crimes to accuse her of. The new animal rights movement in America appears increasingly elitist and intolerant, both traits quickly surfacing in the case of Tawni Angel.

They searched through her Facebook pages, found out that she liked to shoot guns, that she didn’t agree with President Obama’s immigration policies, that she voices strong opinions in a way they thought offensive. And worse yet, that she drank vodka. Her messages were copied and sent to city council members without her knowledge or any chance to see the charges or to reply.

How could such a racist and bigoted person, said the activists, how could someone who liked guns and opposed the liberalization of immigration and who drank vodka possibly be trusted to be around the children of Santa Monica? She was not, they wrote, the kind of person “we” wanted around our children, not the right example for them. Beyond being an animal abuser and dangerous bigot, they whispered, Tawni Angel was probably an alcoholic and a person who did not respect the ethnicity of other people. They thought the council members should know.

Thus, Tawni Angel, who had operated her farm and lived with her animals and run her business lawfully, successfully and peacefully was now, at the word of a handful of people who knew nothing about ponies or the real needs of animals, accused of animal cruelty and abuse, alcoholism, of being a menacing gun nut, and of committing racist and ethnic slurs. She was not only an abuser of ponies, but was no longer fit to even be around the children of Santa Monica.

The council members did want to know. Although her neighbors and many friends wrote letters and signed petitions – hundreds of them – testifying that Tawni Angel was a loving mother and wife and loved her animals and cared for them well – the council members heard enough. They scheduled a vote on Tawni Angel’s contract without telling her and canceled it late at night, in great confusion.  They did not want someone who had been accused of animal abuse working in their farmer’s market, they did not want someone who shot off guns and drank vodka and disagreed with their politics anywhere around.

In this, the city council of this community – it claims to be progressive – became a kangaroo court, and that is also a definition worth pondering in the case of Tawni Angel:

According to Wickipedia, “a kangaroo court is a judicial tribunal or assembly that blatantly disregards recognized standards of law or justice, and often carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides. Merriam-Webster defines it as a “mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted.”

The definition could hardly fit the Santa Monica City Council proceedings any better. Tawni Angel, who was accused of everything and convicted of nothing, was found guilty, a vote for Alice’s White Rabbit. Her contract with the city was revoked, as of next May.

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It is important to understand that this case is not about animals, just as the New York Carriage Horse controversy is not really about horses. While Tawni Angel’s life is threatened and damaged, the life of a single animal was not saved or improved after months of protests, controversy and fruitless investigation. Increasingly, it appears that the animal rights movement – of which I have long been a supporter – has degenerated into a community that attacks the lives of people rather than improve the rights or lives of animals.

The thing is, no one came to Tawni Angel and said the horses needed more room, a better space or shelter, could the city provide it? No one suggested ways to make the horses even happier and more comfortable, even though every expert said they were both. No behaviorists, trainers or horse lovers were consulted by the activists or invited to come and see, no outside advice was sought.

No city official brought her complaints and suggestions and asked her what she thought of them. And there was no accusation, really, for her to answer. She had done nothing wrong. She was not accused of any wrongdoing, none of the investigators who came to inspect her ponies found any kind of abuse. She was not guilty of abuse by any accepted definition, but she was accused of it every single day, on the Internet, in the market, through signs and e-mails and petitions and interviews.

When I was a young reporter, my tutor and mentor, old Jack Boucher, a veteran of many years and a lot of whiskey and vodka, told me I always had to be careful in my reporting about passing on accusations that could not be proven or substantiated.”Shit stinks, kid,” he told me, “once it gets on people it may never come off.”  He warned me to be careful about people’s reputations, once damaged, they were hard to restore. Reporting has changed, reporters seemed happy to pass on unfiltered or investigated allegations about Tawni Angel, they were online and in the papers every day for months, you can Google them and see them being repeated today.

Shit does stink, and false accusations stink all the more.

Abuse is a crime, it is not an opinion or an argument. False accusations of abuse, just like false accusations of child molestation, are a libel, a stain and a stink that innocent people will fight all of their lives to get off. Tawni Angel, an innocent person who has been accused of no crime, has broken no law,  violated no contract or regulation, faces the ruin of years of hard work, the loss of her sustenance and livelihood, and she may have to seek new homes for her safe and well-cared for ponies, if they can be found in difficult times for horses. The very real possibility that people who love animals and want to see and ride ponies will never come near her, or hire her, or trust her again.

Because abuse is a crime, the people who accuse other people of it falsely ought to be held responsible for their cruel words and for the awful damage they do. To me, ruining a blameless person’s life in the name of loving animals is the real crime.

And the question for all of us, animal lovers or not, is this: Does the law mean anything? If we obey the law and follow the laws, and if the people who enforce the laws state clearly that we are innocent of wrongdoing, can we still be wrongly and endlessly persecuted as if we were criminals? And if this is so, what is the difference between criminals and us?

Do we really wish us to live in a culture where laws have no meaning and expertise and knowledge is irrelevant? Do we wish people who have nothing but contempt for laws or truth or the welfare and reputation of a human being to decide the fate of the animals left in our world?

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Tawni Angel e-mailed me last night to thank all of you for the support and love you are showing to her. “Oh, my goodness,” she wrote, “you alone have made this national news. You have readers in Canada and Australia sending me support and love not to mention the hundreds of folks in Florida, Vermont, Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota and on and on and on and on! Words cannot express my gratitude…your beautiful way of writing has inspired so many animal lovers and really given me the emotional boost I was needing. I really hope I have the opportunity to thank you in person and give you a huge hug! My family, including my animals, can’t thank you enough.” You can contact Tawni Angel at [email protected]

I was happy to get that message from Tawni Angel, I think I need to get out to Santa Monica if I can figure out how to do it, and see those animals and get that hug. I quoted her message to thank you for your support and to let you know that it has real meaning for her. I believe Tawni is the very opposite of a criminal. She is an ordinary human being called upon to find her strength and act like a hero. She is hurt and frightened, she is rising to it.

Tawni Angel’s Struggle: Not A Left-Right Thing, A Right And Wrong Thing.

Tawni Angel: Then, They Came For The Ponies.

Santa Monica, California, a trendy town on the edge of Los Angeles,  prides itself on being a liberal, or progressive, place.

The left-right thing, the shrinking of the American mind, is almost always a factor now when it comes to issues affecting the rights of people or animals. This is evident in the successful campaign to take Tawni Angel’s  life and livelihood from her, endanger her animals,  and to ignore the 300 children a week who came to ride her ponies. In their short and savage campaign against her, the people who call themselves animal rights activists have accused Angel and her family of animal cruelty and abuse, of making racist and ethnic slurs on social media, of drinking vodka, and of liking to shoot off guns in the woods.

In the craven spirit of our worst politicians, the City Council – while agreeing that Angel had done no wrong – decided it was simply too much bother to defend her and keep her contract.

She is suing her accusers for defamation. This is not a left and right thing, it is a right and wrong thing.

One City Council member said the many accusations – one might say libels – against her definitely were on his mind as he decided Tawni Angel’s fate.

These accusations were made in public petitions and pronouncements, and more ominously, in private e-mails to members of the City Council who voted to terminate her contract with the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market next Spring. Tawni Angel was not told of these charges, and was given no opportunity to respond to them.

There are many people who work with animals – I think of the New York Carriage Drivers – who have been defamed in this way. Tawni Angel is one of the very first who is suing her accusers for defamation.  There is at least one fascinating precedent.

Two years ago, Ringing Brothers ended a 14-year-legal struggle with the A.S.P.C.A. – the group had repeatedly accused them of mistreating their elephants – when a judge ordered the group to pay Ringling Brothers more than $9 million in damages after it was discovered that witnesses had been paid more than $200,000 to claim in court that the animals were mistreated. If the New York Carriage Drivers ever decide to sue the groups in New York City accusing them of torture, cruelty, theft and abuse, I would imagine that they will never have to worry about working again.

In my now year long research into the carriage horse story, I was  stunned to find more unchallanged lies, distortions and untruths than I could possibly list.

It was not what I expected to find.  In the interests of being transparent, I ought to say that while I dislike the labels journalists and Americans put on people these days, I am generally in the liberal or progressive camp. I am a Democrat most of the time, and it may be that Tawni and I would not agree on many things. I’m sure the same is true of me and the carriage drivers in New York. But I like to think I am a human being before I am a label, I like to think right and wrong matters to me. And truth. I do not permit people on my website or social media pages to engage in cable-news-left and right chatter. Yuk.

What has happened to Tawni Angel is wrong, it is an injustice. It is not a left or right thing, it is about the role of government, personal freedom, the truth about animals, and their future in our world.

There is nothing progressive about what was done to her, or has been done to the people in the New York Carriage Trade.

It is legal to own and enjoy guns, to drink vodka, to say what you want on your Facebook page, if anything was even said at all.  Tawni Angel has not been accused or convicted of any crime, she has broken no laws, violated no stipulations of her contract with the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. Thousands of children have enjoyed her pony rides, none of have been injured on one. If her expulsion stands, few of these children will ever get to see a pony again or learn how to ride or treat one, something Angel emphasizes.

Tawni Angel was wrongfully  accused of abuse, a term that is so misused it has lost any real meaning or context. Three separate investigations of Angel’s pony rides found no evidence of cruelty and abuse – not a single one. The charges made against her were found to be false. That means she is actually a role model for responsible animal care.

I don’t care what she and her husband do on their own property in their own time on their own Facebook pages. She seems much nicer, more honest, less self-righteous and arrogant, much more compassionate and humane than the people accusing her, I am eager to meet her, I am not eager to meet them.

I do care that she treats her animals well. There is not only no evidence that she hasn’t, but quite substantial evidence that she has. This issue is not about her politics or her lifestyle – I know many people who know her, and they say she is awfully nice and interesting. Her wrenching story is really about only one thing:  what is animal abuse?

The animal rights activists who shut down Tawni Angel carried signs alleging that she was committing acts of animal cruelty and abuse (the New York Carriage Drivers have experienced this for years ) by forcing the ponies to give rides to children in a confined space. She claimed they did not have access to fresh water, were working in conditions that were too hot, had cracked and untreated hoof injuries. Three separate investigations found that her animals were sound and healthy, well-cared for, brushed and nourished,  working in comfortable temperatures, had no cracked hooves, plenty of fresh water,  and adequate room to move. In simpler terms, none of the accusations against her were found to be true.

It is an awful thing to accuse an animal lover, and a person whose work depends on animals, of abuse. It is cruel and hurtful. To accuse someone of abuse falsely is unconscionable.

Even as they canceled her contract, the City Council conceded that there was no evidence of animal abuse. So why, then, is she being deprived of her livelihood, the children denied their rides, and her animals facing re-homing or worse?

  According to the Legal Dictionary, cruelty to animals is  “the crime of inflicting physical pain, suffering or death on an animal, usually a tame one, beyond necessity for normal discipline. It can include neglect that is so monstrous (withholding food and water) that the animal has suffered, died or been put in imminent danger of death.”

Abuse is not an argument or opinion, it is a serious crime, it is a violation of the law in California and every other state. The country is polarized by so many things, but it seems to me – I believe it – that there are truths we can all agree on. I have come to love the people I have met in the New York Carriage Trade, we don’t need to agree on every political issue, they don’t care who I vote for. I am eager to meet Tawni Angel and see her farm and her animals for myself, her story is becoming all too familiar. Many animal rights organizations simply no longer operate within the law, or the protections the law gives to the accused.

Angel’s personal life, lifestyle, feelings about guns, Vodka or any other legal thing she does is not my business or that of the Santa Monica City Council. Nor is it the business of the protestors who have invaded her life and her privacy, investigated her and distributed her personal information, almost surely libeled her and taken her means of sustenance away. If the children in Santa Monica had a vote, the ponies would remain forever, and they have a right to be heard, enough of them have e-mailed me over the summer.

It is interesting to note that the people who are seeking to destroy Angel’s life – she loves animals and has lived with them for years, it is a way of life for her – have expressed no concern for her or her welfare, for the anxiety or distress they have caused her. It seems that in Santa Monica it’s politically correct to invoke animal rights while trampling on those of human beings. Is it really progressive?  Many people in New York City don’t think so, more than 61 per cent of the population wants the horses to stay.

Tawni Angel, wittingly or not, is part of a new and less hateful social movement to work for real rights for animals, and for the people who own and work with them as well.

Yesterday, Pamela Rickenbach, co-director of the Blue Star Equiculture Farm, the rescue and retirement home for working horses and the New York Carriage Horses, wrote Tawni Angel a letter:

“We are in a confusing and cruel time,” she wrote Angel, “when good people that love their animals and work alongside them are demonized and demeaned by fanatics who have clearly lost touch with any sense of decency or logic. While there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do to inform them or help them see more clearly we can protect ourselves and stand up to them..absolutely.”

Absolutely.

And if it seems that there is not much we can do in our broken and divided political system, there is this: we can stand up for people who are wronged and treated unjustly whether we agree with everything they say and do or not.

For all the temporizing and rationalizing of feckless politicians and unknowing activists, this is simply a wrong. Unlike her ponies,  Angel really has been abused.

She has broken no laws, committed no crimes, honored her contract with the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market in every way. I talked to two lawyers in New York City yesterday. They said they thought Tawni Angel was right to sue on behalf of her reputation, and they predicted good luck for her. They both added that she ought to go further,  that she and her lawyer should consider seeking an injunction against the Santa Monica City Council staying their vote, and then force them to explain precisely why her contract ought to be revoked when she had followed it in every way and treated her animals and her customers well.

There is a lot at stake in Tawni Angel’s fight for justice.

Think of it this way:

My border collie Red is not treated nearly as well as Tawni Angel’s ponies, he often works for hours out in the pasture in the heat without fresh water or shade, his claws are often torn by racing over rocks, his belly scarred by barbed wire. I love Red, he has a wonderful life as a sheepdog and a therapy dog.  You could easily take a photo of Red with his tongue hanging down on the ground and put it up on Facebook (I have) and claim he is suffering from working in the summer. I can only imagine what the demonstrators in Santa Monica would say if they saw him.

But I know if they can do this to Tawni Angel, they can do it to me – and to you. If Tawni Angel can be shut down by a defeated politician whose only exposure to animals is three rescue cats, then anyone can decide I am abusing my dog by herding sheep.

Left or right does not matter here, no one should be drawn into such shallow and myopic thinking. It is nothing but a distraction from injustice.  I will down some Vodka tonight in honor of Tawni Angel, maybe go fire off a few rounds of my .22 as well. Tawni Angel is a good citizen to me, living a good and meaningful life, giving home and purpose to animals that would probably otherwise be dead. She is sticking up for herself, and I believe her cause is one for good people.

I have let her know how I feel: [email protected]. Perhaps you will as well.

John Locke, the British philosopher who invented the idea of democracy, wrote that the end purpose of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. In all the nations of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom, he wrote.

The law exists to protect Tawni Angel from enraged fanatics who destroy the lives of people in the name of loving animals. She is asking that this be so, this is what she is fighting for.