We met some interesting people in New York. Casey and Jim are father and son, they live along the Southern border of Texas and Mexico,they have two miniature ponies, they read that the mayor of New York was trying to ban the carriage horses, and they were shocked by the news. Casey said they decided to get in their van with the horses and drive straight to New York to see the carriage horses and hopefully jar New York into realizing how valuable horses are to a town or city and support the carriage drivers.
Casey says he was worried that the mayor would ban the horses, and that he and his son would never get to see them again.
The ponies ride in the truck with the sides open and stick their heads out, they stop traffic all across the country. It took father and son more than a week to get to New York and the went straight to the Clinton Park Stables to meet the carriage drivers and were instantly adopted by them. The drivers brought gave them hay and water and helped them care for the ponies and find showers and places to rest.
Jim and Casey took the ponies to Time Square, where they drew huge crowds and stopped some more traffic, they love New York. They came all this way, Casey, said, to support the carriage drivers and the horses, it is simply unfathomable to them that any sane person could believe it is cruel for a carriage horse to pull a carriage in Central Park.
“The carriage horses are so beautify and happy, “Casey said, “people love them so much, I just can’t get my head around.” Maria shared some carrots with the ponies. Jim loves New York and might move here, they will stay as long as they can help the horses cause.
Are the New York Carriage Horses sad and depressed? Are they suffering unthinkable cruelty? Should the carriage trade be shut down to save the horses from cruelty and abuse, to make them happy again and return them to the verdant wild?
For the past year, I’ve been researching and writing about the effort to ban the New York Carriage Horses. In the process I have noted, listed, and researched the most serious accusations against the carriage trade, and there are many. It is a long list of crimes and misdemeanors, some horrific.
Taken together, the accusations are astonishing: the people in the carriage trade have been accused of being immoral, they are thieves, they are inhuman, they abuse the horses, starve them, beat them, put them in daily peril, kill them when they are sick, sell them to slaughter wantonly, torture them, shackle them in cruel harnesses and chains, confine them in narrow cells, run them recklessly in heavy traffic, deprive them of social contact, endanger city residents, overwork them, feed them filthy water, rodent-infested hay, drive them into buses, ignore their wounds, force them to work when hurt, pollute the streets and roads, stink up and despoil Central Park, keep them in dirty stables, deprive them of social companions or rest, they work sick horses to death, groom them with icy water, deny them medicine, subject them to brutal work in awful conditions, refuse to treat their wounds.
Beyond that, say the new animal Inquisitors, the horses are a grave danger to New Yorkers. They are unsafe and threatening, and have been banned in every major city in the world, including London. (Nobody seems to have told the carriage horses or their London website). The horses are piteous and enslaved, they yearn, say their self-appointed protectors, to spend their days grazing on pasture and hanging out with their pals.
These accusations have been regularly investigated by the five different city agencies who oversee the carriage trade and numerous independent and outside organizations and people, they have all been found to be false, and many times over. The mayor of New York City says he believes the accusations, he has repudiated none of them. He has asked the City Council to ban the carriage trade from the city and remove the horses from the city as well.
The mayor concedes he did not know this work was cruel before receiving tens of thousands of dollars in his mayoral campaign from Steven Nislick, the founder of NYClass, an animal rights group spearheading the horse ban. The group’s website says in it’s petition campaign that the carriage horses are abused and endure “unthinkable suffering.” They do not belong in New York City, a place that has been home to working horses for more than 300 years, and for whom Central Park was partially designed.
Any rational human who delves into the carriage horse story in New York finds him or herself in a surreal and Kafkaesque quagmire – rage, distortion, upside-down truths. Everything that appears to be is, is not really, the people in the carriage trade have been fighting for so long it seems almost normal to them. “Let me see,” says Alice in Wonderland, “four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is…oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at this rate.”
It does seem to me sometimes that the animal rights people and their mayor live in Wonderland, facts have no meaning, experts have no place, reality is fluid, truth is a bastard child and emotion rules. They hate suffering but cause much, they wish to kill the horses in order to save them, they commit unthinkable cruelty in the name of preventing cruelty, no one in the universe sees clearly but them, yet they are quite blind to reality. They believe that they love animals, and no one else does.
Of all the accusations against the carriage horses by various animal rights organizations, perhaps my favorite is the oft-repeated statement that the horses ought to be banned in order to ease global warming. It is a Wonderland statement for sure, a portable reality, something for the Queen Of Hearts, the idea that huge electric-powered vintage automobiles are more eco-friendly than horses. Statements like this would be laughable, except the people who say such things have elected a mayor who believes them.
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For much of the year, I’ve been picking through these accusations, seeking the truth about them. In recent weeks I have chosen to focus on one of the most elemental accusations – the very widespread idea and belief that the horses are depressed.
Of all the accusations against the carriage trade, perhaps the most legitimate concern – the one shared most widely by animal lovers who are sincere and well-meaning – is the notion that the horses are unhappy being in New York City; that they are slaves, and would prefer to be out in the wild or grazing peacefully; that they are sad, lonely and depressed.
And also this: that they suffer, according to NYClass, from “unthinkable” suffering. That is, suffering so severe and brutal it cannot even be imagined, and all this in full view of scores of inspectors, police officers, tourists, visitors, health officials and veterinarians who enter the stables daily.
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For months now, I have been talking to behaviorists, veterinarians, horse owners and lovers about equine depression, I have read more than a score of behavioral journals, blogs, reports, academic papers and columns. It has been a useful exercise for me, in part because I was curious to know the answer, I write about animals and study their interactions with human beings. And I have seen the horses up close many times.
I should say that when I started, I already knew something the mayor of New York and the animal rights spokespeople and many people driving by the horses do not know, and that it that a lowered head is not a sign of depression in a horse, it is a sign of relaxation and rest. Same with a raised rear, or “cocked” leg.
Here’s what I’ve learned that I did not really know about horses:
Emotional issues like depression in animals are different from those issues in people.
Animals react behaviorally, not emotionally or in human words or narratives. They are believed to have emotions, but they are animal emotions fueled by instincts and outside interactions, they do not have the emotional construct of children or human beings. They do not experience envy or revenge, they have no concept of mortality, theirs or that of any other living thing. As prey animals, their anxiety comes mostly from feeling threatened, although work horses are among the most stable of all the domesticated animals. Very few things in cities bothers them. Animals do not make career or lifestyle choices, their lives are elemental, revolving around food, shelter, safety and members of their tribe and, in the cases of horses and dogs and cats, human beings.
It is very difficult to tell behavioral and instinctive symptoms from emotional symptoms. Animals are wired differently, they have a completely different neural system from people, and they do not, of course speak. We can only surmise in many cases or, as is more common, project our own emotions onto them.
The truth is, little is really known about depression in horses or other animals.
Depression is not a clear-cut diagnosis or an easy thing to spot. Horses may appear lethargic or sluggish and they may refuse to eat. Behaviorists say this is often the case with horses that have become depressed. Equine vets tell me that depression in horses is sometimes caused by a chemical imbalance, which is similar to human depression. But there is little consensus or documentation about equine depression. Some veterinarians believe that vitamin supplements can assist a horse with depression, but results from that treatment are not conclusive.
Horses who are upset – especially those who have lost mates or members of their herd, believed by horse people and vets to be the most common cause of depression, may not eat, refuse to leave their stalls, their ears may lie back, their tails might be down. They might suddenly turn aggressive towards people, or balk or refuse to work or co-operate. For months, they might avoid other members of the herd, refuse to play or engage with them.
A horse’s attachment to his human or owner – a carriage driver, or stable owner, for instance – is an important relationship to a horse. Although the carriage drivers have been largely dehumanized and portrayed as being outside of the moral community of businesspeople, their relationship to the horses goes to the center of the controversy. A content – or “happy” horse sees his person as part of his herd, the herd “leader.”
Beyond people, the horses are always around other horses – in the stables, in the park, on the way to and fro their work. Herd animals do not need to be sitting at the dinner table together, as some of the animal rights people have demanded – that is most often a poor and dangerous idea – they need to be around their species, to talk to them and hear and see and smell feel them.
When a horse is contentedly submitting to human leadership, he may lick or chew – something one can see the carriage horses doing quite often out on the carriage line or in their stables. Other signs of contentment to look for in horses: when the animal is responsive and calm, he or she has a lowered head, soft eyes, a relaxed jaw. A happy horse will seek affection from his owner and show respect by keeping out of the human’s personal space, say behaviorists.
When horses are happy, they yawn. This does not indicate a bored horse, but a relaxed one. When the people around the horses are frightened or stressed, the horse is sensitive to this, as he or she would be to trouble with any member of the herd. The people in the carriage trade have been under intense stress for years now, constantly under attack, fighting for their livelihood and way of life. A few have turned to drink, some have died from heart disease and other stress-related diseases, all live under a constant cloud of accusation and uncertainty.
They do not know if they will find work if they are banned, or how they might feed their families, send their kids to college, pay the mortgage.They cannot plan for the future. They are not wealthy people, they live week-to-week and month-to-month. Many are losing heart, some gathering to fight. They confront a frightening reality: some very wealthy and powerful people are determined to put them out of business, the very government that is supposed to protect their freedom and property seeks to take both away.
Horses are sensitive to the moods of the people who care for them and work with them. People who love animals might wish to consider this when considering the future of the carriage horses and claiming to speak for their welfare. Separating them from the people and places they they know and sending them off to rescue farms or slaughterhouses would be no different that separating them from other horses in the herd – that would almost certainly depress them, say veterinarians and horse owners.
It is important to know, say the behaviorists, that horses feel human stress and energy levels and also respond to words and body language. Equine behaviorist Sophie Ostler also stresses that horses are prey animals. If horses sense they or their herds are in danger, they revert to the “flight mode,” a state of rushed energy and tension. They look to their herd leader, to their humans, for reassurance, which may be hard to project when the most powerful people in New York City are threatening their way of life. Famed equine trainer Buck Brannaman, the author of “Faraway Horses,” believes that regular work and exercise are essential to a happy horse, nothing depresses horses more quickly or thoroughly than having nothing to do, he says. Those are the horses in need of rescue.
The proposed legislation to ban the carriage trade would prohibit the carriage trade owners from selling or sending their horses anywhere where they might work. The moral outrage of the mayor and the animal rights groups is politically selective – it is cruel for the carriage horses to work, but okay apparently, for police horses to work in even more dangerous situations. Or for bomb-sniffing dogs to look for explosives on Amtrak rail lines, border collies to herd sheep in all kinds of weather, sled-dogs to pull sleds in arctic conditions, or seeing-eye dogs living noble but highly unnatural lives – and working very hard – aiding people with sight issues.
The causes of depression in horses and other animals are varied, say the experts – trauma, stress, uncertainty, anxiety are all causes for equine depression, according to the extensive research journals that have been published (Tufts, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School). Depressed horses may suffer from a chemical balance, although the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP), the most respected equine veterinary group in the country, says the primary cause of depression in horses may be viral, not behavioral. When horses suffer from Eastern or Western Encephalitis, a viral infection, the primary symptom is depression. Untreated, this disease can also cause seizures, coma, possibly death.
None of the journals I read, or the behaviorists and trainers and veterinarians I spoke with or whose work I studied, say that work for working horses was a likely cause of depression. “That’s ridiculous,” said an equine vet who visited the Clinton Park Stables last year. “Working animals do not get depressed from working. They get depressed from having no work.” Work, they repeated, is the number one cure for sluggishness or depression in a horse.
Veterinarians caution that it is much easier to spot and diagnose a healthy and happy horse than an unhappy one. Their ears and tails are up, they are spirited, eager to get to work, to get out of their stalls, they are responsive, curious, appropriate around people and other horses, their eyes are soft and clear. “People who drive by a horse pulling a carriage on the street and diagnose the horse as being sad just don’t know what they are talking about,” one veterinarian at Tufts told me. “You can’t really tell anything from that, it’s like the people who diagnose animals over the Internet. Most often, they don’t know what they are talking about.”
In fact, the AAEP sent a team of vets to examine the New York Carriage Horses two years ago and found them “healthy, content and well-cared for.” The findings of this examination, one of the most thorough and independent examinations of the horses since the controversy began, were ignored by the New York media as well as the animal rights groups, which continues to insist the horses are suffering from the worst kind of abuse, in part because a lazy media is happy to keep repeating the charge.
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It is perhaps important for sincere and well-meaning people and animal lovers interested in the fate of the horses to understand what a depressed horse really looks and acts like.
Horses suffering from depression may appear unwilling to move around or leave their stall. They might flare their nostrils, or show the whites of their eyes. They also may refuse to eat and drink. Some horses suffering from depression will seclude themselves from other horses and may shy away from human affection. Other less obvious symptoms of equine depression include violence toward humans or visibly increased irritability.
One of the primary and most effective treatments for equine depression is exercise. Keeping a horse’s body physically healthy through regular work and exercise will assist in forestalling or alleviating depression, say veterinarians and trainers. It will give the horse a focus and, for situational depression caused by fear or anxiety, it may entirely remove the symptoms of depression.
This issue – what is good for horses? – is central to the carriage horse debate. Everyone claims to be speaking for the horses and representing their best interests. I was surprised to hear over and again that the very thing that keeps horses from depression and cures it – regular work and exercise – is the very thing the mayor of New York and the animal rights groups wish to stop them from doing and keep them from doing. This, of course, is the very danger of having people who know nothing about animals make decisions about their future.
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I have been to New York City a dozen times in the past year, so have many others interested in this issue, and I have not seen a single carriage horse showing any of these above symptoms of depression. Neither have the many vets or inspectors who have examined the horses. The carriage horses are spirited, eager to get out of their stalls, affectionate to their drivers and to the many people on the street (I think there is not a single child or tourist or lover or stroller in the world who wishes to see the horses go, but they have been disenfranchised by shouters and screamers) who come up greet them and pat them, their coats are shiny, their ears and tails are up, they seem relaxed when not working and spirited and proud when they are. Like border collies, working horses are always eager to get to work, it is what they are bred to do. It is not an intrusion upon their natural lives, work is the natural life of a working animal. The horses are eager, they are keenly aware of one another, in their stalls and on the Central park trails, which were built for them. They talk to one another constantly in the park, in the lines, in their stables.
How then, can a mayor and so many people in the animal rights movement be so misinformed?
Many people in the carriage trade and many supporters of the horses insist that the mayor is corrupt, that he is working on behalf of real estate developers – including one who is spearheading the carriage horse ban – to acquire the horse stables for development. In fairness, I should say that despite this widespread and growing belief, I have seen no concrete evidence that the mayor is corrupt, or that real estate is the prime force behind his rabid opposition to the carriage trade. For me, his problem seems to be rigidity and ignorance. He admits to knowing absolutely nothing about animals, he has never owned one, and he is not open to any information that might contradict him, or any dialogue of any kind that might educate or inform him, alter his position, or actually improve the lives of the horses in any way.
The animal rights movement has evolved dramatically in recent years, from a movement promoting the welfare and safety of animals to a rigid ideologly-based and viscerally anti-democratic social militia that emotionalizes animals and seeks to remove them from work and human connection. Sadly, this increasingly angry and disconnected movement is almost universally feared and detested by animal lovers, farmers, the agricultural community, behaviorists and veterinarians, and many of the people who know animals, who work with them and keep them alive in our urbanizing world. Without the support and involvement of these people – the ones who have animals and love them, the ones who have been ignored and excluded in this debate – it will never be possible to advance the true rights of animals or keep them safely in our world.
The mayor faces enormous opposition to the ban – all three newspapers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Teamsters, the public (62 percent of New Yorkers), the Working Families Party. He says he does not care, all these people are wrong, and the animal rights groups say the same thing. And this is a troubling sub-text of this controversy. When the popular opinion and will is dismissed in this way, democratic government seems to go off-kilter. It does not appear to be working in this case. The will of the people is supposed to be important.
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All of these leads back to this central question. Are the carriage horses depressed? How can we tell? Studying this issue and the available information about it, it seems quite clear that the New York Carriage Horses are not depressed. They are not yearning for pastures, for life in the wild, for a change in in lifestyle or careers. They show none of the symptoms of depression.
Almost none of the many accusations against the carriage trade have stood the test of time, proof or public opinion. If this claim – that the horses are sad and depressed – is also false, then there is really only one question left: what is this unnecessary controversy really about?
The plight of the carriage trade is historic, it will help determine the future of animals in our world. It calls us to a new and wiser understanding of animals. That is the increasingly urgent message surfacing from this conflict. The horses challenge us to put their care and the welfare of other animals in the hands of people who understand them and who wish them the most important right of all: to survive among people.
The carriage horse controversy also asks that we consider the origin and rise and function of government. Government, wrote Thomas Paine, is made necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world. The design and end of government is to promote and protect freedom and security.
The carriage horse controversy is not a question of left or right, but of right and wrong. However our eyes may be dazzled with rhetoric or show, with contrived images of suffering, our ears deceived by demagogues and fanatics, however prejudice and and emotion may warp our will and cloud our judgment, or personal interest darken our understanding, then the simplest voice of nature, reason and justice will say, this is right.
The people in the carriage trade have broken no laws, committed no crimes, violated no regulations or codes. They deserve their freedom and security, and if government will not help them keep either, then it falls to good people of conscience to step in and fight with them and for them. This is what is right.
Are the New York Carriage Horses really working too hard pulling horse carriages through Central Park. Jeff and several others sent me this photograph of New York work horses hauling snow to the rivers in the great blizzard of 1988. I asked one wagon builder what these snow wagons weighed, and he said about 4,000 pounds, that was not considered a heavy load for draft horses. Until the animal rights movement abruptly redefined abuse in recent years, horses pulled wagons full of bricks, cobblestones, lumber, rocks and debris and wagons full of all kinds of manufacturing products and goods.
Equine vets and behaviorists can the big draft horses can easily haul four or five times their own weight. The New York Carriage Horses weight on average between 1,500 and 1,900 pounds. Light carriages weigh between 1,000 and 1,500 lbs. Pulling carriages in Central Park is probably the lightest work these work animals have been asked to do in their 300 year history in New York City. They are our partners in life, not our dependents, siblings, children, or piteous wards. They have always stood with us and alongside of us as we have done our work and lived our lives.
A score of independent veterinarians have visited the New York Carriage Horse stables this past year, other vets – working for the police and the health department – routinely examine the horses. They have been universally found to be fit, well-cared for, with good clear lungs and well-groomed hooves and bodies. This is the controversy that should never have happened. These are not the horses in need of rescue, the people in the carriage trade are not the people who abuse horses.
Many people, including some from India, have sent me a story from the BBC reporting that officials in Bangalore, India have decided to honor the donkeys for their work there, they are, say officials, harder-working, more loyal, disciplined, obedient and reliable than many human beings.
The equines who work in Bangalore will be showered with rose petals and blessed by local residents, a new tradition. Donkeys there carry people, haul goods and carriages, plow fields, carry produce to markets. Some give rides to children, others work in fairs and circuses.
I could not, of course, help think that these donkeys are lucky that they do not live and work in New York City. There, angry ideologues and wealthy real estate developers would gather to ban them, accuse their owners of cruelty and abuse and greed, demand that they be returned to their natural environments in the mountains and desserts, punish them and their owners for working hard.
The people who earn their living with them would lose their work and way of life. The donkeyswould be taken from their work and out into the wild, where they could freely starve to death, lead listless lives without purpose, have no medical treatment and vanish from the world, as so many other species have. In America, they call this animal rights.
In India, a different and inspiring story. The donkeys will be honored every month, say local officials, “for their contributions to us.” There, animal rights mean something quite different: reality, gratitude, recognition, an acknowledgement of the rights of people as well as animals.
In New York City, the carriage horses have contributed to us for many years. They provide work and sustenance for more than 300 people plus their families, many thousands over the past century-and-a-half. They give the city millions of dollars in revenue, provide romance and excitement and pleasure for hundreds of thousands of visitors and tourists – many millions over the years – and children and newlyweds and local residents each year.
They grace their beautiful park, and connect people to it’s history and brilliant design. They are iconic, they connect us to our past and to a future that ought to include them. They have provided and still provide immigrants and their children and individuals and free spirits a pathway to the American Dream, a way of life. It is ironic, although they well cared for, they are abused continuously by politicians and people who know nothing about them, but claim to love them.
Our moral obligation is to find more work for them to do with us, and to care for them well. The carriage drivers have accomplished this difficult task, they deserve our recognition and gratitude as well.
Almost daily, they are reviled as piteous and depressed and dependent, demonstrators poke placards in their faces, accuse their owners and handlers and drivers of torture and abuse, and demand that they be forever exiled from the city where they have worked and lived for 300 years. The mayor of New Call calls their work “immoral” and refuses even to speak to the people who own and drive them.
People can draw their own conclusions from this very ironic story, mine is this. There is wisdom in impoverished Bangladore, ignorance here. we are losing our way in America when it comes to understanding animals and their true rights and making sure they have the right to remain in their work and homes and lives. We have forgotten how much we owe them, how much we should appreciate what they do. The donkeys of India remind us that the working animals deserve our love and gratitude and protection.
From carriage horses to border collies to therapy dogs, bomb-sniffing police dogs, search-and-rescue dogs, donkeys and ponies giving rides to children, mounted police horses, seeing-eye dogs, horses on farms, elephants in circuses, we ought to regain our moral footing when it comes to animal rights and shower these animals and the carriage horses with rose petals and give thanks for the good and hard work they do for us every day, and have for thousands of years.
Working animals save lives, support people in every way, comfort the sick, have built our cities and worked our farms.
In India, I think, they do not yet have the luxury or distance to turn elitist and be such foolish ingrates when it comes to animals. They live with them and understand their true needs and natures.
Here, the carriage horses have been betrayed by the very people who claim to be protecting them. Like the donkeys of Bangladore, hey deserve our loyalty and gratitude. I love the rose petals idea. I will bring some rose petals with me when I go to see them in New York, perhaps we can create our own new tradition of caring and understanding.
When children cry and someone dies. A warning. This story is about a troubling video. It is not polished or slick, you have to watch it a few times to get it. It is filled with powerful and revealing images. Violence and rage are always disturbing to watch, and so much of it is rained down upon us in a technologically connected world through the many devices and gadgets we live with and carry, and through the greed and callousness of the wealthy corporations that now control our media.
The thing that comes through again and again if you listen to the video , shot by videographer Sandi Bachom, are the cries of the children. For me, they echoed again and again in my mind. The video is testimony, there is so much truth in it.
This post was inspired by the video, it was taken by people in the carriage trade in New York earlier this week. It speaks directly to the cancer afflicting the movement that claims to speak for animals in America, and the weak and feckless politicians that bow down to it. Animals and children are in special need of protection, and when our system fails to protect either, it is a sad step backwards.
When rage is directed at children, or animals is especially wrenching to see, and the hatred in this video is directed at both. No one dies in this video, but some of our values have.
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It’s a familiar ritual to me now, I’ve seen it a half-dozen times during my visits to New York City. The police and the animal rights demonstrators call it “flipping.” Animal rights demonstrators, usually picketing nearby, will suddenly swarm towards the carriage horses parked along the edge of Central Park, shouting insults at the drivers, yelling at tourists and families lining up for rides – accusing them of supporting torture and abuse – screaming loudly near the horses heads, and waving signs and placards near their faces to panic and frighten then.
(You might ask the question here that I first asked when I saw this in New York. Why would people to call themselves supporters of animal rights treat animals in this way? Because they need the horses to hurt or kill someone in order to validate their long and cruel campaign against them and the people who own and drive them.)
When they get too close, or too loud or too aggressive, and someone complains or protests, the demonstrators immediately begin shouting “stop hitting me,” “get away from me” or screaming that they have cancer or are dying or are on chemotherapy. If someone calls the police for help, they immediately call the police also, claiming they were assaulted. If there is a central ethos to the new ideology of animal rights in America, it is not the well-being of animals, it is the experience of victimization. They are always the victims, always.
In New York City, where the mayor has said removing the horses from the city is his first and most urgent priority, and where he has refused to meet with the carriage drivers or visit the horses in their stables, the police – whose commissioner is appointed by the mayor – have made it clear that they will not protect the carriage horses or their drivers from people who get close and shout at them, try and intimidate their customers, disrupt their work, or poke placards in the horses faces.
The drivers are on their own, in the midst of crowds and traffic, controlling animals that can weigh up to 2,000 pounds as small but angry mobs swirl around them. The police – ubiquitous and vigilant around Central Park – are never present when trouble occurs for the carriage drivers. They come after awhile, as the law requires, and they take down the testimony and conflicting accounts – usually the demonstrators are long gone – and then leave. There are rarely any arrests made, one woman was given a ticket a few years ago when she kicked a carriage driver in the leg. She also claimed to have cancer.
Watching the video, it seems inevitable to me that the animal rights demonstrators will succeed one day in their efforts to panic a horse, giving them and the mayor some desperately-needed ammunition in their long and angry campaign to banish the horses from the city.
Their problem is that they have gained almost no support and much opposition to the proposed ban this year. The newspapers are against it, so are two-thirds of the people, tourists, the business community, and most of the City Council. The ban, so urgent and imminent a year ago, is stalled. The claims of abuse and mistreatment of the horses have been thoroughly debunked by a parade of veterinarians, horse welfare groups, trainers, writers and behaviorists.
It is apparent to everyone involved what the goal of the demonstrators is – you can see it clear in this and other videos taken by the people in the carriage trade or by tourists. They hope to provoke a panic or stampede among the horses, perhaps one in which people will be injured, even killed. In this inverted immorality, death and injury is necessary for them to make the point that the horses do not belong in New York City.
The problem that they and the mayor have in claiming that the horses are dangerous is that no human being has ever been killed by a carriage horse, not in the 150-year history of the carriage trade. Thus it is difficult to make the claim that the city is too dangerous for horses, especially when more than 16,000 people were injured, nearly 200 killed, in accidents on the city streets by cars, trucks, buses and bicycles last year.
You might think the mayor of the city would speak out against acts of reckless violence, as he has against the horses, calling their work “immoral.” He might protect the carriage drivers – and the children of tourists – and assure them that the city will take every necessary step to protect them and their many devoted customers and visitors from unprovoked violence. Random violence and disruption of the kind seen in the video is simply not something a democratic culture will normally tolerate, especially a government that proclaims itself one of the most progressive in the country. New York City’s police know how to take care of their city, if you drop a paper bag in Times Square or carry a backpack, the odds are good that you will be surrounded by police officers wanting to know what you are up to.
It seems rational and logical that the police – their surveillance cameras are on every corner of the park – would keep the horses and the people who ride them safe. The carriage drivers have repeatedly asked the police to keep the demonstrators away from the horses, but their pleas have been ignored.
Generally, in our culture, children are seen as off limits in political differences, outside the pale of heated and angry divisions and conflict. The demonstrators can shout all they want about people hitting them, or their troubles with chemotherapy – should the demonstrator in the video really be out screaming at children if she is so sick? – the video speaks very clearly for itself.
What is clear is this. A mother and her two children came to the southern edge of Central Park to take a ride in a carriage horse, they were suddenly beset by people with placards screaming and waving their signs. You can hear the children screaming and then crying as they are either pushed or shoved by one or more of the demonstrators, and surrounded by a screaming mob, then you can hear the carriage driver pleading with them to stop and get away, and shouting for help and asking passersby to call the police, then you can hear the demonstrators shouting that they have been hit and demanding that everyone else gets back, (the driver says he has nowhere to go, his horse is parked by the curb, and then the demonstrators “flip it,” they demand that the the police be called. You can also see the police officer who eventually comes to take down the information. He asks if he can pat the horse.
The animals of the world need us to understand them and speak for them, not to surrender their rights and welfare to the people you will see in the video. If you are concerned about the rights of animals, close your eyes and listen to the cries of the children. That is the sound of animal rights in New York City.
One day, a demonstrator will surely finally get to provoke a horse into bolting, or running away, or panicking. Hopefully, the spirits of the horses will continue to protect them, and no one will get hurt. But the truly awful thing about this nearly inevitable scenario is that when it occurs, it will then itself be “flipped,” it will be used to try to take the horses away from their safe and secure work and homes and sent them out into the dangerous world of horse slaughter and trouble. For the people who claim to speak for the rights of animals, this will be considered a victory.
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Please consider signing Tawni Brawley’s petition asking the Santa Monica to reconsider their recent decision to allow her popular pony rides for children to remain in the city after her contract expires in May of 2015. She was falsely accused of animal abuse – three separate investigations found the accusations were false – and faces the loss of her livelihood. Her reputation and character have been attacked, her rights trampled. The ponies may also face death or slaughter if she must seek homes for them at a time when 155,000 horses a year are being sent to slaughter in Canada and Mexico. The city’s decision seems a great injustice, she is fighting back on behalf of her rights, fairness, her ponies and our animals. On it’s first day, Tawni Angel’s petition got nearly 600 signatures, she needs more than 2,500. If you love animals and respect the rights of people, please consider Tawni Angel’s petition.
