I was recently asked to name one single voice most worth hearing and listening to when it comes to understanding horses in general, and the New York Carriage Horse controversy in particular. I had no trouble answering: it would, I said, be Buck Brannaman, the inspiration for Robert Redford’s “Horse Whisperer” and perhaps the most universally respected horse trainer and behaviorist in the world.
One of the first things I did when I began inquiring about the New York Carriage Horses and writing about them was to read everything Brannaman had written, especially The Faraway Horses: The Adventures And Wisdom of America’s Most Reknowned Horses, and Believe: A Horseman’s Journey. I also watched Buck, a movie about Brannaman. I watched it again last night to help me focus on this piece.
Brannaman’s messages are not only for horseman and women, they are for anyone who loves animals and who seeks to have a wiser and more mystical relationship and understanding of them. Brannaman’s personal story is powerful, and perhaps helpful for an animal behaviorist who preaches empathy. He was savagely abused by his sadistic father until he was sent to a foster home. The experience gave him a profound sensitivity and empathy for animals, especially those who are troubled or who are being mistreated or abused.
It also gave him an understanding of what abuse truly is. It is a crime, it maims and kills, it is not someone’s sudden opinion on Facebook.
His anthem for training horses ought to be on the wall of everyone who seeks to understand an train an animal, especially horses and dogs. “I try to give the horses I work with a safe place to be and a sense of peace,” he writes.
Watching the angry and disturbing controversy over the carriage horses in New York City unfold, I was surprised – shocked, to be honest – to see the rage and ignorance in the movement that claims the mantle of animal rights in New York City. A reporter asked me what I thought about the many claims and accusations made by the people pushing for the carriage horse ban, especially those speaking for NYClass, the wealthy political group spearheading the ban.
“I have never seen people make so many statements about a subject that were, almost to a one, ignorant or completely untrue,” I told the reporter. If, as Brannaman suggests, you get tell much about a person from his horse, then you can tell much about the founder of NYClass, Steven Nislick, from his mean-spirited organization. I imagine he is not a nice person.
One gets the exact opposite feeling from reading Brannaman, a thoughtful, sincere and experienced observer of horses. He is credible, horses are his life. He is generous, even in his criticisms.
Brannaman began working with horses when he was three – he was a child rodeo star – and decades later, he spends nine months of the year traveling the country holding workshops for people with horses. There are countless testimonials to his skill, patience, and advocacy for horses. People say he works miracles with troubled horses, pulling even the most disturbed animals back from the abyss.
Brannaman is one of the last people anywhere who would condone the mistreatment of horses for any reason. He has campaigned for years against brutality, cruelty and impatience in animal training. If there was much sanity or rationality to the carriage horse debate, the mayor would pick up the phone or invite Brannaman to New York to talk about the carriage horses, and whether or not they suffer in their work or have been mistreated.
The mayor will not ever contact Brannaman, of course, any more than he will speak to the carriage drivers or visit their stables. He seems to know all he needs to know.
The animal rights organizations are not open to differing points of view, they have a Stalinist idea about free speech. Brannaman is the most knowledgeable horse trainer in the world, thus the last person they would ever want to speak with. His message is not the one they wish to hear. But he has given his opinion about the carriage horses, it is in his book “Faraway Horses,” where he recounts a visit to New York City.
Brannaman:
“Next on my schedule were a couple of young women from MTV and Rolling Stone magazine. One of them asked, “What about those poor horses in Central Park? Don’t you think it’s awful how they have to pull those heavy carriages all day?”
“I had an answer for that question “No, I don’t,” I said, then explained that the Central Park horses are content. Pulling carriages on rubber-rimmed wheels on paved streets is a low-stress job, and the horses are calm and relaxed, not anxiously laying their ears back or wringing their tails. Plus, these horses get lots of attention and affection from passerby. And horses love attention and affection as much as we do.”
The horses that people should be concerned about are the neglected ones that, after the “newness” of ownership wears off, live in box stalls all day. These horses have no purpose, no jobs to do. All they do is eat and make manure. Even prisoners get to exercise more than these horses, and the horses have never done anything wrong. If they had the choice, these horses would choose to be carriage horses rather than stand in their stalls.”
There is great wisdom in those two paragraphs. Most people who know animals understand that it is not the carriage horses who are in need of rescue, they are busy, engaged, connected with humans, well cared for. There are so many horses who are not well cared for, so many could have been saved or helped with the millions spent on getting the horses out of New York City. The real equine victims, as Brannaman points out, are not those who work but those who don’t.
There is no one I know of who is better qualified to speak about the welfare of horses, or more respected and accomplished. One might compare his credentials with the people giving weekly press conferences to the manipulable media in New York about how sad the horses are, and how brutal their lives are in the big city. For anyone who wishes to consider the future of animals in our world, Brannaman is essential reading, “Buck” is worth watching. Brannaman reminds us that the people who presume to speak for animals ought to know something about them and what they need.
Can animals have a more fundamental right than that? In the documentary about him and in his writing, Brannaman makes it clear that animals like horses need something to do, it is not healthy or noble to force them into lives of inactivity and disconnection from people.
Brannaman has done much more than any person or group in the United States to promote humane training and good lives for horses, and to also preach the need to understand them and communicate with them in a safe and gentle way. He would be the first to demand the carriage trade be shut down if he thought it was cruel or inhumane.
He is perhaps the first nationally known trainer to talk about the importance of feelings in horse training, and to offer a lesson I learned the hard way as I began my life with animals: we have to be better people to live well with animals, the problem with animals is us, not them. They are a mirror of us, our strengths and weaknesses. If you look at horse, he says (or I would say also, a dog), you can learn a lot about the humans who own and control them.
Angry people, he says again and again, cannot train sensitive animals well, cannot understand them or communicate with them.
And angry people ought never to be given the power to decide their fate or their future.
The carriage horses have always been a stand-in for issues that are larger than them. How can we keep animals in our world? What do they really need? What is abuse? Is it cruel for working animals to work? It is cruel for them to live in a city? Who gets to speak for the future of animals? Brannaman reminds of us how the debate over the carriage horses in New York City has become so tragically derailed, how it asks none of the right questions, and includes almost none of the right people.
Brannaman is almost universally known as a compassionate, honest and knowledgeable advocate for horses. In a moral world, he would be the first stop for anyone who really cares about the horses.
The fact that none of the people demanding that the horses be banished from the city would ever pay the slightest attention to him or take advantage of his knowledge and humanity tells us much about why this campaign to remove the carriage horses from our lives, and the lives of the many people who love them, is so unjust and unknowing.
There are many lessons and implications for the New York Carriage Horses, the carriage trade, the mayor and the animal rights groups of New York City in the ruling handed down Thursday by by Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere, the chief judge for the Maine District court, in the dramatic conflict over Nurse Kaci Hickox and the efforts of three different and powerful governors to force her into involuntary quarantine.
At issue, really, was whether government would surrender to the largely misinformed panic over Ebola and sacrifice individual rights and her dignity and freedom for the mob’s notion of the public good. Politics is fascinating, if unpleasant, and quite a few of the people who like my writing on the carriage horses are not as happy with my writing about Kaci Hickox. I seem to have drifted to the other side on this issue.
As a writer, that has to make one feel good.
I got a copy of the ruling today, and I read it carefully. I believe many of the issues raised by Hickox and addressed by Judge La Verdiere are similar to those facing the carriage trade, especially those relating to the reach of government, the basis for limiting the freedom of people who have done no wrong and pose no danger, and the civil rights of citizens. The judge’s ruling ought to give comfort and guidance to the carriage trade in New York City, it bodes poorly for the campaign of animal rights groups to banish the horses from New York.
The Ebola case raises some issues that are very different from those in the carriage horse controversy, but many are almost eerily similar. The judge set reasonable limitations and restrictions on Kaci Hickox’s movements, but rejected the panic and hysteria that doctors say are shaping the response of politicians to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
The judge ruled that the power of government to take extreme actions against citizens – to quarantine them, (or in the case of the carriage trade, shut down their industry, take away their ability to earn a living and pay their bills, and seize their private property – the horses) – is subject to limits. The state must show, he said, that it made an “individualized assessment that a person poses a risk,” as well as demonstrate to the court that the decision was based on sound evaluation and fact, in this case a scientific evaluation by doctors and health care specialists, not politicians or angry people on Facebook.
When depriving a person of liberty, the judge said, the government must also use the least restrictive alternative to achieve public safety.
This ruling on government power and the deprivation of liberty speaks directly to the carriage trade debate in New York, especially when Mayor Bill deBlasio has repeatedly denounced the government overreach in the Hickox case, and defended Hickox’s notion of civil rights: that is, she has no right to be persecuted by the government if she is healthy, poses no danger to anyone, and has committed no crimes.
The government in New York City is also engaged in what appears to be overreach, seeking to shut down the carriage trade, take away the work and sustenance of hundreds of people, send hundreds of horses out of safety and into peril, and pressure the drivers to surrender the work they love and drive vintage electric cars in Central Park.
In the carriage trade case, the mayor is seeking the most restrictive imaginable option – an outright ban – while refusing to negotiate or even speak with the carriage trade or consider that there might be a less Draconian or devastating alternative. Perhaps the lives of the horses could be made even better and safer, how could the mayor possibly know?
Like Hickox, the carriage drivers are not now accused of any crimes, have violated no regulations, broken no laws. The city claims, as New Jersey and Maine did with Nurse Hickox, that the horses are dangerous in New York City, they are at risk from fumes and traffic and a danger to human beings.
The foundation for this campaign is mostly fantasy and persistent accusation. It seems that a millionaire real estate developer named Stephen Nislick decided about 10 years ago, and quite abruptly, with no evidence or scientific support of any kind, that it was abuse for working horses to pull light carriages on flat ground on asphalt in New York City, and in Central Park. He campaigned fruitlessly for years, and then he gave a truckload of money to Bill deBlasio, who was running for mayor two years ago and who suddenly embraced Nislick’s very extreme idea about the welfare of horses.
Suddenly, an idea that seemed ludicrous – banning healthy and secure horses in the city – became a serious reality.
The idea that the horses pose a risk to public safety is fatuous. No human has ever been killed by a carriage horses in the industry’s 150-year history, the horses are the safest form of transportation in the city by far, according to police and state statistics. New York City has the power to regulate public transportation, but it is not clear if they can legally shut down an industry that is obeying all of the rules, without cause or foundation. When former Mayor Bloomberg tried to ban large bottles of sugar-laden soda, the courts in New York ruled the same way that judge LaVerdiere in Maine did – this was beyond the scope of government. The city had gone too far.
Judge La Verdiere’s ruling Thursday was cited by legal experts as important, certain to influence government responses to the Ebola virus and intrusions by government elsewhere. It suggests that government cannot arbitrarily take away the freedom and way of life of citizens without proof that the decision was based on “sound evaluation and fact.” There is, in fact, no credible evidence that the horses are at risk, are being mistreated, or are a danger to people. The industry is already heavily regulated and is operating safely and profitably.
In addition, the city government – especially Mayor deBlasio – has gone to great lengths in it’s own political maneuvering over Ebola to agree with Judge La Verdiere’s ruling setting limits on the power of government to invade the lives of citizens without clear and compelling reason, reasoning based on expert evidence, not ignorance, anger, and fantasy.
The carriage trade has a long and growing list of trainers, behaviorists, veterinarians, journalists and horse owners and breeders eager to testify that the carriage horses are safe, healthy and well treated. The animal rights groups have severely damaged their own credibility – and would, I think, fare poorly in any court – with claims and accusations that have repeatedly been exposed as distorted or exaggerated, and in some cases, simply false.
Like those seeking to quarantine Kaci Hickox, it seems the efforts to ban the horses have motivated mostly by ignorance, elitism and prejudice. One could argue that fears about Ebola are much more understandable than the hysteria surrounding the carriage horses.
The animal rights groups in New York and the mayor seem unsure themselves exactly why the horses ought to be banished.
At first, the city and the animal rights groups claimed the horses were being abused. That allegation was refuted by one equine group, policing agency and veterinarian after another. Then, there was the claim that the horses are suffering in the fumes of New York City, but that claim has also been undercut by examinations of the horses, which find them to be free of illness or disease. In fact, no carriage horse on record has been known to suffer or die from respiratory disease.
Now, one of the mayor’s strongest allies – City Council President Melissa Mark-Viverito, (she says she knows about horses because she has a rescue cat) claims there is a movement towards a “new kind of tourism,” and that is why the horses must be banished and replaced by $160,000 vintage “eco-friendly” electric cars. This, she says, is inevitable, no matter what the tourists and the public think.
But the carriage horses are immensely popular and no tourist on record has ever sought their removal or asked for vintage electric cars to replace them. I imagine – this is not scientific, just my guess – that there is not a tourist, lover, animal friend, or child on the planet who would seek to ban the horses for a “new kind of tourism” that no one has asked for, and that forces them into electric cars in Central Park.
It will be difficult for the city to claim Kaci Hickox cannot be quarantined without a solid factual basis, or that the hundreds of people in the carriage trade can be thrown out of work and banished because the mayor has decided – with no evidence of any kind that he has revealed – that the horses do not belong in New York City.
Kaci Hickox has spoken out bravely on behalf of the country’s health care workers. She may also have greatly boosted the rights of the New York Carriage owners and drivers, and shown them the way. There are many lessons to be drawn from her struggle.
Battered for years by animal rights organizations accusing them of many crimes without evidence, the people in the carriage trade have reluctantly come to understand, as Kaci Hickox understood from the first moment that she was placed in that tent in New Jersey, that their civil and human rights may be taken from them, that they are threatened by ignorance and hysteria and feckless politicians.
Hickox did not hesitate, she did not hide behind strategy sessions and political assessments, she got herself a good lawyer – civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel – and loudly and eloquently demanded justice and fairness in the face of the howling and unreasoning mob. One day later, she was being ridiculed by Rush Limbaugh, a sign of the times. She spoke out right away, and forcefully, on her dying iphone, from a tent in Newark.
The carriage trade is learning how to fight back. They deserve great compassion for their suffering and the cruelty shown them, and understanding of their clannishness and caution. They are not media warriors, they are not political people.They need and deserve protection from a government that seems to advance freedom only when it suits their political interests.
Kacki Hickox has stuck her neck out for them as well as for us. For the sake of the horses and of animals everywhere, may the carriage drivers maintain the strength and vision and courage of a young and very brave nurse from Maine.
The big and beautiful carriages horses came to me last night, as they sometimes do, perhaps it was a dream, one of them came and whispered in my ear that their story in New York has become a magical and surreal dance, the horses called it The Twisted Ballet, and it seemed so true, and so very real that it sent a chill up and down my spine as the big moon came bursting through.
In the night, these horses are so beautiful, their snorts echo through the pasture, silence the owls and the coyotes, send the mice and the snakes back into their holes, reflect the moon off of their great and shiny coats. Listen to us, they say. At first, I feared for them, I thought they were so weak and unprotected. I know better now, so does the mayor of New York City.
Chief Avrol Looking Horse of the Sioux Nation told me while we sat on a bench in Central Park this summer that the horses were powerful spirits, that they were talking to me, they had chosen me, prayed for me to awaken and speak to them. The horses talk to me all the time, he said, it is a part of our world. I can hardly believe such a thing, I told the Chief, it is unimaginable to me, up on my farm in the country. It cannot be true. I thought it was madness.
That idea, hearing it on that bench, that was surreal. But I have changed now, I know it is true, I don’t think about it anymore, I just accept it and give thanks for this dialogue. The horses did chose me and others to speak for them, they gave me the strength and power to write about them, to seek the truth and find it. They showed me where to look. They called upon me as well to call attention to the great injustice being done the human beings in the carriage trade, the owners of the horses, the drivers.
This has been such a gift to me, I have rarely felt more alive as an author, more worthwhile as a journalist. What is the point of writing all of these words if they do not touch the souls and spirits of people, if they do not uncover truth? The horses called me to recognize who I really was. Words are important, they told. Words have power. Words are stronger than lies, they can kill lies and expose them to the light.
The mayor of New York does not yet know what the horses know, and neither do the carriage drivers of the people who own the stables, there is a monumental truth that is right under their noses, but they are still too battered to see it. They are not the ones in danger, he is. It is he who has been done in, by his sanctioning of cruelty, abuse, fear and dishonesty.
I see it more clearly every day. The horses are speaking, their spirits are unleashed, they are calling our attention to the sorry mess we have brought to the world, and to our hateful dealings with one another. The horses will undo the mayor for his fecklessness and cowardice and arrogance. For his contempt for Mother Earth and the natural world. It is he who will be banished one day, not them. This is underway. Day by day, it is clearer that the horses have done the unthinkable, they have already and in the face of staggering odds defeated him and his enraged allies in the movement that calls itself a movement for animal rights. They have begun his unraveling. He cannot ban them, he has been denied and rejected.
First, the horses revealed the true nature of the movement seeking to drive them out of our world. The horses have called us to see the lies, rage and disconnection that underlie the animal rights movement in New York City. They take money under false pretense. They do not tell the truth, they despise free speech and negotiation, they advocate the hatred of human beings in the name of loving animals. And they have lied and lied and lied about the horses and the people who ride them – almost everyone can see it now – the horses are not abused or mistreated, they are not the animals who need rescue.
They have exploited animals in the worst possible way, to endanger them and exploit their suffering to raise money and gain political power. If not for the horses, many of us would not know this, would not have seen it.
The horses – with no mayor, developer, millions of dollars, angry websites and blogs, marketers and publicists to defend them – have made short shrift of their enraged tormentors. These self-righteous people seemed so powerful in January, but they seem no more powerful than the flies that buzz around the stables in the summer. No one in the great city believes them any more, not the newspapers, the unions, the businesses, the members of the City Council, the people who live in the city.
The mayor dances in the Twisted Ballet, he hides, he dodges, he runs. Everywhere he goes, the horses are there, waiting for him, beautiful, proud, spiritual. They have encircled him, showing us his weakness and confusion, his lack of courage. No matter what he does or when he dodges, he cannot escape them or their message and meaning. They will not be lied about, they will not be banished again by the greedy and the arrogant. He has walked into their trap, he cannot send them away, they are not going away, they will haunt him every day of his political life.
The highest calling off a political leader in a free nation is to protect freedom and property. In this, the horses have brought light to his great failure to do so.
Susan Sontag wrote once that the past itself, in the face of great change, has become the most surreal of subjects. It makes it possible to see the real beauty in what is vanishing. This is what the horses have done, they have shown us their real beauty and worth, they have called us to see the injustice being done to so many good human beings in the name of loving animals.
This is the Twisted Ballet, the horses have never been more reviled, they have never been more loved. They have never been in more danger, they have never been safer. So many of us are awakening to their purpose and meaning and importance in our lives. They are sacred things, a part of us and our past and future.
In my dreams, they show me that it is not the horses we have to fear for, it is us, the lost souls of human beings who have lost touch with the natural world, betrayed them and their sacred spirits, and threatened the world. I am beginning to understand the message of the chief:
Maria and I are heading to New York City first thing in the morning. This trip is important to me. I am going to meet with Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Calf Buffalo Pipe of Peace, Chief Arvol and I are both going together to witness an animal rights demonstration against the horses and to talk with one another. He has asked me to come and meet with him. He is conducing a prayer ceremony in Central Park for peace and for the carriage horses, he is speaking out against the breaking of their sacred connection with human beings.
I am going for several reasons. I believe the assault on the carriage trade and the carriage horses is an injustice, and a great mistake. These horses represent many things in human history, and are one of the last links between our greatest city and the natural and animal worlds. I believe they are safest and best cared for right where they are, they have work to do that is meaningful to many people.
The carriage horse owners and drivers have been subject to a long and unnecessarily cruel campaign, they have suffered greatly simply for doing their jobs, pursuing their own work and living their lives. They have broken no laws, committed no crimes. There is no evidence the horses are abused, unhappy, overworked, unsafe, or uncomfortable.
Chief Arvol believes deeply that all working horses and humans should be protected by law as they serve a deep cultural and spiritual purpose in keeping a sacred connection alive for future generations. This connection is in great danger, if the horses are banished from New York, they will disappear from our world.
I’ll bring my camera and do some blogging from New York. I’ll return to the farm with Maria on Tuesday.
Thanks and credit for this photograph to Nina Galicheva of Nina Galicheva Photography, a gifted photographer who is capturing the world of the New York Carriage Horses.
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People who put principles before people are people who hate people, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The truth of this statement reveals itself more and more every day, in our crippled national political system, of course, and very recently and clearly in the long drama of the New York Carriage Horses and the fall and rise of a horse near Central Park.
There has always been something painful and disturbing about the New York Carriage Horse conflict for me. I felt it the first moment I walked into the Clinton Park Stables on West 52nd Street. Part of it was the issue of the horses themselves, of course, and the many false statements about them I kept running across and discovering.
There are two very different realities in this story, the one you read and hear about, the one you see and feel.
But mostly, I was shocked at the tone and cruelty of the many statements and attacks directed at the people in the carriage trade from the animal rights movement. From a distance, it felt like another of those eternal arguments in politics. Up close, it feels very different. The attacks on the drivers and owners seemed deeply personal, even vindictive to me. It did not feel like just another controversy; it felt like something much more ugly and alarming. They don’t just disagree with these people, I thought, they seem to hate the very idea of them.
And if I may speak from the heart a moment, I need to say it is something that is ugly and alarming. Just ask Tony Salerno.
The people in the carriage trade – most of them immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants – are very real people, they have never seemed to me the demonic cardboard cutouts portrayed by the mayor of New York City and the animal rights workers and volunteers. The carriage trade is heavily Irish, but the drivers are immigrants from everywhere – Mexico, Ireland, Russia, the Ukraine, Israel, Italy, South America They love many things about their work and their lives, although it is hard work – they meet all kinds of people, deal with cold and sun and rain, work with animals, are outside, and live far from the regimentation and tensions of the corporate world.
In their language and values, these are working class people, the American story; they live in Queens, Brooklyn, New Jersey, Long Island, they make a good living, they work hard for it, they do not have a lot of money. To their amazement, they have the most controversial jobs in New York City, perhaps America, at the moment.
I Imagine a function of humanity – of my humanity – is empathy. Empathy is the cornerstone of compassion; you cannot have it for animals and not for people, or for people and not for animals. The drivers and owners run the gamut of human behavior, most seem nice, some seem withdrawn and remote, some are funny, some are quiet, there is great and palpable affection for their horses who are, after all, the center of the enterprise and the focal point of their work. People who work with horses have a way of life, not a job.
And people who live with dogs, horses or donkeys, understand that you cannot ride or control a large animal like a draft horse – or handle a working dog or donkey – without developing a particular kind of relationship with them. We also know that the animals are always a mirror of their humans. Angry and brutal people do not have responsive, calm and contented animals, they do not ride their horses through city streets and on rides in the park if they do not work together and in tandem. You can not herd sheep with a border collie if you are angry and frustrated. You cannot trust a bomb-sniffing dog in a train station if you are not connected to him or her in a special way. The animals reflect us, they never lie. For the people in the carriage trade, their relationship with animals is very individualistic, they do not see the big horses as pets, they see them as partners, sometimes family members.
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People knowledgeable about animals noted after the incident on Thursday that Tony Salerno was able to keep his horse Spartacus calm and to lie still on the ground for several minutes, until it was safe for the horse to get up. Not only was that not an act of greed, callousness, or cowardice, it was a testament to the horse’s trust in him. I was impressed by it, he deserves credit for it. And nobody – not a tourist passing by, not some animal rights bureaucrat in an office, not a mayor hiding in his ideological bubble – could know better than Salerno at that moment what his horse needed or might do. No one in an office in Brooklyn or downtown Manhattan has the right to second-guess him from their computer screens.
With the help of the ever-manipulable media, the campaign against the horses has always sought to portray people like Salerno as inhuman, even sub-human, in order to justify taking their work and their horses away from them. People who put principles before people are people who hate people, and the campaign against the carriage horses has, from the first, has been in large measure a hate campaign against people. In this instance, it is no longer a movement to advance the well-being of animals, if it ever was. If you pay much attention, it is hard to characterize it in any other way.
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I was not completely able to put my finger on what is so disturbing about this issue it until this weekend when I watched the brutal campaign unfold to dehumanize Salerno, a 62-year-old carriage horse driver, an immigrant from Palermo, Italy, and the owner of Spartacus, the horse who fell down on Thursday. And then got up a few minutes later, unharmed. Within minutes, Serano was being stripped of any humanity, decency, compassion or dignity, accused of some awful things, even some crimes. He was no longer a human being.
Spartacus was not harmed, nor was the driver or any person. The carriage sustained minor damaged to one of its lanterns. There was no contact of any kind with any motorized vehicle. I was interested to note that no animal rights spokesperson or activist, no public official, including the mayor ever said at any point that they were grateful no one, including Spartacus, was hurt. That is the first thing an animal lover would say, but of course the mayor couldn’t say that. It would mean the accident was not “horrible” or “awful,” or “tragic.” Nobody would send in any money or sign any petitions for a horse that fell down and got up, there would be nothing to demonstrate about, nothing for the reporters to write. There would be no abuse.
And it would mean that Tony Salerno might be human after all, and compassionate as well. That is not in the script, that would not advance the principle – the horses do not belong in New York City.
PETA’s account of the incident – as a”horrible” and “tragic’ incident in which the horse collided with a bus, was held down by his heartless driver in order to avoid damaging the carriage was based upon a text message sent by an Oklahoma tourist who talks like a PETA protestor and seems not to exist. He is, in fact, a magician as well as a tourist, vanishing right in front of a crowd of drivers, people, tourists and reporters without leaving a single trace. There is no one who saw him or knows who he is. He has not come forth, even thought he said what he saw was the worst case of animal abuse he had ever seen.
Even though nobody saw or heard him, or saw anyone standing near the drivers, PETA said this tourist quoted the driver as saying he had to worry about the carriage first because he had to cover the damage, even though the carriage belongs to him, and there was no substantial damage – and the horse is far more valuable than the carriage.
Why, I wondered, would reporters quote people with such a clear and biased agenda to describe an event they did not see, were nowhere near, have no qualifications to analyze, hold no position. These groups have a long history of distorting and misrepresenting facts. Why tell their transparently false version of a story when there were a dozen carriage drivers right on the scene – and many real bystanders – who saw everything and were eager to talk about it?
Because, one of the drivers told me, we are not human, we don’t matter, we couldn’t possibly be telling the truth.
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The social scientist David Livingstone, author of “Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others,” writes that when people dehumanize others, they must first conceive of them and represent them as subhuman creatures. Only then, he says, can they unleash their aggression and exclude the target from the moral community. At that point, it is acceptable to attack the target in an immoral way.
In the long campaign against the carriage trade, Fitzgerald’s observation and Livingstone’s explanation have both been played out before us. It was very clear on Thursday. Sometimes it is good to be on my farm upstate, it is easier to see things than in the middle of the din. There is no way to describe the vilification of Salerno other than to say it was an orchestrated and distasteful effort to portray him as a subhuman. He was represented as being free of any compassion or morality, a greedy person devoid of any responsibility. He had no feeling for his horse, it was just a thing, like a loaf of bread. This characterization is familiar by now, it is consistent with the continuous portrayals of the carriage trade owners and drivers – as less than human people without any moral values.
Because they make money from the horses, they must not care about them. Visiting the stables and talking to the drivers, I had a different idea, an important one in the debate over whether working animals for money is tantamount to abuse. Because they make money from the horses, they must care about them a great deal. The food they buy depends on it.
Salerno is Italian-born, he speaks broken English but he is quite human, full of emotion. The other drivers describe him as loving his horse very much. He is a character, he has a vivid twinkle in his eyes, his emotions are all over his face. You can see this for yourself in this video of him taken after the accident involving his horse. He showed great love and concern for his horse, and at the same time, considerable empathy for the other, younger drivers, who are worried about putting food on the table for their families if the animal rights groups succeed. Palermo says with great passion that no one is ever taking his horse away; Spartacus is part of his family. If he is faking it, he is a brilliant actor.
Tony Palermo said in the video that he has always stayed silent in the face of taunts and curses shouted at him at least once a week in the park.
“But why,” he asks in the video, “do they lie and lie?”
I love that Salerno veered off his discussion of Spartacus and launched a hilarious broadside at the city’s mayor for eating pizza in a restaurant with a knife and fork, rather than with his hands. He seemed genuinely shocked by this behavior, he said he doubts whether Mayor deBlasio could really be Italian, Italians eat pizza with their hands.
Salerno, said a spokesperson for NYClass, viewed his horse only as a “commodity.” He could have gotten the horse up on his feet in “two seconds,” she said, but he chose not to in order to prevent damage to his carriage. And clearly, she said, the driver was lying about what happened on Central Park South. The horse collided with a bus, she said, it was a horrible thing to see. Except no one saw a bus but the mythical tourist, and no busses run by the horse stand across from the Plaza Hotel.
This de-humanization is a characteristic of the conflict over the carriage horses, which evokes a number of class issues and the distinct whiff of elitism. As Livingstone writes, it is essential for rabid ideologies to de-humanize their targets. If they remove them from the moral community of people, it makes it so much easier politically to abuse them. Serano could not possibly love his horse, he is less than human.
When I saw the photograph of Salerno hovering over his Spartacus, the first thing I felt was empathy for him. There is little in life more painful than to see an animal you love and work with lying on the ground, in danger of harming themselves trying to get up. But the first response of NYClass was to suggest with absolutely no evidence that Salerno felt nothing, thus was not only not human, he was not even a real man.
“One man suggested cutting the carriage and the other said no because it would come out of his pocket (he clearly had one concern, of which the horse was not), ” said NYClass at a press conference,” quoting their ephemeral Oklahoma passerby by, the only one of thousands of people nearby who saw the things he said he saw.
____ De-humanization campaigns are familiar in our time; they have been used against all kinds of people in all kinds of places. When you stop seeing someone as a human being, you will soon stop treating them as one, as has happened to people in many parts of the world, as is happening to the people in the carriage trade. When someone is not really a person, they are not worthy of meeting face-to-face, of compromise or negotiation, of even choosing their own work. They have no rights, are entitled to no fair or due process. They have no right to even exist as they wish, even if they do it in peace and within the law.
If one de-constructs the rise and fall of Spartacus, you will quickly get to the real story, it is right there staring us in the face. Nothing much happened to the horse, the heart of the story is the effort to dehumanize Salerno.
The incident came at a time when the controversy over the horses is at a crossroads, the animal rights groups are alienating almost ever major demographic in the city, people, business owners, newspapers, unions, they are rapidly losing public support and are desperately seizing on Spartacus’s mishap to regain their flagging momentum and call for protests and demonstrations – one Thursday, another at City Hall on Monday. Last week, they accused Liam Neeson of being cruel to animals by going to his condo, shouting at his neighbors, and being cruel to him. It is not yet clear how this has helped a single animal on the earth.
The mayor, by his rigid support of this idea to ban the horses and his close association with the people attacking the carriage trade, is endorsing the dehumanizing of the people in the carriage trade, he is putting the full weight of a powerful government behind it. He refuses to visit any of the stables, talk to any of the owners or drivers or acknowledge that they have any legitimate values or concerns. It is almost unprecedented for a city-wide politician who is seeking to ban an industry that has broken no laws and is accused of no crime to refuse to even meet with the people whose livelihood and long traditions he is seeking to take away from them.
This refusal to acknowledge the carriage people as worthy of talking to is, in itself, an act of dehumanization. It speaks of contempt and disrespect at worse, cowardice at best. To refuse to speak to someone you have great power over is a demeaning insult in almost every culture. The mayor frequently attends fund-raising events held by the animal rights organizations; he has received hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions from them, and says he is proud to be a member of their movement. He talks to people every day, all over the city, about all kinds of things. Putting 300 people out of work ought to be worth a few minutes of his time.
I have asked every carriage owner and driver I have met if any member of any animal rights organization has ever come to the stables, talked with them, pet a horse, given one a carrot, asked them any questions, offered to hold any discussions about the horses. It seems no member of any animal rights group in New York City ever has. They refuse to come near the horses in the park as well. Every Sunday, they come to Central Park and shout all kinds of insults at the drivers, calling them greedy animal abusers and worse. They call the drivers names, wave their placards in front of the horses as if to spook them. Yet they are permitted to speak for all animals and anything that happens to them.
People who put principles before people become people who hate people. The drivers are just doing their jobs, why single them out in this way?
What is it about the carriage trade that makes them uniquely undeserving of one meeting, a single visit to their stables?
The answer may lie in the fascinating press conferences held by PETA and NYClass, and in the continuing protests and demonstrations in the wake of Spartacus’s stumble and fall; it was said more than once that the “men” trying to save the carriage – “if you can call them that..” cared nothing for the horse. There was, in fact, at least one woman involved, no bus. There was not a single expression of sympathy for the driver or the horse, no recognition of the quick and humane and professional work done to end the situation quickly and safely.
Over the course of this conflict, the carriage drivers have been accused of cruelty, abuse, neglect, of cheating tourists and riders, of ignoring city rules and regulations, of working their horses to death, failing to treat serious injuries and illnesses, cheating horses out of their time off, of keeping the horses in filthy stables where they cannot even turn around, of housing them in firetraps, working them in heat and cold, even of contributing to global warming by slowing up traffic on the way to and from Central Park. No public official or politician or newspaper editorial has ever protested or criticize this assault on working people who have broken no laws.
The people in the carriage trade have been relentlessly dehumanized. Otherwise, the mayor wouldn’t dare not speak to them. And as the mayor says – he has never even owned a dog or cat, let alone a horse – they should be excluded from the civic and moral community of the city so that they can be banned in a way that is politically and culturally acceptable. Normal rules do not apply to them.
Carriage horse drivers like Salerno are not even deemed to be worthy enough to have a say in their own futures. If there is any single thing that lays bare the elitism and class contempt – and and the dehumanizing ethos- that hovers over the horse people, it is the assumption by the mayor and the animal rights groups that the drivers will abandon their horses and their trade and willingly go to drive eco-friendly electric cars instead. No one has ever asked them if this is what they wish to do, this has been decided for them.
There is the air of fantasy about this campaign. There will be no victims, say the animal rights groups. The horses will all go to rescue farms; the drivers will all get into their carts.
Imagine telling the employees of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, or the reporters at the New York TImes, or the fancy doctors on Park Avenue, or the producers and technicians for CBS or NBC or ABC, or the members of the City Council, or teachers in Brooklyn, or the art galleries in Chelsea, that it has been decided by superior and more powerful people that their professions and companies aren’t working or aren’t humane or in keeping with the times, and thus will be banned. And that other careers have been chosen for them – perhaps working in the city’s parks to run recreational programs or directing traffic. In the progressive city, rank elitism is all right, as long as it is well-funded.
Since it is presumed that the horses are only a “commodity” for the people in the trade, they couldn’t possibly love them or their work. Putting them into electric cars – and not knowing the difference between driving a horse and a vintage car – this makes sense. Why would it matter to people like this – the children of immigrants, plain-speaking working people, people without blogs, people who do not shout at people in the park every Sunday, people who ride horses for money – what kind of work they might do?
These people might as well be selling shoes or working in the Central Park Zoo, it makes no difference to them, they will be just as happy.
But here is the logic trap, reporters who were awake would see it in a flash: if the drivers are as callous, greedy, cruel and dishonest as the animal rights groups say they are, why should they be allowed to ferry people around Central Park at all in either carriage or car? They should all be in jail. Can’t you just picture an eco-friendly fake vintage car driver ignoring a tourist lying in the road after an accident to make certain his $160,000 cart wasn’t damaged? Would we want someone like that near our children? How is it they are not good enough to drive horse carriages – horses cost about $2,000, they are rescued at auction – but are worthy enough to drive $160,000 fake antique electric cars?
An effort is finally underway now to humanize the people in the carriage trade. It’s about time. There are photos of drivers and horses on websites, cute videos of tourists riding through the park, spokespeople in position to quickly answer accusations, testimonials from their many supporters and admirers from all over the world. The famous actor Liam Neeson deserves much of the credit for helping to remind New Yorkers that people like Tony Salerno are very human.
A handsome Irish immigrant and global celebrity with a knock-out brogue, Neeson seems to me an exceptionally moral and grounded person, so much more gracious and generous and credible than the people now attacking him for defending the carriage horses and his many friends in the trade.
Neeson has focused on the humanity of the carriage trade people, and restored it to a great degree in the public mind by talking about the carriage trade’s Irish roots. He has talked about his love of horses and knowledge of them, about the jobs that would be lost. He has described the good and humane treatment of the horses. He has avoided the cruel and angry rhetoric of the animal rights community, the ceaseless cycle of argument and counter-argument. He has exposed the feckless values of the mayor by highlighting his refusal to come and see the horses for himself. He has evoked the history of the iconic horses and their rich place in the history of the city. In relating the impact of the ban on the more than 300 people, many with children, who would be affected by it, he has sparked great sympathy for the drivers and the horse medallion owners.
He exudes authenticity and credibility.
I do not have the megaphone of someone like Liam Neeson, or his influence, (I am just about as good looking, I am assured) but I have seen the same thing and written about it – this is not a story about an abstract and rigid political principle. It is a very human story.
Perhaps because I am Jewish, and because that I am aware that many women, African-Americans, immigrants and gays, a growing number of corporate workers in America, have been dehumanized and have had and still have to fight to be recognized as human beings. I am conscious of the awful effects of dehumanizing people. I do not define myself in this way, I do not relate to the culture of victimization, but it is a destructive thing. The Irish understand dehumanization as well as any people, they have been dehumanized for centuries, their unique culture, language, politics and worldview have been shaped by it.
I think they are well equipped to stand and fight for their lives and their horses, as Tony Salerno did this week. But the history of New York is grim when it comes to class struggles, when political power and big money collides with ordinary people. Sooner or later, these elites will surely triumph and push these people and push their horses out of New York City, and they will vanish from our world. In the corporate nation, the little guys rarely win in the end against big money and big power. Even Jacqueline Onassis couldn’t stop the destruction of the beautiful and iconic Penn Station, destroyed to make room for an ugly sports arena. It seems some lessons are never learned.
But maybe they will not vanish this year. They are putting up a hell of a fight.
The carriage horse people came to this country in part to escape being dehumanized, they are struggling to make sense of it. This work was good for their fathers and grandfathers, why is it suddenly no good for them, the horses, or the great city? I see the pain in suffering in their eyes and faces when I go and interview them and photograph them. It is very real. It has made some of them sick, there is a dark cloud permanently hanging over their heads. A mayor who is truly concerned with being humane would put a stop to it. Anyone is welcome in the stables, anyone can go and see this for themselves.
Despite the diverse nationalities of the drivers, the carriage trade is still very much an Irish thing. How ironic. Every day, this seems more and more like an issue about class, not horses, and in the city that calls itself the most progressive.
Stereotyping people as inhuman or subhuman for political gain or principle is the tactic of the ideologue, not the moral man or woman. It is always an ugly thing to see, especially when unthinking celebrities and politicians and the media mob join in the righteous chorus. Modern history is pretty clear about what happens to dehumanized people, this ancient practice has left an awful trail in its wake.
The issue involving the carriage horses is whether or not the horses can exist humanely and safely in New York City. It is whether animals can remain in our urban world or not, and whether we care to try and keep them. It is not whether Tony Serano is greedy, callous, or less than human.
To dehumanize someone means removing their humanness, their dignity, and their sense of themselves as a person and a citizen of equal rights and standing. We are all entitled to respect and dignity and freedom, that is the promise of our country. Dehumanization is a far worse and crueler offense than anything that has been done to the carriage horses of New York, or even alleged to have been done.
I will credit the animal rights people as being human, they deserve to be treated as such, even though I do not believe there is a single reason to remove the carriage horses from New York. The spiritual challenge of caring and spiritual people in our time is to try and never become what disturbs us, or calls us nasty names on Facebook. I hope the carriage trade people can do it.
For many years, the animal rights movement has been viewed as an extremist and irrational fringe, making lots of noise, invading the lives of many people with animals and anger, but never setting public policy in a mainstream way. No major politician in any big city has ever endorsed them in the way the mayor of New York has or joined their movement. This struggle in New York has changed the dynamic of animal rights politics across the country. These groups have a lot of power in New York, they have millions of dollars, they have bought themselves a City Council President and a mayor, and he is committed to their cause.
The country and much of the world is now waiting to see how the animal rights movement handles their new found power, or whether, as seems to be the case so far, they will continue to abuse it in this arrogant, frequently dishonest (where is this Oklahoma tourist, anyway?) and often hateful way. To date, they seem unable to grow and modify their xenophic view of animals and their deep animosity towards people. If they continue to choose blind principle over people, then they will, in fact, become people who hate people, and they will fail. Almost no one in the city outside of their own bubble is liking them or their message, the silver lining in this angry cloud. Their cruelty to people, their distortion, lying about facts, and their over-reaching is repugnant. If they don’t change, most people – and most people are just like the carriage people – will reject them and their mayor and their message.
Sometimes, I think the assaults by the animal rights groups on people like Tony Salerno are not by-products of the campaign against the horses, they are the real point of it.
I want to end this long piece (sorry for that, but it needs to be said somewhere) by offering my testimony that Tony Salerno is very much a man, very much a human being. He is entitled to keep his good reputation and his dignity and the horse he loves to work with every day in the greatest park in one of the world’s greatest cities. He has lived a good and hard-working life, he deserves the support and comfort of people who truly wish to be humane and compassionate.
Dehumanizing people is wrong, it constitutes abuse in the most literal sense. No matter what the outcome of the carriage horse struggle, it is so much much crueler to take a human being’s sense of self away than to make a working horse walk in traffic.
