Search Results for: carriage horses

“Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because it is necessary for his own.”- Thomas Jefferson.

The long and painful New York Carriage Horse conflict is entering it’s most critical and confusing phase, it is difficult to grasp what is happening inside all of those closed doors and secret meetings. A number of news organizations have reported that the carriage trade and the mayor have made a deal and reached an agreement. That is not yet so.

I’ve been talking and listening to a lot of people, and this is what I gather is important.

The carriage trade is fighting for its life right now against mayor who seems irrational and obsessed, and possibly corrupt. If he wins this battle, it will clearly be a phyrric victory, it seems foul.

There is no deal, no agreement, between the mayor, the animal rights activists working with him, and the carriage trade. They are far apart on several fundamental issues, including and especially how many horses will remain in he city, and whether the industry will survive in any kind of independent or recognizable form.

If the mayor’s bill passes the City Council in the way it was proposed, the carriage trade will cease to exist as we know it. More than half of the drivers will lose their work, more than 150 horses will have to leave the city, and the carriage trade will be regulated by a new board composed in part of members of the animal rights group that have worked so hard to destroy them, NYClass, a group that claims to speak for the rights of animals, but does not appear to ever have saved a single one.

It is apparent by now that the mayor, thwarted in his effort to ban the carriage trade outright, is using the power of a $75 billion budget to ram legislation through a historically weak City Council with his own personally-chosen Speaker,  that would, in effect, ban the industry without having the courage to come out and say it.

No one in the city but a handful of animal rights groups favors this path. Every  age, gender, political and racial group in the city opposes banning the horses, 3-1. The only other time in memory the city was so united was after 911. It is revealing that the mayor has chosen to ignore this very clear mandate.

Initially, the mayor proposed to cut down the number of horse medallions from 68 to 34, working shifts would be limited to six hours instead of 9, and acceptable temperatures for working horses would be changed. Horses could not work in temperatures above 85 or below 9 degrees. (No horses have been treated for heatstroke or frostbite in modern history).

With only 34 medallions, the industry would have no longer been economically viable.

The idea that the horses are overworked has been an enduring obsession of the mayor and his supporters in the animal rights movement, there is absolutely no evidence to support the claim, pulling light carriages on asphalt in central park would be the envy of most of the working horses in history or on many farms around the world.  The new proposals would drastically increase the workload of the  remaining horses.

One of the most controversial elements of the mayor’s proposal is his effort to limit the number of horses in the new stable to approximately 75. Now, about 220 horses pull 68 carriages. Even though demand for rides would remain unchanged, that would mean at least double the amount of work for each horse, an odd proposal for a mayor who has insisted the industry should be banned in part because the horses are overworked.

The mayor’s proposal refuses to permit carriage owners to use spare or substitute horses, or to even occasionally bring in horses from outside of the new stables. Negotiators describe this as the major obstacle to an agreement. That surprises me, but a lot of the others seem troubling as well.

It is not clear that the powerful Central Park Conservancy supports this plan, and public works projects in the city have a long history of political struggles, bidding scandals,  overruns, court fights and long delays. There may also be fierce taxpayer opposition to city money being used to cannibalize the carriage trade,  something city residents clearly do not want.

Some of the mayor’s most noxious and original proposals have beaten back in intense negotiations with the Teamsters. Some remain.

The mayor is essentially asking public funds be used to pay off what almost everyone in the city understands is essentially a campaign debt, a promise to NYClass founder Steven Nislick to ban the carriage horses in exchange for helping him win the mayoral race. Nislick, a self-styled animal rights activist, is a real estate developer with properties on the West Side of Manhattan, where the horse stables are.

“Campaign debt “is a generous use of Orwellian mindspeak to define something that appears to be something else.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a bribe as “something valuable (such as money) that is given in order to get someone to do something.”  A bribe is also defined as this: “persuading someone to act in one’s favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement.”

A bribe, even in our time, is illegal.

NYClass gave Mayor deBlasio hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and spent more than a million dollars to defeat Christine Quinn, the Republican who was deBlasio’s mayor opponent. The mayor, said the New York Daily News today in an angry editorial this morning, is engaged in a “vanity payback project” to NYClass and taxpayers ought not to be asked to fund it.

The Teamsters Union, which helped beat back the mayor’s original ban attempt, and the carriage owners seem to like the idea of a stable in Central Park, especially one taxpayers would pay for.

They have also won some important concessions in the negotiations. And they may win others when the proposal gets to the City Could. There will be public hearings and a vote there.

If a stable were built in the park, the carriage trade could sell the three stables on the West side for millions of dollars, and their future survival in New York would be assured. If they don’t move to the park, the stables will almost certainly  be gobbled up by real estate interests anyway,  or threatened by having a mayor in office who is obsessed with destroying the industry. A different mayor could most likely arrange for the carriage trade to city, but the horse owners are certainly wise to be wary.

This mayor is a bit scary. I am struck by how many people involved in the negotiations describe the mayor as “unsettled,” “obsessed,” or “insane.”

Lots of people who are following this story all over the country are asking me what they can to do help, and I honestly don’t know. It seems to me we are past the point of writing e-mails to City Council members, they have heard it all before. The mayor does aspire to being the leader of progressive politics in America, I know for a fact that he is aware of the many e-mails and letters some of you have sent him on this subject.

My blog posts are definitely read by politicians and lobbyists on both sides of the issue, I’ve heard this before, but I would not presume to think my blog or my writing really makes much difference in the outcome. I am not a player in New York politics or media. Liam Neeson is, bless his honest soul.

There are big stakes here for lots of people, and also for the horses. There is no doubt many of those 150 horses would end up being euthanized or sent to slaughter. I can’t imagine how organizations who claim to speak for the rights of animals can justify that. But then, a number of animal rights activists have said they believe the horses would be better off dead than pulling light carriages in Central Park. Then, it makes sense.

I think it is now time for the carriage trade, the drivers and their lawyers to recognize that the mayor is irrational and somewhat unstable on the subject of the horses. He is not reachable either fairness or integrity or democratic process. I have always had this feeling that he is an animal rights ideologue, the first elected to a major city in American history.

The animal rights movement is not an animal rescue or animal welfare movement, it is a self-described animal liberation movement (read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation: The Definitive Class Of The Animal Movement.)

NYClass, and Mayor deBlasion, who has never owned a dog or a cat, do not believe animals should be owned by people, entertain people in any way, or work with people in any way. This is the only explanation for the fanatic path that the mayor of New York, who has a lot of bigger issues on his plate, has taken on this issue.

Mayor deBlasio has been thoroughly  defeated – even ridiculed and humiliated – in his move to ban the horses outright. So his new idea is trying to kill them off in devious and indirect ways – a thousand cuts rather than a single blow. Some are afraid the trade might commit suicide rather than risk years of pressure persecution.

My own view is that it is time for the carriage trade and their lawyers to recognize reality. In many ways, this is now a civil rights issue.

The Legal Information Institute at Cornell defines a civil right this way: “A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered by another gives rise to an action for injury. Examples of civil rights are freedom of speech, press, and assembly, the right to vote, freedom from involuntary servitude and the right to equality in public places, and in dealing with public institutions.”

By almost every measure, the carriage drivers have been denied equal access to government and the regulatory process. The mayor refuses to meet with them, speak with them, negotiate with them. He meets regularly with animal rights groups seeking to put them out of work and destroy their property and way of life. He has taken enormous amounts of money to listen to their agenda, and then to pursue it.

John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams all said the primary function of government is to protect freedom and property. Mayor deBlasio seeks to distort the legislative and regulatory process to do both to the carriage trade and the drivers – take away their freedom and property and deprive them of equal access. The law requires that regulatory agencies – the carriage trade is a regulated industry – regulate in a manner that is “rational.”

The carriage drivers are fighting for what Jefferson called “personal liberty,” the right to purse their way of life in an honest and rightful way. They have broken no laws, paid all of their taxes, supported their families, bought homes, send their children to college, violated none of the hundreds of regulations that already govern their work. There is no legal, moral or regulatory justification for their persecution.

There is nothing rational about the mayor’s behavior in this issue, or in the legislation he is trying to bludgeon his way through the City Council. I imagine the people in the carriage trade know this, they have already retained Norman Siegel, perhaps the best and most respected and experienced civil rights lawyer in America.

Siegel has repeatedly counseled caution and patience, and I am no lawyer, I am not qualified to tell him his business. The diverse and somewhat carriage trade suffers from internal politics, and the lack of a single unified vision for fending off the mayor. The fact that they have survived at all is a testament to their endurance and commitment, and to the city’s love of its endangered horses.

My own wish for Norman Siegel and the carriage trade is that they now choose to stand up and fight this outrageous government overreach and challenge the mayor and his legislation in the courts, which exist to defend the rights of oppressed people and guarantee equal process.

They may lose, of course, or they may win, but isn’t better to go down standing for the truth and their way of life rather than die the slow and humiliating death of a thousand cuts?

No one, surely not me, can tell anyone else to do that. It is just what my own heart and instincts say. Can you really get into bed with a snake and not get bit? Is the mayor’s commitment to a new stable in Central Park real? Nothing else he says about the carriage trade has been real.

If the new stables do not guarantee the industry a fair and rational opportunity to exist and survive in New York City, I hope the negotiators reject it and take on the mayor directly. I would love to see him testify in court and explaining exactly how much money he got from NY Class and exactly what for. I would like to hear him explain how he can make critical decisions that affect the lives of the constituents he is sworn to protect while refusing to speak with them, meet with them, or acknowledge them as worthy human beings.

There are important issues here that relate to horses, but also to people. My friend Pamela Rickenbach is a former carriage driver and the director of Blue Star Equiculture, the retirement home of the New York carriage horses and a draft horse sanctuary.

I admire her passion for the horses and her own powerful sense of humanity. She knows the carriage drivers and that culture as well as anyone.

She writes eloquently about the drivers and owners in the carriage trade, she reflects my own experience with these remarkable people. This morning, she sent me a message:

“The drivers and owners are a big diverse family of horse people all trying to survive and carry on a way of life that brings them the life they love to live. They are passionate and in my opinion beautiful people. Carriage drivers are an extraordinary collection of artists, writers, dreamers, lovers, engineers, farmers, farriers, fringe dwellers, fathers, mothers, sons and grandchildren. Some recently found this path and some are 2nd and 3rd generation carriage drivers. Some have raised their children ,sent them to college and have homes that they built with the help of their horses. They all have unique talents as drivers, driving in urban settings that are not for everyone, but it does make you a great driver, mindful and aware and tuned into the heartbeat of the city and surroundings. Most can do all of that and tell you stories and histories of the city you are not likely to hear anywhere else ever.”

If the mayor’s bill passes, many horses will suffer trauma, dislocation and death. Many of these good people will lose cherished and precious work and be forced into the corporate maw that has devoured the dreams and spirits of so many other people. A true and  honest and rational mayor would fight for these people, not just the millionaire developers who give him so much money and who know nothing about the horses and their real needs.

As always, the animals will suffer for our arrogance and cruelty.

It is a travesty to take these horses out of their safe and productive homes and force them into a world that can no longer accommodate them in any other way. The mayor is not just trying to kill an industry, but a way of life he seems to despise in a very personal and troubling way. That does not seem rational to me either.

All men and women are free, we come into the world with the right to our own person.

I hope the carriage trade gets what they want and need. I hope they find the strength and purpose to stand up for the owners, the drivers and the horses and right a great wrong, once and for all. History tells us there are times when we just have to fight for what is right.

Since the New York Carriage Controversy is supposed to be about the horses, their rights, their safety and their welfare, it seems essential, as the mayor tries once more to drive the horses out of New York City, to consider  as thoughtfully as possible what will become of them if more than 150 horses are taken from their work and shelter in the city, as has been proposed.

And to also consider who will be held accountable if and when some of them die, as seems almost certain.

The mayor is seeking to cannibalize the carriage trade  in the next few weeks in exchange for vague and somewhat fantasized promises to build a stable for 77 horses in Central Park sometime in the future. Officials close to the park and city planning say such a stable is unlikely ever to be built in Central Park, at least not for many years and much legal conflict and many millions of dollars.

I want to focus on the horses. Their safety and welfare, lost in the fog of New York money and politics, are supposed to be the point of all this.

On May 12, 2014, the New York State Veterinary Medical Society, Inc. (NYSVMS) wrote a letter to Mayor deBlasio.

“Many residents of New York City are unaware that New York State faces a major problem with unwanted, and even abandoned, horses, whose owners, for a multitude of reasons, are unable or unwilling to provide further care for them. Although rescue groups and individuals struggle to do what they can to save these animals and find them an appropriate home, euthanasia is all too often their fate.”

The debate in New York City over the horse-drawn carriages fails to take into account, says the letter, “what is likely to happen to the City’s current carriage horses if their jobs are taken away from them. The naive assumption that somewhere there is a pasture to which they can retire, masks the reality that sooner, rather than later, many of them will be put down.”

The NYSVMS warning was ignored by the mayor, he never acknowledged the letter or responded to it. Nor did he acknowledge or respond to more than a dozen similar warnings and concerns from just about every one of the most prestigious equine medical associations in the country, includling the American Veterinary Medical Association, and the American Association of Equine Practitioners.

At least a dozen private equine veterinary practitioners from around the country came to New York and also found the carriage horses to be healthy and content.

These groups and doctors all came to New York and studied the carriage horses, along with the NYSVMS, which found after an exhaustive study that “opponents of horse-drawn carriages are also misinformed about conditions in the carriage industry, frequently claiming that the horses are forced to live and work under inhumane conditions.” All three major veterinary organizations found that the horses, “many of which are rescue animals themselves, live and work under the careful scrutiny of the veterinary profession, which follows stringent standards designed to ensure the animal’s welfare is of paramount importance.”

The mayor has refused to meet with or speak to a single one of these internationally reknowned experts, veterinarians, behaviorists or biologists. He has never asked a single one what they found, saw, or concluded. He says it doesn’t matter.

This is an extraordinary position for a politician who aspires to lead the progressive political movement in America.

And one thing should be clear by now. The animal rights movement is not an animal rescue movement, it is an animal liberation movement. It’s oft-stated goal is to remove animals from the ownership and control of people.

Many leaders in this movement have said they believe animals are better off dead than living in bondage to people, forced to do their work. Steven Nislick, the founder of NYClass, the group spearheading the assault on the carriage trade has been quoted as saying that as well.

The movement that says it speaks for the rights of animals does not. The carriage horses are in peril.

In the irrational world of New York animal politics, and animal rights politics in particular, science doesn’t matter.

Neither does the plea of famed horse trainer Buck Brannaman, the inspiration for The Horse Whisperer book and film. The carriage horses, he wrote, are the lucky ones, they have light work to do and people to pay attention to them. The ones to worry, he cautions,  about are the ones languishing on preserves and farms. They have nothing to do but eat and drop manure. That is not, he says, a healthy life for any horse, let alone a working horse. For them, he says, it is a slow death.

Or the conclusion of famed biologist Jared Diamond, who says the big horses are the best suited animals on earth to live in urban areas.

The mayor is not interested in Brannaman, or Diamond, or in reason, knowledge, or people who have spent their lives treating or living with horses, or  the real needs of animals. He has never owned a dog or a cat. His major supporters include real estate developers who will inevitably buy the properties on which all three city stables sit.

Mayor deBlasio, along with the animal rights activists seeking to ban the horses, has rejected any kind of equine or animal expertise and refused to meet with the carriage horse owners or drivers. He will not visit the stables, not even after the actor Liam Neeson, a long-time lover of horses, humiliated him by urging him to “man up” and see the horses for himself.

There are a number of murky but very serious issues relating to the future of the carriage horses, if they are taken from their work and stables. The bill the mayor is introducing into the City Council dictates what the horse owners can do and can’t do with their private property. This is a nearly unprecedented expansion of government authority over personal property, especially by a municipal government in a democratic country.

The bill says that “A licensed horse shall not be sold or disposed of except in a humane manner, which, for the purposes of this subchapter, shall mean a licensed horse may not be sold or otherwise transferred to an individual or organization for purposes of slaughter, resale for slaughter, or holding or transport for slaughter.”

For one thing, carriage horse owners suddenly thrown out of work – more than half would lose their jobs under the new bill of the mayor’s – may need to sell their horses in order to raise money and live, the city has no plans to reimburse them or offer them any kind of buyout.  You can’t sell your horse to a  rescue farm.

For another, it seems their business what they do with their horses. They bought them, trained them, lived and work for them. Should the mayor and City Council really be deciding what people can do with the animals they own? Since the animal rights movement across the country is arguing, along with the mayor, that work for horses is tantamount to torture and abuse, they are essentially limiting the owners to selling their horses to rescue farms and preserves.

The horse rescue community is in awful difficulty since the recession.

More than 160,000 horses were sent to slaughter last year – 10,000 more than when the NYSVMS wrote their letter to the mayor  in 2014. Rescue farms are overcrowded, underfunded, and it is beyond naivety to believe there will be room for 150 1,800 lb draft horses who eat four huge bales of hay a day. It is dishonest to insist there are safe places for all of these horses to go for the rest of their lives.

I called a large and well-known rescue farm in Minnesota yesterday and talked to the owner, who asked not to be identified for obvious reasons (the animal rights movement does not promote civil dialogue).

“I’d like to see the horses leave all cities,” she said, “but I have to be honest with you, I’d rather see the horses alive and well and cared for in New York than dead or hanging around all day on rescue farms with a lot of sick old  horses. Working horses need to work, and I don’t have the money to feed big and healthy and active horses. Those aren’t the ones we rescue, they are fine. If 150 horses are sent out of the city like that, most of them will be dead within a couple of years. Nobody has that kind of money. We rescue the ones who are sick, starving, neglected almost to death, we need to save every penny for them.”

The mayor is blindly and obsessively plunging ahead with his plan to decimate the carriage trade  and remove the horses from the city, as he has promised to do. As he travels the country in pursuit of his burgeoning national political ambitions, he may well find the ghosts of these  beautiful and iconic animals waiting for him.

In the next weeks, the mayor is hoping to ram through the council his bill destroying the carriage trade while dangling his Trojan Horse – the promise of a stable in Central Park somehow at some time. He can’t kill them outright, but he can try to bully them into committing suicide.

It is time, I believe, to ask him and the members of the City Council who will be held accountable for the deaths of these horses if and when they occur, as they inevitably will if they are sent away, according to every equine authority there is.  I hope the lawyers of the carriage trade will emerge from their silence and speak up clearly for these animals, while there is time.

The horse world all across the country is up in arms over this issue, I have been giving interviews all morning. They and animal lovers everywhere will be taking note of every healthy and happy and loved carriage horse who is sent off to their death by an arrogant and willfully ignorant mayor and any other New York City politician who joins with him in this very unholy crusade.

This, clearly, is not about the rights of animals but the greed and ambition and arrogance of human beings.

A member of the City Council – he was from Queens – e-mailed me last night after reading the piece I wrote about the new legislation. He was seeking information about the future of the horses. His constituents, he said, were asking him about it.

He said he was thinking ahead, and he said he did not want to find himself explaining why he voted to kill one carriage horse after another for no reason anyone can justify or explain, and after the mayor and the leaders of the animal rights movement had promised that every one of the horses would be safe and cared for all of their lives.

Amen, brother, I answered. You are wise. The horse and animal people and the spirits of the horses will not forget.

A sad and urgent story to report. Somewhat myopically, I thought the carriage horse fight had been won. The truth is that the effort to ban the horses was stopped, but I didn’t realize how much of  a disconnected ideologue the mayor is or how little he cares about animals or the democratic process.  Do not let anyone tell you he cares about people who work.

The latest news from New York could be awful news for the New York Carriage Horses, and for everyone who loves animals and wants to see and know them.Their situation is dire, the mayor is once again negotiating obsessively, secretly and in bad faith.  He’s trying to ban the carriage trade without being blamed for it.

There is no deal close at hand, the carriage trade negotiators believe the idea of a stable for the horses in Central Park is a promising idea, but a fantasy.

I believe they are standing firm against this awful plan.

I quoted the Daily News the other day as saying a deal was close, that the city would build a new stables for the horses in Central park. That was inaccurate, it is not near to being close.  But there is a great danger of a bill being railroaded through the City Council that would cripple the carriage trade, cost hundreds of people jobs,  put many horses in danger,   and close two of the city’s three stables without any certainty that a new stable will ever even be built.

It seems that if the mayor can’t kill the carriage trade outright, he wants to persuade the people who work in the trade to commit suicide.

Once again, the people who say they are for the rights of animals but are not,  are close to driving away the beautiful draft horses from New York City, where they have worked and lived for hundreds of years. These horses are now in the gravest peril yet, all in the name of being saved. They are the luckiest horses in the world to be where they are, and the city seems to know it is blessed in many ways to have them. The mayor doesn’t know this, and the animal rights groups in the city have made it abundantly clear they know nothing about horses at all.

“We have no deal, we are not close to a deal,” said one person close to the negotiation. “The animal rights people are trying to make it look like a done deal. The mayor is unstable over this issue, he is obsessed with it, he is trying to ram through the City Council a bill that would essentially cut the number of licensed drivers drastically, put 150 horses out of work and in danger and restrict the trade in so many ways that we can barely function or make any money.”

The negotiators say the idea of a new stable in Central Park is what they are calling a “Trojan Horse,” essentially a trick to get council members to pass the new legislation. Humiliated by his failure to get a ban through the City Council after promising to get rid of the horses on “day one,” the mayor is simply (and secretly) trying another tack, an end run around any kind of open or democratic process.

The people in the carriage trade are fearful,  angry and disheartened, they are fighting back with a proposal to introduce safe “horse lanes” from the stables to the park rather than take public land in the park. But mostly, they are fighting for time. The stables would be a wonderful solution, if the offer was real.

Person after person has described the mayor as being obsessed with the idea of destroying the carriage trade and there is growing concern that he will muscle this legislation past the City Council.  He is repeatedly said to be disturbed on this subject.

NYClass, the animal rights group spearheading the effort to ban the horses, and the group that helped elect Mayor deBlasio is secretly supporting the bill that will essentially force two of the three stables into selling to hungry and very greedy real estate interests, cost scores of drivers their jobs, and keep only 75 to 77 horses in the city.  They are said to be leaking the stories about a done deal, they want it to happen. I bit.

And this is without any assurance that a stable will be built in the park at all. If they can’t kill the trade with one blow, they will try and do it by a thousand cuts.

The public has overwhelmingly rejected the idea of banning the horses from the city, this new plan is a complete and arrogant rejection of their wishes. Should the public will matter to an elected mayor?

The Teamsters are fighting to retain the status quo until a stable is built and better terms can be  agreed upon.  It sounds grim. The mayor, say the negotiators, seems almost disturbingly obsessed with advancing the idea that these changes must occur right now, and he is hoping to rush the legislation through the City Council very soon, before the enormous support behind the horses can organize again. It is not clear if he has support for this measure in the council.

“We have no agreement,” said one member of the carriage trade, “we are being steamrolled.”

Essentially, the most important issue is this: the mayor wants to implement his program before it is really negotiated, before the new stable is built or completed or even funded.  The carriage industry is expected to cannibalize itself without a  new home or rational or safe work rules.

Secondly, under the new rules, the owners cannot rotate or replace their horses, no spare horses, no replacements. This will drastically reduce the number of horses available, and radically increase the workload of the surviving horses.

This is critical. This is what keeps the horses healthy, safe and profitable. This is what keeps them from overwork and exploitation, some owners  have two horses, some have four or five. The restrictive new rules fly in the face of  persistent complaints from the mayor and the animal rights groups that the horses are overworked. In fact, the toll on the horses will be dramatic.  The quality of their work life will change immediately.

The remaining horses will have to to work more than twice is hard, more than 150 trained and able carriage horses will be sent away. None of the animal rights groups or the mayor’s office is yet willing or able to say where the horses will go or who will pay the millions of dollars it will cost to care for them. The only rationale for this rule is to cripple and weaken the carriage trade.

There are a number of good things about the mayor’s bill, but none of them really work unless and until the stables are built and the smothering new rules are softened or change. As best as I can tell, this is where we are now.

There is nothing humane about ripping the horses away from their familiar environments and human attachments. It is nightmare out in the world for horses, if there were room out there for more than 150 big draft horses, they wouldn’t be sending 160,000 horses a year to slaughter.

This is true abuse, of the horses, of the people who have cared for them. The carriage trade, almost alone in the animal world, has found a way to keep domesticated animals in the city, and keep them healthy and safe and well cared for. It defies any notion of animal rights and welfare to destroy this industry in this cruel and unnecessary way. There is nothing environmentally sane about removing horses from the city to make room for more cars and condominiums.

The irony is that the carriage trade likes the idea of the stables, and is open to negotiating a solution along those lines, but no one in the city government is willing to negotiate with them, or really deal with them at all. They have become the Orwellian “non-humans,” people considered outside of the moral community, people who don’t need to be treated with dignity, or even considered at all.

I am not a part of the negotiations, for me it is past time for the carriage trade to consider legal action that seeks to protect their rights against a government guilty of gross overreaching. The carriage trade has retained Norman Siegel, one of the best civil rights lawyers in the country. I have no idea what he is planning. Speaking only for myself, I think is time for him to come forward and address the serious civil rights issues that underlie this drama.

The mayor has refused to speak to the carriage stable owners or the drivers or meet with them. Animals rights organizations have contributed more than a million dollars to supporting his candidacy and defeating his opponents.  The mayor has consistently worked with animal rights organizations but never been willing to talk to the carriage trade. The interests of the horses are not being protected.

The carriage trade has had no real representation or opportunity to negotiate for their jobs and livelihoods, and there is the perception of serious wrongdoing and corruption involved in the mayor’s truly curious obsession and involvement with the carriage horses. Here is a man who has never even owned a dog or cat, who suddenly makes removing horses from the city the major priority of his administration.  A man who was given truckloads of money by a real estate developer who happens to head the animal rights group – NY Class – that has spent millions of dollars to ban the horses from the city.

You try and connect the dots.

Now, he is refusing either to budge or negotiate on these critical issues for the horses and the working people who depend on them. There is nothing progressive about his actions or the manner in which he is pursuing them. This remains a fight for anyone who loves animals, lives with them, or wishes to keep them in our lives. The fight against the horses is irrational and undemocratic. Every newspaper, major business group, working people’s party and gender, age and ethic group in the city has said again and again they want the horses to stay, and by overwhelming margins. The mayor has said again and again he doesn’t care. He is saying it again.

It would be awful to let these horses suffer and die. I hope to do everything I can to stop that. This when elected officials ought to be held accountable.

The bottom line, say the carriage horse owners and drivers, is that the mayor can choke the industry to death and remove them from their homes and base of operations without having to take the blame for banning them overtly. If you read the new law in its current form, it essentially bans the horses without admitting it to an angry public. They ought not to get away with this.

I am not an attorney but there is deep concern that real estate interests who seek to take over the stables have played a prominent role in the assault against the horses, who have been found again and again to be safe, healthy and well cared for. I hope there is some legal action to force the mayor and his dealings into the open. Here is a bill that would practically force two of the three stables to sell immediately, the third if and when the mythical stable is built. If the new rules are passed, the survivors won’t last too long either.

Civil rights also plays into the question of freedom in this story, the right of law-abiding people who have broken no laws and violated no regulations to keep their way of life and freedom of choice to pursue work that they love. The long and ugly campaign against the carriage trade is outrageous.  When government overreaches, there is considerable precedent for seeking relief from the courts. The mayor seems out of control on this issue, he needs to be compelled to tell the truth and be open about what he has decided and why.

I hope they sue. I hope they drag the mayor into court and force him to tell the truth under oath about this campaign.

In the face of so much conflict and abuse of power, the meaning of victory changes almost daily. Once, victory meant leaving the horses alone. Now, it means keeping the status quo in place until it is clear what stables are being built, who will pay for them, and how many horses can be housed in them humanely while keeping this industry intact. No one will ever care for the horses more lovingly and well than the carriage trade has learned to do in recent years. They deserve support, not persecution.

The horses depend on us to keep their safe and important lives, and so do hundreds of jobs and a way of life, and the idea that animals belong with us in our every day lives, not only in private preserves, rescue farms and slaughterhouses.

This is another of those awful fights that should not be happening.  The horses were not in danger, they pose no serious danger to others. But here it is.

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The vast majority of my blog readers live outside of the city, but many live in New York.  I can’t tell anyone else what to do, but here is a list of members of the City Council Transportation Committee for those who wish to contact them:

 

 

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.” – William Faulkner

“A sudden epiphany, carriage horses are just city horses.  They love their life and their city, just as much as any New Yorker loves NYC. I wish all of the energy, and political power that has gone into banning the carriage horses could be redirected to help horses that are truly in need.   There are over 160,000 that went to slaughter in Canada and Mexico in 2013.   One out every one thousand horses that come out of the starting gate at an American race track are fatally injured.  The wild horses are being rounded up and sold to slaughter.  Banning carriage horses in my opinion is unnecessary.”  – Janine Jacques, Equine Rescue Network.

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Good people in our culture are increasingly confronted with a new and a chilling reality in our culture: truth does not seem to matter. Fact-checkers are the jesters of our political and civic culture, they almost literally piss in the wind. Truth cowers in shame as lies dance in the open and preen.

Argument matters, so does hatred and judgment. The very idea of ethical truth, invented by the Great Greek Philosophers, has been upended, stood on its head. We see it in politics every day, we see it in the animal world every day. Mark Twain said that a lie can travel halfway around the earth while the truth is putting on its shoes.

The animal rights movement, the social order that was supposed to fight for the rights of animals, seems to have been rotted away from the inside out, abandoning truth for cruelty, persecution and the never bending ideology of the fanatic. Lying is a form of insanity, people who lie can very often no longer help themselves. All we can do, as Faulkner urged, is raise our voices for honesty and truth and compassion and hope it is stronger than lies.

I believe it is, my life is centered on it. Facts matter. Truth matters. That is the true significance of the New York Carriage Horse controversy, it is about the horses, for sure, but it is about much more than that. It is about the freedom of all of us to live our lives in a just and truth world.

Last week, a volunteer for NY Class came up to a New York Carriage Driver and tried to spit on her, then ran away. This is where argument and debate has gone in our civic life. This is what happen when lies are louder than truth, and when truth sometimes struggles to breath. The carriage drivers, simple people who love to work with animals in the outdoors for the most part, have become the new Centurions of truth, whether they wish it or not.  If they perish, truth will weep and bleed.

When he comes to horses, Janine Jacques is the latest in a long line of truth tellers who have flocked to New York City to see the carriage horses for themselves, to see if they are well-cared for, attached to people, comfortable and safe in their work and on the streets of New York City.

Janine Jacques is the leader and founder of the Equine Rescue Network, much of her life is devoted to understanding, rescuing and evaluating horses. Recently, she stopped by unannounced at a New York Carriage Horse stable, just as I did more than two years ago. She was expecting to be treated with suspicion, even hostility, as I did, and was surprised to be welcome and taken all through the stables, as I was.

She knows much more about horses than I did, and knew what to look for – the medical charts, the hay and water, the posture of the animals, their coats and sheen, the way their eyes and tails moved, their bellies and hocks. She wrote an account of her findings here, and it is must reading for anyone who cares about the future of animals and of the horses, for anyone who cares about the weight of truth and it’s ability to resolve conflict.

Truth is important, it brings people together by resolving issues of disagreement. Without truth, there is eternal conflict, harassment, anger, even war. A score of respected veterinarians, horse lovers, trainers, behaviorists, writers have flocked to New York to seek out the truth about the horses. Every day, people stand before cameras in New York City and simply lie: the horses are abused, they say, underfed, overworked, poorly cared for.

Janine found out what all of us found out: the horses are healthy, they are safe as any horse can be, they are loved and well cared for, and happy to be able to fulfill their destiny and work among people.

Almost every rational being in the city knows by now that these claims against the carriage drivers are false, everyone but the mayor and the people who call themselves supporters of animal rights.

Jacques found that out for herself, as did I. These are the lucky horses, she fears for the carriage horses if they are banned and sent out into the horrific maelstrom that is the life of horses in American today. As a rescuer of horses, she knows full well what all the money and energy could have done for horses in America that are truly in need. You can read the details of her report here.

I hope you do get to read it. The truth can heal. It can make us free. It can heal and salve the awful wounds that divide us. If people all over the world spoke up for truth and compassion, it would change our troubled world. The carriage drivers speak for all of us.

A friend send me a link this morning of a video showing a team of Amish draft horses freeing a giant tractor-trailer that was stuck in snow and ice in Ottawa, Pa in February of 2011. The video is a huge hit on You Tube and ought to be required viewing for the oddly disconnected and misguided people who believe it is cruel for working horses to pull a light carriage on flat ground in Central Park for part of the day. It is a curiously telling film, revealing in its own simple way.

A mayor with his head on straight would get on the phone and hire a bunch of horses to help run the city right away.

The video got me thinking about the New York Carriage Horses and my own curious and personal – and somewhat lonely – obsession with marking the collapse, at least for now, of the furious, vicious and lavishly funded campaign by the Mayor of New York, a millionaire real estate developer, platoons of clueless reporters and TV stars,  and horses of animal rights fanatics to ban the carriage horses.

A year or so ago, nobody thought the horses and the carriage trade would survive it, but thanks to their own determination, Liam Neeson sticking his famous neck out, and the skillful political maneuvering of their true saviors, the Teamsters Union, the ban effort collapsed. The horses are safe for now. The animal rights groups and their wagon loads of cash were routed.

Nobody thinks this fight is over but the horses and the carriage trade have struck a mighty blow for individualism, ethical government and the future of animals in our world. There is absolutely no good reason to ban the horses and many good reasons to keep them in the everyday lives of New Yonkers. The big lies – the horses are being abused, work for them is cruel – have been exposed and rejected. Absolutely no one outside of the echo chamber that is the animal rights movement believes them.

I wrote about the horses for more than two years, but the struggle has gone dark, at least in public, there isn’t much more for me to say. I have to get paid to paying work. The rag-tag Army of photographers, artists, political activists, writers, horse lovers,  oddballs and videographers and other angels who appeared out of the mists to fight for the horses are still around, but heading back to their own lives and work mostly. I get e-mail every day, some from New Yorkers, asking if the carriage horses are still there.

Outside of the trade itself, no one knows what has happened, what is happening, what might happen in the future.  Will the mayor introduce the ban again? Will the carriage trade fight on to the end?  Are they angry? Happy? Relieved? None of the above?

Stasis has descended, the surreal story has become even more surreal. Far from the battlefield, we can only scratch our heads, peer over the horizon for clues,  and hope for the best. I am told that the drivers and stable owners fear that the city will try and yank the driver’s city medallions next Spring, a way around the stalemated ban. But that seems to be hearsay, not fact.

Since the awful struggle of this year, the carriage trade hired smart lawyers, unleashed great lobbyists, found aggressive spokespeople, and begun a steady stream of photographs and stories that show the horses and the drivers in a better light. There are good photographs of the horses, drivers and stables on social media every day. Accusations are answered quickly and persuasively. But everyone in power seems to be saying the same thing: lay low, be quiet, be wary.

No one outside of the circle – at least no one I know – has any idea of the horses are truly safe, or just hanging on waiting for the next blow. The fear surrounding the industry is wrenching. There is the widespread belief that they all are only one horse mishap or accident away from the whole thing firing up again. Hundreds of New Yorkers are mowed down, killed and injured every week by cars, bicycles, pedicabs and taxis, but if a single horse trips and falls, the wolves are howling for the blood of  the carriage trade. I don’t blame them for being paranoid and frightened. Mostly, I think they are traumatized.

I realized a month or so ago that since the ban collapsed, the controversy has vanished from public consciousness. That seems dangerous to me, especially if they really believe the fight isn’t over. The issue needs to stay in the public eye, public attention is fickle, there will be other issues, other distractions.

The Teamsters have other issues to worry about it and a contentious mayor to deal with. Most of the people in the carriage trade seem to wish the whole thing would just blow away. There is no unified voice in the carriage trade, no leader, no single person with the authority to speak for the horses. The people in the trade are a diverse –  and often contentious –  tribal collection of immigrants and their descendants, working people who have never looked for trouble and don’t want any more.

“Most of us just want to earn our money and go to work,” one told me last week. “We are frightened, it has been a horrible ordeal for us and we are afraid to call attention to ourselves. We don’t have anything like a leader, and most of us don’t even like the people who are speaking for us all the time. We aren’t in a celebratory mood, we expect the fight to flare up at any time. We don’t want to do anything to call attention to ourselves.”

I don’t think any individualists – the carriage drivers are surely that – like anyone who speaks for them or tells them what to do. I sure don’t. My relationship with the people in charge of the carriage trade have always been touchy. I am an outsider, and an odd one at that. I have been thrown off of one of the trade Facebook groups, denied entrance to another, and quit a third when people started suggesting what I should and shouldn’t write.

I don’t blame them for a thing. When, after all, will I ever learn?

They carriage trade ethos is, after all, very different from me. They are war refugees, living under siege.   I have made openness a cornerstone of my work, the lawyers and lobbyists and “leaders” in the carriage trade are secretive, political and very cautious.  They are also, it should be noted, successful.

The lobbyists work behind the scenes, not in front of the cameras, or on public blogs or websites. They see little percentage in public statements, ceremonies, discussions about strategy or protestations of gratitude.

This is a major discomfort I have with them, perhaps the only one. Many thousands of people, animal lovers from all over the country have rallied to their cause, signed petitions, written letters, come to New York to ride the carriages. The people of New York City, the residents, labor unions, business associations have stood solidly behind the carriage trade in the face of an ugly campaign of lies and often hysterical accusations.

They need to hear that their work is appreciated, they need to hear the carriage trade will not run away or go away. They deserve to be acknowledged in some way.

I keep seeing a ceremony of some kind in Central Park acknowledging the vast support the carriage trade has received, expressing gratitude for it and reaffirming the importance of keeping the horses in New York, where we can all see them. The carriage trade has no plans for such a ceremony. To them, it’s a dangerous idea.

I am a bit player in this long drama, I came late to it, had little to do with the outcome. But it has loomed large in my life and head, and I’m bothered by the seeming eagerness of the very political  people running the carriage trade defense to go underground, work in secret, and refuse to say a word to the outside world about what is going on behind all those closed doors. I don’t care for secrecy, we live in a transparent world, we have the most amazing tools to reach out to our own communities and summon the help we need.

The import of the carriage horse issue goes far beyond New York City. New York is our big stage, everything that happens there reverberates everywhere, the horses have sparked a great awakening about the future of animals and the validity and importance of keeping them in our world. Lots of people are watching and listen, it is not an issue that ought to go away.

I hear from a lot of the carriage drivers, many feel the same way. But they are workers and lovers and free spirits, not warriors. They just want to live in peace and keep their way of life.

This seems short-sighted to me, as one who has no standing at all in the carriage trade, the animal rights movement, or New York City politics. This is why I love Beavis & Butthead, because I am stupid I am free. because I don’t know what I am supposed to think, I can try to think. There was a beautiful and meaningful ceremony in Central Park on Saturday honoring the horses and their connection to human beings. It was led by a Cheyenne elder, a great spiritual leader and friend of the horses.

I couldn’t get to New York Saturday, and I have something different in mind, something personal. I understand that my place in the world is outside of groups and organizations, leaders and pastors, chiefs and lobbyists. I just never stay on the inside for long, its not in my DNA. For better or worse, I live outside of the circle, that is my own destiny and spiritual path. In the city, they have been knee-deep in the blood of this ugly conflict for years while I was sitting on my farm with my Apple computer.

It was, of course, inevitable that I end up not behaving the way I am supposed to behave.  I have never learned to do that. I tried to explain to one frustrated lobbyist, that once a writer opens up on a cause, he or she almost never shuts up. It’s not really even possible. But they can’t really understand me any more than I can really understand them. It’s good that we share the love of the same cause.

I have no business telling anyone in the carriage trade what they should do, or what they owe to people, or how they should thank them, that is up to them. I have no business agreeing to be on their Facebook groups, I support the team, I am not on the team.

I do owe it to myself to follow my own beliefs, and I am called to host or co-host a small and private ceremony of gratitude and hope for the New York Carriage Horses in Central Park. Gratitude that the ban has collapsed for now, hope that the horses will remain in New York for good, and that the people in the carriage trade can live in peace and prosperity, at long last.

A couple of people in New York have offered to join me in this. I will keep you posted. This is important to me, I mean to hold that ceremony, even if I have to be there alone.