Carriage Horses Redux, and a Win…

Another essential dispatch from Jon Katz at Bedlam Farm.

“No one really knows how many millions of dollars NY Class, PETA, and a
coalition of animal rights groups have spent trying to mobilize public
support for the carriage horse ban and bullying the members of the City
Council to pass the mayor’s carriage horse ban…

“In the last week alone, these groups have mailed out hundreds of
thousands of glossy color posted sized pieces showing dead horses (some
of them from New York, some from elsewhere) to people for days in a row.
They are organizing expensive phone channeling telephone calls from all
over the country. They are following carriage drivers with video
cameras, trying to catch them violating city regulations, they have
hired private detectives to follow them, they have released a series of
videos on you tube, and enlisted various naive and poorly informed
Hollywood stars who think they are being hip and progressive.

“They have established a network of blogs and fund-raising websites
using photographs of dead and injured horses, most from unknown places
outside of New York to raise tens of millions of dollars from people who
believe they are saving or rescuing animals, rather than sending them
off to languish or die..

“The animal rights groups have organized hundreds of demonstrators –
some  paid – to gather at the carriage horse lines in Central Park, hand
out thousands of pamphlets, intimidate children, tourists and horse
lovers, to shout insults at the carriage drivers and call them
murderers, to secretly tape them in the hopes of catching them saying
something controversial or angry.

“… The next chapter in this
disturbing drama will be – should be – to stop the intimidation,
harassment and abuse of the carriage trade, it is unconscionable that is
occurring, and that the city government appears to be supporting it…  The animal rights ethos has become in some ways a fascistic, not a
progressive one. Its targets are the poor and the working class. It
despises the democratic process, and it dehumanizes it’s targets and
treats them in ways that are beyond the pale of a democratic and civil
society.”

The carriage trade is considering  lawsuit. I would not be optimistic about this but for a strangely parallel suit won by environmentally conscious ranchers against the so- called Center for Biodiversity (do NOT confuse with the scholarly Berry Center for Biodiversity at U Wy Laramie, run by my friend Carlos Martinez del Rio– I mean the one down here run by the former grad student in literature from Long Island, the one that seems to harass good ranchers as though it were a personal feud). A rancher named Jim Chilton has a 25,000 acre lease in Arizona where his environmental practices have been praised by a team of independent researchers who studied the land for six years, among others.

Unimpressed, the CDB stepped up their campaign of “psychological warfare” to drive him off the land, one that included outright lies and photographs of stripped ground that turned out to be a Forest Service parking lot. The result, according to Ted Williams of Fly Rod and Reel (not online yet I think) was that “… Chilton then took CBD to court, winning $100,000 for harm to his reputation and $500,000 in punitive damages… this is the only time an NGO has been successfully sued for libel.”

Go get ’em!