Horses Without Carriages International www.horseswithoutcarriages.org

It is very important for the success of this bill to begin now to contact your representatives by making phone calls. Please make your calls if you have not yet done so. And please make arrangements to attend this event. Arrange to take a vacation day from work if that is possible. More information about what to expect will follow.

The bus will leave Manhattan at 8:00am, arrive in Albany before 11:00am; it will leave Albany at 3:00pm; to arrive back in Manhattan before 6:00pm. The departure location of the bus is still to be determined. It will be close to public transportation. I already bought my ticket - please buy yours before the bus fills up. Don't wait!! There are still a lot of details being worked out. Stay tuned.

There is an easy solution to your concern for job loss: The carriage drivers whose life ambition is to ride tourists around Central Park can use their own blood, sweat and tears and ride pedicabs. - Mickey Kramer, Upper East Side, Manhattan (see comments below the letter)

In defence of animal rights Rabbi Avi Shafran believes that we have to devalue humans to value animals. He writes,"The perverse overvaluing of animal lives swings in tandem with the devaluing of human life." But moral valuation is not a zero-sum game. It is not as though there are only so many rights to distribute, so that if we afford rights to some we have to take them away from others. I don't have to devalue my sons to value my daughters. Claiming that animals have rights does not mean that humans don't have rights or have fewer rights. Rabbi Shafran writes, "We have obligations towards animals, to be sure. But assigning them 'rights' leads to obscenities like a book, Eternal Treblinka, that compares factory farming to Nazi concentration camps."

I think this misses the point. Dr Charles Patterson, who wrote this book, is making a point about moral psychology attributed notably to the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant: if we mistreat animals we diminish our human sympathy and are more likely to mistreat human beings. This actually emphasizes one of the important origins of antisemitism. Far from devaluing human life to promote animal life, the point is that the two go hand in hand. (Dr Patterson also wrote a very interesting book on Christian antisemitism.) The proper attitude towards animal rights is to affirm that each species ought to be given rights according to the nature and capacities of the species. All species have the right to live and develop according to their own natures. This principle does not necessarily make one a vegetarian, but it is certainly incompatible with the way animals are horrible mistreated in factory farms. Robert T. Hall, Professor of Philosophy, Universidad Aut�noma de Quer�taro (Mexico)

Thanks to all of you who have purchased a Charlie Tag. Please Note: When you send in a donation, you must indicate that you want a Charlie tag. If you pay by check, write it in the memo section of the check. If by PayPal, please enter "Charlie Tag" where it asks for a description. If you sent in a donation, expecting a Charlie tag but did not receive one, please e-mail me at coalition@banhdc.org and we will send one out. This helps us to raise some needed funds and to remember Charlie. The tag reads:

• CHARLIE
• 10-23-11 R.I.P.
• NEW YORK CITY
• CARRIAGE HORSE
• WWW.BANHDC.ORG

If you want to do this on your own, let me know and I will send you the file for the flyer. You can hand out flyers at any movie theater that is showing War Horse. Just check the time of the movie and how long it runs to gauge when it is over. Bring a friend. It is really an easy and fun thing to do.

If you would like to show Blinders in your community in NYC or NY state, please contact me at coalition@banhdc.org. Donny Moss would be able to travel within NYC and most of Westchester County. If you live beyond that, please consider showing it yourself to a group of people. Appropriate places to show this documentary include libraries, large halls, churches - any where you are able to get a large group. (The picture is of a carriage accident, part of a wedding party in Brooklyn.)

You will help to make a difference for these horses. The media learned of six of the last seven accidents from us - the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages. And we learned about it from you!! It makes sense that the DoH and ASPCA know about more -- we have requested this information from both the ASPCA and the DoH. The ASPCA has ignored the request. The DoH only admitted to knowing about three accidents, of which we were aware. The public has a right to know just how unsafe and inhumane this industry is. (Picture is of ASPCA car parked off 6th Avenue in the park on 12/24, but this is a common occurrence. The driver never got out of his warm car. There was no way he was able to monitor the carriage drivers. Outrageous.)

Our official Facebook page is No Walk in the Park. It is an open page and we invite you to "Like" us. We generally post news there as it comes in. We have another page called Horses Without Carriages International, which is tied in with our international coalition.

On I-Give - the name of our organization is "The Coalition for NYC Animals, Inc. ." We also have three stores on Cafe Press with great t-shirts, bags, hats, mugs, mouse pads, etc. . Purchasing this merchandise helps our organization. Click here.