Equine Justice is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advocacy and protection of equine rights. We provide an advocate's voice for those who cannot speak for themselves, and a lawyer's zealous representation of the afflicted among us. Our mission is to raise the public's awareness of the important role horses have played in human history and the debt we owe them; to illuminate the inhumane ways in which we repay that debt; and to remind us of our obligation to act responsibly and with decency.

Why Justice?

 

"God's will expressed emotionally is love, his will expressed politically is justice."

Martin Luther King

Justice is the cornerstone of an elightened civilization. Without it there is a vacuum which human nature fills with tyranny, brutality and barbarism. Justice is a quality, a principle, an ideal that requires honesty, integrity and fairness. It is doing what is right. Justice doesn't lend itself to precise metes and bounds. But we all know it when we see it, and we know in our hearts when it isn't present. Justice is always present in nature. It is balance. Injustice is present only in human affairs and the imbalance typically wrought by human hands. Humans are the only animals that create injustice, that exploit other creatures, that can be cruel. Ironically, we are the only animals that can compel justice.

Metvs Est Plena Tyrannis. "The tyrant is filled with fear," just as Damocles learned as he perceived the sword hanging by a horse's hair above the tryrant's head.

"The time is coming when people will be astonished that mankind needed so long a time to regard thoughtless injury to life as compatible with ethics."

- Albert Schweitzer, physician/Nobel Laureate.

The notion of justice is commonly represented throughout the Western world by Justitia, the Roman Goddess of Justice, who bore scales in one hand and a double-edged sword in the other. We at Equine Justice are dedicated to bringing greater fairness and balance in the treatment of all horses.

 

 

Cruelty, neglect and misuse are wrong in any context. Isn't only right that we respect and express gratitude for the enormous role horses have played in our own growth and development? To receive so much from them and not to return the favor is selfish and wrong. Maybe it's about karma, maybe it's about obeying some higher law of nature and a universal order most of us simply call God. Maybe it's just about honor and integrity. The bottom line is that it restores balance to the one-sided contribution horses have made to us. They made our world better and more comfortable. What have we done for them?

Look back at our struggle for freedom,Trace our present day's stength to it's source, And you'll find that man's pathway to glory Is strewn with the bones of a horse ~Anonymous

 

But there are more compelling reasons.

 

It's a rather homo sapien prejudice that makes us think that humans are the best form of life on the planet, that there is a superior quality borne from our particular form of intelligence. It's the same kind of prejudice that humans have even turned on their own, labeling other races and ethnic groups as inferior to the point of genocide. It's what made humans regard horses as beasts of burden and nothing more. Even food. It's sad not only because of what it denies horses, but also for what is denies us. Humans view a willingness to accomodate and cooperate as weakness rather than evidence of strength. At Equine Justice, we believe horses are one of the particularly more sentient species on this planet that despite their overwhelming physical power submit themselves to us because of a knowing, gentle, loving nature. Unlike humans, horses tend to be symbiotic rather than parasitic.

"This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

- Chief Seattle, Native American

 

Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride,
Friendship without envy,
Or beauty without vanity?
Here, where grace is served with muscle
And strength by gentleness confined
He serves without servility; he has fought without enmity.
There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent.
There is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.
~Ronald Duncan, "The Horse," 1954

O! for a horse with wings!  ~William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

They captured our hearts and our imagination, so much so that we made mystical creatures out of them that could fly on angel's wings and even invented a hybrid creature, the Centaur, half-horse and half-human.

"I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake."

~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

 

Try and imagine where human civilization would be today were it not for the horse. Horses opened up a whole new world of possibilities for human beings that sent us on our way to where we are now. Horses gave us the mobility to explore, to discover new worlds, to do what we were meant to do.

But they also give us beauty, grace and elegance, combined with raw, sensual power. They are poetry in motion. Just watching them is food for the soul.

We wrote poems and sonnets about them, heart-wrenching stories of love and supreme devotion, and even diefied them in our literature.

"He's of the colour of the nutmeg.  And of the heat of the ginger.... he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him; he is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts."  ~William Shakespeare, Henry V

They brought peoples and cultures in contact with one another so that we could learn from one another and grow.

For thousands of years, and as recently as just over one hundred years ago and the industrial era, they carried us about, pulled our wagons, delivered our mail and ploughed our fields--worked until they died so we could live better. And we rode to conquest and glory on their backs.

"So, wasn't that why they were put here?" No, it wasn't. We just exploited them, like we've exploited every other living creature and resource on this planet until it was used up. Such behavior by an individual is easy to see as selfish and indecent, even revolting. But, such is human nature.

Only the very, very fortunate few make it to the winner's circle and are turned out to pasture in comfort and safety, or live in the plush, comfortable stables we're so accustomed to watching in the movies. Those that are hurt or are not fit for racing are largely discarded every year in the thousands and sent to be slaughtered and made into food.

"Thou shalt not lay stripes upon these Roman citizens; for their docility is such, they are guided without rein or lash; they go or come, halt or march on, at a whisper.  So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous did these fine truck-horses look - so full of calm intelligence and sagacity, that often I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they stood in contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing.  But all I could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh; ..."  ~Herman Melville, Redburn. His First Voyage, 1849

Vast numbers of thoroughbreds are bred, trained and made to race under conditions that damage their too-young bones while making billions for the humans that own them and bet upon them for leisure. In a given crop of horses that make it to the track, about half will start as 2-year-olds and the rest will start as 3-year-olds. Most racehorses (except geldings) are off the track by 5.

While the last slaughter houses of horses in the US have been closed by act of law, horses from the US are still shipped in the tens of thousands to Mexico, Canada and Europe where they are are butchered in a disgusting and barbaric fashion. Tragically, the forces of avarice never sleep and foreign companies that profit from cruelly butchering horses and sending their meat abroad are buying legislatures in some states and are about to roll back those advances. There are likely to be horses slaughtered in the U.S. once again very soon. They are manipulating truth and using outright deception to justify their merciless vulgarity.

 

We know injustice when we see it. We know when something is wrong.

However, at Equine Justice, we believe that human beings also possess an ironic capacity for great decency and compassion. We understand that despite our genetic heritage we can aspire to a higher way of being on this planet, and that by summoning the better angels of our natures we can live in harmony with our planet and its other inhabitants. There is no more spiritual calling than giving of one's self to make the world a better place to live.