Animal Rights Protestor Plans First Amendment Defense

In an effort to protect the First Amendment, I plan to file a motion to dismiss a million-dollar lawsuit slapped against me and some 20-unnamed defendants for launching a petition and protest of the tethered pony ride and cramped petting zoo at the Sunday Main Street Farmers Market in Santa Monica, California. The petition, launched last spring, now has 1,450 signatures calling on the City of Santa Monica to shut down the animal exhibits that involve tethering ponies to a metal bar and forcing them to plod in a small circle for hours on hard ground, car exhaust in their face, music hammering their ears, and no freedom to turn around or seek water on their own during a hot day.

If a lawsuit like this is allowed to go forward, it will chill ongoing local and national political debate on a range of subjects, from animal exploitation and non-human rights to overdevelopment and corporate greed to fracking and climate change.

The right to dissent is critical to a democracy.

The lawsuit, filed by pony ride operators Tawni Angel and Jason Nestor, alleges libel and defamation, intentional interference with economic advantage, and infliction of emotional distress, and asks for injunctive relief (erasure of all of my posts critical of the animal exhibits). The suit objects to the video I posted on www.freethepony.org, where an alpaca, a revered animal in Peru, is shown face down in the dirt under a beating hot sun, a goat is tied up in the sun, and ponies plod for over three hours with a knotted rope and metal bar across their face.

The animal operators filed the lawsuit following a unanimous 4-0 vote by the Santa Monica City Council to give preference to non-animal exhibits when the current operators’ pony ride contract expires in May, 2015. Due to other council business, the vote was held early in the morning, but all parties involved, including the animal exhibitors, said that morning they wanted the animal agenda item to be discussed then and there.

To address some of the pony operators’ charges, I issued the press release below:

In the United States of America, and to an even stronger extent in the State of California, the First Amendment to our federal Constitution (and its state counterpart) guarantees freedom of speech. To petition, protest, and advocate before governmental bodies and public marketplaces are constitutional rights and therefore protected speech. This lawsuit is an attempt to bully me and silence dissent in the City of Santa Monica, where the pony ride and petting zoo have been the subject of criticism and protests for years, long before my personal involvement.

In consultation with counsel, I intend to file an ANTI-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion to protect my freedom of speech rights – and those of others who might otherwise be deterred by coercive litigation from exercising their rights -- and to defend the rights of suffering animals, sentient beings with emotional lives worthy of dignity and compassion.

I have repeatedly made overtures to the pony ride operators, introducing Jason, Tawni’s husband, to Phil Brock, the Parks Commissioner, to see if they might be willing to compromise and move their animal exhibits to a more spacious and tranquil environment, where the ponies could be taken off the metal bar and walked with a gentle lead at a city park. The City Council resolution relating to the ponies directed City staff to explore alternatives elsewhere in the City for the pony ride to operate in a more congenial environment for the animals. To my knowledge, the pony operators have not been interested in compromise and have repeatedly refused to consider more humane alternatives.

While the operators repeatedly and publicly attack my character, threatening my livelihood as a public school teacher, I know that I have only told the truth, expressing my opinion, both in words and photographs, throughout this period of protest, in which 1,450 people signed my petition to shut down the animal exhibits. Additionally, records obtained under the California Public Records Act have surfaced past complaints about the animal exhibits.

Beyond that, I learned that a separate protest in 2005 resulted in approximately another thousand petition signatures from market visitors disturbed by the exhibits.

Not only do local residents find these exhibits objectionable, some of my neighbors boycotting the Main Street farmers market, but Marc Bekoff, noted scientist and colleague of Jane Goodall, with whom I consulted months ago, calls the exhibits “thoroughly inhumane” -- adding, “Tethering animals so they cannot have freedom of movement and the freedom to get away from harassment and noise is as inhumane as keeping the animals in tiny cages in petting zoos, where they suffer physically and emotionally.”

I am a public high school special education teacher, working with at risk students struggling with autism, emotional disturbance, attention deficit disorder and specific learning disabilities. I take seriously what we teach our children and want our youngsters to learn that animals are wonderful companions who deserve to be treated humanely and afforded, as the city contract stipulates, “reasonable freedom of movement.”

The lawsuit refers to racial and gun-toting facebook posts on Jason Nestor’s facebook page, so let me address those, as well as my interest in protecting Santa Monica as a community where all are welcome and valued.

As a special education teacher in a public school district, I understand that those who work with children would be subject to close scrutiny, if not outright termination, if a teacher or children’s aide posted a facebook screen shot or video spraying bullets from a rapidly firing gun at a shooting range, while remarking, “I like it.” The celebratory gun posts, along with anti-immigrant “Borders Closed!” and “Language: English!” screeds, were cause for concern, particularly since those who operate at the front of our city market are, in essence, city ambassadors welcoming visitors far and wide to Ocean Park.

For me not to have shared the existence of these disturbing and very public posts with city management and council members would have been irresponsible, given the operators close hands-on relationship with little children of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, some of whom may be undocumented. I only learned of the existence of these posts after Tawni, herself, posted hostile comments from her husband’s Facebook page on my Free the Pony Facebook page. It was then that I saw the video of Tawni at the firing range.

The animal exhibitors rely in their complaint on testimony from animal control officers and the previous head of Santa Monica Animal Control, Sgt. Mike Graham. When Sgt. Graham visited the market, I spoke to him to object to the ponies not having adequate shade or reasonable freedom of movement, two contractual requirements between the City of Santa Monica and the animal exhibitors. He told me repeatedly he was not aware of what was in the contract because he hadn’t read the contract. When I offered to let him read it on my phone, he refused, saying, “You’re biased.” Note, Sgt. Graham was in charge of animal control when neither the pony ride operators nor the city were in compliance with the contractual requirement that the animal exhibitors have an animal permit issued by the City of Santa Monica. Though this may sound bureaucratic, it is significant because it means no agency had clear jurisdiction to provide oversight.

This lawsuit is a publicity stunt to circumvent the city council’s action, which was a legislative decision that cannot be directly challenged because, with few exceptions, the council’s decisions are immune from litigation. Additionally, under defamation law, the pony operator does not have grounds to go forward because she is a public figure, whose animal treatment was the target of a year-long public protest in 2005. Hence this subject -- the prolonged tethering of animals -- is a matter of public interest and debate, which only underscores the need to allow the political process to unfold without fear of retaliation.

This is the reason for the ANTI-SLAPP law, which allows defendants to call for the immediate dismissal of a lawsuit not likely to prevail. The ANTI-SLAPP law is intended to safeguard our First Amendment rights, which are essential to protect and preserve our democracy.

In their lawsuit, the animal operators object to my signs which read “Stop Animal Abuse: Free the Ponies and Petting Zoo.” It is my opinion that tethering ponies to a metal bar and forcing them to circle for hours on hard ground is institutionally abusive. It is wrong to do this in Santa Monica and it is wrong to do it in other cities, where such tethering has been outlawed.

Ultimately what is at stake here is the right of ordinary citizens to protest and petition their government for redress of grievances, as well as the right of animal lovers everywhere to advocate for humane treatment of non-human companions. My husband Buddy Gottlieb and I are the proud guardians of three rescue cats and want our beautiful city of Santa Monica to uphold the dignity of animals, as well.”