When I was a little girl, animal rights—specifically the rights of circus animals—was one of the first social issues that I learned about from my mother. She taught me to never cross a picket line, that girls were never inferior to boys (though we had to fight for the same rights and freedoms), and that the circus was a cruel place. I remember at first feeling sad that she wouldn’t let me attend the circus when it came to town when I was five or six years old; then, when I was a bit older, I began to understand why she wouldn’t support such cruelty.

Zoo animals lead boring, bleak, and painful lives. Lions and elephants who would normally roam acres of land a day, with free, warm air rustling their backs and a close family surrounding them are confined in small, tight cages, where they barely have enough room to turn around, let alone run or get any other form of exercise or enjoyment. They are not naturally born to perform the stupid tricks that people pay to see them do; these circus tricks are unnatural, humiliating, and cruel to make them do. So it’s no wonder when the animals refuse to do these tricks.

But when they do refuse—which they should have every right to do, since they’re living, sentient beings—not the toys we think they are—with every right to live and thrive as we have on this planet—they are, as Dickinson said about people who dissent, “handled with a chain.” They are brutally beaten, which adds serious injury to serious insult, since these “trainers” would think twice about daring to harm one of these enormous creatures in the wild. Even the little, gentle baby elephants are beaten with bull hooks, which claw at their skin and leave gaping, bloody wounds.

We would not stand for such treatment for our companion animals! Every time you hear about someone harming a dog or cat, leaving a companion animal in a hot car, or even kicking a pet—all cruel acts that should never be carried out, for sure—you hear cries for blood by the populace. When it comes to the circus, however, our culture readily pays money to see animals we know are cruelly harmed, even killed, just to witness the so-called tricks they are taught to perform.

Standing up against circuses is one of the biggest things we can do to help us remember our humanity. We are not barbarians and it is time to stop behaving like them. One of the ways we can stand against Ringling Brothers, one of the largest perpetuators of animal violence today, is to not attend their events and to ask their partners and promoters to stop helping them stay in business while they harm animals. One promoter, Travelzoo, has received thousands of messages from concerned citizens asking that they stop partnering with the cruel company, yet they continue to do so. Please consider writing them today and asking if they will stop this partnership.