Elephants are uniquely intelligent, social, and self-aware mammals that become distraught at the suffering of other elephants, remember their own past suffering, and even mourn the death of other elephants.

As decades of activist work has proven and a recent Mother Jones Magazine expose has illustrated (http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/10/ringling-bros-elephant-abuse), elephant abuse is endemic to circuses and carnivals. Likewise, the problem is such that the demands of circus and carnival operations are utterly incongruent with the physical and social needs and well-being of elephants as intelligent, social, self-aware mammals.

Given the unique nature of elephants, the proven, endemic abuse by circuses and carnivals, the unbridgeable gap between the needs of elephants and the needs of entertainment companies, and the abject failure of the USDA to deal with the problem in the past, we demand that our congress pass the necessary law to completely ban the exploitation and use of elephants in circuses and carnivals, and their display in any non-zoo forum.

Circuses and carnivals may be popular and, in a time of economic uncertainty, they may indeed create jobs. But it is now 2011, and what we realize about these animals and what we realize about ourselves has changed much from they heyday of these primitive spectacles. The time comes, as it always does, when we as citizens and human beings must strive for a higher morality than that which mere markets and the demand for profit provides.

With posterity as our judge, we must ban this hideous, violent, painful exploitation for the sake of these animals, and for the sake of our own humanity.