Ringling Bros. Protest Pt. 2

So, our angry screaming low grade assaulting friend in the video below happened, but he was not indicative of the experience on the whole. We handed out hundreds of flyers (I made 400 of mine and there couldn't have been more than 50 or 75 left, and there were lots of IDA flyers as well.) It seemed like there were a good dozen or so of us protesters.

I handed a flyer about the trial Ringling is facing to a dad who was with his very sweet daughter who took it politely and kept walking (this was how almost every interaction went) but then he turned around after about 30 yards and came back. He had been reading it and wanted to know where he could find out more. He said he had no idea about this and though he was here with his daughter and would go in, he said probably wouldn't come back. I told him I know how it can be with a kid who is ready to rock n roll and I told him next year he could look into all the other fun family activities that don't have this ugly side to them. He thanked me for being there.

Another guy saw the screaming and paper throwing in face episode and came over to Matt and I after and asked what that dudes problem was. We talked to him for a good 10 minutes about what we were doing there and how the elephants are treated. He said he had no idea and took our flyer and wished us well. He told us he was from India and spoke with Matt for a while about the elephants there and it didn't seem like he was too happy to have already bought his tickets.

I would say half my attempts to give flyers out were met with "No thank you" or "Ok, thank you." If I got a "no" I said thanks anyway and moved on. No big deal and it felt nice to be supporting the other activists there who do a lot more than I do in this capacity.

The sad part about Mr. ScreamyAngry was that he didn't like the info we had because his kid "can read!" (no really, he yelled that at us) and I assume he means he doesn't want his kid reading about abused elephants and so forth. So he wanted to protect his kids from this violent information and he wanted to protect his kids from this violent information BY BEING A VIOLENT PERSON IN FRONT OF THEM.

Regardless, I don't think that dude's wife will let him go back to the circus again, so with that guy, and the other two, Matt and I appear to have made next year's attendance at least 3 fewer, which I know doesn't sound like a lot, but with other types of outreach doing their thing, I think a dent was made and hundreds of people watched the show who had our flyers in their hands an must have wondered about those bullhooks in the trainers hands. If all that happened was that we planted a lot of little seeds in people's heads, that is still something.