We want to clarify our position as protesters of the rodeo and the exploitative non-human entertainment industry at large.

We feel that given the facts of the inevitable deaths and provocative means that ensure a performance for humans’ amusement, there is no way to justify non-humans’ forced involvement in such barbaric activities. We view the rodeo as exploitative, since the non-humans exist as expendable entities to draw in ticket sales.

It is absurd of us, as humans, to assume that an electric-shocked horse would classify himself as a proud athlete or that a calf selflessly and purposefully would sacrifice his life to be the recipient of a cowboy’s lasso.

Although many involved in the rodeo culture deem this all as “tradition,” we argue that humans in the United States have also, at one point in history, regarded slavery, legal segregation of minorities and the oppression of women as “tradition.”

So to evolve as a society, there begs a need to expand our awareness and consciousness to recognize suffering that may have been invisible to us previously.