Can circuses ‘force’ animals to perform tricks? Charlotte City Council to decide

It was 4:58 p.m. on Tuesday and Room 267 of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center building was packed wall-to-wall with Charlotteans wearing “End Circus Abuse” T-shirts as Charlotte City Council members stood in front of the room in a tight huddle before the 5 p.m. meeting start time.

This is not what a typical Tuesday afternoon looks like before a council meeting.

At 5 p.m. on the dot, Mayor Vi Lyles took her seat, announcing the council would move forward with a closed session first. This meant everyone else must leave the room.

Discouraged but determined not to leave, activists spilled back out of the room and into the hallway to wait patiently for the closed session to end.

After years of protesting and months of writing to City Council and sending sample ordinances —finally — the ordinance to ban exotic and wild animals from performing forced and unnatural tricks for entertainment was set to be put to a vote.

If the council votes in favor of the ordinance, Charlotte would be one step closer to prohibiting circuses with performing animals.

Among the group of activists was Meggan Beltran, who has been protesting the circus since 2013. She was committed to waiting all evening, if that’s what it took, to confront the City Council about the abuse circus animals face for the sake of entertainment.

“Our voice goes a long way and tonight — that’s why we are here: to get one step closer to freedom for all animals,” Beltran said.

Accusations of cruelty

CharlotteFive recently covered the protest of Garden Bros circus, which came to town on Oct. 25. The 100-year-old Sarasota, Florida-based circus has been accused of several acts of cruelty towards their performance animals by PETA and other animal rights organizations.

Kayla Cook and Demetrus Ezell weren’t even at the meeting to protest the circus, but the couple found solidarity in their causes on Tuesday evening. Cook and Ezell were attending their first City Council meeting to advocate for a change in the city’s law regarding dog tethering. Once they arrived and found out about the circus protest, they said they were excited to extend their support to fellow Charlotteans.

“We advocate for all animals,” Cook said. “The only way for change to happen is if we do our part and show up.”

Around 7 p.m., after more than two hours of waiting in the hallway, activists were allowed back into Room 267.

Since the beginning, Kristen Moyer has been the face of the fight. And after protesting several circuses, repeatedly reaching out to City Council members and attending meetings, it was the moment she had been waiting for — the moment when the council would vote whether to move forward with the proposed ordinance.

Proposed ordinance

The session began with a presentation of the proposed ordinance by the city attorney’s office.

“The mayor and council were asking questions about the proposed ordinance that they would have had the answers to if they had read the ordinance. The city attorney also failed to let them know that all of those questions were addressed in the ordinance,” Moyer said.

Council member Matt Newton, who serves District 5, made a motion to send the proposed ordinance to a committee for further review. This was the outcome the animal advocates said they were hoping for.

However, District 6 representative Tariq Bokhari made a counter motion to send the matter back to the office of the city attorney and city manager to provide the council with more information. That motion was seconded.

“The city attorney, mayor and council seemingly knew nothing about this issue, despite the fact that I and other citizens, as well as a half-dozen reputable animal welfare organizations, have inundated them with the answers to every question about this proposed ban that they raised at tonight’s meeting,” Moyer said.

In the end, it was decided that the City Council would re-examine the issue again at a strategy session in December.

“So I am frustrated that we all showed up to support this issue and they hadn’t done their homework. But it was worthwhile to show them that there is community support and that we are determined to see this through to the end,” Moyer said.

This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 7:06 PM.