UPDATE, JULY 19, 7:29 A.M.: Constance Marie played Angie Lopez on ABC's George Lopez sitcom, and she's now Regina Vasquez on ABC Family's Switched at Birth.
She's using her celebrity to issue this plea to Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido: Fire Have Trunk Will Travel as the elephant ride contractor at the city-owned Santa Ana Zoo.
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What follows is the letter Marie sent Pulido via People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which is also among the groups trying to stop Have Trunk Will Travel's elephant rides at the current Orange County Fair:
My friends at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (
Members of Animal Defenders International
(ADI), Animal Protection, Rescue League (APRL), People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other advocates plan to gather at the fairgrounds entrance at 6:30 this evening to peacefully protest and educate fair-goers about the alleged elephant abuse.It was ADI that recently released an undercover video that features 42-year-old Asian elephant Tai and other Water for Elephants elephants being electric shocked with a stun gun and jabbed and hit will
bull hooks during their training in 2005 at Have Trunk Will Travel's Perris ranch.Based on that video and other evidence, members of ADI and other animal activists filed a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles last month against Have Trunk Will Travel's owners and elephant trainer, who have repeatedly denied ever inflicting any abuse on their elephants.
Animal activists recently showed the video to the president of a fair in San Diego. He agreed to look into the abuse allegations,
but the Have Trunk Will Travel elephant ride continued there, according to activists.They received a similar reception from Orange County Fair CEO Steve Beazley, according to a City News Service report. Beazley apparently met with ADI reps and came away saying that while he respects the organization's opinion
about not wanting animals kept in captivity, the fair has not had a problem with Have Trunk Will Travel in the 27 years the company has run the fair ride.“To break that relationship would take more than what the elephant protesters are running out there,'' Beazley is reported have said, before adding there's no
record of Have Trunk Will Travel being investigated by any agency regarding its
training.Nonetheless, Change.org animals blogger Laura Goldman, who recently posted petitions online aimed at ending the elephant ride at Santa Ana Zoo, tells the Weekly she has more than 6,000 signatures on a Change.org petition that aims to stop the rides at the San Diego and Orange County fairs.
Here is the controversial video posted by ADI:
Movie star electric shocked from Animal Defenders on Vimeo.
Here's shaky video of a family enjoying the OC Fair ride:
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
