The San Francisco Chronicle wanted me in prison for rescuing dying piglets.

When I was charged with 4 felonies in 2018 for rescuing sick and injured piglets from Smithfield Foods, the paper amplified the company’s claim that the video of our open rescue was “staged in an attempt to manufacture an animal care issue where one does not exist.”

It was just the latest example of the Chronicle accusing animal advocates of exaggeration or even extortion, but I was still flabbergasted. We had clearly outed Smithfield for lying to the public about the usage of so-called gestation crates, 2’ x 7’ cages where mother pigs are forced to live their entire lives. And we had shot the entire rescue using cutting-edge 360 degree cameras, borrowed from a Bay Area virtual reality (VR) startup, to ensure we captured every scene in the farm as accurately as possible. Yet the Chronicle was repeating allegations that we were lying. So I wrote this to the Chronicle:

To stage a VR video would require us to either: (1) somehow create an entire factory farm for us to shoot in VR just for the purpose of tarnishing the company’s reputation; or (2) CGI a VR video, which we have neither the technical ability nor economic resources to do.

(You can watch the video yourself—ideally with a VR headset—and see if it seems staged to you.)

I didn’t ask the Chronicle for a retraction, though I thought we were entitled to one. I asked instead for the paper to link to the actual video and include a quote from us in response. Shockingly, the reporter, Tara Duggan, responded that she had not even watched our investigative video but thought Smithfield’s claim was fair because our posts on social media were “telling a story in a very specific way.” She refused to change her piece.

It felt like the Chronicle wanted me in prison—and would amplify corporate lies to help make that happen.

That’s why yesterday’s featured opinion piece in the Chronicle is so surprising.

Prof. Matthew Liebman and Prof. Justin Marceau, two of the leading animal law scholars in the nation, published a piece in the Chronicle defending my right to rescue animals from abuse in a separate open rescue at an egg farm in California. I was convicted in 2023 for rescuing 37 dying hens at a Sonoma County factory farm. (Some of these animals were literally starving and rotting to death, such as the hen below.)

A court of appeal recently vacated my felony conviction in that case, on the grounds that I was denied the right to present evidence that my intent was to save animals from abuse. But the court also concluded, as a matter of law, that commercial animal abuse is not an “emergency” that necessitates rescue, and therefore left standing one misdemeanor conviction for trespass. As Liebman and Marceau argue in their piece, that is absurd. The animals left to starve at a factory farm are clearly facing an emergency.

This argument is important on its legal merits. Animals across the nation face dire suffering. If rescuers are not even permitted to argue that this is the case, then our courts will effectively join the cover-up of corporate cruelty. Juries, like much of the public, will be deceived about the true conditions in intensive confinement facilities, including not just factory farms but breeding facilities and labs.

But the publication of Marceau and Liebman’s argument is also important because it shows a seismic shift in what’s even allowed in debate. The Chronicle has been one of the most anti-animal papers in the nation. Its support for Smithfield, when I was charged for rescuing piglets, was not an aberration. It also opposed ballot initiatives to protect animals in 2008 and 2018 that were overwhelmingly supported by both Democratic and Republican voters. Our institutions, including the media, are too often bought by corporate money to actually represent the views of the public at large.

That is changing due to popular pressure and independent media. Now, even major mainstream publications must feature opinions such as Marceau and Liebman’s. As I noted in a prior newsletter, The New York Times has published three opinion pieces about animal cruelty in just the last month! And animal rights content by mainstream media outlets, such as this short video by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about the Ridglan rescue, is going viral. (Over 30 million views!)

@journalsentinelMore than 50 activists broke into a beagle breeding facility outside Madison on March 15, taking 23 dogs to an undisclosed location. More than 20 people were arrested. Activists have been trying for years to shut down Ridglan Farms, which breeds beagles for research. To settle a state investigation last year, the farm agreed to surrender its license to sell dogs for research by July. The facility will remain open and can continue breeding dogs for its own internal research. A spokesperson for Ridglan Farms said it is relying on state and federal authorities to help them retrieve the dogs. Read more at the link in bio. 🎥: Footage provided by Wayne Hsiung and Curtis Vollmar #animalrights #beagles #dogs #wisconsin

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Audiences are demanding the truth, not corporate catchphrases. That means that, after years of ignoring our voices—even when we have been falsely accused and face decades in prison—the media is finally airing out the debate.

This is important. I’ve always said that, fundamentally, the problem of animal abuse is one of ignorance, not malice. When we actually have the debate, we win. But for decades, the media has suppressed that debate. Instead, it has published caricatures, attacks, and outright lies by those in power—and refused to even allow us a response.

Now things are changing. Dissenting perspectives are being amplified. And if that continues, as I expect it will, expect the debate to get louder and bigger. And when we finally have the discussions we need to have as a society about what happens to animals, I’m confident the world will change.

Other stuff

• Our Zoom meeting on Sunday at 3 pm ET will show how you can be part of this seismic shift in media for animals. I can’t prove it. But I suspect that the attention around Ridglan is part of the reason the Chronicle decided to publish the piece by Liebman and Marceau. We can make this even bigger—and move the campaign to save dogs from labs into national prominence. But to do that, we need you equipped for that fight. RSVP here.

• Our right to a speedy trial has been denied. I’ll have more to say about this, but it is just the latest example of courts bending to power. The trial is likely being pushed back from September to January, but stay tuned for more.

• It’s my birthday today, and if you want to offer some support, become a subscriber to this blog! We’ll always keep all this content free. But there are some things I’d like to do with it that will take some investment, including relaunching the podcast. I’d be grateful for your support!

This is a report from the frontlines.

We have broken into Elon Musk’s lab, Neuralink, and we can see a primate, a macaque. Through a crack in the vent, we’ve placed a camera that sees everything. The macaque is pinned down with arm and neck restraints. A power drill is on the table next to her. Soon, they will drill metal rods into her head, so they can access her precious brain for experiments. She screams and thrashes, but she cannot escape.

Suddenly, we hear a noise in the hallway. A light turns on, and three men with grim faces appear. They stare at us, shocked by our presence.

“How did you get here?” one shouts.

This is the point we’ve been dreading. A direct confrontation between the animal abusers and animal rescuers at the very site of the violence.

But then something surprising happens: the men with grim faces flee. One jumps over a gate and crashes through a window. Another pulls open a latrine cover and crawls through. The third leaps, grabs onto a railing above him, swings up, and squeezes through a hole in the roof.

“Stop!” I yell, as I run after the men. But they’ve disappeared into the night.

“Call it in.”

Within an hour, dozens of ambulances stream in, and EMTs rush into the facility. The macaques are gently coaxed, two at a time, into the back of spacious trailers with bedding, food, and water. Their babies are placed in special heated trucks; trained staff stay with them, offering infant formula to help them recover from trauma. Helicopters airlift a few to a local hospital to receive emergency intensive care. Within 4 hours, all the animals at Neuralink have been saved.

This is a report from the frontlines. The year is 2060. Five years ago, every nation signed a universal declaration of animal rights. And today, we are shutting down the last animal abuser on Earth.

I began my talk at the Vegan and Animal Rights Conference (VARC) in March with this fictional story, based on a similar story I told in 2016. I meant for the story to illustrate the world we can create together—a world where every animal is safe, happy, and free.

But the story was also meant to create accountability. Ten years ago, I and other organizers at the grassroots animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) challenged our movement to think bigger: to achieve our greatest dream, animal liberation, in a single generation. We predicted that it would happen by 2055. And the victory at Ridglan this week shows we’re making progress that’s even faster than I would have guessed. The fictional story I told in 2016 is coming to life.

There are three reasons why.

First, institutions are transforming. As I set out in the talk, institutions often seem hard to change. But once change starts, especially when it comes to the expansion of rights, it’s very hard to stop. When I started as an animal advocate in 1999, there were zero state farm animal protection laws. Twenty years ago, there was exactly one. Now there are at least 44.

Second, culture is shifting. Twenty years ago, the vast majority of Americans supported medical testing on animals. Today, half are against it. Indeed, it is one of the few moral issues that has seen consistent momentum in one direction over the last 20 years.

Third, movement power is exploding. In 2006, when anti-vivisection activists were hit with lawsuits and serious criminal charges, the movement fell apart. We simply didn’t have the support and resources to take on the corrupt alliance between the industry and the state. Today, things have dramatically changed. We have lawyers, media connections, and (above all) the diverse grassroots support that a movement needs to take on powerful industries and win.

What this adds up to is rapid change—change that can happen in one generation (or even faster). I’m doubling down on my prediction from 2016 and saying we will achieve animal liberation even faster: by 2040, not 2055.1 But I’m interested in your take. Will we see an end to institutionalized animal cruelty in our lifetimes?

You helped us win the fight for the Ridglan dogs. But there are still tens of thousands of beagles trapped in labs. This is the moment to save them all, as we have unprecedented support behind our movement. (Just yesterday, two members of the presidential Cabinet, including RFK, posted a video in support of the Ridglan rescue.) If we ride the momentum, we can rescue every one of the 40,000+ dogs destined for torture or death in labs across the US by the end of 2026.

RSVP here for the 1-hour Zoom briefing on Sunday at 3 pm ET / 12 pm PT where we’ll answer your questions—and get your feedback—about this plan.

We’ll achieve this by focusing on the biggest abuser of them all: the global vivisection giant Marshall BioResources (MBR). MBR has a massive fortress-like facility in North Rose, New York, with more beagles than any lab in the nation—nearly 20,000. And the MBR dogs are victims of chemical warfare, trained to breathe phosgene gas that will drown their lungs in pools of blood. Despite decades of abuses such as these, and a long list of legal violations, the government has refused to protect the MBR dogs.

So we must.

Our strategy at MBR will be simple: organize, campaign, and rescue. We will organize community events that awaken the nation’s conscience. We will campaign to ensure every candidate for office takes a stand. And if the politicians don’t act to save the dogs by Nov 3—Election Day—we will mobilize the largest rescue network in human history to peacefully march from the state capital to MBR to save them ourselves.

In the wake of our rescue, every politician will be challenged to face the public and choose: side with the puppy abusers, or the puppy rescuers. When the dust settles, they’ll side with us.

The strategy will proceed in three stages.

In stage 1, we organize. We’ll recruit 100 regional teams to host “Puppies and Ice Cream” meetups in July of 2026, or other similarly themed events. At churches, universities, or the living rooms of our supporters, we’ll serve delicious vegan sundaes and introduce people to rescue pups. Dog parents across the nation will come to our meetups for community and support. (We all need people we can trust to babysit our furry families!) Others will come for the free food and adorable dogs. We’ll welcome everyone to join, even if they’re afraid to hold a protest sign. But the meetups will end with an inspiring video and ask: join the community to rescue the dogs tortured in labs.

In stage 2, we campaign. We’ll press every politician to take a stand on cutting funding for experiments on dogs and mandating rescue instead. We will use the story of the Ridglan rescue to push all 15,000 candidates for office to make a public statement in support of the MBR rescue. We’ll break volunteers into teams of 10, assign each of them 15 candidates to reach, and give them an AI-powered toolkit to make their mini-campaigns go viral. Every public statement by a politician will be celebrated and posted to savethedogs.io, blown up on social media, and leveraged to push even more candidates to support the rescue. By the end, we’ll have the most powerful people in the nation on our side.

In stage 3, we rescue. Beginning in late July, we’ll organize nonviolence trainings across the nation to prepare 10,000+ people for open rescue. The training will become part of the story, as the largest network of rescuers in history prepares to descend on MBR. We’ll take the lessons from April 18 and create the smartest, fastest, and most courageous team of rescuers the movement has ever seen—with key infrastructure in place to ensure safe rehoming of dogs and informed risk-taking by rescuers. On or around Oct 3—one month before Election Day—we’ll head to MBR with a movement that is 10 times as large as what we had at Ridglan. In the aftermath of the rescue effort, we will bring the fight for the right to rescue not just into the court of law but into the center of national politics.

When the world is asked to choose—puppy abuse or puppy rescue—it will choose rescue. We’ll create unstoppable momentum to free every last animal from a lab.

I just sent this note to our entire network of rescuers.

Ridglan Farms is shutting down, and all the dogs should soon be freed!

I want to thank each and every one of you for your incredible efforts on behalf of these dogs, along with the coalition partners who stepped up. So many dogs are safe because of you.

As recently as late March, this outcome did not seem likely. After the March open rescue, Ridglan’s attorney was still publicly saying the company was merely “reorganizing” and would continue experimenting on dogs, despite the mountain of animal cruelty evidence and the public horror over the abuse of dogs. What changed was the courage, persistence, and compassion you showed the world on April 18. You brought light to a dark and violent place, and the cruelty could no longer hide.

But this fight isn’t over. We are at the strongest point we’ve ever been, and the Coalition organizing committee has a plan to keep building toward the end of all dog experiments by the end of 2026. The upcoming election will be a key opportunity to push decision-makers to do what they should have done long ago: save the dogs.

And to make this fight a national issue, our movement will have to be the change we want to see in the world. We have to show the authorities, once again, that if they don’t rescue the dogs, we will. Stay tuned for more on that.

For now: thank you. This has been a 10+ year struggle. Every hour, every arrest, every sacrifice has been worth it. Thousands of Ridglan dogs once destined for death in laboratory cages are now getting hugs and walks and the thing that every dog wants more than anything: love. They won’t die on a vivisector’s table. They’ll grow old with their families. ❤️

And we’re just getting started. Soon, we’ll get every single dog out of a lab cage and into the happy home that every dog — every animal — deserves.

So many said it could never happen. We proved them wrong.

I’ll have much more to say—including a plan for next steps—in the next 24 hours.

Sometimes, I think about this mother beagle I left trapped in a Ridglan cage back in 2017, and my mind nearly breaks. I have loved dogs my entire life. Hearing one cry outside will send me running out of the house to help. But I left this mom cowering in a 2’ x 4’ metal cage as she struggled to walk. The wire flooring pressed painfully into her red, inflamed paws. Her vocal cords were cut to silence her cries. And the worst was yet to come: torture or death in an experiment.

When I think about it too much, I’ll just start crying. We had our reasons for leaving her behind: space in the car, resources, available hands. But no matter the excuses, one question echoes painfully through my mind:

What happened to this mom?

Maybe you know this despair. The fight for animals has been a losing one for most of the last 50 years. The numbers are almost too large to comprehend: millions in labs, billions in factory farms, and trillions in ecosystems devastated by human encroachment.

But all that is about to change. Because we are near a turning point for animal rights. This might seem like a strange statement, given that I’m facing felony charges for rescuing beagles from Ridglan Farms. The government of Dane County certainly does not seem to be turning the right way. But the government often lags behind the rest of society. When you look more broadly, something is changing in our society’s support for animal rights.

You can see it in the newspapers. Yesterday, the New York Times columnist Ezra Klein published a powerful condemnation of the corruption and cruelty of the pig farming industry. It was one of three opinion pieces published by the Times in the last few weeks challenging the abuse of animals.

You can see the change on social media. Posts not just about dogs, but farm animals too, are going viral. The open rescuer Zoe Rosenberg racked up hundreds of millions of views on her social media after she was put on trial for rescuing four chickens from a slaughterhouse. Chickens, not dogs!

You can see the change in organizing. David Coman-Hidy, who is an astute student of animal rights activism and history, noted earlier this month that he’s never seen as much grassroots, organic support for animal protection as what’s unfolding in this moment. People from all walks of life are hosting events, calling senators, and making the fight for animals a part of their life.

But maybe the most important way you can see the change is in the confidence of animal advocates. People are no longer tiptoeing around the issue; they are speaking out. In 2019, Sen. Cory Booker was asked a question about his personal veganism in a presidential debate and ran from the question with his tail between his legs. In 2018, Ezra Klein admitted that talking about his support for animal rights was the scariest thing he’s done as a journalist.

But now Cory is condemning cruelty to chickens openly. (Again: Chickens, not dogs!) And Ezra is writing about the personhood of pigs. From Ezra’s column yesterday:

Plenty of people would go to great lengths to save a potbelly pig they saw wandering near a street corner, even as they consume factory-farmed pork at the dinner table. That pig is an individual. Breeding sows are an abstraction. We can relate to individuals; we feel powerless before systems. And systems fight to keep us that way.

There is a wave rising to challenge that system of cruelty and deception. And this wave could be much bigger and faster than you think. The reason is that people all over the world, not just Cory and Ezra, are finding their voice.

People often pretend they are ok with animal cruelty because they worry that they won’t fit in with others if they say what they actually think. This is why Ezra found it so difficult to come out as an animal advocate. Recognizing that animal suffering matters changes the way you see everything because animal abuse is everywhere. That separates you from the people around you who are just trying to live “normal” lives. Ezra has called it taking the Green Pill, based on the famous scene in The Matrix. The hero must choose between two pills: one gives you a life of comfortable lies, and the other forces you to acknowledge the disturbing truth. Taking the Green Pill—seeing the cruelty to animals everywhere—is a tough pill to swallow.

But when people see this truth and speak it, it can create a powerful domino effect. The truth spreads, and people are inspired to fight back. And we are seeing that unfolding right now for animal rights. It’s not just the thousands of people who signed up to join the Ridglan rescue, leading to a historic release of over 1500 dogs. It’s the new confidence of the kid at school giving presentations about factory farming. It’s the new courage of the introvert who comes to a horse carriage protest for the first time. People aren’t just taking the Green Pill. They’re speaking out.

That bodes well for the future. When large numbers of ordinary people find their voice, the foundation for a movement is established. We have been waiting for this moment. That mama beagle at Ridglan in 2017 has been waiting for it. Let’s seize it, and never leave another suffering mom behind.

Other stuff

• Negotiations continue for the Ridglan dogs—with more success. We’ve seen a steady trickle of releases, and I’m confident that these negotiations will lead to success. But stay tuned for more updates, as we are hearing that good things are in the works.

• We have a plan to save the tens of thousands of other dogs trapped in labs by the end of the year. Expect it to be released this week. We’ve been getting feedback, and it’s in good shape—and ready for your participation and support.

• The Ridglan prosecution continues—with more unconstitutional actions by the state. The prosecutor in the case, Matthew Moeser, filed a motion last week arguing that the judge should undermine our right to a speedy trial… because one of his officers wants to go on leave. There is, of course, no “leave for officers” exception to the constitutional right for a speedy trial, and we suspect this has more to do with the fact that Ridglan wants to delay this trial as long as possible. We will be vigorously opposing.

That’s all for now. But stay tuned for much more, including a possible leadership summit in late July in NYC!

Today, I’m back in court in the case that could cost me everything: my freedom, my future, and my dreams of a happy life with my wife and family. And the sacrifice is the entire point. Because facing 30 years in prison is the most powerful way for me to show that I mean what I say:

We must rescue the animals, no matter what it takes.

A lot of people might read those words, or hear me say them, and think, “Oh that’s just a rhetorical flourish, right? You don’t really mean it.”

But I do mean it. No matter what it takes. And the reason is illustrated by James, the beagle puppy from Ridglan whom my wife and I have adopted into our family.

When we wake, his floppy attempts to cuddle bring instant joy to the start of our day. James is so excited to see us he falls off the bed as he attempts to burrow into my arms in the morning.

When we go to sleep, James begs me to put him on the bed, then stands on my chest while he unleashes a furious storm of licks to my face. I start chuckling an hour before bed in anticipation of our silly nighttime ritual.

Even as I’m writing this, I have a big, stupid smile on my face. James is love. James is family. James is everything. If James were being hurt, I’d rescue him, no matter what it would take.

And there are still shadows of James’ past life—filled with people who hurt him—in his behavior. He often runs in circles, as if still trapped in a cage. He barks frantically at new objects we bring into the house—boxes, chairs, or even large bags—as if there might be monsters hiding underneath. And he will still occasionally stop suddenly on a walk, trembling uncontrollably, and refuse to take another step. James is haunted by ghosts we cannot see.

When he is afraid, I hold him tight and whisper, “No one is ever allowed to hurt you again. Papa simply won’t allow it.”

And I mean what I say.

The Other Dog

But there is another dog trapped in a cage at this very moment, just like James. There was no open rescue to break him out. No negotiation to set him free. He will be poisoned with toxic gas and drown as pools of blood form in his lungs. He will be cut open and vivisected, his organs picked apart in disturbing experiments. And he will never know love or family. No one will ever even give him a name.

He will just be YPP5, a serial code in an experiment.

And that dog needs me—he needs us—just as much as James. In fact, YPP5 was James just a couple months ago. YPP5 is the serial code seared into James’s ear and thigh.

It is a reminder to me daily: We must rescue the animals, no matter what it takes.

I push myself every day to do everything I can to help these desperate little creatures. And that includes going to prison. If the state chooses to punish me for saving James, so be it. It is a trade well worth taking.

Credibility and Sacrifice

But there is something even greater at stake than my freedom. It’s the credibility of our vision: a world where every animal is safe, happy, and free. To many, that sounds absurd. “Haven’t you heard of lions, bro! Cruelty is nature!” To others, it just sounds too hard. “We’re killing each other. And you’re asking us to be kind to… dogs?”

There’s one thing that can change that: what the Harvard scientist Joseph Henrich calls a “credibility-enhancing display,” or CRED. It can be hard to convince people to take a big change seriously, but whether you’re trying to save animals or get people to use solar panels, it’s much easier when your actions speak louder than your words. If you want people to use solar panels, use them yourself. If you want people to save animals, save them yourself. A study in Nature found that advocates using CREDs were 60% more effective than those who did not.

And, importantly, the single most powerful form of CRED is sacrifice. The monk who burned himself to stop the Vietnam War. The suffrage activists who undertook hunger strikes in prison. The civil rights activists who braved police violence. Actions of this sort don’t just create credibility. They go viral. They are unforgettable. They inspire. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the impact.

We need more of this in the fight to save the dogs. It’s why I’m ok with facing 30 years in prison for rescuing James. Sacrifice was the entire point.

And it’s the point for you, too. Not everyone is going to risk prison time. Some people will sacrifice financial security. Others will sacrifice their reputations or even their careers.

But we all must risk something to save the dogs. That may be hard or scary or even life changing, but you won’t be alone in your sacrifice. Because more and more people are seeing the truth of what happens to animals, and they are saying to the world:

We must rescue the animals, no matter what it takes.

I’ll see you in court.

Some other things

• Today, we will find out whether the court will protect our basic rights—or allow the state to undermine them. Two central issues will be litigated. The first is whether I have the right to contact my co-defendants. They are, of course, witnesses to the case, and we are in a joint defense. Barring us from any contact fundamentally undermines our Sixth Amendment right to present a defense. We will thus be moving the court to lift the unconstitutional order imposed by a commissioner that bars us from any contact. The second issue is whether we will have a speedy trial. This is a right guaranteed by Wisconsin law and the Constitution. But, already, the government has indicated that it will refuse to uphold that right. The prosecutor has stated he is too busy to bring the case in 90 days. Conveniently, Ridglan will likely be closing—its employees leaving and its records disappearing—in that time. We will fight hard today against these unconstitutional efforts by the state. I’ll update everyone on X/Twitter, after the hearing. (We don’t think there will be a livestream.)

• We had a great meeting on Sunday regarding the new plan to save all the dogs. I spoke about the historic opportunity to rescue all the dogs trapped in labs by the end of the year. And we heard from many other people with questions and feedback on that plan—including an inspiring proposal to march from Albany to MBR, the largest vivisection facility in the nation. I will publish the plan shortly after reviewing everyone’s feedback. That should happen in the next 48 hours. So stay tuned.

• In the meantime, we’re looking for organizers, so please apply here—or nominate someone else! While the plan hasn’t finalized, we know that you are an important part of it. I’ll be writing more this week on what we are looking for in organizers. But by far the most important attribute is commitment to our vision: nonviolence, and rescuing the dogs. It is often the case that the best leaders are not the ones to self-nominate. So if you can think of someone who is organized and committed and ready to help, I encourage you to nominate them!

That’s all for now!

For decades, the media was silent about animal rights, even when confronted with atrocities. But something has changed in recent years. And the reason for that is… you.

Since the animal rights movement’s birth in 1975, animal advocates have desperately sought mass media coverage of the horrific abuses committed against animals. But almost always, we failed. Ridglan Farms was a devastating example of this failure. When whistleblower accounts came forward of pyres of burning animals at Ridglan in 2006, there was not a single newspaper article written about the revelation.

How things have changed.

On Friday, one million people tuning into ABC’s Nightline were told the harrowing story of the beagles at Ridglan Farms. The piece goes into gruesome detail as to the abuses suffered by the dogs at Ridglan, such as the surgeries performed without anesthesia. And it ends with a heartwarming scene: one of the Ridglan puppies, Beau, being taken to his forever home.

Then today the New York Times published a remarkable op-ed by Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Nicholas Kristof about the pork industry’s corrupt efforts to keep mother pigs trapped in cages. In the piece, Kristof describes the fight for animal rights as “one of the great but incomplete moral revolutions of our lifetime.”

It’s hard to think of a better two days of media in the animal rights movement’s history. And this is a dramatic change from where we were 20 years ago, when Ridglan could literally incinerate hundreds of dogs without even a local newspaper reporting about it.

What changed?

The shift in coverage might be driven by audience preferences for pro-animal content. Public opinion on vivisection, in particular, has transformed in the last 20 years.

There has also been an increase in the availability of independent voices in media. Independent platforms, such as podcasts and YouTube shows, are increasingly dominating the typical American’s media diet. Smart phones and cheap cameras have made it easy for anyone to create content. The former CIA analyst Martin Gurri has argued that this dramatic change in our information ecosystem—the end of the state’s monopoly on communication—has caused the public to revolt against elite control. That revolt has probably benefitted animal rights.

But I think neither of these explanations is really satisfactory. Public opinion on animal rights issues other than vivisection has hardly changed in recent years, yet the NYT is publishing stories on pig rights. And the surge in pro-animal coverage is not exclusive to independent media. Indeed, in many ways, traditional outlets like the Times have been better than YouTube, which has very few prominent animal rights influencers. There is a better explanation for the changing media grounded in the science of social contagion. And that explanation is: you.

The psychologist Jonah Berger at the University of Pennsylvania, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on virality, has pointed out that the modern media climate is driven almost entirely by word of mouth. Precisely because communication has become so cheap, massive chains of social connection can spread new messages quickly across the globe. Berger created an acronym to explain this phenomenon: STEPPS. From the first S (Social currency: people share content that makes them look good) to the last (Stories: people spread ideas in the form of stories), content is contagious when it follows these simple steps. But the driving force behind all of the STEPPS is that they create incentives for an audience to share content.

In short, media goes viral when it harnesses its audience. And that is precisely what’s happened with animal rights. It’s not me or ABC or The New York Times that are changing the media climate. The audience is driving this change. You are driving it.

That is very evident in the Ridglan case. The national media coverage came in the wake of social media explosions. Over the last few months, it feels like every random photo posted about Ridglan immediately reaches 100,000+ people. This gave openings for mainstream media to cover the story, too.

But it’s also true of other animal issues. My friend Lewis Bollard has had numerous posts go mega-viral as he campaigns to get pigs out of cages. Millions of people across social media, including people from all walks of life, shared the story of corrupt politicians torturing mother pigs in gestation crates. That’s surely part of the reason why the Times felt a prominent column was justified.

And this is precisely why we must continue developing the grassroots.

Tomorrow, we’ll have our next opportunity to build that grassroots power. We can launch the fight for animals into the stratosphere—the front page of every newspaper in the nation. But to do that, we can’t count on prominent journalists, celebrities, or even movement “leaders” like Lewis or me.

We’ll count on you.

RSVP for the all-rescuer Zoom on Sunday, May 31 at 3 pm ET / 12 pm PT to learn how we plan to make your voice as powerful as possible for animals!

They were killing beagles with the deadliest chemical weapon in history.

In September 2024, the grassroots animal rights organization Camp Beagle released video footage leaked from Marshall BioResources (MBR) in North Rose, NY. In the footage, which was apparently taken by an employee distressed by what she had witnessed, rows of tethered beagles thrash as they attempt to pull masks off their faces. The purpose of the procedure was to train dogs for “inhalation experiments.” Perhaps the most disturbing of these experiments involved phosgene gas, a chemical weapon that killed 85,000 people in World War I and was subsequently banned under international law. In 2015, MBR sold dogs to buyers who poisoned beagles with phosgene and watched as their lungs deteriorated. The goal was to understand what happens to human beings poisoned by the gas, whether through war or an industrial accident. Over many hours, the dogs would agonizingly drown to death, as fluid filled their lungs from the damage caused by the phosgene gas.

Dogs, naturally, do not want to accept being poisoned like this. That makes phosgene experiments difficult to manage, even for beagles (a breed of dog chosen for their docility). The training at MBR was meant to suppress the beagles’ willingness to resist. The dogs needed to learn to simply take the abuse—even if it ended with their deaths.

The phosgene experiments are just one example of what I have described as a war on dogs. And MBR is at the epicenter of that war. Tucked into a seemingly innocent hamlet in upstate New York, very few people even know the facility exists. But it is not just there. It is probably the largest vivisection facility in the world, with around 20,000 dogs—ten times the number of any other facility in the nation—and 40,000+ other animals, including cats, ferrets, and pigs.

It is the Death Star of Vivisection, inflicting more death and destruction on lab animals than any weapon on Earth.

And we are taking on the Death Star next.

RSVP for the all-rescuer Zoom on Sunday, May 31 at 3 pm ET / 12 pm PT where we’ll get your feedback on our plan to save all the dogs trapped in labs by the end of 2026.

Seizing the Moment

Just a few weeks ago, on April 18, the largest nonviolent direct action for animals in history unfolded in the Town of Blue Mounds, WI. Over one thousand rescuers descended on Blue Mounds to free beagles suffering criminal abuse at Ridglan Farms. Millions of people were exposed to the horrors of animal experimentation as videos went viral. Public outrage forced the company to release most of the dogs. But while the fight for the Ridglan dogs is not yet over—650 remained trapped in experimental protocols—the Ridglan campaign has to move now to building something even bigger: a movement to end all animal experiments, starting with the Death Star.

This is not simply because of numbers, though the numbers are massive. Half of all experiments on dogs originate at MBR, which is as large as all the other suppliers combined. Winning the fight against MBR is effectively winning the fight against all dog experiments.

And it’s not just because of the national political opportunity before us. Nick Langworthy, a local Congressmember in New York inspired by the Ridglan rescue, has personally visited MBR recently and says he wants to see the facility shut down. He is begging for our support. Now is the moment for us to provide it.

The most important reason we must take on the Death Star is that it solves the Day 2 Problem. The Day 2 Problem asks the question: How are our successes on Day 1 feeding into our successes on Day 2? And, as I have written previously, solving this problem is crucial to making change. The system of animal abuse is so big, and so subject to countervailing influence, that unless you can create feedback loops of activism, progress often disappears.

We can already see that with the Ridglan campaign. Videos that used to get millions of views are now down to the thousands. Media outlets that were knocking down our doors are losing interest in the story. Even the rescuers ourselves struggle with the daily grind of maintaining engagement with the campaign. If we do not create a surge of new energy, Ridglan could easily rebuild its cruel business the moment the world looks away from its abuses.

Taking on the Death Star will give us that surge. All we need is a plan.

Blueprints for the Next Rescue

Over the last few weeks, I and a number of the other organizers of the Ridglan rescue have been hard at work coming up with exactly that plan. And we now have an initial draft. Here are the opening words:

We are going to rescue every one of the 40,000+ beagles destined for torture or death in experiments across the US and UK by the end of 2026. We’ll achieve this by focusing on the 20,000 dogs and cats at the biggest abuser of them all: Marshall BioResources, a multinational with massive facilities in the US (New York) and UK (Cambridgeshire). Then we’ll use the momentum from beating both Ridglan and Marshall—the Death Star of Vivisection— to save them all.

Our strategy will be simple: press the politicians to enforce the law and save the dogs. If they refuse, we’ll rescue them ourselves—by mobilizing the largest rescue network in human history to peacefully descend on the Death Star one month before the November 3 election.

Every politician will be forced to face the electorate and choose: side with the puppy abusers, or the puppy rescuers. When the dust settles, they’ll side with us.

You can read the full plan and leave comments here. But you can also do something even better: join us in making it even stronger. This Sunday at 3 pm ET, I’ll be briefly presenting this plan (and some other brilliant ideas suggested by the April 18 rescuers, including a march from DC to MBR) then asking for your feedback.

We can win the war on dogs. We can save every beagle trapped at MBR, Ridglan, and cruel facilities across the nation—including the exact beagle who was thrashing in an inhalation mask in September 2024. But to do this, we need you. I hope you’ll join us.

Other stuff

• We are looking to find people passionate about transformative uses for AI. If you’ve been following the news, you know that AI is already having transformative effects on the economy, including key industries such as software. But we have yet to see powerful use cases for social, rather than economic, problems. There is some early indication, including this report in Science, which shows how AI can significantly improve democratic decision-making, suggesting AI might have potential in this space. More generally, I’m interested in connecting with extraordinarily talented and committed folks who want to build organizing platforms from the ground up with a focus on how to deploy AI effectively. If this includes you, let me know! Here are some initial thoughts I’ve sketched out on transformative uses for AI that I’d love your feedback on.

• Speaking of which, I’m at EAG in London this weekend. Say hello! This is a conference on how to do the most good with limited resources, and animals will once again be a focus. If you’re at the conference and interested in discussing scalable change, reach out!

• One of the April 18 rescuers, Michael Freeman, penned a great op-ed on why he risked everything to free the beagles. One of the things I hope to do with the plan that will unfold over the next 5 months with MBR is to empower more folks to write pieces like this. Give it a read!

• My friend Jack Hancock has released his new documentary, The Dying Trade, about his relationship with his father, a slaughterhouse worker. Jack has some of the smartest content on animals out there, including some very important work on wild animals, and this is worth viewing.

• I should be back on a more regular writing schedule. The last few weeks have been a little crazy, with final exams, travel, and integrating James into our lives. But I’m hoping that starting this week, I’ll be publishing far more to this newsletter.

That’s all for now!

Moments ago, the prosecution in the Ridglan rescue case filed an updated information adding 3 felony counts to the existing burglary charge. The total cumulative prison time the prosecution can now seek for the four felony charges is over 30 years. I will be arraigned on those charges, along with my co-defendants, at 2 pm CT via Zoom. (You can watch the court hearing live by searching for the Branch 14 livestream here.)

And I could not be happier.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want even a single additional day in jail. Over the last few months, I’ve barely seen my family. Oliver was rescued from a dog meat farm and still lives in trauma. Even 10 years later, he still shakes at times when a stranger comes too close—fearful of the deadly violence he witnessed by human beings in his first year of life. He needs the people he loves nearby.

My wife Rose is going through her own struggles, not just in leading Animal Rising but in facing upcoming trials in September and November. I should be at her side.

Then there is James. Little James, already the light of our lives. Floppy, sad-faced, and endlessly affectionate, James was rescued on March 15 and is still grappling with this big new world. My arms were the first to carry him outside of Ridglan Farms. And he has blessed me with his trust since that day. Everywhere I go—on walks, doing work in the office, even going to the bathroom—he is glued to my side. Every time I come home, he collapses in my lap and gives me endless licks to the face. Every time I leave, he looks up at me as if his world is ending.

I promise him that it’ll be okay, and that I’ll always keep him safe. But I wonder, by going on trial, am I breaking that promise?

Then I remember another promise: the promise I made to the mamas at Ridglan in 2017. On that cold night in Wisconsin, as we walked out with a blind beagle puppy and 2 others in our arms, I looked back and whispered:

“We’ll come back. I promise.”

That promise is as important as the ones I’ve made to Ollie, Rose, and James. And it will now be judged in court by a jury of our peers. It will be a test of our society’s compassion. And I’m betting my freedom that we will pass the test.

And that promise is why I’m happy to be arraigned. There has yet to be a reckoning over the thousands of beagles left to be criminally abused and killed over the last 10 years at Ridglan Farms. This court case is our best shot at bringing the corruption and cruelty to light.

Of course, it’s not just the beagles at Ridglan who need our help. There are tens of thousands of others at places like Marshall BioResources in New York who are desperately in need of aid. And there are unprecedented opportunities to help them. In an election year, politicians will be looking for grassroots support. If we can mobilize people, we can make historic change.

But more on that later. Today, I plead not guilty and face the power of the state, and the corrupt ties between industry and government that left dogs like little James to die. I’m glad to have your support.

Other things

• I will be challenging two unconstitutional actions by the prosecution today. The first is the no contact order, which bars me from contacting defendants in the Ridglan rescue case. There is clear constitutional case law prohibiting this sort of bail condition. I’ll be raising those arguments in court today. The second is the attempt to delay the trial. The prosecutor in the case, Matthew Moeser, claims that his schedule is too busy to meet the speedy trial requirement of 90 days set by Wisconsin law. We will oppose his attempt to delay the trial in hope to bring this to court by August at the very latest.

• The Wall Street Journal published what is perhaps the best piece by the business press on open rescue—and it could have dramatic impacts. I was once told by an experienced hand in animal rights that one piece in the Wall Street Journal is worth 1000 protests. It is read by every important businessperson in the nation. And the piece published by investigative journalist Joe Barrett is brilliant. Give this a read, and use the piece with any conservative or business types if they ask, “What’s the deal with these rescues?”

• I also published a piece today in Current Affairs on rescue as civic duty. One of the most important lessons of the recent MBR trials in the UK is that activism must be framed as community service, rather than imposition of political ideology, to be successful. Rescue is perhaps the best form of activism to frame our activism in this way because of its concreteness. Give it a read, and let me know what you think!

• There is much more for us to achieve with the network that mobilized for Ridglan. We are still not sure whether all the dogs at Ridglan will be freed. I had conversations earlier this week about the status of negotiations and will send something out to this list once I have a clearer sense of the current status. Just as important, we need to seize this moment to build a sustainable movement for change. We have seen in prior movements how quickly attention collapses (and with it, power). I’ve been having discussions with many leaders and scholars about how we can overcome this problem and start building towards real power. We’ll likely schedule a meeting in the next week!

The beagle with the serial code YPP5 seared into his ear burst through the broken window into a bright new world on March 15, 2026.

Moments earlier, my friend Austin had taken this sad-eyed puppy from a cage at Ridglan Farms and thrust him into my hands through a window. YPP5 was trembling. The rush of new sights and sounds—the mass of people in white Tyvek suits, the crack of thunder in the sky—must have been a terrifying experience. I carried him to a member of our rescue team.

“He’s yours. Keep him safe,” I said with one look. And then I went back for more.

The right to rescue is being featured on Radiolab. It’s the dramatic account of how 8 jurors in southern Utah, presented with paper cut-outs of piglets, and banned from hearing the words “animal welfare,” nonetheless sided with rescuers over an abusive industry. Give it a listen!

But before I could take another dog, the police arrived and put me in handcuffs. I watched as they converged on rescuers all around me. My heart sank. Was YPP5 seized by the police? Was he back in a Ridglan cage, destined for surgical mutilation or death?

Would he ever get a hug or see the sun again? Would YPP5 ever get a real name?

I thought of that moment this week as felony burglary charges were formally brought against me and three other rescuers. The government wants to teach us a lesson: it’s not worth it.

What the authorities don’t appreciate is that the repression will backfire. Because the repression is merely highlighting that it is worth it. The public recognizes that abused animals are not “things” but sentient beings with inherent value. And when state repression forces our society to answer the question—what is an animal worth?—the people are siding with us.

This debate is unfolding in criminal trials. This week’s Radiolab episode chronicles how jurors responded to felony burglary charges filed against me for rescuing two injured piglets from the largest pig factory farm in the world. When the prosecutors compared the piglets to dented cans to explain why you cannot steal damaged goods, the jurors revolted and acquitted me.

Another example: on Thursday, a Court of Appeals reversed my felony conviction in California for rescuing 38 distressed hens from an abusive factory farm in Sonoma County. The authorities are trying to force people to accept that animals are things, but we are beating them in court.

The debate is also unfolding in our other institutions. In the past few weeks, multiple legislators and institutions—including Rep. Mark Pocan, who represents the district including Ridglan Farms—have been asked by Ridglan to protect their property and shut down the protests. But Pocan refused the request and joined the activists instead. “Shut. Them. Down,” he wrote on social media.

The New Yorker’s Jay Kang wrote that this rapid institutional change is “a case study in effective activism” driven by “a lot of people willing and ready to go to jail through putting their bodies on the line.” It’s hard to be against grandmas brave enough to face off against police violence.

But the most important place this debate is unfolding is in the animal movement itself. Animal advocacy has existed for millennia, going back to ancient Greek philosophers such as Plutarch, who compared the slaughter of animals to the slaughter of human beings. But for those same millennia, no one has really listened to us.

“Yes, animal cruelty is not great,” the authorities say. “But it’s not that big of a deal.”

But it is that big of a deal. The average experience of a land animal on Earth is that of a tortured creature trapped in a cage. What is happening to YPP5, and other animals, is an emergency. A crime. An atrocity. And we now have people stepping up to show this.

In 2017, when we first started campaigning at Ridglan, we had 6 rescuers willing to risk arrest to save a blind beagle puppy. We got some attention and support, but the Ridglan dogs remained trapped in cages.

In 2026, we went from 6 rescuers to 1,000. And these rescuers risked not just arrest but brutal police violence. And we didn’t just get exponentially more attention. We got the dogs out.1

The Harvard scholar Joseph Henrich has noted the importance of this sort of risk-taking in changing culture. It’s hard to get anyone to pay attention, much less change, if we don’t put our money where our mouth is. But when people start doing this in large numbers—what Henrich calls a “credibility-enhancing display”—things can rapidly change. If people continue to risk everything for the animals, even the authorities will be forced to see them, not as “things,” but as sentient beings.

That includes YPP5. In one of my first calls upon getting out of jail, a member of the rescue team gave me the good news.

“We’ve got him. He’s safe.”

The fight isn’t over. I and my co-defendants face up to 12 years in prison at a trial that will unfold in the next few months. More importantly, there are 40,000 other dogs across the nation still trapped and awaiting torture or death in laboratory cages. More people will need to step up if we’re going to save them.

But it’s worth it. YPP5 is worth it. Because he is not a serial code. He is James. And yesterday, James flew to his new forever home with me, my wife Rose, and our other little boy Oliver. James is family. So too are the other animals of this earth. And we will risk everything to rescue them.

Let them try to imprison us for protecting our families. It will only prove that, when we say the animals must be freed, we mean what we say.

Other stuff

1. The California Court of Appeal has reversed my felony conviction and acknowledged the necessity defense for animals. I am grateful to Prof. Justin Marceau at the University of Denver, who argued my appeal, and the numerous other scholars and lawyers across the nation who supported the case. This includes one of my former professors, Martha Nussbaum at the University of Chicago Law School, and Kristen Stilt, a leading scholar of animal law at Harvard. The deep irony is that the authorities in Dane County are making the same mistake that they made in Sonoma County in my California conviction: asserting that animals are mere things.

2. We need to sustain this whirlwind moment. I’ve written numerous times in recent years about the power of these moments. But among the most important lessons from history is that it’s not enough to harness the moment. We have to sustain its power. I call this the Day 2 Problem, i.e., after you win on Day 1, what do you do on Day 2? I’ll be sharing how we can answer this question later this week.

3. I’ll be speaking about the Ridglan rescue at the Grassroots Animal Rights Summit on May 17 in Washington, DC. This will be our first opportunity to gather with other activists and plan our next move. Don’t miss it!

Something happened in the last 24 hours that should give every animal trapped in a cage hope for the future.

I don’t mean the breaking news that came out yesterday, though it brought tears to my eyes. (I’ll have more to say about that in the weeks to come.)

I don’t mean the beginning of my trial for the rescue of dogs from Ridglan, though that could establish a ground-breaking precedent.

We’re holding a Zoom meeting tonight to discuss the events of the last 24 hours—and our plans to seize this movement to end all experiments on dogs. RSVP here!

What I mean is that a true grassroots political movement is bursting to life. Vox’s journalist Marina Bolotnikova put it best when she described recent events as “a bold and bruising experiment in broadening the movement’s tent beyond the already converted, and carrying animal rights forward into the realm of mass politics.”

What are the signs that this “bold and bruising” experiment is working? The renowned social movement scholar Charles Tilly coined the acronym WUNC to describe the characteristics of social movements that are able to create change. Worthy. Unified. Numerous. Committed.

And what we have seen, in the last 24 hours, is a movement that is showing that it is WUNC.

In the face of shocking police violence, we have maintained the moral high ground. At my hearing yesterday, Karen, a senior citizen who uses a walker, described her pride at participating nonviolently in the April 18 action. “We’re here for the dogs,” she told me. Karen, with the quiet dignity of an elder in our community, showed that we are worthy.

Even as the industry tries to divide us—supported by unfortunate factions within the animal movement itself—the Ridglan response has been a powerful coalition effort. Animal advocates from across the nation, from radical organizations like PETA to relatively conservative groups like Big Dog Ranch Rescue to wonk-ish effective altruists at Coefficient Giving, came together to support saving the dogs. I’ve never seen unity like this in the movement.

And then there were the numbers. At a typical protest, grassroots organizers struggle to get a 10 people to attend. The Ridglan campaign recruited over 1,000. Numbers like this give us real power.

Finally, there is what happened in court today. But I don’t mean with the lawyers and the judge, but with the people who showed up to support. The overflowing courtroom was filled with supporters. Most of them joined the defense of the pups on April 18. The government accused us of violence. It attempted to scare us with tear gas and rubber bullets. But not only did everyone still show up in court; they wanted to do it all again.

“I’ll be there next time,” Karen, the elderly woman with the walker, told me outside of court. “We will do it all again.”

Commitment like this is how the world changes.

Over the last few months, I have been traveling around the world revisiting a thesis I first offered to the movement 10 years ago. Animal liberation—the end to all commercial exploitation of non-human beings—will happen in one generation, I argued back in 2016.

The last few days have strengthened that argument. We are worthy. We are unified. We are numerous. And, above all, we are committed.

As my friend and fellow organizer Aidan Kankyoku put it, we got our asses kicked. And it worked.

This changes everything. A movement with this scale and commitment cannot be stopped. And even as our battles continue—in court and in the next open rescue—we should have not just hope but confidence. Soon, every animal will be free.

Some other things

• The Dane County court found probable cause in my preliminary hearing yesterday—but removed the court order banning me from Dane County. The hearing had far more fireworks and objections than a typical hearing of this sort. Prosecutor Matthew Moeser aggressively objected to every question about animal cruelty; the court commissioner sustained the objections. Unluckily, we drew the same court commissioner in this hearing, Brian Asmus, as we saw at the bail hearing. He was no more sympathetic this time, though my attorneys (Chris Carraway and Kristen Schrank) made a strong case for the defense. Ultimately, while the court found probable cause for a felony and refused to lift my no contact order, it did lift my ban on being present in Dane County. This was the most constitutionally indefensible portion of the prior order, but we will continue the fight against the other restrictions in the weeks to come.

• We’re publishing a report on the lessons from April 18. This past Sunday, we had a long debrief session with all rescuers who participated on March 15 or April 18. We are now releasing a report based on an analysis of that feedback. Check it out here—and leave a comment.

• Some tremendous things have been written about the Ridglan campaign. Marina Bolotnikova wrote the most vivid description of the events on April 18, as a personal witness to the police brutality. Aidan Kankyoku has written what I hope will be the first of many blogs analyzing the impact of the campaign.

• There’s so much more to do, so I hope you’ll join us tonight. Even as the fight against Ridglan may be nearing its end, the fight for dogs and other animals facing torture in labs is moving on to the next step. We’ll be discussing the last day’s news, and how we can sustain and grow this momentum, at the call tonight. RSVP here to get the Zoom link!

On April 18, I held my friend Aditya’s shoulder as he blindly navigated our jail cell. He had been assaulted by police, gassed, and blinded by pepper spray.

Three days later, a Wisconsin court ordered me not to speak with him. I was indefinitely banned from any contact with Aditya and three other people I love—rescuers who’ve risked everything to save beagles from criminal abuse. Our support for one another, apparently, is seen as a bigger threat by the local authorities than the torture of dogs at Ridglan Farms.

It all happened at my bail hearing last Tuesday. Court Commissioner Brian Asmus set the conditions of my release after I was arrested on April 18. The bail amount was so high, $20,000, that even a jail officer expressed shock afterwards. (“Damn! I’ve never seen that for burglary.”) Accused pedophiles and other violent criminals were given bail amounts that were thousands of dollars less.

JOIN THE COURT HEARING TODAY: I’ll be in court today (April 29, 3 pm CT) to face the government’s evidence for the first time and challenge the unconstitutional conditions of my bail. You can find details to join us by livestream or in person here.

But what came next was even more cruel.

“Defendant shall not have any contact, direct or indirect, with Aditya A., Michelle L. [Misha], Melany B., or Dean W.”

These are all people I love.

Aditya is a gentle soul, someone whose Buddhist training shines through in the peacefulness of every one of his words and actions. His dive through a window at Ridglan Farms on March 15, a last-ditch effort to save one more dog, showed the world that true peace is an active force.

Misha is built from the stuff of courage. In our trainings, Misha stood out as someone who would throw their body between a bully and a rescuer, protecting friends from violence.

Melany is a former beauty queen whose compassionate spirit is more stunning than anything one might see at a pageant. In the weeks prior to April 18, she stood outside of Ridglan with her prayers and her camera, even as men threatened to shoot her.

And then Dean, the one whose commitment I know best. Dean was an anxious and soft-spoken college student at UC Berkeley when I met him 10 years ago. But even then, I saw the spark in him, a fierce compassion. That spark has transformed into a supernova. Dean was last seen leaping on hay bales on April 18, as tear gas canisters and rubber bullets whizzed all around him, to rally the spirits of the rescuers.

“Tear gas! Pepper spray! It’s ok!” Dean shouted into a megaphone. And it was—because his courage steeled all those around him.

These four, and so many others, represent what I love most about humanity: courage and compassion. And these four suffered the worst of the state violence on April 18. When Aditya arrived in my jail cell, after being beaten and tear gassed, I had to hold his shoulder and guide him to his bunk bed. He was still blind—with eyes stinging and swollen—from the pepper spray.

Now Aditya and my friends face over 12 years in prison, charged with burglary for our attempt to save the Ridglan dogs. And there is nothing in the world, in this moment, that I want more than to protect my friends.

And the government has taken that away.

In a constitutionally indefensible order, Commissioner Asmus, a former prosecutor who apparently worked under District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, ruled that he would ban us from any contact with one another to “protect members of the community from serious harm.” This was deeply ironic, given that the defendants themselves had just experienced “serious harm”—beatings and terroristic threats—at the hands of Ridglan and the police. (One rescuer on April 18 was beaten and kicked in the face, knocking out two of his teeth and leaving him unconscious on the ground for around 14 minutes. No officer rendered aid, as they are required by law.)

Commissioner Asmus also banned each of us from going near Ridglan—and from the entirety of Dane County. The Dane County ban can only be interpreted as a direct attack on the First Amendment. The only “unlawful conduct” I am alleged to have engaged in within Dane County, where the state’s Capitol is seated, is petitioning the government to enforce the law and protect the dogs.

A criminal law professor I sent the order to was so flabbergasted that he laughed out loud. (“That is absurd,” he said. “These are supposed to be narrowly-tailored.”) Yesterday, our lawyers filed a motion challenging its constitutionality. But this is simply the latest example of lawlessness in Dane County by the authorities. And it is all directed at one purpose: a war on love.

The county government is attacking the friendships among rescuers, not because of any laws broken, but because our friendship targets a powerful industry in Wisconsin.

It assaulted grandmothers holding flowers because it saw their compassion for dogs as a threat to local business interests.

And it has prioritized the prosecution of animal rescuers, while falsely claiming Ridglan is above the law, because it believes love is a greater danger than cruelty.

And in a sense, it is right about this. The love of the rescuers on April 18 is a threat—to the alliance between government and business interests. The assault inflicted on nonviolent rescuers shows how far the legal system will bend towards those with wealth and power, even when they inflict unspeakable cruelty on those who are innocent. The system is bending so far, revealing corruption so deep, that it is on the verge of breaking. Trust in government has fallen off a cliff precisely because of cases like this.

But here is the most important point: love will win. So long as we tell the story of what is happening in court, and at Ridglan Farms, the nation will side with us—and tear down the government’s alliance with corporate interests. I saw this even in the officers arresting me on April 18.

“How do you feel about what’s happening at Ridglan?” I asked. “How do you feel about what’s happening to the dogs?”

The officers were nervous and uncertain, unwilling to look me in the eye or even say a word in response. They knew they were waging a war on love. And they knew that, in the eyes of the public, they could never win.

So let the authorities bring their war on love today in court. Let them try to tear apart our friendships. Let them beat us for our compassion. And, above all, let them try to imprison us for bringing frightened beagles to loving homes.

It is a fight we are more than willing to have. Because in the long run, love will win.

There is still hope for the Ridglan dogs.

While direct action did not get the dogs out, it has left us in a stronger position than we’ve ever been. There is unprecedented attention focused on Ridglan and experiments on dogs. CNN, the New York Times, Democracy Now, AP, and Fox News all covered the rescue effort on April 18. Google Trends shows a massive uptick in search traffic for Ridglan—more than 2x the traffic of the original rescue mission on March 15. The spotlight is on the abuses at Ridglan, which gives us a crucial opportunity to get the dogs out.

To seize this moment, however, we’ll need not just attention but strategy. And the clock is ticking. By July 1, Ridglan will likely sell or move all of its dogs. For that reason, I’ve put together three proposals for us to continue the campaign—and a survey for you to vote on which proposal excites you most.

Vote on the three proposals here.

Approach 1: Culture and Storytelling

We will harness the backlash against police brutality to get 1,000 of the most influential people in the world to take a public stand against Ridglan Farms—and create unstoppable cultural momentum to free the dogs. The rescue efforts on March 15 and April 18 already inspired support from influencers like comedian Ricky Gervais, director James Gunn, and podcaster Jennifer Welch. Using the stories of rescuers who bravely fought off tear gas and rubber bullets, we will supercharge this effort and make Ridglan—and the abuse of dogs in labs—a subject of everyday concern. We will compile a list of 2,000 influential people; organize our activists into teams of 10 which are each tasked with reaching out to 10 of them; then use every lawsuit, court date, and individual story of heroism in the face of police brutality to persuade 1,000 of those influencers to take a public stand. Every statement by an influencer will be celebrated and posted to savethedogs.io, blown up on social media, and leveraged to push politicians, customers, and even Ridglan itself to free the dogs.

Approach 2: Key Decisionmakers and Institutions

We will use every tool of nonviolent protest to seize the attention of Gov. Tony Evers, Attorney General Josh Kaul, HHS Secretary RFK Jr., and President Donald J. Trump—and pressure them to save the dogs. We will bombard their offices with emails and phone calls from grandmas who were brutalized. We will swarm their social media with photos of beagles in labs. And we will meet them at every public event and beg, plead, or even compassionately disrupt their events to bring attention to the Ridglan dogs. We will split up into regional teams that will identify key leverage points in each region: a congressional ally in Michigan, an upcoming visit to Florida, or even just a sympathetic journalist in the local paper. We will use this leverage to provoke reactions from powerful people, then celebrate every reaction—such as Gov. Evers’ recent statement that he can’t “wave a magic wand”—on savethedogs.io to ratchet up the pressure. When Evers says he doesn’t have a wand, for example, 100 of us will show up at his next event in Harry Potter costumes and offer him ours.

Approach 3: Community Organizing and Rescue

We will turn Save the Dogs into the largest in-person community for animals ever—and a launchpad for a rescue effort that is 10x larger than the one we executed on April 18. We will aim to have 100 “Hugs for Pups” meetups in May—all featured on savethedogs.io—with delicious vegan ice cream and puppies from local shelters. At churches, universities, or the living rooms of our supporters, we’ll share slickly-edited videos about the Ridglan rescue effort and explain how the Save the Dogs community can help everyone’s pups. Dog parents will come to our meetups for the community and support. (We all need to meet people who can babysit our furry friends!) Others will come for the delicious food and adorable pups. We’ll welcome everyone to join, even if they’re afraid to hold a protest sign. But we will have an underlying purpose: build a community that can mobilize and support 10,000 people for the next rescue effort.

Again, vote on the three proposals here.

I’ll be in court on April 29 at 3 pm to appear for a preliminary hearing in relation to the March 15 rescue. At the hearing, the prosecution will, for the first time, present its evidence that we committed a “crime.” My attorney, in turn, will get his first chance to cross-examine that evidence.

Just as importantly, we will be challenging the court’s unconstitutional conditions imposed upon me during my initial release. Murderers, rapists, and leaders of violent criminal gangs are not subject to the conditions the court imposed on me, including a no-contact order with my co-defendants and an outright ban on stepping foot anywhere in Dane County (other than for court dates). It is just the latest example of lawlessness by the authorities in defense of Ridglan Farms. Our motion, under any reasonably fair judge with an interest in following the Constitution, should prevail.

There should be a livestream of the hearing, but we’re also gathering in person at 2:30 pm outside the courthouse at 215 S Hamilton St, Madison, WI 53703. I’d love to see you there, if you’re local and free tomorrow afternoon!

But immediately after the hearing, my first priority will be focusing on the strategies outlined above. The first of them, culture and storytelling, is already unfolding! The story of peaceful activists targeted by a violent and lawless government is one of our most important tools in freeing the Ridglan dogs. I hope you’ll help us boost that story.

Our plan to save thousands of dogs from Ridglan Farms exploded with a can of tear gas.

On April 18, 1000+ people converged on Ridglan Farms with a seemingly simple plan. Rescue the dogs from criminal abuse using every nonviolent means possible. But the police and industry responded with brutal violence, including attacking a disabled grandmother. Few of our rescuers even got near a building. Not a single dog was freed.

What went wrong? There were at least four major factors in the plan’s failure: overconfidence, complexity, poor communication, and rigidity. But before I can unpack those failures, let me describe in more detail the actual plan.

The April 18 Plan

Our strategy was to use the “flexibility, scale, and intelligence of 1,000+ nonviolent rescuers to overcome any barriers to the mission,” i.e., to rely on teams to act independently on site and find creative means to rescue the dogs. Our plan, in short, was to have no plan—but rely on nonviolence, problem-solving, and the sheer number of the rescuers instead. The most important factors in giving our rescuers this freedom of action was to clear the site of obstacles, including both physical barriers and security or police.

We had special teams who volunteered to arrive early to clear the physical obstacles within minutes—fencing and doorways, specifically—but clearing the site of security and police would require an element of surprise. For that reason, our team leads were instructed that, while the date of the action was set for Sunday, April 19, circumstances such as weather might require a change. The final briefing could happen at any time, and at any place, and team members were asked to be prepared to adapt.

That is precisely what happened in the weeks before the action. Locals told us that the Dane County Sheriff’s office, which up to this point had been civil and respectful of our rights, was planning to shut down the entirety of Blue Mounds Road on April 19. Checkpoints would be set up at roads, and only those with an ID showing a local address would be allowed into the area. That would make a demonstration, much less a rescue, impossible.

“We have to move before they’ve set up the checkpoints,” I told our leadership team in a meeting a week prior to the action. “That probably means going on Friday, right when people arrive.”

We had envisioned this possibility from the start. I first mentioned the possibility of moving on Friday in late March. But there were two problems. The first was that moving on Friday would leave people untrained—and perhaps unprepared—for the action. While we had tried to implement online trainings in the weeks prior to the action, nothing is as good as an in-person walkthrough. And many teams would not have even met in person yet.

“We are just going to have to trust our team leads,” I said. “Because it’s a choice between doing a rescue with less training, or not doing a rescue at all.”

The second was that the weather was not cooperating. What was initially forecast as rain became thunderstorms and tornados in the days leading up to Friday, April 17.

“I don’t think we can safely rescue puppies in this weather,” one member of the leadership team shared. On Thursday night, the team was evenly split on whether we should move the next day.

“Let’s keep open the possibility of doing Friday,” I said. “But unless the weather improves, we are delaying.”

On Friday, our recon teams were telling us that no police were on site, much less setting up perimeter checkpoints. Locals told us, surprisingly, that there was not even private security visible on site. One volunteer even told us he used an infrared camera to confirm there was only one human being at Ridglan Farms. Many members of our team felt that we should move forward.

“This is our best opportunity to catch them off guard,” one told me. “They are going to be prepared over the weekend.”

But the weather was getting worse. A flash flood warning was issued in Dane County, and a local reporter told me that his station was not even allowing him to cover our briefing due to tornado risk. I called off the Friday mission. It’s too dangerous for the dogs, I thought. We would wait until Saturday morning to reassess.

The rest, of course, is history. By Saturday morning, police cruisers were present and following any cars that drove by Ridglan Farms. One pulled over at the intersection of Highway E and Blue Mounds and appeared to be preparing a checkpoint. There was even an armored personnel carrier on site. We had to move immediately if there was going to be any chance at rescuing the dogs. And even if we moved immediately, we had to adapt. As I drove towards Ridglan, I sent a message to our team leads chat.

“We have to pivot. Wait for everyone to mass up and move in one large group,” I said. We instructed breach teams to hold back and arrive at the same time as the larger mass of Red/Yellow activists.

But before I could organize anyone to make this pivot, I was arrested on a public road. Within minutes, tear gas canisters were flying through the air. The police refused to arrest or detain people — their main approach to stopping us on March 15 — and assaulted people instead, preventing anyone from getting anywhere near Ridglan Farms.

Four Major Mistakes

So what were our mistakes?

The first mistake was overconfidence. We assumed, based on the prior action, that the police would use the same tactics they used on March 15: detention and arrest. On April 18, they used brutality instead. I played an enormous personal role in this mistake, as I spoke to many people about how I doubted the likelihood of police violence.1

“This is a progressive county where the Sheriff has pronouns in his bio,” I said. “And there’s never been police violence at any open rescue in animal rights history.”

Indeed, the main threat of violence we perceived was from agent provocateurs within our own movement.

That was a mistake. And while we can’t be sure there was anything that could have been done to overcome police violence, we could have engaged in better scenario planning —consideration of different assumptions about the state of the world we were in—to reflect that possibility. When evidence started coming in that the police might shift to violence—e.g., when Sheriff Kalvin Barrett made a “crazy” video accusing us of violence in the days before the protest—we should have recognized more quickly that our assumptions about police were wrong.

The second mistake was complexity. Large and uncertain challenges require simple plans, especially when they involve large numbers of people. And our plan, beneath its surface simplicity, was far too complex. Nearly a dozen independent teams, from recon to breach, were positioned all over the facility and developing very specific and detailed operational plans. When the chaos and uncertainty inevitably took over, those plans fell apart, and some of our most trusted teams were quickly neutralized. It would have been better for us to keep plans simple—and vet them with contingencies, such as an escalation in police violence. In short, we spent too much time on details that didn’t matter (e.g., how to move a haybale) rather than the high-level simple factors that were more important to mission success (e.g., how to handle a large police presence).

We should change this. Simplicity should always be our mantra, especially when organizing at scale.

A third mistake was poor communication. While the primary reason for moving away from Friday was the weather, a secondary factor was the surprising number of people who did not get the memo that they needed to be ready for action starting on Friday at 6 pm. There is an old mantra in communications research—that you have to repeat a new idea at least 7 times before it sinks in—and we did not do this enough. Worse yet, some people got conflicting messages, partly because we didn’t establish a single source of truth until relatively late in the action. Even our Beagle-Bot—an AI chat agent trained on the documents we prepared—often got things wrong as a result.

Most importantly, we did not have great communication protocols at the action itself. Two days before the action, we did a quick walkthrough of how our Overwatch crew—the set of people responsible for providing key information—would communicate with team leads. It was clear that there were serious deficiencies. Some members of the Overwatch crew, for example, did not understand the lexicon we were using (“What’s core placement?”) or the plan (“Where do rescuers take the dogs?”). We should have focused 10x more on having robust and effective communications strategies. For all future actions, there should be a clear communications memo—setting out who is communicating with whom, and how—right at the start of our action planning.

A fourth and final mistake was rigidity. We were too focused on the primary scenario we envisioned—surprising the police, and facing mass arrest rather than violence when they arrived—and not sufficiently prepared to adapt. We were also too focused on getting maximum participation and not sufficiently willing to lose numbers even if it enhanced our ability to adapt.

Take, for example, the schedule. We started on Sunday, moved to Friday, then ended on Saturday. But we didn’t do enough operationally to ensure that those changes could operate seamlessly. We told people to come on Sunday but did not have the communications norms or culture to change this quickly. This is partly because we wanted to avoid complexity, which is also very important. But there is a way to have simple plans that are also flexible. It might have been enough to tell people, “Come on Sunday, but be prepared for any other time” more explicitly. More generally, for future actions, it may be wise for us not to spell out a single date at all.

“We don’t know exactly when the action will be,” we may have to say. “But the call to action could come at any time.”

That may limit our numbers. But if it ensures flexibility of action, it’s worth it.

What Failure Means

There are, I have no doubt, other failures in our planning. The list above is not meant to be exhaustive. But I want to end with a line from one of my most favorite talks, by entrepreneur (and some-time animal advocate) Vinod Khosla.

“Failure does not matter. Success does.”

Khosla is not trying to suggest that failure isn’t painful. Especially in a context like ours, it’s heartbreaking and demoralizing and even traumatic. Dogs are currently trapped at Ridglan Farms, awaiting torture or death, because we failed.

What Khosla means is that failure is inevitable when trying to solve hard problems—finding a cure for cancer, ending wars, or creating social change. The key is to not let the fear of failure take you off the path of success. Many people, perhaps most people, give up on hard problems when they experience failure. It’s too painful. But that is the only way to guarantee that failure is permanent. In contrast, if we remain willing to fail—and learn from the process—failure doesn’t matter. To the contrary, it’s an essential step on the path to success.

Today, we are engaging in a debrief of our entire rescue community for that purpose. There are so many perspectives and ideas and solutions from this community that I am optimistic that we will learn from the failure of April 18 and continue on the path to success.

Indeed, that is already happening. The unprecedented attention from the action—4x as much search traffic as the March 15 rescue, according to Google Trends—is pushing our culture and institutions in a positive direction. For example, after the April 18 action:

• Rep. Mark Pocan (the district’s own congressman) publicly called for the Ridglan dogs to be released and shelter networks to begin preparation.

• The leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate publicly demanded a “real transition plan” for the Ridglan dogs

• Two Dane County Supervisors, including Rick Rose, condemned police conduct and called for investigation.

We did not save the dogs, but we are in a stronger position than we’ve ever been to get them out. (Yesterday, I whipped up a quick memo with three approaches to seizing this current moment.)

But to find those paths, we must confront our failures directly. Overconfidence, complexity, poor communication, and rigidity were the failures of our leadership team that I saw. What failures did you see, and how do you think we can use our failures to get us back on the path to success?

One day after being released from jail, I’m back in California to hear Prof. Justin Marceau argue the appeal in my conviction for felony conspiracy back in November 2023. This could be the most important legal argument in animal rights history, as it goes to the root of the legal system’s broken relationship with animals: whether animals are beings with legal interests, or just “things.” And the argument, which begins at 9:30 am in downtown San Francisco, is open to the public.

Here’s the event page. (Also consider joining the hangout tomorrow evening at 7:30 pm at the Berkeley Animal Rights center.)

In the Sonoma case, I was sentenced to 38 days in jail for organizing the mass open rescue of distressed hens trapped in cages at one of the largest egg factory farms in the state, Sunrise Farms. That facility’s owners had falsely marketed its products as certified humane; falsely accused us of “terrorism” for documenting their abuses; and even outright lied in court by claiming they had no battery cages when, in fact, we found hundreds of thousands of birds in exactly those cages, which violated the state’s landmark law prohibiting intensive confinement.

The key legal issue in the Sonoma case is whether the necessity defense applies to animals. The prosecution’s argument in the appeal is that animals are akin to “cellular matter”—a comparison expressly adopted by the trial judge—and therefore cannot be “rescued” even if they are victims of criminal abuse. Prof. Marceau, in contrast, will argue that animals can have legal interests, including an interest in being rescued from suffering, supplying the legal foundation for a right to rescue defense in a criminal trial. What is at issue is not just my conviction but the future of countless animals who suffer abuse. This includes the dogs at Ridglan Farms. The prosecution in my prior case in Wisconsin expressly stated that dogs are “things” under the law—and thus cannot be legally rescued.

I hope you join the appeal. It’s important for the court to understand this is an issue with public sympathy and importance.

But regardless of whether you can make it, I hope you can join us in hanging out at the Berkeley Animal Rights Center tomorrow evening at 7:30 pm. We’ll have some cookies and other snacks. And I’ll probably share some slides and stories, but otherwise the hangout is going to be very informal. I am literally just scheduling it today. I’m hoping some others who were part of the recent rescue effort will be able to join us.

I hope I’ll see you tomorrow—at Prof. Marceau’s historic argument, or the hangout in the evening, or both!

They brutalized a disabled grandma.

Jeryl has five grandchildren and suffers from multiple disabilities, including the deteriorating disc, requiring a wheelchair for mobility. She was one of 1000+ activists who came to Ridglan on March 15th to give aid to dogs suffering from criminal abuse.

But when she approached the facility she was met with ruthless police violence. One officer shoved her to the ground. Another pepper sprayed her directly in the eye. A third kicked her vulnerable back viciously.

She was blinded, vomiting, and forcefully taken to a police van. As activists in the van tried to console her, she began to cry — but not for her own pain. “I just wanted to save one dog.”

Repression like this can feel terrifying and insurmountable. And that is precisely its goal: to scare people into inaction. But one of the secrets to successful social movement is that there is a way to make repression backfire. Indeed, from the Civil Rights Movement to Occupy Wall Street, effective movements have harnessed repression to bring attention to the injustice of a system. Civil Rights activists led by Dr. King intentionally marched in Birmingham in 1963 with the knowledge that they’d face brutal violence. Occupy Wall Street went viral after a protester was maliciously pepper sprayed directly in the face by a police officer. In these cases and others through history, it was the repression and not the activism directly that led to transformative change. We can do the same for animal rights if we keep these four things in mind as we confront the repression in our movement.

Every voice matters. Movements that depend on a few key leaders inevitably fail repression’s test. It’s too easy to neutralize a few people and leave a movement voiceless.

But if a movement is diverse and numerous, it can not be silenced. And when the public sees ordinary people resisting — and not just celebrity leaders — it inspires everyone to join. It was a nameless woman who was pepper sprayed and not Bernie Sanders who launched Occupy into national prominence. It was previously unknown activists — Rosa Parks and the Greensboro Four — who inspired the movement for civil rights.

Jeryl was not a celebrity. But it’s stories like hers that will allow us to harness repression for change.

Name the villain. If everyone is a villain, no one is. This is one of the lessons of Hannah Arendt’s study of atrocities in history. When repression is made abstract and bureaucratic, it’s impossible to generate directed outrage against concrete change.

The Civil Rights Movement named specific villains like Bull Conner, the brutal police commissioner in Birmingham. Occupy Wall Street identified a handful of billionaires — Bezos, Musk, and Gates — who held more wealth than the entire lower half of the nation combined.

The Animal Rights Movement must also name its villains. Sheriff Kalvin Barrett voluntarily stepped into that role.

Take the moral high ground. The danger of naming villains is that it can cause a movement to devolve into hatred or even violence. This undermines public sympathy and can legitimize repression.

The Civil Rights Movement strove to resist this. King’s concept of the Beloved Community — a family of people who are cherished and cared for and nourished — included even his adversaries like Lyndon Johnson. Occupy, in contrast, largely lost the moral high ground by demonizing its adversaries. Luigi Mangione, United Healthcare CEO’s killer, is a result of this moral corruption. It is part of the reason the fight against inequality has gone so badly in recent years.

It is important to remember that every villain is just a future friend. If Kalvin Barrett chooses to break bread with animal advocates, I’ll be first in line to host him for a vegan meal.

Courage of purpose. Repression is disorienting. Tear gas and pepper spray literally prevent us from navigating the world. This makes it particularly important to focus on our purpose when facing repression. Without this courage of purpose, we can lose sight of why we resist — and thus give in to fear.

The Civil Rights Movement adopted the principle, accept suffering without retaliation, for this reason. The courageous sacrifice was part of their purpose. Occupy, too, has been at its strongest when it keeps its courage of purpose. Bernie Sanders has suffered numerous efforts to repress his cause including illegal efforts to tilt the DNC against his 2016 presidential primary, but he never loses his focus: defending the working class.

Courage of purpose is one of the reasons why Jeryl’s story is so inspiring. When I first heard what happened to her, I started to tear up. I could feel her fear and pain. But when I heard her response in the police van — “I just wanted to save one dog” — my tears of suffering became tears of awe. Even as Jeryl was threatened with permanent disability, she kept her focus on the dogs. This is incredible courage and focus. And this is how we will win.

Repression is indeed very frightening. But we will make it backfire. Jeryl’s story shows us how. She is not a celebrity but she speaks out. Her story is specific and concrete — pointing to specific villains. And she does so with kindness — and thus maintains the moral high ground. But most important, Jeryl has courage of purpose. Let them attack me, her actions say. I will never give up my purpose: getting every Ridglan dog out of a cage.

“Would you save a grub?”

It was not a question I expected from a special agent in a joint terrorism task force. Yet here I was being interviewed in a Dane County jail about insect rights.

It was just the first in a series of questions I was asked by two special agents with the FBI and state department of justice on Saturday. I answered their questions — against the usual legal advice — because I wanted to learn more about their “terrorism” investigation. And what I learned sheds light on, not just the government’s approach to the Ridglan case, but its approach to all “animal cases.”

The conflation of protest and violence. Jim, one of the agents, started the conversation by comparing our action to those of Luigi Mangione, who allegedly assassinated a healthcare CEO because of complaints about premiums.

You see a company causing harm, he explained. But it’s not okay to use violence.

“You are right. Violence is wrong,” I replied. “But grandmas rescuing dogs is not violence.”

Criminal damage and terrorism. But, Jim insisted, that’s not all you did. There were tools — wire cutters, ladders, and even power saws.

“Damaging property is not always wrong or illegal,” I responded. I asked Jim and So, the other agent, about the dog in a hot car scenario. Would they break the window? Both quickly said yes. So, then, what is different about a dog being mutilated in a vivisector’s cage?

Liberty for me…but not for thee. Jim then told me he was a hunter who killed deer to feed his family. Activists would disrupt his hunts with bells and other devices.

You can have an opinion on hunting, he said, but you can’t stop me from living my life and feeding my family.

But if we care about liberty, I asked, shouldn’t we care about liberty for all beings, including a dog trapped for years in a 2-foot-by-4-foot cage?

The right way to make change. Even if I were right morally, however, So insisted there is a right way to do things: within the law.

I agree — and the law expressly allows some rules to be broken when a life is at stake. Indeed, officers and firefighters break “rules” all the time. No firefighter is liable for breaking down a door to save a puppy from a burning building.

The line on “who matters.” We ended by coming back to their initial question on whether I’d act to save a bug.

“I read that lobsters feel pain,” So said. “Does that give you the right to break into Red Lobster?”

The two agents thought they had me. Who could possibly defend rescuing invertebrates and bugs? But they were surprised by my answer.

“We should have compassion for all animals,” I said. “And yes that includes bugs.” I refuse to kill mosquitoes who are biting me for exactly this reason.

“You want to treat dogs the way you think I treat bugs. But we don’t have to draw lines. We can simply have compassion for them all.”

The agents were stupefied. They requested, and I agreed to, an end to the interview.

No lie can live forever. The sheriff of Dane County will soon see this.

Yesterday, Sheriff Kalvin Barrett condemned the “violent” protesters for breaking into Ridglan Farms “intending to hurt our deputies.” He cited no evidence for this dramatic claim, and the news segment showed images and video instead of peaceful activists being assaulted by police with tear gas, pepper spray, and guns with rubber bullets. The clip ended with video of a journalist collapsed on the ground, gasping for air. Apparently, the journalists were also dangerous.

My first thought in hearing about yesterday’s escalation — I was arrested instantly and witnessed none of it personally — was concerned for those injured. No one should be assaulted for giving aid to a dog, even if damage to property is part of that rescue effort. (Police and firefighters, for example, damage buildings and doors all the time on rescue missions.)

But as reports trickled into jail that immediate danger to the protesters had ended, my concern shifted to anger. The sheriff not only led a vicious assault on peaceful protesters holding flowers. (My cellmate, Aditya, tells me he was arrested with a grandmother of six who was distraught and crying in the back of a police van after being pepper sprayed and tear-gassed. “I just wanted to save a dog,” she cried.) The sheriff had the audacity to outright lie about the grandmothers, journalists, and activists who are deeply committed to nonviolence.

Being falsely accused by a powerful man is a disturbing situation to find ourselves in. You might be surprised by how I feel this morning: confident and optimistic.

The first reason for this is that the sheriff’s lies show the weakness of his decision. People lie when they know they are in the wrong. And the sheriff understands that assaulting grandmas and journalists is wrong. He will use force to fabricate violent intent to justify his own brutality. You can see the weakness of his decision in his tone — the exaggerated manliness — and jerky body language. This is a man who is beginning to realize he’s on the wrong side of history.

The second reason for my optimism is that lies, when exposed, bring even more attention to injustice. As they say, not the crime will get you in trouble, but the coverup. Before I was arrested, I was in correspondence with a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who specializes in exposing government deceit. I expect a story will be forthcoming. I’ve also heard the New York Times published a positive story just hours after the protest — the fastest from pitch to publication I’ve ever seen for an animal rights story in the Times.

Brutality and dishonesty may suppress dissent in the short term. But over the long term, they simply bring more attention to a cause. Humans have a deep desire for authenticity. Even those uncertain about our actions will not be happy to learn they are being lied to.

And that brings me to the third reason for optimism: no lie can live forever. As attention focuses on the weakness of the sheriff’s position, there will be immense pressure to change. Indeed, this is already happening. The sheriff’s bizarre and false assertion that Ridglan is exempt from the animal cruelty laws has been thoroughly debunked. Journalists no longer repeat that lie. Institutions such as the Dane County Board have rejected it. Indeed, even the sheriff himself has stopped saying it, perhaps because he realized that his lie…has died.

There is a broader principle here. For thousands of years, humanity assembled through darkness and deceit. False prophets and manipulative demagogues have had an iron grip on our species.

But for the last few hundred years, with the spread of literacy and reason, that grip has been broken. In a world where information is in all of our hands, and not just the powerful, something remarkable is happening: the world is bending towards truth.

We once lived in a world where brutal segregation was accepted as “equal protection.”

Where women were considered “property” of a man rather than “citizens.”

And where love between two people of the same gender was a “criminal act.”

Those lies have all fallen. So too will the sheriff’s. He can try with all his might to manipulate the public into believing that compassionate rescuers are “violent,” that Ridglan’s criminal abusers are just “licensed business,” or that the dogs at Ridglan are just “things.”

But he will fail. Because no lie can live forever. And the world is saying this truth:

The animals of this Earth are not “things.” They’re sentient beings. And we have the right to rescue them from abuse.

We have been attacked. Now everything depends on how we respond: with courage or fear.

Today, hundreds of animal activists were tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and assaulted by dozens of police protecting Ridglan Farms. As I sit in a jail cell, I am feeling a mix of shock from the sudden escalation of violence and guilt for the failure to protect the people I love. Cordial conversations with Sheriff Kalvin Barrett convinced me that authorities would respond to our movement with reason.

I was wrong.

Now we must care for our injured and defend those who are arrested. Leaders like me must be accountable for our decisions and ask forgiveness from all those who suffered harm while our movement learns from this moment.

Above all, we cannot give up on our purpose. We cannot give up on the dogs. If we stay focused on this purpose, the repression will backfire. The public will see armed men attacking grandmas desperately trying to save dogs, and their conscience will be awakened. That is what happened in India’s struggle for independence when armed British soldiers attacked peaceful activists simply attempting to gather salt. It’s what happened when civil rights activists were attacked by police dogs in Birmingham in 1963. It will happen here too — as long as we don’t give up the fight. The brutality of those attacking us will highlight the injustice of a system that uses state violence to defend the torture of innocent dogs.

I don’t mean to say that this moment will guarantee the scale of change we saw in the 1960s. There were years of struggle and failure before activists in past movements saw the change they dreamed of.

What those activists understood though is their sacrifice had purpose.

Claudette Colvin, a young Black woman who was arrested one year before Rosa Parks, did not spark the historic movement. And the Black community in Montgomery could have responded to Colvin’s arrest with withdrawal and fear, as a state-sponsored lynching spread across the nation, that would have been an understandable response.

But they did not respond with fear. Rosa Parks saw the purpose in Colvin’s brave acts and instead followed in her footsteps. Parks’s courage in the face of repression changed the world. In the face of broken systems, courage is often the only thing that does.

So now we animal activists face the same question. We have been attacked, and our friends are hurt and in jail. But the dogs we love are still trapped in cages. And those brave activists’ sacred purpose — to bring those dogs into freedom and love — shines brilliantly through their actions.

As I sit in this jail cell, I cannot say with certainty what our next steps should be.

But what I can say is this: our next step must be taken with courage.

Pray for courage. Pray for the dogs.

But a few words on why we are doing this.

This is not a political cause, really, though politics plays a role. It’s not really a moral campaign, either, though of course ethics plays a role.

It’s fundamentally a fight for our families. The dogs of this earth are not things, or even toys. They are our children when we are parents. They are our brothers and sisters when we are young. They are cousins and friends and—above all—they are family. And when you hurt our family, we will act to protect them.

I am back at Ridglan for Vivian, my first pup who shielded me from bullies at school.

For Natalie, who gave me purpose in my greatest moment of darkness.

For Lisa, who taught me lessons on love.

For Oliver, whose innocence and vulnerability moved a nation.

And, last of all, for James, the beagle I took out of Ridglan on March 15.

James didn’t know there was a big, beautiful world out there. He didn’t know what it meant to have parents, to run in a big yard, to feel love. And yet he must have known it was out there, somewhere. Love is the primordial bond, the thing that all mammals yearn for from the moment they are born.

Ridglan has broken that bond, shattered it cruelly into a thousand pieces. We aim to restore it.

I’m grateful to you for supporting us in that sacred mission.

I’ll see you on the other side of this rescue.