Beautifully written Wayne. Your words are spot on! Thank you for your continued passion and commitment to educate, organize, and mobilize. You are the real deal and quite an inspiration.
OMGosh….your words capture it exactly…..Thank you… ❤️🩹………☮The world will never know peace, until ALL sentient beings are treated with kindness and compassion.☮
I had just read this story about an acquaintance of Albert Einstein, a fellow from the 'periphery' of Britain's domination over India in the days of non-violent protest there, who gave his name to the 'boson' particle in advanced physics-- https://aeon.co/essays/why-satyendra-nath-bose-was-more-than-einsteins-sidekick . He obviously had so much more to do than worry and fixate whether his approach to living was a winning gamble in the world, which is sort of what I think drives the violence of ICE personnel, who simply can't not win. But what happens, and what does life become, when they do win? Something secretive, carried out in remote facilities, where nobody's hope or morality is furthered, as our social life becomes a parody full of lies and errors. There must be other and better things we can do with ourselves.
ICE, and those who empower them, "simply can't not win", as you say.
And yes, there are "better things we can do with ourselves", as you say.
By being unable to "not win" they are losers, but they don't know it - and their victims "suffer what they must" (to quote Thucydides).
They will lose - but will it be more painful for them than what they imposed on their victims?
Therein lies the problem.
They need to be taught "better things to do", but they also need to be held accountable for their "winning ways". How do you stop the evolved generalist parasites from "not winning"? 😈 (I'm sure it will happen, because it's unsustainable, but I'm not sure how.)
Wayne, I write this with deep respect for you - your brilliance, your courage, the immense good DxE has brought into the world well as your many other acts of leadership. Few people have done more to expose the moral catastrophe of animal agritorture or to model disciplined, principled action in the face of state repression. I share your conviction that tyranny over animals lies at the root of so much of what is broken in our world.
Where I part ways with this essay is in the framing that “cruelty is spreading” as a generalized human condition. That frame collapses vital distinctions. The cruelty engulfing us is not evenly distributed - it is being driven by an increasingly desperate state apparatus defending a dying system. Masked agents kidnapping people from workplaces and homes, genocides funded and armed by empire, whole populations terrorized to preserve extraction and profit - this is not morally equivalent to the rage of people under siege.
Pain, fear, and even fury in the face of such terror are not themselves cruelty. By placing state violence, protest rhetoric, property destruction, and human emotion into a single moral category, we risk obscuring power. Dialectics teaches us to ask: who is wielding force, against whom, and for what end? The violence of empire is not the same as the resistance of the oppressed. The class nature of cruelty matters.
I believe in nonviolence as a horizon and a discipline. But history shows it has never existed in a vacuum. Gandhi’s victories followed centuries of colonial plunder and rebellion. King’s triumphs unfolded alongside Garvey, Malcolm, and the Panthers. Even “peaceful” transformation has always taken place inside a field shaped by struggle. To conflate movements with the states that crush them, or to equate resistance with domination, flattens that history.
I do not claim to have the final answer. But I do know this: unity across justice movements is essential. Animal liberation does not stand above or apart from human liberation - it is braided with it. Our task is not to moralize people in terror, but to expose the system that produces terror, and to invite all who resist it into a deeper, more expansive compassion that includes every being.
Your work has shaped me. It is precisely because we share the same ultimate aim - a world without domination - that I offer this in the spirit of dialogue and collective clarity.
I believed in you and Priya day one when someone came to Miami from dxe Berkeley to meet with a handful of us. The fact that the courts literally separated you from your partner and support for a time and that now your forces are once again joined, only a million times stronger, to bring down this holocaust of beagles in Wisconsin today, and all other houses of despicable horrors around the world is a testament to the power and resilience of non violent resistance en masse. Animal Liberation is first on the agenda of 2026. Thank you and all rescuers around the globe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 🙏🏼❤️💛💚🐶 🦆 🦊 🐷 🐮 🐥 🐠🥰💜
Yes, the slaughter of innocent Alex Pretti is the same as what we do to innocent animals.
Why? Sorry to say, it's because we are the evolved generalist parasite. It comes out more, and it is easier, if we can make our actions hate-based (misothery) or money-based (those fresh ICE agents gotta earn their sign-up bonuses, right?).
I hope you are right, but I think any swing back to compassion will be temporary - as long as we humans don't see ourselves for what we are (and even then it might not change.) ☹
Beautifully written Wayne. Your words are spot on! Thank you for your continued passion and commitment to educate, organize, and mobilize. You are the real deal and quite an inspiration.
OMGosh….your words capture it exactly…..Thank you… ❤️🩹………☮The world will never know peace, until ALL sentient beings are treated with kindness and compassion.☮
What does all sentient beings include?
Your work and your heart are a guiding light for me. Thank you.
I had just read this story about an acquaintance of Albert Einstein, a fellow from the 'periphery' of Britain's domination over India in the days of non-violent protest there, who gave his name to the 'boson' particle in advanced physics-- https://aeon.co/essays/why-satyendra-nath-bose-was-more-than-einsteins-sidekick . He obviously had so much more to do than worry and fixate whether his approach to living was a winning gamble in the world, which is sort of what I think drives the violence of ICE personnel, who simply can't not win. But what happens, and what does life become, when they do win? Something secretive, carried out in remote facilities, where nobody's hope or morality is furthered, as our social life becomes a parody full of lies and errors. There must be other and better things we can do with ourselves.
ICE, and those who empower them, "simply can't not win", as you say.
And yes, there are "better things we can do with ourselves", as you say.
By being unable to "not win" they are losers, but they don't know it - and their victims "suffer what they must" (to quote Thucydides).
They will lose - but will it be more painful for them than what they imposed on their victims?
Therein lies the problem.
They need to be taught "better things to do", but they also need to be held accountable for their "winning ways". How do you stop the evolved generalist parasites from "not winning"? 😈 (I'm sure it will happen, because it's unsustainable, but I'm not sure how.)
Thanks, Wayne. So true.
Wayne, I write this with deep respect for you - your brilliance, your courage, the immense good DxE has brought into the world well as your many other acts of leadership. Few people have done more to expose the moral catastrophe of animal agritorture or to model disciplined, principled action in the face of state repression. I share your conviction that tyranny over animals lies at the root of so much of what is broken in our world.
Where I part ways with this essay is in the framing that “cruelty is spreading” as a generalized human condition. That frame collapses vital distinctions. The cruelty engulfing us is not evenly distributed - it is being driven by an increasingly desperate state apparatus defending a dying system. Masked agents kidnapping people from workplaces and homes, genocides funded and armed by empire, whole populations terrorized to preserve extraction and profit - this is not morally equivalent to the rage of people under siege.
Pain, fear, and even fury in the face of such terror are not themselves cruelty. By placing state violence, protest rhetoric, property destruction, and human emotion into a single moral category, we risk obscuring power. Dialectics teaches us to ask: who is wielding force, against whom, and for what end? The violence of empire is not the same as the resistance of the oppressed. The class nature of cruelty matters.
I believe in nonviolence as a horizon and a discipline. But history shows it has never existed in a vacuum. Gandhi’s victories followed centuries of colonial plunder and rebellion. King’s triumphs unfolded alongside Garvey, Malcolm, and the Panthers. Even “peaceful” transformation has always taken place inside a field shaped by struggle. To conflate movements with the states that crush them, or to equate resistance with domination, flattens that history.
I do not claim to have the final answer. But I do know this: unity across justice movements is essential. Animal liberation does not stand above or apart from human liberation - it is braided with it. Our task is not to moralize people in terror, but to expose the system that produces terror, and to invite all who resist it into a deeper, more expansive compassion that includes every being.
Your work has shaped me. It is precisely because we share the same ultimate aim - a world without domination - that I offer this in the spirit of dialogue and collective clarity.
I believed in you and Priya day one when someone came to Miami from dxe Berkeley to meet with a handful of us. The fact that the courts literally separated you from your partner and support for a time and that now your forces are once again joined, only a million times stronger, to bring down this holocaust of beagles in Wisconsin today, and all other houses of despicable horrors around the world is a testament to the power and resilience of non violent resistance en masse. Animal Liberation is first on the agenda of 2026. Thank you and all rescuers around the globe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 🙏🏼❤️💛💚🐶 🦆 🦊 🐷 🐮 🐥 🐠🥰💜
Thank you!
We are in the midst of a demonic surge of power-grabs by people for whom empathy itself has become suspicious, compassion permissible given a 'litmus test' of with or against monstrousness in global world order-- https://countercurrents.org/2026/01/the-monstrosity-as-a-system-the-war-on-palestine-and-the-moment-the-world-lost-its-moral-gravity/ .
Yes, the slaughter of innocent Alex Pretti is the same as what we do to innocent animals.
Why? Sorry to say, it's because we are the evolved generalist parasite. It comes out more, and it is easier, if we can make our actions hate-based (misothery) or money-based (those fresh ICE agents gotta earn their sign-up bonuses, right?).
I hope you are right, but I think any swing back to compassion will be temporary - as long as we humans don't see ourselves for what we are (and even then it might not change.) ☹
Thankyou for sharing Wayne.
I love reading your articles and in these turbulent times non violence is paramount.
Your words are hopeful and full of compassion.x