How We Achieved the Greatest Turnaround in Animal Rights History
The state tried to imprison me for rescuing 3 dogs. Now it's helping us save them.
BREAKING: The Washington Post just published an op-ed by Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff defending our right to rescue the Ridglan beagles and calling for an end to all experiments on dogs. Shout-out to the University of Denver's AALDP for getting this piece in the Post!
—
One year ago, I was facing 16 years in prison for rescuing a blind beagle puppy from Ridglan Farms, one of the nation’s largest beagle experimentation facilities. Today, we are on the brink of turning the tables on the industry, bringing felony charges against Ridglan, and rescuing thousands of beagles from a lifetime in a 2’ x 4’ cage. It’s likely the greatest turnaround story in animal rights history. And it shows the power of scalable change — a mechanism that can transform seemingly small actions (such as rescuing a beagle) into systemic impacts (e.g., ending all experiments on dogs).
How does scalable change work? There are two factors that must be present. The first is the existence of feedback loops. When change on Day 1 feeds into more change on Day 2, that creates a feedback loop that can be harnessed to supercharge our efforts. Most of us observe feedback loops in our everyday lives. For example, a whisper into a microphone, too closely positioned next to a speaker system, can build into an ear-splitting screech as the whisper bounces from speaker to mic and then back to the speaker again.
Most forms of institutional change exhibit feedback loops. One university’s plant-based pledge paves the way for others. But feedback loops are particularly relevant in efforts at legal change. Indeed, in some cases, a victory in court on Day 1 requires a victory on Day 2 due to a doctrine called stare decisis.
The second factor in scalable change is exponential growth. In some contexts, each additional unit of effort leads to more than a unit of change. This is true of the microphone and speaker example. A whisper can become an ear-splitting screech but only if the speaker amplifies the whisper beyond its initial volume.
And, once again, legal change often exhibits this same exponential growth. When we passed a fur ban in San Francisco in 2018, it was a crucial victory that increased the odds that the fur ban would scale to California as a whole. I estimated at the time that fur would be banned in the entire state by 2025, and many laughed at my prediction. However, when Los Angeles unexpectedly followed San Francisco in banning fur within a year of the SF ban, that accelerated the timeline considerably. I quickly whipped together a proposal in Jan 2019 to shift the entire organization behind an effort to ban fur in California – and we succeeded in a historic vote later that year.
This is an example of exponential growth. The first effort, the SF fur ban, made winning in California possible. The next effort, the LA fur ban, made winning in California inevitable. Each additional unit of effort, like a speaker amplifying the volume of a whisper, was more powerful than the last.
It’s crucial for advocates to understand if they are part of an engine for scalable change. When problems are as large as animal exploitation – involving tens of billions of victims spread across the globe – the size of the solution has to meet the size of the problem. Anything smaller than scalable change misses out on the largest opportunities for impact. Just as important, however, is that scalable change solves one of the fundamental bottlenecks in social movements: countervailing influence. For every incremental effort we make, there’s a reaction by the system that threatens to reverse progress. For example, we may persuade one person to become vegan, only to see 2 other vegans revert to their former lifestyles. Scalable change can solve this problem by creating momentum that overwhelms countervailing influence. Indeed, in large and complex systems with many sources of countervailing influence, scalable change may be the only way to create any change at all.
But that brings us to the most important question: how do we know if we’re working with scalable change? The Ridglan case offers some insights.
The first is that true scalable change must answer the Day 2 problem. How are our successes on Day 1 feeding into our successes on Day 2? In the Ridglan case, the initial rescue and prosecution led to massive attention, including a number of viral videos.
That attention inspired action including protests, marches, and – crucially – a petition for a special prosecutor joined by two local groups, Dane4Dogs and Alliance for Animals. That action, in turn, inspired a new round of attention, from prestigious scientific journals to an avalanche of local media outlets. It all culminated in a decision by a court earlier this year to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue felony charges against Ridglan Farms.
Most efforts at social change do not even consider, much less provide an answer, to the Day 2 problem. This short circuits the feedback loops that create scalable change, akin to a speaker positioned too far from a mic to create feedback. So, if we are working on a campaign, we should always ask: what happens on Day 2 after we win on Day 1? And what happens on Day 10? Day 1000? All the way to your final goal. If we don’t have any answer to these questions, we are not working with scalable change. (If you’re wondering about my own answer to the Day 2 problem, see here.)
The second lesson from the Ridglan case is that momentum is far more important than early success because momentum is a sign of exponential growth. We only rescued 3 dogs from Ridglan, and early progress was hard. Far from being persuaded by our efforts, the government tried to imprison us. But we had a theory of momentum. We thought every small sign of progress in the campaign – even something as trivial as having charges dismissed against the rescuers – would make future efforts dramatically more effective.
And that is exactly what happened. From politicians to Ridglan customers, each incremental victory has made the next one easier. Most recently, the government is moving to potentially remove the company’s veterinary license, and many of Ridglan’s buyers are cutting ties. These are victories that would have been unthinkable one year ago. The smallness of the original action, and the early difficulty of progress, were not as important as the momentum the work inspired.
Too often, activists ignore momentum and focus only on early success. The reality is that, in most opportunities for scalable change, early success is a red herring. It suggests you are doing work that targets low-hanging fruit but probably does not have the momentum to scale. (After all, if the work were easy and high momentum, it would have already taken off.) What you want is not early success, but hard campaigns that have rapid momentum, e.g., by building a high-energy activist base for your campaigns. That was precisely our theory in the Ridglan case. We didn’t think it would be easy to win over the legal system. (If it were easy, someone would have already done it!) But we knew, if we were able to make some legal progress, that progress would inspire the momentum to scale.
And that strategy of scalable change has now taken us to the brink of saving thousands of dogs.
That is not, of course, the final goal. If our strategy succeeds, it could create an infinite loop that saves billions. After all, if we are able to convince a court that animals are “persons” rather than “property,” why wouldn’t that apply to monkeys, pigs, and chickens as much as dogs?
But to achieve that greater goal, we’ll need more people to be part of that strategy. We will need people like you to understand the power of scalable change.
—
What’s up this week (and with this newsletter and The Simple Heart)?
The newsletter has been on hiatus as we prepared for the right to rescue summit in DC — but it should be back and rolling again now. Over the last few months, I shifted much of my work away from writing and podcasting towards preparing for events in DC. That summit just finished, with around 150 registrants joining us in defense of the right to rescue. While we didn’t succeed at our primary goals, we’re making progress. But for now, it’s time to get back to writing!
We should have more major media, including an open rescue that illustrates the corrupt ties between government and industry, later this week. Activists have been working over the last few years to show how much taxpayer money is being used to fund animal cruelty. The world will be shocked to see what they found. Expect a video and newsletter on this subject later this week.
I shared raw personal stories on one of the nation’s most popular documentary podcasts, This is Actually Happening (TIAH). The TIAH episode has gotten a great response. We’ve had so many write to us after listening. But I haven’t felt great about promoting it because, frankly, I’ve failed at my primary goal: building a movement for open rescue. I believe cases like Ridglan show the immense opportunity presented by open rescue — yet our movement hasn’t been able to seize that opportunity. It gnaws at my soul. But I have to get over that and continue pushing forward. In that spirit, please give the podcast a listen — and share it if you like it.
The Simple Heart is scaling back its efforts. Our team has done great work for many years, especially around legal cases such as Ridglan. But we have made little, if any, progress in our strategic roadmap. In particular, our attempts to train and mobilize people have fallen flat. So it’s time for a reboot. The Simple Heart will mostly cease to exist as an organization but continue as a Substack and perhaps a podcast/YouTube. To be clear, I’m not giving up on the larger strategy. But it’s time for a new approach. Stay tuned for more.
That’s all for now. Thanks to everyone for your patience — and support.
You have made and are making great strides for the rights of animals!! 🩷
Thank you for sharing the progress in your incredible efforts with the Riglan case. You are an inspiration!!