I’m in jail for rescuing dogs. It’s where I was meant to be.

Note: Wayne just recited this blog post to the legal support team over the phone from jail.

Wayne prying open the door to the facility where thousands of beagles are trapped.

Yesterday, around 100 people walked to Ridglan Farms to rescue dogs from imminent torture or death. We took 31 little pups out of their cages and into our arms. They looked up in the sky, licked our faces frantically, and felt hugs as we wrapped them in towels. It was each dog’s first hug—indeed, her first feeling of softness—after a lifetime in a vivisector’s cage.

27 of us were arrested after we refused to stop our rescue effort. 5 of us—Alexandra, Dean, Raquel, Aditya, and me—remain in jail today. And this is where we were meant to be.

Alexandra, Dean, Raquel, and Aditya are still in custody.

This is not because the charges brought against us are just. The arrests are the latest example of the state’s efforts to cover up criminal abuse of dogs by targeting their rescuers. And yesterday, representatives of Ridglan slashed our tires, smashed into one of our vans with their car, and drove up into a field at high speed to threaten peaceful grandmas and flower wielding college students. Strangely, these violent actions have led to no arrest.

No, the reason that I say we were meant to be in jail is precisely because it highlights a broken nature of our system. After decades of trying every method to get anyone in power to hear the cries of the pups, going to jail is our tactic of last resort. And there are three reasons I believe this tactic will prevail.

The first is that the drama of incarceration brings attention. Dr. King wrote from a Birmingham Jail that his goal was to so dramatize an issue that a society that refuses to negotiate will finally come to the table for a debate.

For years, the authorities have refused to come to the table for the dogs. Indeed, even in the last few weeks, District Attorney Ismael Ozanne has ignored four emails documenting hundreds of counts of felony animal abuse, including surgical mutilation of dogs without anesthesia. Something must be done to get him to come to the table to negotiate in good faith.

The second value served by jail is enhancing our credibility. When Gandhi finished the Salt March—an effort to challenge British imperialism in India—he encouraged thousands to walk into the line of police to endure arrest, incarceration, and even savage beatings. The activists’ sacrifice did not just inspire worldwide attention, it proved their credibility. It is why Gandhi made “accept suffering” a core part of his theory of change. No one would believe these “silly brown people” really meant what they said until they put their money where their mouths were. Arrest and jail was the most powerful way to achieve this.

The same has been true of the “silly dog people” in our fight to save the pups at Ridglan Farms. In one of my first interactions with law enforcement on the case, a state investigator was impatient and irritated.

“We have a lot of serious crimes to resolve,” he said. “You don’t understand that.”

“You don’t understand that the people of this country want dogs protected from abuse,” I replied. “And I promise, we will do anything to see them rescued.” Yesterday, we fulfilled that promise—and proved to the authorities our credibility. Going to jail shows we mean what we say.

Wayne being arrested at the Ridglan Mass Open Rescue.

The third and most important reason we are meant to be in jail, however, is perhaps the most surprising. And that is that jail is an empathic space, one where society (if we are willing to look) can start to understand the suffering of other beings.

This is true of other human beings. The dangers of modern jails are overstated, but the suffering is not. In the cell I was initially housed in, an older black man, “Ronald,” struggled to walk and wetted his bed. Another inmate, “Roger,” who was white and in his early 40s (though looking decades older than that), spoke to me in a stuttered and incoherent way. I could tell he desperately wanted for me—for anyone—to understand him. But however hard I tried, I could not make the connection he needed.

I have written before that being closer to suffering transforms us. We feel its weight, its horror, its desperation in a new way. And the place where the most suffering unfolds on this planet is the cage. As the journalist Andy Greenberg has written, “The average lived experience of a sentient being on earth is a life of a factory farmed animal in a cage.” Their suffering is the suffering of Earth.

It is hard to be close to this, to be close to the desperate ties of puppies who await death. And yet to understand their suffering, we must come closer to it. That is why I was meant to be here in a Wisconsin jail. The conditions here are infinitely better than Ridglan. I can walk around without running into a cage wall. I have a bed. I even have two fellow activists, Dean and Aditya, to give me company. And yet even these small glimpses into captivity teach me about the suffering of a cage. I have had no food to eat in two days. (There is little here that is vegan). I miss my wife’s loving voice. And my heart yearns for a hug from my dog.

These are things that the Ridglan dogs will never get. Not even once in their lives. And heartbreakingly, 8 of the 31 dogs we saved were torn from our arms or rescue vans and sent back to that dark life at Ridglan Farms. When we come closer to that suffering, we see that it must change.

Alexandra Paul carrying a beagle to safety from Ridglan’s breeding facility.

The authorities taking back the beagles from rescuers.

It is through my own suffering that I can help others understand the urgency of rescue. To have empathy for all those beings who are trapped in a cage. The jail is not just the right place for me and my fellow rescuers. It is the only place for us.

Until, someday soon, every animal is freed.

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Rescuers carrying beagles to freedom.