The Primordial Bond

Evolution created the need for connection. Our society breaks it at an unfathomable scale.

In an infamous study, baby monkeys separated from their mothers chose mechanical surrogates over food. (Photo + caption added by Wayne’s team)

They took my family.

For 2.5 million years, evolution has created a fundamental emotional need in our species: social connection. Human beings, on our own, are vulnerable and hairless apes, without the strength to climb or swing, or the claws and teeth to scratch or bite. Our desire for connection — and the complex cooperation that desire facilitates — is what made us strong. One human is helpless, but a thousand working to build tools and weapons is the apex predator of our planet. For one hundred thousand generations, those humans who yearned for connection thus survived evolution's test; those who lacked that yearning died, like ants lost without a tribe. Social connection is the primordial human bond, more important than our desire for food, water, or shelter.

And on November 30, 2023, at my sentencing hearing in Sonoma County, that bond was broken. As punishment for “conspiring” with 500 peaceful activists to give aid to sick and starving animals at a Whole Foods supplier, Sunrise Farms, I was ordered to have no contact with about a dozen of the people I love most in life. The jail term itself, 90 days, was less than the maximum 42 months (though much more than the probation department's recommendation of 30 days). But Judge Laura Passaglia also ordered an “associational constraint.” These orders, which have faced criticism from constitutional law experts, are allowed in limited circumstances, e.g., when a defendant is part of a violent gang. In my case, the associational constraint targets a group that rescues suffering animals. And it extends not just to those accused of being part of the Sunrise “conspiracy” — Priya and Almira and Julianne — but to other dear friends, like Matt Johnson, who were not. If I come within 100 yards of any of them, or even attempt any form of contact, I will be immediately jailed.

This is not about crime but rather about stopping activism. In the immortal words of former prosecutor Troye Shaffer (who was recently promoted to judge), the authorities seek to “cut the head off the snake.” To stop the movement by removing its leaders.

But Sonoma authorities have made a serious mistake. Contrary to the government's delusions — amplified by ill-informed critics who call DxE a cult — I have not been in leadership at DxE since I stepped down in 2019. I am as surprised by the latest DxE action as the readers of this blog. More importantly, no single leader makes a grassroots movement. Leadership lies in each of our hearts. Indeed, heavy-handed efforts to target leaders can strengthen a movement by inspiring more people to step up.

But what will not hurt the movement will still hurt me. And my heart sank when I heard that my closest friends are being taken away.

Almira Tanner, the one I entrusted with the reins at DxE when I stepped away. There’s not a week that goes by when we do not share, sometimes tearfully, the struggles of leadership in a movement where so many lives are at stake.

Jon Frohnmayer, who is not just my legal counsel but perhaps my most trusted personal friend. It’s unclear how I can defend myself in court, or navigate the hurricanes ahead, without the attorney who has defended me for many years.

And then there’s Priya. In 2012, when I moved to the Bay Area to find treatment for my mother’s cancer, Priya came into my life. As Mom withered away and died, Priya held my hand as I cried, and whispered, “It’ll be OK.”

Wayne outside court with several “co-conspirators”

In 2017, my first dog, Natalie, lost the ability to walk. She cried pitifully when she needed me. But it was Priya who answered her cries, bringing her food and water, or walking with her a sling. I realized then that Priya was not just my best friend; she was a parent to my child.

And in the last years, when I lost Lisa and Joan — my teachers, and the loves of my life — it was Priya who took us to the vet when I couldn’t bear to go alone. And who organized the funerals where we honored their remains.

Now, with the stroke of a pen, Priya and so many others are gone. And when I heard the judge’s words, I said to myself, this is worse than prison. This is the breaking of the primordial bond.

But I’ve now had a few days to reflect and meditate. And I am beginning to see the paths forward. The first path is to zoom out and take the broader view. I am not the only one suffering from this fate. You see, tens of millions of years before humans appeared on Earth, the first social animal — our ancestor — was born. And these creatures learned that there is strength in numbers. That the world is less scary if someone keeps watch while we sleep. Less cold if we huddle together when it freezes. And less lonely with evolution’s greatest emotional discovery: the power of love.

The descendants of this ancient creature are the social animals of the earth today. And, like us, they have been blessed and cursed with the primordial bond. Indeed, this is precisely why we are only able to domesticate social animals. A fierce and antisocial wolverine will not tolerate a chain. A puppy or pig will bear that yoke — because she is desperate for love.

But for these creatures, that hope never comes to fruition. There is an infamous experiment by the vivisector Harry Harlow. A baby monkey is separated from her family at birth and raised in a lonely cage. Months later, she is given a choice between two new enclosures: one with food, and one with a doll covered with soft fur — something that resembles a mom. Universally, the babies choose to starve for a chance at love.

Every one of the creatures we confine and kill has that same hope. And, even in the most “humane” conditions, that hope is always crushed. In the documentary Gunda, a mother pig gives birth at the most idyllic of farms. One day, men come and scoop up Gunda’s babies for processing at the next stage. Before she realizes what is happening, they are already gone.

Gunda, a gentle and slow-moving giant, suddenly leaps to her feet and runs out of her shed like a gazelle. She runs everywhere in her pen, searching, then runs back to her bedding to check again. But no matter where she looks, she sees the same shocking truth. Her babies are gone. She runs back outside and circles mindlessly, screaming. To the untrained eye, it might seem this pig has gone insane. But those who understand her language know: she is suffering from a broken heart.

It is the forgotten horror of the animal holocaust: the breaking, on a scale that cannot be fathomed, of evolution’s primordial bond.

Recognizing that I am not alone in this experience gives me strange solace. There are others who have it so much worse. It also shows me the second path forward: sharing this experience with the world.

Gunda with her children

I have written that suffering transforms us. It gives wisdom that no class can teach. We will now be blessed with that wisdom. Priya and I and others. We will have a glimpse of Gunda’s desperation when her babies were lost. A window into the baby monkey’s feelings when she chose a false mother over food and water. And it will be our duty to share this wisdom with the world.

Unlike the mother pig, our broken bonds will be healed. In two years, when the associational constraint expires, we will throw the happiest party of our lives. Until that day, we will still have family and friends — both new and old — to lessen the pain of what we lost. That is a mercy Gunda was never granted, a fact that we must never forget.

E.B. White understood this fact when he wrote what are arguably the greatest words in the history of fiction. About a heartbroken pig, and the friend who saved his life.

“Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart.”

For the coming years, Priya and others will be erased. The primordial bond has been broken.

But I will never forget you. And while there will be new friends I will love dearly, none will ever quite take your place in my heart.

And in honoring that love, we will all be saved.

Note: I will be released as early as Saturday, December 9. And while that is bittersweet, it has become even more important — with the arrests of Zoe and Rocky and Conrad — for us to share these stories with the world.

I will go straight from jail to do this, and gather signatures for the Sonoma ballot initiative. I hope you’ll join me this weekend — as Priya and my friends cannot.

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(From Wayne’s team): We are celebrating Wayne’s release from jail at our December Open Rescue Advocates meeting this Sunday in San Francisco! Join us in-person for dinner or online as we discuss how all of us can help defend the latest open rescuers arrested on felonies in Sonoma. See details and register at simpleheart.org/ora.