We are going to say some things today that will make certain people uncomfortable. Good. Discomfort is what happens right before understanding.

Ridglan Farms in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin has hundreds of documented animal welfare violations. A court ordered them to stop breeding and selling animals. They kept going. They kept taking your federal NIH grant money — your tax dollars — while ignoring that court order. This week, Rep. Mark Pocan confronted HHS Secretary RFK Jr. about it directly at a House Appropriations Committee hearing. The facility’s own congressman went to Congress. On the record. About these dogs. About this facility. In our state.

There are still approximately 2,000 beagles inside Ridglan Farms right now.

Last month, activists entered the facility and removed dogs they say were suffering. Twenty-seven people were arrested. They plan to go back. Before you decide what you think about that — we need to talk about some things.

I live here. I know the people who started this fight. They are my friends and my colleagues and my community.

In 2018, Rebekah Robinson co-founded Dane4Dogs — a grassroots Dane County organization with one mission: end the breeding, sale, and use of dogs and cats for painful experimentation. She and her colleagues at Alliance for Animals spent years doing the unglamorous work. Door-knocking. Petition-filing. Letter-writing. Filing complaints with DATCP, the Veterinary Examining Board, and the USDA. Organizing ballot initiatives. Building the evidentiary record. Going to court. Getting a special prosecutor appointed. Seven years of it. While most people had never heard of Ridglan Farms.

That groundwork — built by Wisconsin people, for Wisconsin animals, through every legitimate channel available — is what made everything else possible. When national direct action groups arrived and the story went to Congress, they were standing on a foundation that Rebekah Robinson and Dane4Dogs and Alliance for Animals built with their own hands over nearly a decade.

And when activists from around the country showed up and took direct action — it did not erase one moment of that work. It amplified everything those people had already built.

I am proud of everyone who fought for those dogs. In every arena. Through every available pathway. The people I am not proud of are Ridglan Farms. And the advocacy police.

The word “legitimate” is doing enormous work right now and we need to name what it is actually doing: it is protecting the people with power from the people without it. It always has. That is its primary function.

Since you want to invoke legitimacy — name five white abolitionists. Not Lincoln. Not politicians. People who broke the law to end slavery. Direct action people. Right now. Off the top of your head.

Can’t do it? Then you have your answer. Because Black Americans were told for generations that their freedom had to come through legitimate channels. That they had to be patient. That their tactics were too radical. We know exactly how that argument was deployed and who it served. We see the same argument being made today about the people at Ridglan Farms and we are not going to pretend we don’t recognize it.

And while we’re here — do you want to invoke Martin Luther King Jr. to make your point about legitimacy? Do your homework first. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that justice for animals and justice for people were inseparable. Coretta Scott King continued that work after his assassination. Dexter Scott King carries it today. They are vegan. They made this connection explicitly and publicly for decades. You used his name and you didn’t know that.

The term “animal rights” gets used like a slur. Like it marks you as a radical. Like reasonable people don’t believe it.

But every single person in this country already believes in animal rights. We have to — because we have animal cruelty laws in all 50 states. We have the Animal Welfare Act. We have felony cruelty statutes. We prosecute people for it.

Remember Michael Vick? This country lost its mind — correctly — over what he did to dogs. Nobody called that “animal rights extremism.” We called it what it was: torture. And to his credit — Vick did the time. He went to counseling. He learned about dogs. He did the work. He changed. Many people still won’t forgive him. That is their right.

Now tell us about Brett Favre.

In a CBS Sports oral history, Favre’s former backup Mark Brunell told the story of young Brett shooting a deer with a .22 on property they were trespassing on — wounding but not killing her — then dragging her to a stream and holding her underwater until the bubbles stopped coming out of her nose. Brunell called it one of the funniest stories he’d ever heard. CBS Sports published it. America shrugged. Favre went on to appear with Hunter Nation alongside Ted Nugent — the same Hunter Nation now organizing GoFundMe campaigns for people who kill federally protected wolves on Christmas morning after baiting them with doughnuts.

Brett Favre is still celebrated. Still beloved. Hall of Fame. America’s quarterback. Nobody is asking whether he is legitimate.

Same act. Different victim. Completely different consequences. If you want to understand how this system decides who is a villain and who is a hero — that is your answer.

Every major religious tradition on earth instructs its followers to show compassion to other living creatures. This is not invented by activists. It is written into the texts. We are not doing a great job of living up to it.

This is not sentiment. This is not emotion. This is data.

Now remove the beagles from Ridglan Farms and put humans in. Would that facility be legal? Would it operate for years with hundreds of violations while ignoring a court order? Would federal grant money still flow to institutions using people sourced from that facility?

We already know the answer. That answer is the argument.

The water that flows past an unregulated breeding facility flows to your tap. The virus that mutates in a crowded, inhumane, unmonitored facility becomes the next pandemic. The culture that normalizes cruelty to animals — that treats suffering as a cost of doing business, that ignores court orders because enforcement is inconvenient — that culture does not stop at the species line.

Violence is violence. The victim may be different. The act is the same. The psychology is the same. The systems that enable it are the same.

When you devalue animals — when you run killing contests and cheer for body counts, when you operate facilities in violation of court orders, when you dismiss the people trying to stop it as radicals — you are not just failing the animals. You are training people to dehumanize. Once you can do it to a coyote, once you can do it to a beagle, it becomes easier to do it to a refugee. To a homeless person. To anyone your system has decided doesn’t count.

A law is only as good as its enforcement. The Animal Welfare Act exists. It is not enforced. And the people who dismantled the enforcement mechanism are the same ones calling the activists illegitimate.

Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance fights for wildlife. That is our lane and we stay in it. We were not at Ridglan Farms. We are not directing anyone to take any specific action there.

But we live here. We know Rebekah Robinson and Dane4Dogs and Alliance for Animals and the seven years of work they did before anyone was paying attention. They are our community. And when direct action brought national attention to what they had built — a congressional hearing, RFK Jr. confronted on the record, news coverage across the country — that did not erase one moment of their work. It amplified everything.

Both things happened. Both things mattered. Both groups of people are fighting the same villain. And that villain is not the activists.

In Wisconsin, hound hunters are legally permitted to run their dogs through public lands — land you paid for — into known wolf territory. When a wolf kills a hound, the hunter is reimbursed by the state. Up to $2,500 per dog. For a dog they may have paid $100 for. A dog that is, in many documented cases, run deliberately into wolf packs by repeat offenders who know exactly what they are doing and file the reimbursement claim before the body is cold.

That is legal. That is funded by your tax dollars. Meanwhile, twenty-seven people were arrested for carrying beagles out of a facility operating in violation of a court order.

And one more thing people don’t know: in Wisconsin, wildlife is largely exempt from animal cruelty laws. The same statutes that protect a beagle at Ridglan Farms do not protect a wolf, a coyote, or a fox. A coyote killing contest can operate legally. Bears can be baited and chased with dogs for months. The same lobbying interests that fought the puppy mill bill and fought Ridglan accountability wrote that exemption into law and have fought every attempt to close it.

We fight for all of it. Because it is all connected.

We are in the middle of a war with Iran. We have government corruption at the highest levels. The Endangered Species Act is being dismantled. Human rights are under attack. And yet — a thousand people showed up to one beagle breeding facility in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. Ricky Gervais tweeted about it. The BBC covered it. France, Spain, and England have governments speaking out about what is happening here and writing their own legislation in response.

When people say “they’re just animals” — this is your answer. This is the pulse of the public speaking louder than any poll, any press release, any political calculation. Don’t tell us about legitimacy.

A small, underfunded, local grassroots group identifies a problem. They do the years of work. They build the foundation. Then direct action brings national attention. Then the larger organizations arrive. And sometimes those larger groups end up holding the trophy.

We do not care who holds the trophy. We care whether the win is real and undiluted and lasting. But here is what we are asking of the larger, well-funded groups: know who was there first. Fund them. Lift them. Do not walk into a fight someone else started and immediately begin negotiating it down.

And lest anyone think this is only a Wisconsin or American problem — in the UK, an estimated 3,000 to 7,000 foxhounds are killed every year by the very hunts that claim to love them. Shot behind kennels. Clubbed. Thrown in bins. Puppies killed at birth for not being aggressive enough. The same hunting lobby that fought the puppy mill bill here. That fought Ridglan accountability. That fights wolf protections in Wisconsin. They are the same people. The same value system. Operating on both sides of the Atlantic.

That is not a coincidence. That is who they are.

To the grassroots organizers who started this fight — who did not get the headline but built everything the headline was built on — we see you. We are grateful for you. This movement belongs to you.

To everyone fighting for a more compassionate, just, and empathetic world in whatever way they are able — thank you. Especially the ones who don’t get the recognition. Especially the ones nobody is listening to yet.

why the spotlight shines yet again on Wisconsin’s animal cruelty, let’s see if we can get help for wildlife too. The Ridgelan dogs deserve better and so do hunting hounds