I participated in the largest open rescue attempt in history at Ridglan Farms outside of Madison, which houses around 2,000 beagles used for animal testing (“Activists attempt to raid beagle farm early,” April 20).
It has been well documented that these dogs are kept in deplorable conditions until they die from painful experiments or are euthanized. After years of advocates petitioning legal authorities and regulatory agencies for help, the dogs are still there.
Myself and roughly 1,000 other like-minded people attempted to free these dogs from a lifetime of abuse and bring them to loving rescues and adopters. We expected to be told to leave – to be arrested and charged – and were willing to take that risk. Sometimes what is the law does not align with what is morally right.
Instead, we were met with law enforcement already standing guard inside the property before we got there, armed with pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, flash bangs and wearing gas masks and riot gear. There was no attempt at negotiation, and there was no warning before escalation. They chose to direct full force toward us as rescuers, fully knowing our intentions, while known animal abusers were standing right behind them.
I am shocked, sad, disappointed and still haven’t processed everything that I saw, but I am also hopeful and proud of the brave, kind, intelligent people I met.
The effort to save these dogs is not over, and this weekend was an important step in ending Ridglan’s cruelty.
Kayla Pagel, Wauwatosa
Wayne Hsiung’s arrest and ban shows troubling inversion of justice
The coverage of Wayne Hsiung’s arrest and ban from Dane County highlights a troubling inversion of justice (“Animal rights activist banned from Dane County after beagle farm raid,” April 21) .
Dane County Court Commissioner Brian Asmus stated that “you don’t get to take the law in your own hands.” Yet the law has repeatedly failed these dogs. The message is clear: animals have no legal standing, and those who speak for them are criminalized.
When regulatory systems fail, when enforcement is toothless, and when thousands of sentient beings suffer, silence becomes complicity.
The question isn’t whether Hsiung broke the law. It’s why the law protects a facility that harms animals while punishing those who try to stop it.
Ben Williamson, executive director, Animal Outlook, Takoma Park, MD
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wayne Hsiung arrest an inversion of justice at Ridglan Farms | Letter
Reporting by Letters to the Editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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