It's a few days into my jail sentence. The people in the cells around me are screaming and banging on their doors. They are often crying about how they want to be free. To escape this place. I understand. I spend nearly 23 hours a day in a small cell almost entirely in isolation. When I get to briefly leave, I enter a common area by myself.

This common area is not large, it has nothing but two chairs, a pay phone, a screen with which to place commissary orders, and a small TV that plays some news. I'm supposed to get 60 minutes in this room, but in reality, it is sometimes much less. This is frustrating, because it's my only access to a phone. The rest of the day, I typically have no way to communicate with the outside world. Visits are extremely limited. There are only three visiting days a week. and you can only get one 30-minute visit on each of those days barring any lockdown.

As I sit in my empty cell alone for hours on end, It's hard not to think of life on the outside. There, I think about the flowers I pass on my morning walks in Berkeley, the feeling of wind blowing on my face, and the whistles of songbirds. I think of the animals at my sanctuary, exploring under the sun, but also all of the animals who aren't so lucky, who are suffering far worse than I am here.

To them, my sorry excuse for a mattress is an unheard-of luxury. They sleep on wire, cement, and feces. They need help far more than I do. As I sit here in my cell, I think about how this has happened, how we have come to live in a society where it is normal to lock each other in cages. The United States incarcerates a larger percentage of its population than any other civilization in human history. That doesn't factor in animals. Billions of animals are locked up in factory farms across the United States at any given time, too. So many individuals are forced to suffer in confinement. Whether it's humans, the systemically disadvantaged, who need a helping hand, or animals who never should have been born into these places to begin with. It may seem like an unsurmountable problem, but the thing is, these systems only exist because we let them. We give them power with our complacency. That fact is troubling, but also empowering. We can take our power back.

The institutions that hold power, know this. That's why I'm here. When I rescued Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea, it may have seemed like a small act. In many ways, it was. But the implications of my actions, the messages behind them, were deemed a threat to Perdue and the entire animal agriculture industry. You see, when I took away my complacency and rescued these four birds, I did more than save their individual lives. I challenged their status as things, as property that can be used and abused at a corporation’s whim. I shared their stories, effectively rebranding Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea as the individuals they are, entitled to respect and care. That is why I was arrested, charged, harshly prosecuted. They feared others would see what I see, and act as I acted, and bring the whole system of animal exploitation toppling down.

By using the penalties of our criminal justice system, they hoped it would stoke enough fear to ensure the complacency of others. They don't want you to rescue animals. They don't want to take your power back.

Unfortunately for them, they miscalculated. When they took away my freedom, they also put an international spotlight on the reality of factory farming and the urgent necessity of animal rescue. After my conviction, activists in Paris rescued 95 hens from a factory farm, Australian rescuers saved 130 chickens from a factory farm, as well, and then eight more from another. In the United States, two chickens were also rescued from a factory in light of the verdict.

Since my incarceration, lives have continued to be saved. On my first day in jail, two chickens were rescued from a slaughterhouse in Stockton, California. They've been named Josephine and Jasmine. They were already on the kill floor, anticipating their own deaths, as they heard the agonized screams of their brothers and sisters who were having their throats slit. It's hard to imagine what that kind of fear might feel like. I hope they are beginning to settle into their new lives and understand that they're safe, that no one is going to hurt them. I also understand that since my jailing, a quail has found liberation, too, from a slaughterhouse in Oakland, California, and has been given the name Koda. These are just the stories that have reached me in my cell, but I know animals are constantly finding their ways to freedom, and I thank all who play a part in that. To these individual animals, the act of rescue means everything and more. I know, without a doubt, that as long as animals are forced to live lives of distress and suffering, people will find the courage to take away their complacency, to reclaim their power, and bring liberation to life through protests, advocacy, and direct acts of rescue.