Sitting at a UC Berkeley reflecting pool between classes, Zoe Rosenberg pulled up her left pant leg and pointed toward her ankle. There, wrapped around white, chicken-themed socks, was a black monitor tracking her movements.
“For graduation,” the animal rights activist said, “I’m going to bedazzle it in Cal colors.” side from that bit of hardware, Rosenberg didn’t look much different from many other students on campus that sunny Tuesday morning in mid-March. A giggly, curly-haired senior, she wore a backpack loaded with textbooks, oversize glasses and a small necklace adorned with a quote from her idol, the late British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst: “DEEDS, NOT WORDS.”
But as the 22-year-old Rosenberg tried to relax by the reflecting pool, she had far bigger concerns than finishing coursework or finding a job. Just four months after she graduates on May 17 with a bachelor’s degree in social movement strategy, the straight-A student will stand trial in a Sonoma County courtroom for her June 2023 incursion into Petaluma Poultry, a processing facility owned by agribusiness giant Perdue Farms. If convicted for taking four chickens Perdue valued at around $24, she faces up to 5½ years in prison. Read more