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PRESS RELEASE

19 Arrested at California State Capitol Building Protest Demanding Factory Farm Moratorium

October 1, 2020

Arrestees include photographers and videographers, as well as activists who chained themselves to the building

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PRESS RELEASE

19 Arrested at California State Capitol Building Protest Demanding Factory Farm Moratorium

October 1, 2020

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PRESS

At least 26 activists arrested at Farmer John slaughterhouse in Vernon

September 29, 2020

Fox Los Angeles

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PRESS

At least 26 activists arrested at Farmer John slaughterhouse in Vernon

September 29, 2020

Fox Los Angeles

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PRESS

Animal-rights activists cited in attempt to rescue a pig at Farmer John slaughterhouse

September 26, 2020

LA Times

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PRESS

Animal-rights activists cited in attempt to rescue a pig at Farmer John slaughterhouse

September 26, 2020

LA Times

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BLOG

When giving someone a drink of water becomes an act of civil disobedience

September 11, 2020

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BLOG

When giving someone a drink of water becomes an act of civil disobedience

September 11, 2020

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BLOG

Five reasons why a moratorium is the right next step in our fight to #CancelAnimalAg

August 27, 2020

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BLOG

Five reasons why a moratorium is the right next step in our fight to #CancelAnimalAg

August 27, 2020

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PRESS RELEASE

UC Berkeley students holding dead piglets chain themselves to Sather Gate, following exposé of University pork supplier

August 25, 2020

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PRESS RELEASE

UC Berkeley students holding dead piglets chain themselves to Sather Gate, following exposé of University pork supplier

August 25, 2020

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BLOG

Notes on the Removal of Aidan Hill from DxE

August 19, 2020

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BLOG

Notes on the Removal of Aidan Hill from DxE

August 19, 2020

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BLOG

How One Bird's Death Illustrates Our Nation’s Pandemic Failures (and its Hope)

August 14, 2020

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BLOG

How One Bird's Death Illustrates Our Nation’s Pandemic Failures (and its Hope)

August 14, 2020

The diseases suffered by Nina and her species never should have existed. Now, they threaten us all -- but her story should give us hope.

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PRESS RELEASE

Woman Arrested After Spraying Pig Feces at Home of Smithfield CEO

August 7, 2020

Smithfield faces nuisance lawsuit judgements totaling hundreds of millions for waste pollution sprayed disproportionately on communities of color

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PRESS RELEASE

Woman Arrested After Spraying Pig Feces at Home of Smithfield CEO

August 7, 2020

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Our Top Press Hits

TOP PRESS

These California and Colorado Ballot Measures Are Terrifying the Meat Industry

October 10, 2024

Vox

In principle, there’s a lot of sense in capping the size of factory farms. Measure J’s proponents are betting that progressive Sonoma County, better known for its tasting rooms than its slaughterhouses, can push California — and the nation — in that direction.

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TOP PRESS

Secret Recordings Capture the Ugly Reality Inside a Denver Slaughterhouse

October 9, 2024

The Intercept

Videos shared with The Intercept prior to the report’s public release show, among other scenes, lambs with their throats slit hanging upside down and thrashing on the slaughter line; one animal with an internal organ that has been torn inside-out and left dangling behind it as it heads to slaughter; injured lambs being led to slaughter; workers laughing, spanking animals, and engaging in simulated sex acts with nearby machinery as lambs are having their throats slit; and the apparent use of so-called Judas sheep — adult sheep kept alive at the facility and used to lead the young sheep to slaughter.

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TOP PRESS

Sonoma Loves Its Farms. Activists Call Them Factories. Could a Ballot Measure Upend This County?

August 30, 2024

San Francisco Chronicle

In dimly lit indoor aisles at Weber Family Farms in Petaluma, hundreds of thousands of white chickens live out their 90 weeks of life. They fly from perch to perch. They dust bathe in the bedding. They nip at water dispensers. They lay egg after egg. And they never leave. These barns are at the heart of a bitter fight that Mike Weber and Samantha Faye are waging for the future of local farming.

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TOP PRESS

Groups Seek to Ban Large-Scale Animal Farming in Sonoma County

April 4, 2024

Los Angeles Times

Lewis Bernier, an animal rights activist supporting the initiative, said he has visited several factory farms across the country, documenting inhumane treatment, and one farm in Sonoma County stands out as having “the worst and most systemic animal cruelty that I’ve ever seen.”

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TOP PRESS

An Animal-Rights Activist and the Problem of Political Despair

March 15, 2024

The New Yorker

Instead of planning actions, many activists now spend their time litigating microaggressions and small disputes within their ranks... As a response, [DxE co-founder Wayne] Hsiung has tried to promote a maxim of "braver spaces, not safer spaces," which encourages the animal rights community to put aside their individual concerns, if possible, and do things like risk felony jail time for the cause.

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TOP PRESS

A California Town Will Vote on Banning Factory Farms. What Does That Mean for the Rest of the US?

January 30, 2024

The Guardian

If successful in Berkeley, a liberal San Francisco Bay Area town that’s often been at the forefront of US environmental policy, the method can be replicated elsewhere, [activists] say. “We can pave the path to abolishing factory farming,” said Cassie King, an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, one of the groups that pushed for the measure.

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TOP PRESS

You’re More Likely to Go to Prison for Exposing Animal Cruelty Than for Committing It

November 9, 2023

Vox

Hsiung’s trial and conviction show the extraordinary difficulty of trying to discuss what happens to animals on factory farms in a legal system that only sees them as property. At both factory farms in this case, DxE had documented gruesome conditions prior to their open rescue actions and had submitted animal cruelty complaints to authorities (though no action was taken by legal officials, King said). Yet it was the activists, not the farm owners, who were criminally charged and had to explain themselves to a jury.

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TOP PRESS

This Is the Ops Manual for the Most Tech-Savvy Animal Liberation Group in the US

November 8, 2023

Wired

For the first time, guerrilla animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere reveals a guide to its investigative tactics and toolkit, from spy cams to night vision and drones. Bernier says that DxE decided to publicly release its guide, even in the wake of Hsiung’s conviction, to help activists who are already committed to carrying out covert investigations do their work more safely and effectively.

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TOP PRESS

Animal Rights Activist Convicted of Felony for Rescuing Sick Chickens

November 4, 2023

The Intercept

Hsiung’s defense was in many ways stymied from the jump. The judge barred almost all photo and video evidence of animal cruelty from the trial, as has been the case in a number of previous DxE trials. As I’ve previously noted, the decision to disallow such evidence is usually made to benefit a defendant — not showing gruesome images of a murder victim, for example. Such logic has been flipped in DxE cases, including Hsiung’s most recent, to the benefit of powerful agribusiness.

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DxE's Blog

BLOG

Tulare County Dairy Farms Are Poisoning Latino Communities

May 20, 2022

Over the last few decades, the Central Valley of California has become plagued by the crisis of dirty drinking water contaminated with nitrates. Latino communities have been disproportionately affected. In the heart of the valley lies Tulare County, a majority Latino district and the largest dairy producing county in the nation.

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BLOG

The Case for Systemic Change

May 5, 2022

This is a response to a recent study by Faunalytics regarding the impacts of protest on diet change.

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BLOG

Glue, Chains, and Guts: A Recipe for Virality

April 14, 2022

High profile sporting events pose a significant opportunity to get eyeballs on a topic– if one is bold enough to risk criminal charges and bodily harm. And it's a tactic that has been used throughout history.

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BLOG

5 Tips for Time Management and Organization

February 2, 2022

Tip #1: You need an organizational system that you understand and use every day.

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BLOG

Stories to Inspire Part 3

January 8, 2022

These stories first appeared in a series of emails sent to DxE supporters in a countdown to 2022. The stories recap some of our biggest achievements in 2021, and also shine a light on some of the little details that don’t usually get the appreciation they deserve. We hope you find them as inspiring as we do.

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BLOG

Stories to Inspire Part 2

January 7, 2022

These stories first appeared in a series of emails sent to DxE supporters in a countdown to 2022. The stories recap some of our biggest achievements in 2021, and also shine a light on some of the little details that don’t usually get the appreciation they deserve. We hope you find them as inspiring as we do.

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BLOG

Stories to Inspire Part 1

January 6, 2022

These stories first appeared in a series of emails sent to DxE supporters in a countdown to 2022. The stories recap some of our biggest achievements in 2021, and also shine a light on some of the little details that don’t usually get the appreciation they deserve. We hope you find them as inspiring as we do.

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BLOG

The trial of open rescue

November 10, 2021

Seven years after founding the DxE Open Rescue Network, I finally go to trial. Here's why it matters.

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BLOG

A Small Win for Activism in Sonoma County

October 28, 2021

Following public outrage, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau cancelled their "Beyond the Fence Line" event intended to teach farmers how to "manage activists."

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Our Press Releases

PRESS RELEASE

Activists Disrupt Food Network Chef Tyler Florence’s Restaurant, Over Ties to Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry

July 20, 2024

On Saturday evening, animal rights activists protested inside and outside of Miller & Lux, an upscale steakhouse in Mission Bay that is owned by celebrity chef Tyler Florence. The protesters were calling on Florence to cut ties with Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry. They marched and chanted through the restaurant, holding signs that read “Drop Petaluma Poultry” and “Stop Supporting Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry’s Criminal Animal Abuse.”

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PRESS RELEASE

Judge Dismisses Multiple Felonies Against Animal Rescuer

May 13, 2024

Berkeley student in Perdue poultry case now faces 1 felony and 3 misdemeanors

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PRESS RELEASE

Felony Charges Dismissed Against Beagle Rescuers

March 8, 2024

Today, in a stunning development, the State of Wisconsin moved to dismiss charges against three animal rights activists accused of rescuing three beagles from Ridglan Farms, one of the last two remaining large breeders of dogs for vivisection in the country. Judge Mario White granted the dismissal at a hearing this morning.

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PRESS RELEASE

Activists Ask Stanford to Never Again Buy Research Subjects from Abusive Dog Breeder

February 27, 2024

The demonstration highlighted the horrifying conditions in which Ridglan Farms confines thousands of beagles for experimentation... The action featured speeches from Stanford alumni and a former Stanford researcher.

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PRESS RELEASE

Activists Evoke “Chicken Run” in Retelling of Real-Life Rescues

January 27, 2024

Playing with characters and plot elements from the new film Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget, the protest featured “Zoe Rosenbird” coming to the rescue of sick, injured chickens and transforming the operation that tortured them into an animal sanctuary.

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PRESS RELEASE

Activist Sentenced to Jail for Rescuing Sick Animals from Factory Farms

November 30, 2023

The University of Denver’s Animal Activist Legal Defense Project is working on the appeal. Attorney Chris Carraway said, “I often hear courts describe trials as a search for the truth. Mr. Hsiung’s trial was anything but. The press had limited access; trial participants were unconstitutionally gagged from the beginning; and the court bent over backwards to prevent the defense from detailing the chronic animal cruelty found which informed the intent behind the actions."

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PRESS RELEASE

Berkeley Factory Farm Ban Qualifies for November 2024 Election

October 19, 2023

“The thousands of signatures we’ve collected this summer are a testament to how enthusiastic the people of Berkeley are about disassociating with these cruel industries that run counter to our values,” says Berkeley resident and DxE organizer Kitty Jones. “It is high time we move past a system of industrialized exploitation of animals.”

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PRESS RELEASE

Activists Submit Required Signatures to Put Factory Farm Ban on Ballot

September 5, 2023

Activists say voter enthusiasm is high for a ban on factory farms in Berkeley after submitting more than 4,900 signatures to the Berkeley city clerk today, a large overshoot beyond the 3,000 required to get the measure on the ballot.

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PRESS RELEASE

Factory Farm Ban Likely to Be on Ballot After Activists Gather Required Signatures

August 1, 2023

"The vast majority of Berkeley voters that we've talked to care about animals and the planet and are eager to sign on to this initiative,” says Almira Tanner, lead organizer of DxE.

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