Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
PRESS
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.
PRESS
August 30, 2024
San Francisco Chronicle
PRESS
September 23, 2024
Waging Nonviolence
During this episode of Nonviolence Radio, Stephanie and Michael welcome Cassie King, from Direct Action Everywhere, to talk about our relationship with animals, and more specifically about proposed legislation in California that aims to end factory farming.
PRESS
September 23, 2024
Waging Nonviolence
BLOG
September 10, 2024
If people do not believe that they can change a situation, they will never act to do so. If we do not believe that animal liberation is possible and that we can make it happen, it never will. In fact, animal agriculture and other unjust systems rely on our hopelessness and cynicism.
PRESS
August 24, 2024
Davis Vanguard
Another felony burglary count filed against Zoe Rosenberg—an animal rescuer with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE)—was tossed by prosecutors here this last week... “Prosecutors have known the facts of this case for nearly nine months, and they still can’t figure out what to charge,” said Chris Carraway, Rosenberg’s lawyer and a staff attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project. “It clearly isn’t easy to paint a good Samaritan as a criminal.”
PRESS
August 24, 2024
Davis Vanguard
PRESS
August 23, 2024
Daily Californian
Mayoral candidate Kate Harrison as well as Berkeley labor commissioner Avery Arbaugh also expressed support for the measure. “I support it as a common sense, human health piece of policy,” Arbaugh said. “Also, as an environmental and ethical policy when it comes to both our treatment of the animals and treatment of the environment.”
PRESS
August 23, 2024
Daily Californian
PRESS
August 22, 2024
SF Examiner
Direct Action Everywhere, which claims it has documented animal mistreatment by Petaluma Poultry, took credit for leading a pressure campaign targeting Florence. The group said activists disrupted Florence’s American Grill Book tour at seven stops in San Francisco, Corte Madera, Palo Alto, New York City, Atlanta, Ridgewood, N.J. and Greenville, S.C.
PRESS
August 22, 2024
SF Examiner
PRESS RELEASE
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.”
PRESS RELEASE
July 20, 2024
PRESS
June 26, 2024
Our Hen House
Three activists affiliated with Direct Action Everywhere, Wayne Hsiung, Paul Picklesimer, and Eva Hamer, were charged with felonies resulting from the rescue of several beagles from Ridglan Farms, a notorious facility that breeds dogs for use in research. Suddenly, right before trial, the charges were dropped, and none of us ever heard the full story. So, now, Chris and Steffen are here to tell us not only about what really happened, but how they and their clients are working to turn the tables and, using a particularly interesting Wisconsin statute, bring criminal charges against Ridglan itself for animal abuse.
PRESS
June 26, 2024
KTVU Fox Bay Area
"If Tyler Florence had seen what I've seen in Petaluma Poultry factory farms and its slaughterhouse, he would agree this criminal animal abuse is unacceptable," Rosenberg said in a statement Monday. Perdue Farms did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
PRESS
June 26, 2024
KTVU Fox Bay Area
PRESS
June 24, 2024
Napa Valley Register
DxE has disrupted Florence at nearly a dozen events across the U.S., where activists have held signs that read: ‘Stop Supporting Petaluma Poultry's Criminal Animal Abuse.’ DxE claims that Petaluma Poultry, a poultry producer for which Florence is a brand ambassador, has violated animal cruelty laws at several of its locations in Northern California. Activists allege that many of the birds processed by Petaluma Poultry are injured, have been left to starve, and are carrying infectious diseases that are hazardous to public health.
PRESS
June 24, 2024
Napa Valley Register
TOP PRESS
October 11, 2022
Democracy Now!
In a major victory for animal rights, a jury in Utah has acquitted two animal rights activists who each faced up to five and a half years of prison time for rescuing two sick piglets from Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms, one of the world’s largest pig farms.
TOP PRESS
October 8, 2022
The Intercept
“Whenever I think about the condition Lily was in and the desperation we felt when we saw her there, struggling and so small and so sick, a little baby in such a horrible, awful, brutal place,” Hsiung said in a video posted to Instagram, “we just wanted to get her out.” Animal rescue “is not the worst part of us as human beings. It’s the best of us.”
TOP PRESS
October 8, 2022
New York Times
Many animal welfare advocates viewed the trial as a display of corporate power, and a test of whether the meat industry can legally prevent the public from seeing the sometimes unsavory aspects of modern mass food production.
TOP PRESS
October 3, 2022
Fox 13 Salt Lake City
“They did a nonviolent action, and they saved the lives of two piglets who would have been discarded by the industry anyway.”
TOP PRESS
September 19, 2022
Harper's Magazine
Most readers care about humans, not pigs. What gets us going is a compelling main character facing many years in prison, not several million pigs spending a lifetime in circumstances that make prison look comparatively relaxing.
TOP PRESS
April 28, 2022
New York Magazine
Protests are often unpopular, but as this article shows, in the end, they tend to be right.
TOP PRESS
April 14, 2022
The Intercept
DxE documented video footage of the depopulation at Rembrandt Enterprises, demonstrating the brutal reality of VSD and the true toll of our broken "food" system.
TOP PRESS
March 22, 2022
San Francisco Chronicle
Compelling testimony by a former slaughterhouse worker who is now a member of DxE's core organizing team.
TOP PRESS
March 14, 2022
Current Affairs
DxE activists are showing that anyone can, if they give themselves permission, start creating the world they want to live in.
BLOG
November 30, 2022
Corporations seem more concerned with shielding the practices of their suppliers from the public than with the cruelty and disease documented in those farms. They know that the public would be horrified if they saw the truth. But what these corporations don’t understand is that repression often makes movements stronger. I’m not going to stop talking about what happens to animals, and I’m not going to stop documenting protests.
BLOG
November 24, 2022
Back in October, DxE's Lead Organizer Almira Tanner spoke at the inaugural AVA Summit. Check out her talk: Building a Mass Movement for Animals.
BLOG
November 7, 2022
Do your homework, get feedback, and find the simple story.
BLOG
September 20, 2022
Today, a coalition of advocacy groups filed an amicus letter to the California Supreme Court in support of this case, written by the First Amendment Coalition and signed by Greenpeace USA, ACLU of Northern California, Amazon Watch, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and many more.
BLOG
September 19, 2022
Why is it that 60 years after the Freedom of Speech Movement, we can’t rally more than 200 people to fight for the future of our planet? Why is it that when we’re being faced with injustices like racism, fascism, worker abuse, animal abuse, income inequality, loss of reproductive rights and environmental destruction, one of the most progressive student bodies in the world barely rises up?
BLOG
September 18, 2022
Rose was the sole survivor of all the birds at McCoy’s that day, and amid the tragedy that occurred for the others, Rose’s story offered a glimmer of hope. The fact that her rescue was permitted was proof that they all deserved to be rescued, that even the police knew rescuing them was the right thing to do.
BLOG
September 10, 2022
The systems we have designed for animals are mentally abusive from the very beginning.
BLOG
August 23, 2022
The #SmithfieldTrial is moving to Washington County, Utah because the judge agreed it would be a challenge to find an impartial jury in Beaver County.
BLOG
August 16, 2022
Despite this supposed safeguard, if a local entity wants to take the lives of Canada geese, an application and a verbal statement over the phone grants instant permit approval from the USDA –which killed 26,000 Canada geese last year alone.
PRESS RELEASE
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.”
PRESS RELEASE
May 13, 2024
Berkeley student in Perdue poultry case now faces 1 felony and 3 misdemeanors
PRESS RELEASE
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.
PRESS RELEASE
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.
PRESS RELEASE
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.
PRESS RELEASE
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."
PRESS RELEASE
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.”
PRESS RELEASE
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.
PRESS RELEASE
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.
