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
April 22, 2023
Our Hen House
After their acquittal of petty theft charges for rescuing two sick chickens, the activists describe the importance of shedding light on the cruelty in animal agriculture through court trials and the "necessity defense" as it relates to animals in the eyes of the law.
PRESS
April 22, 2023
Our Hen House
PRESS
April 20, 2023
St George News
“Smithfield Foods is weaponizing the police to silence people who oppose factory farming,” [activist Curtis] Vollmar told St. George News in an email. “As this issue gains more attention and more people speak up for animals and the planet, we need our First Amendment right to be protected.”
PRESS
April 20, 2023
St George News
BLOG
April 18, 2023
We're touring 12 cities in two weeks to talk about DxE's recent groundbreaking victories for the Right to Rescue. Join us in a city near you!
BLOG
April 18, 2023
We're touring 12 cities in two weeks to talk about DxE's recent groundbreaking victories for the Right to Rescue. Join us in a city near you!
PRESS
April 17, 2023
KALW Public Media
The protest was in tribute to the unconsenting athletes whose extreme stress, horrific injuries, and frequent deaths are, according to activists, downplayed by the profit-driven racing industry.
PRESS
April 17, 2023
KALW Public Media
PRESS RELEASE
April 16, 2023
A California jury found two women “not guilty” for rescuing sick birds from a Foster Farms slaughter truck.
PRESS
April 15, 2023
CBS News Bay Area
The protest is "in tribute to the unconsenting athletes whose extreme stress, horrific injuries, and frequent deaths are, according to activists, downplayed by the profit-driven racing industry," said Cassie King, a member of the animal rights group.
PRESS
April 15, 2023
CBS News Bay Area
PRESS
April 14, 2023
Pontos News
Οι ακτιβιστές εισέβαλαν σε μεγάλο σουπερμάρκετ στον Πειραιά, έχυσαν κόκκινη μπογιά στις βιτρίνες του κρεοπωλείου, και αφού φώναξαν συνθήματα, πραγματοποίησαν καθιστή διαμαρτυρία, εμποδίζοντας την «πώληση νεκρών ζώων». [The activists stormed a large supermarket in Piraeus, poured red paint on the butcher's shop windows, and after shouting slogans, staged a seated protest, preventing the "sale of dead animals".]
PRESS
April 14, 2023
Pontos News
PRESS
March 30, 2023
Blog TO
Several animal rights activists took issue with the storefront's graphics that were displayed through the window, which depicted pigs and an octopus.... Protestors were seen holding signs that read, "it's not food it's violence," while others were pictured painting the words "animals are not products" on newspapers taped onto the storefront.
PRESS
March 30, 2023
Blog TO
TOP PRESS
March 30, 2023
Salt Lake Tribune
If government agencies were taking these [investigative] reports seriously and protecting animals from cruelty, there would be no need for bills like this. But certain Utah legislators have decided that the real problem with sick, suffering animals is the potential for negative publicity for the industry and so it is the industry, not the animals, that need protection.
TOP PRESS
March 30, 2023
Salt Lake Tribune
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
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.
BLOG
April 29, 2024
My findings show that “No Antibiotics Ever” just means that the chickens are still experiencing severe infection but they aren’t receiving the medication they desperately need. In one barn at a Petaluma Poultry factory farm in Santa Rosa, more than 10% of the chickens died by the time they reached 5 weeks. That is more than double the accepted industry mortality rate.
BLOG
December 26, 2023
The Sonoma County Court's actions didn't stop me but, instead, spurred me to further action just as it did for many others.
BLOG
December 2, 2023
Whether I lose my freedom for days, weeks, months, or even years, it is worth it to give even one or two animals a chance to experience freedom for the first time in their entire lives.
BLOG
October 1, 2023
To everyone who doesn’t believe in a better world, I understand. I feel your pain and I know how hard it is to keep going in a world as painful as ours. But, just a glimmer of hope saved Vincent’s life and it might just save the rest of the animals, too. So please, don’t give up.
BLOG
August 30, 2023
If you saw a little duckling on his back, paddling his legs and struggling to get back up, what would you do? Would you keep walking? Or would you help him?
BLOG
July 1, 2023
Since 2018, DxE investigators have documented routine violations of California's animal cruelty laws at Petaluma Poultry factory farms, but the authorities refuse to intervene -- so they are taking action themselves to rescue the animals.
BLOG
June 5, 2023
Your story on the shutdown of the Kentucky Derby racetrack failed to provide important context: the growing worldwide movement to abolish horseracing.
BLOG
May 23, 2023
During my time in Utah, I found people willing to have open and honest discussions. Why, then, are high-ranking members of the Church and the police attempting to stop that from happening? Could it be that egregious abuses documented by DxE at Smithfield were getting too close to those in power? When open dialogue threatens a power structure, it’s time to scrutinize that power structure.
PRESS RELEASE
March 4, 2023
“The racing industry gives horses ridiculous names like “Big Laugh” because the suffering of these animals is just a game to them,” said DxE organizer Kitty Jones. “We give them respectful names because we see them as individuals worthy of respect.”
PRESS RELEASE
February 25, 2023
Referencing Chick-Fil-A’s history of oppression toward marginalized groups, activists say the company’s disregard for animals is part of a pattern.
PRESS RELEASE
February 15, 2023
Citing practices that cause prolonged, terrifying, and painful deaths at Foster Farms’ killing facility, activists call for corporate accountability.
PRESS RELEASE
January 26, 2023
More than 5,000 monkeys are confined at the center for use in research and breeding. Abusive methods cited by activists include the practice of withholding food and water until monkeys in research studies are so dehydrated they will perform tasks in order to be rewarded with minuscule amounts of food or water.
PRESS RELEASE
January 24, 2023
The footage shows pigs screaming, gasping, thrashing violently, and trying to escape as they descend into the pit of CO2 gas.
PRESS RELEASE
January 21, 2023
Saturday’s Bay Area demonstration was a nonviolent disruption of Sprouts Farmers Market, recreating DxE’s first-ever action but with a far larger assemblage than the seven activists who participated in 2013. As at the original action, activists delivered a slam poem describing how farm animals live and die while standing in the store’s “meat” section.
PRESS RELEASE
January 18, 2023
Investigator Raven Deerbrook recorded over 16 hours of footage from multiple angles, which shows pigs screaming, gasping, thrashing violently and trying to escape as they descend into the pit of CO2 gas. Former federal prosecutor Bonnie Klapper reviewed the video and determined that use of these devices on pigs violates federal law.
PRESS RELEASE
January 7, 2023
Activists installed images representing each horse who died in 2022 along the fence at I-80 and hung a 100-foot-long “Shut Down Golden Gate Fields” banner from the pedestrian bridge above I-80.
PRESS RELEASE
December 3, 2022
“Humans can consent to run and risk injury. The horses do not, and when they get injured and can’t run anymore, they are killed."
