Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
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TOP PRESS
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.
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
PRESS
March 8, 2024
Common Dreams
The prosecution evidently, "prefers to let the defendants walk free than allow the world to see the dire conditions of dogs at Ridglan and the state trying to jail activists for a heroic act of compassion," said Chris Carraway, an attorney with the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project.
PRESS
March 8, 2024
Common Dreams
PRESS
March 8, 2024
Isthmus
[Defendant Wayne Hsiung] expressed his frustration that “the public still does not know what is happening in research facilities like Ridglan,” which the trial may have shed light on. He said the dismissal left unaddressed some “incredibly important legal and moral issues,” including whether “people have the freedom of conscience to help animals when they’re suffering.”
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
March 7, 2024
Isthmus
According to the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, “DxE documented dogs crammed into small cages, often alone, with no access to the outdoors; apparent continuous 24-hour lighting; noxious air and feces building up beneath the cages; dogs with red and swollen feet from standing on wire cage floors; and extreme psychological torment. The activists describe the conditions as a ‘factory farm for dogs.’ ”
PRESS
March 6, 2024
Pathways
Focusing only on the environment is a mistake. We need a different relationship with animals. As "Earthlings" so powerfully states, "We must learn empathy. We must learn to see into the eyes of an animal and feel that their life has value because they are alive."
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
February 27, 2024
PRESS
February 14, 2024
Sentient Media
At Ridglan, [rescuer Eva] Hamer recalls, beagles were found confined not unlike chickens in the egg industry. “The size to body ratio is similar to a chicken farm,” she says, describing the size of the cages... Another similarity to factory farms, she adds, “is the smell, you can smell them from a mile away.” Yet, there was one thing quite different, even “bizarre,” Hamer adds: “Factory farms tend to be quiet at night. At the dog farm, everyone is howling, thousands of dogs, howling.”
PRESS
February 14, 2024
Sentient Media
PRESS
January 31, 2024
Daily Illini
We should ask ourselves what it means that the people who rescued the animal victims are on trial while the breeders and researchers abusing and killing them are let off with warnings at worst. It means that law enforcement agencies are actively upholding a system of violence.
PRESS
January 31, 2024
Daily Illini
TOP PRESS
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.
TOP PRESS
January 30, 2024
The Guardian
TOP PRESS
January 18, 2023
Wired
Animal rights activists have captured the first hidden-camera video from inside a carbon dioxide “stunning chamber” in a US meatpacking plant.
TOP PRESS
October 25, 2022
Vox
The pigs’ essentially zero value is baked into the meat industry’s business model... 15 percent of piglets die before they’re finished weaning. The pork industry may slaughter over 125 million pigs a year, but they breed far more, knowing many will die from disease and injury.
TOP PRESS
October 18, 2022
New York Times
During the closing statements in the trial, in which I represented myself, I told jurors that a not-guilty verdict would encourage corporations to treat animals under their care with more compassion and make governments more open to animal cruelty complaints.
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.
BLOG
April 17, 2025
The resistance of 2025 might not look like the resistance of 2017. That’s okay. In fact, sociologist Doug McAdam has demonstrated that tactical innovation was critical for the continued success of the civil rights movement. As organizers introduced new tactics, movement activity (‘insurgency’) rose dramatically.
BLOG
April 5, 2025
Perdue's legal complaint is riddled with false accusations meant to malign nonviolent activists and keep the attention off its abuse of animals.
BLOG
March 6, 2025
We have already begun to develop a large, trained, and coordinated network of chapters across the state, and to create a factory farm map and resource guide that will become the go-to source for information about industrialized animal agriculture in California.
BLOG
December 29, 2024
The silver lining of repression is that it gives movements the opportunity to prove how strong they are. While the past year has been hard, I feel incredibly grateful for all of the ways the animal rights movement has grown and persevered.
BLOG
December 12, 2024
“Do we have factory farms in Berkeley?” was a common response I got when collecting signatures. I explain that we want to prevent another animal gambling operation from opening up in Golden Gate Fields’ absence. Plus, Berkeley can be the first municipality to ban CAFOs and set a precedent that other places can follow. Berkeley voters understood. They signed the petition, and this November, they voted yes. Measure DD passed with 62% “YES” votes, making history for animal and environmental protection.
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.
PRESS RELEASE
May 31, 2023
Recent similar trials in St. George, UT and Merced, CA resulted in groundbreaking acquittals for open rescuers.
PRESS RELEASE
May 5, 2023
Congresswoman Claudia Tenney wants federal funds used to surveil people who support rescuing animals in distress.
PRESS RELEASE
May 3, 2023
Animal rights activists are calling this a win for the right to rescue animals from abuse.
PRESS RELEASE
April 25, 2023
A Beaver County Judge convicted Curtis Vollmar of criminal trespass and disorderly conduct for talking to members of the public about Smithfield Foods.
PRESS RELEASE
April 24, 2023
The “Right to Rescue” is a hot topic after a California jury acquitted two activists who removed sick birds from a Foster Farms slaughter truck. Jurors, defendants, attorneys, and law professors gathered to discuss the verdict's meaning for laws related to corporate animal abuse, animal rescue, and animal personhood.
PRESS RELEASE
April 16, 2023
A California jury found two women “not guilty” for rescuing sick birds from a Foster Farms slaughter truck.
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.
