Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
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
November 30, 2023
Plant-Based News
From his jail cell, where he was held for four weeks awaiting sentencing, Hsiung published blog posts reaffirming his belief in the power of non-violent direct action. He also reported successes in educating fellow inmates on veganism and animal rights.
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Plant-Based News
PRESS
November 23, 2023
Countercurrents
The conviction of Hsuing could be a flashpoint in this “next frontier.” Because it shows just how broken the legal system is, his story could help advance the development of a grassroots movement to liberate nonhuman animals. It also presents us with a choice: Live in a system where the government ignores animal cruelty laws—or save the animals those laws were meant to protect.
PRESS
November 23, 2023
Countercurrents
PRESS
November 22, 2023
The New Republic
Virtually all turkeys raised in the United States come from crowded concentrated feeding operations—CAFOs, or factory farms. Investigations by animal rights groups like Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, have shown that the same farms that provide the well-groomed, handsome birds for White House events raise the rest of their animals in hellish conditions.
PRESS
November 22, 2023
The New Republic
PRESS
November 22, 2023
Common Dreams
I hate seeing Wayne go through this. I’m tired of the legal maneuverings by those with power to maintain a world that hurts the most vulnerable.
PRESS
November 22, 2023
Common Dreams
PRESS
November 16, 2023
Plant-Based News
“Open rescue is one of the most powerful tools that we have to challenge animal cruelty," [said animal rescuer Zoe Rosenberg]. “When you look into a factory farm and you see thousands of animals suffering, it’s so easy to desensitize yourself and get lost in the numbers and the immeasurable suffering. But when you identify an individual and connect with them, it’s life changing. Every single one of those animals in those facilities is an individual.”
PRESS
November 16, 2023
Plant-Based News
PRESS
November 13, 2023
Democracy Now!
“If you or I tortured an individual dog, we would clearly be subject to the criminal laws of the state of California. Yet, when a factory farm does this on massive scale, on a scale a million times larger than an individual person abusing a single animal, it’s seen as industry standard, and therefore completely immune from prosecution.”
PRESS
November 13, 2023
Democracy Now!
PRESS
November 10, 2023
Petaluma Argus Courier
We can work together to start the transition away from these destructive factory farms and use our collective power to build a better world.
PRESS
November 10, 2023
Petaluma Argus Courier
TOP PRESS
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.
TOP PRESS
November 9, 2023
Vox
TOP PRESS
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.
TOP PRESS
November 8, 2023
Wired
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
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.
