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 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
November 30, 2023
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Press Democrat
Shortly after court recessed, animal welfare activist Zoe Rosenberg, who said she was going to drop printed evidence of animal cruelty at Reichardt Duck Farm at the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, asked others to march with her to the department a few blocks away. As they approached the parking lot, Sheriff’s Office vehicles approached and deputies arrested Rosenberg and two other demonstrators, Rocky Chau and Conrad de Jesus.
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Press Democrat
PRESS
November 30, 2023
North Bay Business Journal
A dozen of Wayne Hsiung’s supporters watched silently — some of whom fought back tears — as Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Laura Passaglia sentenced Hsiung to 90 days in county jail, followed by two years of probation.
PRESS
November 30, 2023
North Bay Business Journal
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Marin Independent Journal
Hearing and seeing animal agriculture firsthand, I know that animals deserve better. I will never forget seeing a cow running after a transport truck leaving a dairy. They were running parallel to the road just to be stopped by a fence, and forced to watch their family being taken away. This single event one day at one farm was so profound I can’t imagine how much suffering happens daily at factory farms everywhere.
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Marin Independent Journal
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
TOP PRESS
September 14, 2017
The Washington Post
TOP PRESS
July 6, 2017
The New York Times
TOP PRESS
October 20, 2016
The Washington Post
While the hens are not in cages, the video shows them crowded together, covered in feces and blood, struggling to breathe and attacking and even eating one other.
TOP PRESS
January 8, 2015
The New York Times
An animal rights group released on Thursday a disturbing video of laying hens at a farm in Northern California that supplies eggs to Whole Foods and Organic Valley, among other retailers and distributors.
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
November 17, 2022
The investigation at Foster Farms found an E. coli-infected turkey chick, buckets of dead chicks, and a litter beetle infestation. Said former U.S. prosecutor Bonnie Klapper, "[The arrest] is an absurd action on the part of the Berkeley police and one which serves only to protect corporations engaged in animal cruelty from being held accountable by consumers.”
PRESS RELEASE
November 12, 2022
The two factory farm investigators who were found “not guilty” last month joined the protest.
PRESS RELEASE
November 10, 2022
Rescued turkey chick had an infection called omphalitis caused by E. coli.
PRESS RELEASE
October 9, 2022
Activists take on a multibillion-dollar industry -- and win.
PRESS RELEASE
October 3, 2022
Two men face 10+ years in prison in a case decried by legal experts as unconstitutional retaliation for exposing abusive conditions
PRESS RELEASE
September 24, 2022
The demonstration is the kickoff for a week of action dedicated to promoting Rose’s Law, an animal bill of rights that DxE says is their ultimate vision of a kind and just world for animals.
PRESS RELEASE
September 9, 2022
"This is really about inverting the truth: making peaceful activists look dangerous, when the real danger is Smithfield and other companies that systematically torture millions of innocent sentient beings while destroying our environment."
PRESS RELEASE
September 8, 2022
Emek Echo and Katia Shokrai ran across the field holding up red smoke flares and wearing shirts with “RIGHTTORESCUE.COM” text.
PRESS RELEASE
August 20, 2022
Judge Wilcox repeatedly expressed concerns about advocates potentially intimidating local residents. This is contrary to recent footage and a lawsuit in which it is canvassers supporting Hsiung and Picklesimer who faced death threats and were forced to stop talking to sidewalk pedestrians.
