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
April 4, 2024
Los Angeles Times
Lewis Bernier, an animal rights activist supporting the initiative, said he has visited several factory farms across the country, documenting inhumane treatment, and one farm in Sonoma County stands out as having “the worst and most systemic animal cruelty that I’ve ever seen.”
TOP PRESS
March 15, 2024
The New Yorker
Instead of planning actions, many activists now spend their time litigating microaggressions and small disputes within their ranks... As a response, [DxE co-founder Wayne] Hsiung has tried to promote a maxim of "braver spaces, not safer spaces," which encourages the animal rights community to put aside their individual concerns, if possible, and do things like risk felony jail time for the cause.
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
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 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 4, 2023
The Intercept
Hsiung’s defense was in many ways stymied from the jump. The judge barred almost all photo and video evidence of animal cruelty from the trial, as has been the case in a number of previous DxE trials. As I’ve previously noted, the decision to disallow such evidence is usually made to benefit a defendant — not showing gruesome images of a murder victim, for example. Such logic has been flipped in DxE cases, including Hsiung’s most recent, to the benefit of powerful agribusiness.
TOP PRESS
August 7, 2023
National Geographic
These crusaders are part of the so-called “open rescue” movement, in which animal rights activists brazenly take animals from factory farm operations. Direct Action Everywhere—better known as DxE—is at the forefront of this movement in the United States...
TOP PRESS
June 13, 2023
The Intercept
In conjunction with the release of an undercover investigation on the factory farm, the group DxE mounted an “open rescue” of birds from a slaughterhouse.
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.
BLOG
August 11, 2022
These stories - the story of Smithfield, the story of Lily and Lizzie, and the story of government and industry collusion - are too important to tell for us to just give in to intimidation and bullying.
BLOG
August 3, 2022
Let this story be a reminder that animals do fight for their freedom and that they participate in their own liberation.
BLOG
July 21, 2022
Activists gathered for a vigil exactly two years after the release of Unseen, a documentary that exposed the horrors inside Yosemite Foods, a slaughterhouse in Stockton, California, that kills 2,000 pigs every day.
BLOG
July 19, 2022
DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung recently shared the story of a very sick pig who was rescued from Farmer John. This is an excerpt from his Substack blog, The Simple Heart.
BLOG
July 5, 2022
Our signs read “Expose Smithfield’s Deathstar” referring to Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms in Milford, Utah, the largest pig farm in the country. While many criticized the tackiness and absurdity of the action, it garnered much needed media attention.
BLOG
July 2, 2022
Here's what this could mean.
BLOG
June 25, 2022
Senator Booker spoke about the need for nonviolent direct action and for "not being spectators in democracy!"
BLOG
June 25, 2022
The protest occurred after yet another horse was killed at the horse racing track that spans Berkeley and Albany.
BLOG
June 14, 2022
As happy as I am to see Smithfield leave California, they should not be allowed to simply cut and run. They must adequately compensate their workers, provide appropriate care for their pigs, and clean up the damage done to the surrounding community and to the L.A. river.
PRESS RELEASE
July 17, 2023
“This closure is a win for horses and for vulnerable humans who are taken advantage of by the gambling industry,” says Rocky Chau, a DxE activist who was arrested during a protest on the GGF track in March 2021.
PRESS RELEASE
June 13, 2023
Hundreds are gathered outside the slaughterhouse calling on the Sonoma County District Attorney to prosecute Petaluma Poultry for documented criminal animal cruelty and infectious diseases that are endangering public health
PRESS RELEASE
June 10, 2023
While hundreds rallied in support of the right to rescue animals from abuse, a few activists delivered “feeder” mice and suffering betta fish to safety.
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.
