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 28, 2024
Plant Based News
“Sonoma County is a beautiful place with strong values around protecting animals and the environment. Unfortunately, dozens of factory farms are operating counter to the public’s values,” DxE communications lead Cassie King told Plant Based News (PBN). “Now, ordinary people are uniting and utilizing a form of direct democracy to end factory farming in Sonoma County.”
PRESS
March 28, 2024
Plant Based News
PRESS
March 27, 2024
Press Democrat
“Our key volunteers are all local,” [supporter Kristina] Garfinkel said. “As a local myself, this is such an important issue. I’m from Santa Rosa. I drive by these CAFOs every day and smell the air. We do have support from other regional partners. CAFOs are a ubiquitous problem, so of course it will draw interest from other groups.”
PRESS
March 27, 2024
Press Democrat
PRESS
March 21, 2024
The Bulwark
[Defendant Wayne Hsiung said] the dismissal affirmed something he and his co-defendants “always knew to be true,” namely: “If a jury of our peers heard testimony and saw the videos from inside Ridglan Farms, they would revolt against the notion that we’re the ones who have committed crimes, rather than the company.”
PRESS
March 18, 2024
WKOW.com
"I think most Americans, most people in Wisconsin, want dogs to be protected from torture," said beagle rescuer Wayne Hsiung. "That's not happening right now."
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
March 15, 2024
The New Yorker
PRESS
March 13, 2024
KRON4
“I find it very frustrating. Honestly, I was very excited to go before a jury and let them hear the facts of the case,” said Berkeley native and Defendant Paul Darwin Picklesimer in an interview with KRON4. “It was absolutely shocking and disgusting to see what we saw. You walk in, and you get hit with a stench of all the fecal matter and the lights that are on in the middle of the night. You see that these poor dogs are just in these wire cages, spending their whole life there until they’re sold into experimentation."
PRESS
March 12, 2024
Daily Californian
DxE Director of Communications Cassie King alleged that Golden Gate Fields crowds animals together in stables with “poor conditions” for the majority of the day. She added that DxE believes this treatment is “out of touch” with the surrounding community’s values.
PRESS
March 12, 2024
Daily Californian
PRESS
March 9, 2024
El Diario
“Los perros se tenían que sentar sobre sus propias heces y orines, incapaces de escapar de sus residuos. Estaban tan desesperados que se golpeaban contra las paredes, estiraban las patas a través de los barrotes y mordisqueaban las jaulas”, relata Hsiung. “Sus gritos eran tan fuertes que nos veíamos obligados a gritar nosotros también para comunicarnos, incluso cuando sólo estábamos a un palmo de distancia unos de otros”.
PRESS
March 9, 2024
El Diario
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
TOP PRESS
October 10, 2024
Vox
In principle, there’s a lot of sense in capping the size of factory farms. Measure J’s proponents are betting that progressive Sonoma County, better known for its tasting rooms than its slaughterhouses, can push California — and the nation — in that direction.
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
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.
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.
BLOG
January 26, 2015
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.
