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The Moral Atrocity of Factory Farming and Why We Must Not Look Away

August 11, 2022

Current Affairs

Journalist Marina Bolotnikova argues that factory farming is a fascist industry in which violence and domination of animals is justified without argument.

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PRESS

The Moral Atrocity of Factory Farming and Why We Must Not Look Away

August 11, 2022

Current Affairs

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PRESS

Bird Flu Outbreak Forces SF Pigeon Activists to Halt Efforts to Heal Their Feathered Friends

August 5, 2022

San Francisco Standard

Members of Direct Action Everywhere regularly participate in pigeon first aid events in the city -- untangling string from claws that could lead to the loss of a toe or a potentially fatal infection. But activists have been forced to stop helping the birds as a deadly wave of avian flu sweeps the country.

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PRESS

Bird Flu Outbreak Forces SF Pigeon Activists to Halt Efforts to Heal Their Feathered Friends

August 5, 2022

San Francisco Standard

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PRESS

Animal rights activists sue Beaver County for allegedly violating First Amendment rights

August 3, 2022

Fox 13 Salt Lake City

Animal rights activists are filing a lawsuit for what they believe is active repression of their criticism of animal cruelty occurring at Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms.

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PRESS

Animal rights activists sue Beaver County for allegedly violating First Amendment rights

August 3, 2022

Fox 13 Salt Lake City

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PRESS

Utah police intimidated animal-rights activists and blamed them for pig farm layoffs, lawsuit says

August 3, 2022

Salt Lake City Tribune

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PRESS

Utah police intimidated animal-rights activists and blamed them for pig farm layoffs, lawsuit says

August 3, 2022

Salt Lake City Tribune

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BLOG

Two cows freed themselves, but now they’re at risk of slaughter again.

August 3, 2022

A dramatic story is unfolding right now in Newfane, New York after two cows freed themselves from a “beef” farm and luckily wandered onto the property of Asha’s Farm Sanctuary.

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BLOG

Two cows freed themselves, but now they’re at risk of slaughter again.

August 3, 2022

Let this story be a reminder that animals do fight for their freedom and that they participate in their own liberation.

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PRESS RELEASE

SF Giants MLB Game DISRUPTED By Animal Activists in YODA and DARTH VADER Costumes

July 31, 2022

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PRESS RELEASE

SF Giants MLB Game DISRUPTED By Animal Activists in YODA and DARTH VADER Costumes

July 31, 2022

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PRESS

Activists Protest Foster City's Plan to Kill 100 Geese Over Poop Problem, Health Risk

July 25, 2022

NBC Bay Area

Animal rights activists are not giving up in a fight to stop the killing of 100 geese on the Peninsula.

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PRESS

Activists Protest Foster City's Plan to Kill 100 Geese Over Poop Problem, Health Risk

July 25, 2022

NBC Bay Area

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BLOG

On the Anniversary of Unseen, We Came to Bear Witness

July 21, 2022

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BLOG

On the Anniversary of Unseen, We Came to Bear Witness

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.

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BLOG

What I learned from saving Chester – then watching him die

July 19, 2022

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BLOG

What I learned from saving Chester – then watching him die

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.

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Our Top Press Hits

TOP PRESS

Secret Recordings Capture the Ugly Reality Inside a Denver Slaughterhouse

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.

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TOP PRESS

Sonoma Loves Its Farms. Activists Call Them Factories. Could a Ballot Measure Upend This County?

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.

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TOP PRESS

Groups Seek to Ban Large-Scale Animal Farming in Sonoma County

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.”

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TOP PRESS

An Animal-Rights Activist and the Problem of Political Despair

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.

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TOP PRESS

A California Town Will Vote on Banning Factory Farms. What Does That Mean for the Rest of the US?

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.

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TOP PRESS

You’re More Likely to Go to Prison for Exposing Animal Cruelty Than for Committing It

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.

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TOP PRESS

This Is the Ops Manual for the Most Tech-Savvy Animal Liberation Group in the US

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.

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TOP PRESS

Animal Rights Activist Convicted of Felony for Rescuing Sick Chickens

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.

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TOP PRESS

Activists Call It Rescue. Farms Call It Stealing. What Is ‘Open Rescue’?

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...

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DxE's Blog

BLOG

Measuring Change, Evaluating Successes

September 16, 2013

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BLOG

DxE in Action

September 11, 2013

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BLOG

Tension and Vegan Consumerism

September 10, 2013

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BLOG

Organizing Culture

September 5, 2013

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BLOG

On Controversy and Campaigns

September 3, 2013

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BLOG

Peter Singer: Then and Now

September 2, 2013

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BLOG

Earthlings Around the World

August 29, 2013

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BLOG

Many Faces. One Voice.

August 27, 2013

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BLOG

269life

August 21, 2013

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Our Press Releases

PRESS RELEASE

Berkeley Resident Arrested on Felonies for Filming Safeway Protest, Following Findings of Cruelty and Disease at the Store’s Turkey Supplier

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.”

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PRESS RELEASE

After Acquittal for Smithfield Foods, Whistleblowers and Activists Protest Costco’s Continued Sale of Smithfield Pork

November 12, 2022

The two factory farm investigators who were found “not guilty” last month joined the protest.

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PRESS RELEASE

Investigation Finds Sick Turkey Chicks among Litter Beetle- and Larvae-Infested Corpses at Foster Farms

November 10, 2022

Rescued turkey chick had an infection called omphalitis caused by E. coli.

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PRESS RELEASE

Smithfield Piglet Rescuers Acquitted in Landmark Animal Rights Case

October 9, 2022

Activists take on a multibillion-dollar industry -- and win.

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PRESS RELEASE

Monday Night Football Disrupted by Activists on Field, Highlighting “Landmark” Piglet Rescuer Trial That Began Today

October 3, 2022

Two men face 10+ years in prison in a case decried by legal experts as unconstitutional retaliation for exposing abusive conditions

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PRESS RELEASE

Dozens of Activists Hang Massive 200-Foot Banner from Bay Trail Pedestrian Bridge

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.

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PRESS RELEASE

“I COVER UP ANIMAL CRUELTY!” Protesters Erect Giant Head of Utah AG Sean Reyes Ahead of Prominent “Right to Rescue” Trial

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."

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PRESS RELEASE

Bills-Rams Game Disrupted as Animal Activists Run on Field, Deploy Smoke Flares Ahead of Piglet Rescuer Trial

September 8, 2022

Emek Echo and Katia Shokrai ran across the field holding up red smoke flares and wearing shirts with “RIGHTTORESCUE.COM” text.

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PRESS RELEASE

Utah Judge Changes Venue in Piglet Rescuers’ Trial, After Canvassers Face Death Threats

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.

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