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
December 8, 2023
Food Safety News
[Hsiung's] law license is not necessarily at risk, and his conviction and sentence appeal are an opportunity to argue that people can enter the property and remove exploited or distressed animals.
PRESS
December 8, 2023
Food Safety News
PRESS
December 4, 2023
Unchained TV
[Arrestee Zoe] Rosenberg has since publicly declared, “I want the world to know that I am not afraid, because nothing the legal system can do to me, including depriving me of a (medical) device I rely on to survive, will ever compare to the atrocities that take place every day…” in the animal factories she investigates.
PRESS
December 4, 2023
Unchained TV
BLOG
December 2, 2023
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.
PRESS
December 1, 2023
KTSF26
The defendant's father, Xiong Hansheng, said: "I think it's unfair, he didn't commit a crime, he just wanted to protect animals, so I'm a little disappointed, but I also feel that I hope Wayne's behavior can make many animals more protected."
PRESS
December 1, 2023
KTSF26
PRESS
December 1, 2023
VICE News
Authorities seem to be opening a new front against Direct Action Everywhere, an attention-grabbing group that says it documents cruelty and neglect in factory farming.
PRESS
December 1, 2023
VICE News
PRESS
December 1, 2023
CBS Bay Area
The organization is hoping to make legal the right of people to enter places such as a factory farm to remove animals that are being "exploited" or are in distress.
PRESS
December 1, 2023
CBS Bay Area
PRESS
December 1, 2023
Democracy Now!
In California, animal rights activist and attorney Wayne Hsiung has been sentenced to 90 days in jail after he was found guilty of felony conspiracy and misdemeanor trespassing for rescuing dozens of injured and dying ducks and chickens at two factory farms in Sonoma County, California.
PRESS
December 1, 2023
Democracy Now!
PRESS
December 1, 2023
UnchainedTV
Hsiung could have been sentenced to three years in jail. So, at first blush, the relatively light sentence caused relief amongst his supporters. However, it quickly became apparent that the sentence contained an onerous condition. Without the prosecution asking for this, the judge ordered Hsiung to have no contact with the other named “co-conspirators” in this case, who just happen to be most of his closest friends.
PRESS
December 1, 2023
UnchainedTV
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Northern California Public Media
Hsiung’s father, Hansen Hsiung, spoke about the sentence outside the courthouse. "I expect something worse than this," Hansen Hsiung said. "So I feel great relief, even though I know that Wayne doesn't deserve any jail sentence, doesn't deserve to be convicted as a criminal."
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Northern California Public Media
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
February 20, 2018
BLOG
February 13, 2018
BLOG
February 7, 2018
PRESS RELEASE
July 31, 2022
PRESS RELEASE
July 14, 2022
Animal rights advocates gathered to mark the two-year anniversary of the release of Unseen, an undercover mini-documentary exposing extreme cruelty inside this facility, and to bear witness and spread compassion for its victims.
PRESS RELEASE
July 4, 2022
Investigators with same animal rights group face felony trial in September after rescuing piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory pig farm
PRESS RELEASE
June 18, 2022
Over 70 activists, including two Bay Area residents facing felony charges for rescuing piglets from a Smithfield factory farm in Milford, Utah, marched through the streets of San Francisco Saturday.
PRESS RELEASE
June 16, 2022
Alexandra Paul and Alicia Santurio, two members of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), have been charged with theft in conjunction with a dramatic rescue of two chickens from a Foster Farms slaughter truck.
PRESS RELEASE
May 23, 2022
Two defendants face years in prison after removing sick piglets from the largest factory pig farm in the U.S.
PRESS RELEASE
April 26, 2022
Bill for moratorium against new factory farms was killed by first Assembly committee set to consider it
PRESS RELEASE
April 22, 2022
Third disruption by animal rights activists this month follows exposé of chickens being “roasted alive” at team owner Glen Taylor’s factory farm
PRESS RELEASE
April 15, 2022
Footage from Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor’s factory farm reveals chickens fully conscious after being “roasted alive” en masse
