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
June 3, 2023
ABC7 News
"[Horses being killed is] just inherent to the industry. These horses are bred for racing, they're fed for racing, they're drugged for racing. Everything about the way that they're raised is for profit, not for their well-being," Cassie King said.
PRESS
June 3, 2023
ABC7 News
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 31, 2023
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
May 22, 2023
CBS Bay Area
"No legitimate sport would tolerate the deaths of 28 of its athletes in 20 weeks in just one state," said Martha Sullivan of the organization Kill Racing Not Horses.
PRESS
May 22, 2023
CBS Bay Area
PRESS
May 21, 2023
St. George News
Vollmar, who is part of an ongoing federal civil rights lawsuit against Beaver County and several sheriff’s deputies, says his First Amendment rights were violated when he was interrogated by deputies at the Pioneer Day event last July 23.
PRESS
May 21, 2023
St. George News
PRESS
May 14, 2023
Seehafer News
“After sometimes months or years of confinement that drives many of them to insanity, they’re subjected to experiments that are so nightmarish that they’re hard for people to believe are true,” [activist Wayne] Hsiung contended.
PRESS
May 14, 2023
Seehafer News
PRESS
May 12, 2023
Vox
Now, the U.S. animal movement has the opportunity to further empower ordinary citizens to make decisions about animal treatment democratically, rather than letting corporations decide what counts as animal cruelty.
PRESS
May 12, 2023
Vox
PRESS
May 10, 2023
Press Democrat
“I’m looking forward to my day in court, because I believe people in Sonoma County want animals to be protected, not tortured,” said [Wayne] Hsiung, who’s representing himself.
PRESS
May 10, 2023
Press Democrat
PRESS
May 10, 2023
Veg World Magazine
Costco wants to push us away and restrict our activity as much as possible to prevent customers from seeing the horrors that happen at its suppliers.
PRESS
May 10, 2023
Veg World Magazine
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
April 1, 2021
BLOG
January 25, 2021
BLOG
January 19, 2021
We’ve been hovering around this 150 number for a while now in the SF Bay Area chapter, and we know we have to grow past this, so we set off to figure out how to break Dunbar’s number.
BLOG
September 11, 2020
BLOG
August 27, 2020
BLOG
August 14, 2020
The diseases suffered by Nina and her species never should have existed. Now, they threaten us all -- but her story should give us hope.
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
