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
BLOG
May 5, 2023
When we come together in person to take action, we are unstoppable. History has shown this. And Sebastopol passing a Right to Rescue resolution, and condemning their own District Attorney for ignoring animal cruelty and prosecuting animal rescuers, is just the latest example.
BLOG
May 5, 2023
When we come together in person to take action, we are unstoppable. History has shown this. And Sebastopol passing a Right to Rescue resolution, and condemning their own District Attorney for ignoring animal cruelty and prosecuting animal rescuers, is just the latest example.
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
May 3, 2023
BLOG
May 1, 2023
I have seen firsthand the trauma these programs inflict on children and the violence they inflict on animals. It’s time we reform 4-H and FFA to no longer include programs where kids raise animals to die.
PRESS
April 29, 2023
New York Post
“Animals are routinely castrated without painkillers, driven to insanity by intensive confinement, and eviscerated alive on the slaughter line. Congresswoman Tenney would better serve her constituents by targeting this abuse rather than the growing movement for compassion,” the statement from DxE read.
PRESS
April 29, 2023
New York Post
PRESS
April 26, 2023
Salt Lake Tribune
“I feel that this company has a lot of power over this town,” Vollmar said of Smithfield Foods, which up until layoffs last year employed one of every four workers in the county according to local statistics, including Mayor Matt Robinson. “There’s probably a lot of political pressure to convict me at this court."
PRESS
April 26, 2023
Salt Lake Tribune
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 25, 2023
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 24, 2023
PRESS
April 23, 2023
Salt Lake Tribune
If Beaver County officials are so fixated on silencing activists raising concerns and asking questions about a corporation, what is this corporation trying to hide? What is the incentive for the Beaver officials to silence people? Should international multi-billion-dollar corporations have this much control in rural Utah?
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
June 29, 2020
Workers forced to kill thousands of pigs with extreme heat and steam
BLOG
June 11, 2020
Investigators say “ventilation shutdown” is criminal livestock neglect as pigs are “roasted alive”
BLOG
June 9, 2020
Bay Area residents face criminal charges after rescuing dying animals from Sonoma County factory farms
BLOG
May 12, 2020
An Unfiltered Q&A With A Publication That’s Planning An “Exposé” Of DxE
BLOG
May 8, 2020
How money and drugs corrupted the story of a pig farmer who was prosecuted for saving his pigs.
BLOG
April 18, 2020
Protesters of Smithfield slaughterhouses and vendors say it undermines the well-being of employees, animals, whistleblowers and the public
BLOG
March 29, 2020
BLOG
March 24, 2020
PRESS RELEASE
September 27, 2021
Just-released hidden camera footage from inside the Foster Farms facility reveals fully-conscious animals routinely being improperly slaughtered -- conduct activists allege is criminal
PRESS RELEASE
September 2, 2021
Imposter disavowed nonviolent animal rights activists as“terrorists”
PRESS RELEASE
August 24, 2021
Student-led investigation into UCB chicken supplier Tyson Foods shines new light on administration’s erroneous claims that it doesn’t supply from factory farms
PRESS RELEASE
August 8, 2021
Group behind Berkeley vegan transition bill says Newsom’s inaction on environmental impact of animal agriculture is unacceptable
PRESS RELEASE
August 6, 2021
California residents want the the company to disclose supplier information, citing animal abuse and environmental destruction
PRESS RELEASE
July 26, 2021
Berkeley City Council passed a resolution late Tuesday to switch 50% of city expenditures on animal-based foods to plant-based by 2024, and commit to a long-term goal of 100% plant-based.
PRESS RELEASE
July 20, 2021
Activists want to keep the pressure on Mayor Arreguin’s climate commitments
PRESS RELEASE
June 26, 2021
Chanting activists entered the store holding placards while others rallied outside
PRESS RELEASE
June 14, 2021
Berkeley residents say Mayor Arreguín broke his commitment to support their divestment proposal
