Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
PRESS
June 3, 2025
Wired Magazine
Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America’s agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an informant for the FBI.
PRESS
June 3, 2025
Wired 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
April 4, 2024
Los Angeles Times
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
TOP PRESS
March 20, 2018
The New York Times
TOP PRESS
November 7, 2017
Mother Jones
TOP PRESS
November 1, 2017
The Intercept
TOP PRESS
October 5, 2017
The Intercept
TOP PRESS
September 14, 2017
The Washington Post
TOP PRESS
July 6, 2017
The New York Times
TOP PRESS
October 20, 2016
The Washington Post
While the hens are not in cages, the video shows them crowded together, covered in feces and blood, struggling to breathe and attacking and even eating one other.
TOP PRESS
January 8, 2015
The New York Times
An animal rights group released on Thursday a disturbing video of laying hens at a farm in Northern California that supplies eggs to Whole Foods and Organic Valley, among other retailers and distributors.
BLOG
December 13, 2022
The feeling of hearing those words “not guilty” after five long years of the uncertainty and judicial bureaucracy was indescribable. But mostly I felt proud. Proud of the jury, our legal team, and Direct Action Everywhere.
BLOG
December 6, 2022
Preliminary hearings finally happened for Rachel and Jon. The prosecution argued that they were "co-conspirators" in the 2018 and 2019 rescues at Sonoma County factory farms. Judge Urioste agreed to send the case to trial on felony charges.
BLOG
November 30, 2022
Corporations seem more concerned with shielding the practices of their suppliers from the public than with the cruelty and disease documented in those farms. They know that the public would be horrified if they saw the truth. But what these corporations don’t understand is that repression often makes movements stronger. I’m not going to stop talking about what happens to animals, and I’m not going to stop documenting protests.
BLOG
November 24, 2022
Back in October, DxE's Lead Organizer Almira Tanner spoke at the inaugural AVA Summit. Check out her talk: Building a Mass Movement for Animals.
BLOG
November 7, 2022
Do your homework, get feedback, and find the simple story.
BLOG
September 20, 2022
Today, a coalition of advocacy groups filed an amicus letter to the California Supreme Court in support of this case, written by the First Amendment Coalition and signed by Greenpeace USA, ACLU of Northern California, Amazon Watch, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and many more.
BLOG
September 19, 2022
Why is it that 60 years after the Freedom of Speech Movement, we can’t rally more than 200 people to fight for the future of our planet? Why is it that when we’re being faced with injustices like racism, fascism, worker abuse, animal abuse, income inequality, loss of reproductive rights and environmental destruction, one of the most progressive student bodies in the world barely rises up?
BLOG
September 18, 2022
Rose was the sole survivor of all the birds at McCoy’s that day, and amid the tragedy that occurred for the others, Rose’s story offered a glimmer of hope. The fact that her rescue was permitted was proof that they all deserved to be rescued, that even the police knew rescuing them was the right thing to do.
BLOG
September 10, 2022
The systems we have designed for animals are mentally abusive from the very beginning.
PRESS RELEASE
September 15, 2025
Zoe Rosenberg, 23, is charged with felony conspiracy and 3 misdemeanors for rescuing chickens from Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse
PRESS RELEASE
August 30, 2025
Activists use Trader Joe’s nautical theme to urge the company to follow its moral compass and steer away from Petaluma Poultry
PRESS RELEASE
August 16, 2025
Dozens of activists with the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) protested outside the Trader Joe's store at 1885 University Avenue in Berkeley, after an Alameda County judge partially denied Trader Joe's requested temporary restraining order against DxE on Tuesday.
PRESS RELEASE
July 26, 2025
Around thirty animal rights activists with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) held a peaceful protest outside the home of Scott Fitzpatrick, the Live Production Manager for Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry, after Sonoma County Judge Patrick Broderick denied Fitzpatrick’s application for a temporary restraining order on Friday, citing “insufficient evidence.”
PRESS RELEASE
July 23, 2025
Scott Fitzpatrick, Live Production Manager for national poultry giant Perdue Foods, filed a lawsuit Tuesday to stop public protests by Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) over documented animal cruelty.
PRESS RELEASE
July 3, 2025
Ani Kandada superglued down inside Trader Joe's original store in Pasadena asking the retailer to stop selling chickens from Perdue's Petaluma Poultry, just hours after another animal rights activist was arrested for supergluing her hand inside Trader Joe's Headquarters in Monrovia, CA.
PRESS RELEASE
July 3, 2025
Carla Cabral remained superglued to the desk from approximately 10AM to approximately 11AM, while she demanded a meeting with company executives about documented animal cruelty at Trader Joe's chicken supplier, Petaluma Poultry, which is a subsidiary of national agribusiness giant Perdue Foods.
PRESS RELEASE
June 10, 2025
Animal rights activists with DxE disrupted multiple events at the Summer Board Meeting of the California Poultry Federation, a trade association representing commercial chicken and turkey producers across the state. Among CPF's twenty board members are three executives from Petaluma Poultry, the California subsidiary of national poultry giant Perdue Foods, where DxE investigators have documented widespread violations of animal cruelty laws since 2018.
PRESS RELEASE
June 4, 2025
Describing the requested gag order as “overbroad and vague by any constitutional standard,” Judge Gnoss noted that Ms. Rosenberg’s critics, too, had participated in public discussion about her case, pointing by way of example to a statement by Bill Mattos, President of the California Poultry Federation, describing Ms. Rosenberg’s rescue of four chickens as a “terrorist act.”
