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
BLOG
June 25, 2022
Senator Booker spoke about the need for nonviolent direct action and for "not being spectators in democracy!"
BLOG
June 25, 2022
Senator Booker spoke about the need for nonviolent direct action and for "not being spectators in democracy!"
PRESS
June 20, 2022
blogTO
Fur Free Toronto and Direct Action Everywhere Toronto stormed Dior and Tiffany & Co. on Bloor West in Yorkville to try to put pressure on them to adopt a fur-free policy.
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 18, 2022
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
June 16, 2022
PRESS
June 14, 2022
NowThis
After repeated protests by activists, three Orlando restaurants have taken foie gras off of their menus.
BLOG
June 14, 2022
As happy as I am to see Smithfield leave California, they should not be allowed to simply cut and run. They must adequately compensate their workers, provide appropriate care for their pigs, and clean up the damage done to the surrounding community and to the L.A. river.
PRESS
June 1, 2022
Kron 4
“Humans can consent to run and risk injury. The horses do not, and when they get injured and can’t run anymore, they are killed,” said DxE organizer Paul Darwin Picklesimer.
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
May 23, 2022
BLOG
May 20, 2022
Over the last few decades, the Central Valley of California has become plagued by the crisis of dirty drinking water contaminated with nitrates. Latino communities have been disproportionately affected. In the heart of the valley lies Tulare County, a majority Latino district and the largest dairy producing county in the nation.
TOP PRESS
May 1, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
Just four months after she graduates on May 17 with a bachelor’s degree in social movement strategy, the straight-A student will stand trial in a Sonoma County courtroom for her June 2023 incursion into Petaluma Poultry, a processing facility owned by agribusiness giant Perdue Farms. If convicted for taking four chickens Perdue valued at around $24, she faces up to 5½ years in prison.
TOP PRESS
October 10, 2024
Vox
In principle, there’s a lot of sense in capping the size of factory farms. Measure J’s proponents are betting that progressive Sonoma County, better known for its tasting rooms than its slaughterhouses, can push California — and the nation — in that direction.
TOP PRESS
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.
TOP 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.
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.
BLOG
September 29, 2015
PRESS RELEASE
May 27, 2025
Tuesday's rescue follows a months-long investigation into Vera Goat Dairy by DxE earlier this year, which found that dozens of dead mother and baby goats are regularly dumped into an illegal dead pile on the property, indicating that the operation is experiencing high rates of mortality.
PRESS RELEASE
May 24, 2025
Approximately 200 activists with the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) marched through downtown Petaluma Saturday afternoon in support of animal liberation and the right to rescue animals from abuse. They began at Penry Park and weaved through downtown including past diners at restaurants along the riverfront. Along the way, they chanted, delivered speeches, and handed out educational information to the public about Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse.
PRESS RELEASE
May 19, 2025
Over the weekend, animal rights activists with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) held protests across Sonoma County to elevate animal cruelty at Petaluma Poultry, a subsidiary of national poultry giant Perdue Foods. On Sunday, they delivered their message to Sonoma County District Attorney Carla Rodriguez with a protest outside her home in Windsor, urging her to finally prosecute Petaluma Poultry for documented criminal animal cruelty.
PRESS RELEASE
May 13, 2025
Free speech experts say that Perdue’s lawsuit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP suit, intended to silence activists, burden them with legal fees, and intimidate them from protesting. California's anti-SLAPP statute was passed to enable defendants to quickly dismiss meritless lawsuits targeting protected activities.
PRESS RELEASE
May 4, 2025
Direct Action Everywhere activists protest dozens of Trader Joe’s stores across the country asking the retailer to cut ties with Perdue’s California subsidiary, Petaluma Poultry, given documented animal abuse
PRESS RELEASE
March 29, 2025
“I want to know why Trader Joe’s is continuing to support Perdue’s animal cruelty and endangering consumers,” said Conrad de Jesus, an Oakland resident who participated in the protest. “They’ve seen the evidence of sick and injured animals languishing without medical care at Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry. It’s time they cut ties with this awful company.”
PRESS RELEASE
March 22, 2025
A handful of counter-protesters showed up with a Trump flag and a cardboard sign reading “Eat chicken.” They heckled the speakers and disrupted photos by standing in front of the photographers.
PRESS RELEASE
March 20, 2025
“I’m appalled that Trader Joe’s would continue to knowingly sell abused animals,” said Sally Zito of Los Angeles, who joined today’s protest in Monrovia. “I have delivered letters and I’ve called corporate headquarters and asked to talk to Trader Joe’s buyers, and they denied this request. They are putting their profits over the lives of animals.”
PRESS RELEASE
March 15, 2025
The protest spotlighted the zoonotic pathogens found at Petaluma Poultry, including salmonella, campylobacter, antibiotic-resistant Enterococcus, and Clostridium perfringens. Two protestors wore the type of biosecurity suits that are required for investigations and held yellow caution tape in front of the store’s meat section, which contains chickens slaughtered at Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse
