Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
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TOP PRESS
October 24, 2025
The Guardian
I asked Rosenberg what outcome she was hoping for. “My ideal outcome is honestly just whatever is best for the animals,” she said. “An acquittal wouldn’t set an actual legal precedent, but it would set a social precedent, to some extent, and send an important message.”
TOP PRESS
October 24, 2025
The Guardian
PRESS
October 30, 2025
Los Angeles Times
“These charges carry a potential sentence of nearly 5 years in jail,” DxE said in a statement. “Meanwhile, Petaluma Poultry faces no consequences for leaving sick animals to die or scalding animals alive.”
PRESS
October 30, 2025
Los Angeles Times
TOP PRESS
October 29, 2025
The New York Times
The four chickens she took with her — whom she named Poppy, Ivy, Aster and Azalea — are alive at a sanctuary for rescued farm animals, she said. “I will not apologize for taking sick, neglected animals to get medical care,” Ms. Rosenberg said in a statement. “When we see cruelty and violence, we can choose to ignore it or to intervene and try to make the world a better place.”
TOP PRESS
October 29, 2025
The New York Times
PRESS
October 29, 2025
The Guardian
“Sonoma county spent over six weeks and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to protect a multibillion-dollar corporation from the rescue of four chickens worth less than $25,” Chris Carraway, Rosenberg’s attorney, said in a statement.
PRESS
October 29, 2025
The Guardian
PRESS
October 29, 2025
KQED
When asked on the stand last week if she wants open rescue “to be something that happens everywhere,” Rosenberg told prosecutors: “Yes.” Rosenberg’s defense team is expected to appeal, creating the opportunity to set a legal precedent for the practice.
PRESS
October 29, 2025
KQED
TOP PRESS
October 29, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
But even if the appellate court doesn’t reverse Rosenberg’s conviction, she likely won’t regret having risked prison time to force a trial. Her trial, by some measures, was still a success. Several national publications — including The New York Times and the Associated Press — covered it, raising awareness of DxE’s goal to eradicate America’s factory-farming industry by 2040.
TOP PRESS
October 29, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
PRESS
October 29, 2025
The Press Democrat
“Even if the verdict was good, it would still be disappointing, because still no one is lifting a single finger to look at the allegations of criminal animal cruelty at Petaluma Poultry,” Carraway said. “Unfortunately, at the end of the day, there was more concern about talking about protests Zoe did when she was 14 years old than actually the much worse crimes that are happening day in, day out at Petaluma Poultry.”
PRESS
October 29, 2025
The Press Democrat
TOP PRESS
October 28, 2025
The Associated Press
A California animal rights activist on trial for taking four chickens from one of Perdue Farms’ major poultry plants said Tuesday that she was rescuing Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea from abuse while prosecutors say she broke the law.
TOP PRESS
October 28, 2025
The Associated Press
PRESS
October 28, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
During his closing argument in a Sonoma County trial that could reverberate throughout America’s animal rights movement, Deputy District Attorney Matt Hobson seized several opportunities to stress something that should have seemed obvious: The defendant — not animal agriculture — is on trial here. His need to reiterate that point Tuesday spoke to the unique nature of this case.
PRESS
October 28, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
PRESS
October 28, 2025
The Press Democrat
Hobson also questioned why Rosenberg took only four chickens if her goal was to save animals. Carraway countered that rescuing even a few birds could still raise awareness about animal cruelty.
PRESS
October 28, 2025
The Press Democrat
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.
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...
PRESS RELEASE
January 27, 2024
Playing with characters and plot elements from the new film Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget, the protest featured “Zoe Rosenbird” coming to the rescue of sick, injured chickens and transforming the operation that tortured them into an animal sanctuary.
PRESS RELEASE
November 30, 2023
The University of Denver’s Animal Activist Legal Defense Project is working on the appeal. Attorney Chris Carraway said, “I often hear courts describe trials as a search for the truth. Mr. Hsiung’s trial was anything but. The press had limited access; trial participants were unconstitutionally gagged from the beginning; and the court bent over backwards to prevent the defense from detailing the chronic animal cruelty found which informed the intent behind the actions."
PRESS RELEASE
October 19, 2023
“The thousands of signatures we’ve collected this summer are a testament to how enthusiastic the people of Berkeley are about disassociating with these cruel industries that run counter to our values,” says Berkeley resident and DxE organizer Kitty Jones. “It is high time we move past a system of industrialized exploitation of animals.”
PRESS RELEASE
September 5, 2023
Activists say voter enthusiasm is high for a ban on factory farms in Berkeley after submitting more than 4,900 signatures to the Berkeley city clerk today, a large overshoot beyond the 3,000 required to get the measure on the ballot.
PRESS RELEASE
August 1, 2023
"The vast majority of Berkeley voters that we've talked to care about animals and the planet and are eager to sign on to this initiative,” says Almira Tanner, lead organizer of DxE.
PRESS RELEASE
July 17, 2023
“This closure is a win for horses and for vulnerable humans who are taken advantage of by the gambling industry,” says Rocky Chau, a DxE activist who was arrested during a protest on the GGF track in March 2021.
PRESS RELEASE
June 13, 2023
Hundreds are gathered outside the slaughterhouse calling on the Sonoma County District Attorney to prosecute Petaluma Poultry for documented criminal animal cruelty and infectious diseases that are endangering public health
PRESS RELEASE
June 10, 2023
While hundreds rallied in support of the right to rescue animals from abuse, a few activists delivered “feeder” mice and suffering betta fish to safety.
PRESS RELEASE
May 31, 2023
Recent similar trials in St. George, UT and Merced, CA resulted in groundbreaking acquittals for open rescuers.
