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
July 25, 2025
Vera supplies the nation’s largest goat milk producer, Meyenberg, and its practices are a far cry from the rigorous standards Whole Foods promises. Thousands of goats are confined in crowded pens without access to pasture; newborn babies are routinely separated from their mothers; and, outside the confinement area, lies a mass graveyard of animals who died prior to slaughter.
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 23, 2025
PRESS
July 19, 2025
The Daily Californian
According to DxE lead organizer Almira Tanner, another lawsuit defendant, a 2023 DxE investigation into the Petaluma Poultry plant alleged that there were chickens that were severely sick and unable to get food or water. Additionally, the investigation claimed that there are decomposing animals in the facilities, diseased birds and inhumane slaughterhouse practices.
PRESS
July 19, 2025
The Daily Californian
PRESS
July 16, 2025
Hoodline
Picture this: you're trying to buy organic chicken for dinner, and suddenly there are protesters with megaphones asking you to reconsider your protein choices. That's been the reality at Trader Joe's locations across California
PRESS
July 16, 2025
Hoodline
PRESS
July 15, 2025
ABC 30 Fresno
They are asking the District Attorney's Office to investigate conditions at Vera Goat Dairy in Stratford after a disturbing discovery the group says they made earlier this year. "Dead mother and baby goats are being thrown out like garbage in an illegal dead pile. We have documented Vera Dairy and have found these sick animals being neglected, denied medical care, being left to die," Direct Action Everywhere organizer Cassie King says.
PRESS
July 15, 2025
ABC 30 Fresno
PRESS
July 14, 2025
The Press Democrat
“We brought this to Trader Joe’s, but instead of listening, they blocked us, refused all dialogue, and hired powerful attorneys to try to shut us up,” Cabral said in a statement. “Customers have made it clear — they don’t want to be lied to. They want ethical products they can trust. So why won’t Trader Joe’s live up to the values they claim to hold?”
PRESS
July 14, 2025
The Press Democrat
PRESS
July 14, 2025
Pleasanton Weekly
On July 2, a group of roughly 20 activists associated with the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere occupied the original Trader Joe’s store located at 610 S. Arroyo Pkwy. in Pasadena. The group held banners and signs while delivering speeches in front of the poultry section of the store and the checkout aisle alleging how Petaluma Poultry — a food manufacturing company based in Petaluma — has systematically abused animals in its factory farms and slaughterhouse.
PRESS
July 14, 2025
Pleasanton Weekly
PRESS
July 9, 2025
ABC7 Bay Area
"This is an attack on California that could hurt everyone in the country, including millions and millions of animals who are living in these facilities and already have so few protections," King said.
PRESS
July 9, 2025
ABC7 Bay Area
PRESS
July 9, 2025
SF Gate
“It is absurd that I’m being charged with felony vandalism,” Kandada said in the DxE’s July 3 news release. “The refrigerator is perfectly fine, my hand is fine, but the chickens are not fine.”
PRESS
July 9, 2025
SF Gate
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
December 27, 2015
The Politics of Punishment has decimated movements. Here’s how we can save ours.
PRESS RELEASE
November 17, 2022
The investigation at Foster Farms found an E. coli-infected turkey chick, buckets of dead chicks, and a litter beetle infestation. Said former U.S. prosecutor Bonnie Klapper, "[The arrest] is an absurd action on the part of the Berkeley police and one which serves only to protect corporations engaged in animal cruelty from being held accountable by consumers.”
PRESS RELEASE
November 12, 2022
The two factory farm investigators who were found “not guilty” last month joined the protest.
PRESS RELEASE
November 10, 2022
Rescued turkey chick had an infection called omphalitis caused by E. coli.
PRESS RELEASE
October 9, 2022
Activists take on a multibillion-dollar industry -- and win.
PRESS RELEASE
October 3, 2022
Two men face 10+ years in prison in a case decried by legal experts as unconstitutional retaliation for exposing abusive conditions
PRESS RELEASE
September 24, 2022
The demonstration is the kickoff for a week of action dedicated to promoting Rose’s Law, an animal bill of rights that DxE says is their ultimate vision of a kind and just world for animals.
PRESS RELEASE
September 9, 2022
"This is really about inverting the truth: making peaceful activists look dangerous, when the real danger is Smithfield and other companies that systematically torture millions of innocent sentient beings while destroying our environment."
PRESS RELEASE
September 8, 2022
Emek Echo and Katia Shokrai ran across the field holding up red smoke flares and wearing shirts with “RIGHTTORESCUE.COM” text.
PRESS RELEASE
August 20, 2022
Judge Wilcox repeatedly expressed concerns about advocates potentially intimidating local residents. This is contrary to recent footage and a lawsuit in which it is canvassers supporting Hsiung and Picklesimer who faced death threats and were forced to stop talking to sidewalk pedestrians.
