Turning Repression into Liberation

Wayne Hsiung, cofounder of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE)

Rescuing a dying piglet from the worst place on Earth is “felony theft” and “rioting.” Blowing the whistle on corporate misconduct results in a restitution ruling against activists in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it all adds up to a “pattern of unlawful activity.” As of June 2019, over one hundred DxE activists have pending legal cases—misdemeanors, felonies, and civil claims—as a result of our investigatory and rescue work. I’m personally facing fifteen felonies, plus civil suits by two agribusiness corporations. Our legal docket seems to grow by the week; we even have a few more cases penciled in, which we expect to drop soon. But it wasn’t always this way.

Humble Beginnings

When Patty Mark heard of the horrific cruelty at an Australian egg factory in 1992, she had no visions of pioneering a transformative tactic, “open rescue,” to give power to liberation activists so often silenced or repressed. When an employee told her that “hens would somehow get out of their cages then fall down into [a massive manure] pit, where there was no food and water, and they would slowly starve to death,” she knew that she had to get them out, and fast. “It didn’t cross my mind for our action to be clandestine, only to somehow get ourselves in there safely so we could help as many hens as possible, to document conditions so people would become aware of what was happening, and to openly identify ourselves while doing what needed to be done.” This bittersweet story of cruelty and liberation made national headlines, and open rescue was born. Subsequent years saw an awakening as the tactic of open rescue rose to prominence; even a member of the Australian Parliament joined activists in openly rescuing factory-farmed piglets. Activists worldwide were inspired at seeing everyday people proudly and publicly taking these actions, with groups like Compassion Over Killing and Mercy for Animals adopting the tactic.

Industry Pushes Back

The early 2000s saw the global rise of “ag gag” statutes, which criminalized certain acts of documentation inside animal agricultural facilities. Citing increasingly aggressive activist activity—releases of minks and other animals at farms, as well as property destruction—industry-friendly politicians passed the insidious Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act into federal law in 2006 via bipartisan unanimous consent, requiring no formal vote. The lone dissenting statement in the US House was made by Representative Dennis Kucinich, cautioning that the bill was “written in such a way as to have a chilling effect on the exercise of the constitutional rights of protest.” A chilling effect was right. Open rescue all but disappeared in the United States for a decade beginning in the mid-2000s.

Waking a Sleeping Giant

Citing a unique Good Samaritan provision of California law, Penal Code Section 597e, to justify our entry into the farm, DxE’s first open rescue was covered in the New York Times in January of 2015. Thousands of hens were revealed to be crammed in filthy sheds, many suffering from illness, even cannibalism, inside a “Certified Humane” Whole Foods egg farm. Dozens of investigations that followed, of some of the biggest sellers of animal products in the country, resulted in no legal consequences, despite numerous violations of animal cruelty law. It certainly wasn’t for lack of evidence; social and mainstream media content publicly revealed not just our findings, but our investigators’ identities. We wanted the opportunity to bring the issue to court, but ignoring scandal is corporate public relations 101. When an upstart grassroots group goes public with troubling findings, any response beyond a generic denial likely does a major corporation more harm than good. And so it went for over three years. Investigations of Smithfield, Costco, Whole Foods, even a dog meat farm in China came and went. We reached millions via the New York Times, Nightline, viral Facebook videos, and more. Our work expanded beyond a small team in the San Francisco Bay Area to independent teams throughout the United States, in Canada, and even Europe. Our mass gatherings—where inspired activists connect, learn, and take action for animals—have grown exponentially, from dozens to over one thousand. The minor annoyance that Big Ag had hoped would go away on its own has instead blossomed into a force which can no longer be ignored.

The Backlash Effect

“That’s precisely why this industry is so obsessed with intimidating, threatening, and outlawing this form of activism: because it is so effective.”

—Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist

The barrage of charges over the past year is not all bad, of course. It should actually be very good, provided we stay the course, supporting each other in whatever ways we can. It’s also not unexpected. To the contrary, draconian repression efforts are an almost inevitable part of social progress, an indication that we’re really doing something. And that something has provoked a calculated and coordinated effort between some of the most powerful government and corporate entities in the country. In August 2017, a six-car armada of FBI agents in bulletproof vests and armed with search warrants raided farm animal sanctuaries in Utah and Colorado. The subject of such an expansive use of taxpayer resources? Two dying piglets—of zero commercial value—that DxE rescued from a Smithfield farm in Utah. Then, in 2018, publicly available documents revealed that prior to charging these activists with felonies, the Sanpete County attorney in Utah who brought felony charges on a DxE turkey investigation was communicating and coordinating with the Utah Attorney General, who filed the felony charges in the Utah Smithfield case to bring the charges around the same time.

And these are just a few of the examples—ones we know about. More often these sordid arrangements are unspoken understandings, communicated in financial contributions rather than words. Agribusiness donates tens of millions of dollars to influence races at all levels each election cycle, but while industry has the power of money and politics, our passion and people power can level that playing field, and then some. More recently, we’ve seen our numbers at mass demonstrations escalate, even as the stakes have also risen.

In May 2018, forty activists of more than four hundred on-site were arrested on misdemeanor trespass, as activists rescued thirty-seven hens from a Petaluma, California, factory egg farm where whistleblowers had documented criminal animal cruelty (which was ignored by authorities). In September 2018, we returned to Petaluma. This time, fifty-eight were arrested on felony charges—including some simply there for photography/videography, never entering a barn—as activists attempted to provide lifesaving care to sick and injured animals. During the 2019 Animal Liberation Conference, seventy-nine were arrested on felony charges, with over six hundred in attendance, as thirty-two ducks were rescued from a Petaluma factory farm and slaughterhouse.

A movement sinks or swims with its response to repression. Prosecutions of civil disobedience must be met with even more civil disobedience, leveraging the passion of ordinary people into the power to transform society into a more just place for all. DxE saw an opportunity and went for it. We’ve continually refined our work, drawing on lessons from trailblazers like Patty Mark and Lauren Gazzola, an organizer who served prison time in connection with the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) anti-vivisection campaign of the early 2000s. With inevitable legal battles certain to grab national headlines, the threats are rising, but not as fast as the opportunities. A handful of open rescue activists becomes dozens, then hundreds, until this massive force lays itself on the gears of the machine that is animal agriculture to bring it grinding to a halt.

But there is a greater ambition in our actions. Effective movements have not just addressed the symptoms, but the root causes, of oppression. And by taking these mass actions, DxE activists have highlighted one of the most fundamental tensions within not just our legal system, but our culture. This is the tension between animals as property and animals as living creatures who deserve moral and political consideration, i.e. legal “persons.” By garnering public support and attention for these actions—and eventually winning in the court of law—we will be doing what has seemed impossible through normal legislative channels: enshrining the right to rescue animals from distress and, by doing so, forcing legal acknowledgment that animals are not things for corporations to use and abuse.

Some of the most impressive lawyers and scholars of our generation are now lining up to support us, from criminal law scholar Hadar Aviram—a chaired professor at UC Hastings and Fellow at Harvard Law School—to former federal prosecutor Bonnie Klapper, who busted drug gangs and now goes after criminal factory farms. As with iconic court cases from movements past, we hope our cases in California, Utah, and North Carolina will finally, after far too long, make animal rights into a real political question. We are, in short, taking a leap of faith. We believe that the people of this nation and planet are a compassionate people. That they want to preserve life, and not destroy it. And if we are correct, these cases won’t just enshrine the Right to Rescue. They’ll supercharge our movement and turn repression into liberation.