Direct Action Everywhere

Founding

DxE was founded in 2013 by a handful of people in the Bay Area who decided to protest inside restaurants and stores, rather than outside, which was more typical of animal rights protests. DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung had been investigating slaughterhouses for ten years prior to founding DxE with the goal of scaling up open rescue and other forms of non-violent direct action.

DxE's first action occurred in January 2013. Six activists demonstrated in front of a meat counter at a Sprouts Farmers Market, contending that the items being sold there behind the counter were not food but "the torment and suffering of billions of our friends in factory farms and slaughterhouses."

Growth

DxE continued organizing protests inside restaurants and stores, citing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and ACT UP as influences. In August 2013, DxE organized its first multi-city protest, The Earthlings March. Approximately 40 cities participated in the march, which was covered in international media.

In October 2013, in response to a viral video produced by Chipotle called The Scarecrow, DxE organized in-store “die-ins” at three San Francisco Chipotle restaurants. DxE argued that the ad, which advertised Chipotle’s purported efforts to create a more natural and humane food system was “humanewashing,” which animal rights activists describe as marketing efforts intended to disguise the inherent violence of using and killing animals for food. Within a few weeks, copycat demonstrations were executed in Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Philadelphia. DxE responded by creating a platform for coordinated global days of action under the “It’s Not Food, It’s Violence” message.

DxE has continued with internationally coordinated monthly days of action. In addition to Chipotle, activists have also targeted other grocery stores, restaurants, clothing stores, zoos, circuses, and labs. The original actions were organized around the San Francisco Bay Area. By December 2014, DxE's network had grown to at least 90 cities in 20 countries.

Whole Foods Campaign

Beginning in the summer of 2013, DxE activists Wayne Hsiung, Chris Van Breen, Priya Sawhney, Brian Burns, and Ronnie Rose began an investigation with an aim to start DxE’s Open Rescue Network. DxE selected U.S.-based natural foods grocery store Whole Foods Market as the target of the investigation because the company allegedly “actively shap[es] the public’s view of animal agriculture with false marketing.”

The activists selected Certified Humane Whole Foods egg supplier Petaluma Farms in Petaluma, California as the target of the initial investigation. At one point, activists encountered a diseased hen who had collapsed and was struggling to breathe and removed her from the farm. They named her Mei Hua (Chinese for “beautiful flower”) and made her recovery a centerpiece of the ensuing campaign and imagery.

DxE released a 19-minute video of the investigation, “Truth Matters,” on YouTube and Facebook in January 2015 and received coverage in several international media outlets, including the New York Times and Mother Jones. For several weekends following the investigation, and every month thereafter through early 2016, DxE chapters in several dozen cities organized protests inside Whole Foods stores, challenging the company’s “Values Matter” advertising campaign. Whole Foods announced new egg-laying standards shortly after the release of the investigation video.

Over the course of 2015, a larger team of activists investigated Diestel Turkey Ranch, one of only three companies, out of over 2,000, to achieve a 5+ rating on the 1-5 scale used by the Global Animal Partnership, Whole Foods’s animal welfare rating scheme. Activists recorded video apparently at a Diestel-owned farm in Jamestown, CA, showing filth, overcrowding, and birds dying as infants. Diestel added a brief mention to its website of its Jamestown farm following the investigation.

DxE released another investigation in November 2016 into Jaindl Farms, a Whole Foods farm that has supplied the White House with Thanksgiving turkeys since the 1960s rated in the 98th percentile of animal welfare according to an animal welfare audit. The activists released footage of birds with mutilated beaks, struggling to walk, and crowded to the point of repeated trampling. Two Huffington Post reporters visited the farm on invitation of Jaindl's owner and found that while severe injuries were uncommon, turkeys had visible sores.

Costco Campaign

In July 2016, DxE released an investigation into Farmer John, a Hormel subsidiary and supplier to Costco, Safeway, and the LA Dodgers based just outside of Los Angeles. The investigation documented the use of carbadox, an antibiotic identified by the FDA as a carcinogen and recommended for removal from the market. The activists argued that similarity between animal and human biology inevitably led to potential crises like antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Following the Farmer John investigation, DxE activists repeatedly interrupted LA Dodgers baseball games to protest the team's touting of Farmer John's "Dodger Dogs" hot dogs. Activists in LA, Colorado, and the San Francisco Bay Area jumped on the field during plays at several games with banners declaring "Dodgers Torture Animals" and "Animal Liberation Now." The activists tied their protests to Farmer John, protesting the promotion of "torture and death of animals."

DxE followed up its Farmer John investigation by investigating a cage-free egg supplier to Costco. Costco had been a key leader in the 2016 trend of food companies committing to shift to a cage-free egg supply, but, according to DxE, the investigation raised questions about the state of animal welfare after that shift. Activists staged protests at Costco stores around the country following the investigation.

Liberation Pledge

In November 2015, DxE became one of the most visible backers of a new action known as the “Liberation Pledge,” with co-founder Wayne Hsiung authoring a piece in the Huffington Post announcing the pledge. According to the website liberationpledge.com, the pledge is as follows:

"The pledge is simple:

One: Publicly refuse to eat animals - live vegan.

Two: Publicly refuse to sit where people are eating animals.

Three: Encourage others to take the pledge."

The pledge was considered controversial upon release, including criticisms regarding food justice concerns and by potentially isolating vegans who take the pledge. Several prominent figures in the animal rights movement, including Anita Krajnc of the Toronto Pig Save and Keith McHenry of Food Not Bombs took the pledge, with McHenry declaring, "We must stop the eating of animals." Wamyama Box creator Nzinga Young defended the Liberation Pledge, writing, "when I spend time in safe spaces with sacred people, I don’t want to see carnage."

Animal Liberation

DxE's organizing principles call for every animal to have an "equal right to be safe, happy, and free" within "one generation." DxE’s website originally described animal liberation as referring to species equality with a link to Peter Singer’s writings. DxE later updated its description of animal liberation to describe it as a rejection of speciesism as a system of discrimination against animals.

Nonviolent Direct Action

Activists with DxE agree to the principles of nonviolent direct action. DxE organizers have trained with Kazu Haga of the East Point Peace Academy. Haga is a student of Martin Luther King, Jr. ally Bernard Lafayette. Haga’s philosophy is based in part on Lafayette’s efforts to institutionalize nonviolent social change.

DxE's focus on nonviolent direct action is based on the belief that social change depends on changing the beliefs of the public by spreading memes that are spread accurately, widely, and for a long time. They focus on telling the animals' stories from the animals' own perspectives.

The inaugural DxE video contended that "our conviction is that the status quo will remain unchanged unless there is a considerable amount of pressure exerted from the outside. We also feel that mere education is not enough, and that animal liberation will only come about by creating a cultural climate of saying . . . that it's not right to use others for our benefit, whether that be other humans or other nonhuman animals."

“Humane Fraud”

One of DxE’s most central campaign topics has been its ongoing campaign against companies who claim to sell products with superior animal welfare standards, such as Whole Foods Market and Chipotle. Through investigations, public statements and writings, and protests, DxE has criticized such companies for lying about the actual conditions on their suppliers’ farms and deceiving customers with the idea that it is possible to raise and kill animals in a humane way, an idea that DxE rejects. DxE’s efforts combine the rejection of welfare improvements by animal rights abolitionists with documentation of actual welfare conditions to make the point.

Social Science

DxE’s leaders include a number of students of social science and DxE organizers aim to use social science in making many of their decisions. Most notably, cofounder Wayne Hsiung was a graduate research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the faculty at Northwestern University, where he became further connected to prominent social scientists. DxE has published articles on the evidence for nonviolent civil resistance based on the work of political scientist Erica Chenoweth, the importance of social ties based on the work of sociologist Doug McAdam, and the importance of mobilizing masses of ordinary people based on research by network scientist Duncan Watts.

Consumer Veganism

Activists and writers associated with DxE have criticized the animal rights movement’s contemporary focus on creating individual vegans and celebrating consumer products like vegan ice cream rather than focusing on activism and changing social and political institutions. DxE argues that the individual focus is less effective than trying to change institutions, since the individual focus does not lead people to do more once they stop using animals personally. Instead, DxE argues that activist groups should push people to take action so that the movement grows more quickly. Activists with DxE have argued that nonviolence is in principle a practice of anger toward systems and compassion toward individuals and that a protest movement will be more successful by focusing on governments, corporations, and other institutions rather than making individual consumers defensive by attacking them personally.

DxE’s blog has argued that consumer vegan options also distract from the actual threat to animals, allowing companies that are hurting animals like Whole Foods to avoid criticism and leading animal rights activists not to take action against them. In a debate with Rutgers philosopher and animal rights theorist Gary Francione, DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung stated that “activism, not veganism, is the moral baseline.”

Open Rescue

Wayne Hsiung cites as an inspiration for DxE the work of Patty Mark, an Australian animal rights activist and founder of Animal Liberation Victoria (ALV). ALV activists popularized the tactic of going into farms in the middle of the night without disguises and filming the conditions inside. The tactic stands in contrast to the more common form of investigation in the U.S. animal rights movement in which an investigator poses as a farm worker to film using a hidden camera. Open rescue activists emphasize that their approach allows the portrayal of individual animals’ stories since activists can focus on animals in the farm, and to rescue animals who would otherwise die of disease document their recovery. Open rescue also lets activists dramatize the story, allows them to avoid the costs of having somebody work at a farm for several months, and offers a way into farms that are smaller and where it’s harder to gain employment..

DxE has cited open rescues as particularly key to exposing “humane” companies that are generally smaller and more difficult to infiltrate. It also touts open rescue as a form of activism anyone can undertake, offering the possibility and goal of thousands of open rescue teams across the country.

Community Building

The Bay Area chapter of DxE started a voluntary program called DxE Connections in early 2015 to nurture bonds among activists that promote involvement in and support for taking direct action for animal rights. DxE Connections is based on sociologist Doug McAdam’s research into the Freedom Riders, James Coleman’s pioneering work on social structure, and Duncan Watts’ experiments on social momentum. The program pairs activists with two more senior activists for social chats around animal rights to promote interest in and personal affiliation with the cause and the community.

DxE chapters also aim to hold monthly or weekly community events or meetups to foster a shared identity around animal rights. Activists can speak at the meetups about themes of personal interest that touch on activism, animal rights, and social change.

Mass Protests

Inspired by both activist networks and street theater groups such as Improv Everywhere, DxE mobilizes masses of activists to creative protest in prominent public spaces. Early actions in DxE’s history include a guerilla poem, a “freeze” at a prominent mall, the disruption of a screening of American Meat with the stories and images of companion animals, and numerous other creative efforts.

Notable network-wide protests have included an effort in the summer of 2015 to incorporate dogs, cats, and other companion animals into protests as a symbol of human support, connections, and equality with animals. DxE also issued the #DisruptSpeciesism and #DogMeatPlease viral video challenges in September 2014 and 2015, respectively, which garnered social media fame when videos by DxE organizers Priya Sawhney, Kelly Atlas, and Jenny McQueen went viral.

Public Event Disruptions

Activists within the DxE network have undertaken a number of prominent disruptions of public figures. In August 2015, Iowa activist Matt Johnson asked New Jersey Governor Chris Christie about his veto of a widely supported bill banning gestation crates for mother pigs that the public widely regarded as cruel. Johnson also asked Christie about his prosecution of animal rights activists (see Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) and general opposition to the cause. When Christie rebuffed Johnson’s questions, Johnson leapt on stage with several other activists and a banner demanding “ANIMAL LIBERATION NOW.”

Johnson staged similar disruptions along the campaign trail, including at Iowa campaign events by Ohio Governor John Kasich and former U.S. President Bill Clinton and an appearance by former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina at the Iowa Pork Producers. Fiorina replied to Johnson’s protest by condemning him for protesting for animals and not the lives of unborn children. Several activists from Iowa and Indiana also interrupted a Republican family values forum on the eve of Thanksgiving and the release of DxE’s Diestel Turkey Ranch investigation video.

In January 2016, activists interrupted a speech by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf at the 100th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Farm Show, saying that there was no reason to confine and kill pigs, chickens, and cows when it was not okay to do that to dogs or cats. DxE activist Zach Groff has stated that DxE aims to ensure that any event or public figure “promoting violence against animals” is the target of a protest interruption.