Wayne Hsiung
Wayne Hsiung is an American attorney, activist, and 2020 candidate for Mayor of Berkeley. Hsiung is a co-founder and organizer with the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere. Prior to founding DxE, Wayne was a lawyer with the law firms DLA Piper and Steptoe & Johnson, a Searle Fellow and visiting assistant professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, and a NSF Graduate Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Hsiung grew up in Indiana. His parents emigrated from China in the 1970s. His father did work involving vivisection for several years, which left a lasting impact on Hsiung and motivated him to become an animal rights activist. He also was influenced by Patty Mark, an Australian animal rights activist.
Hsiung has two dogs, Lisa and Oliver, and a cat named Joan. He rescued Oliver from Yulin, China, where Oliver was to be slaughtered at the Yulin dog meat festival.
Hsiung is on the Board of Directors of the Climate Defense Project, which represents environmental activists and pursues environmental impact litigation.
Due to his activism, and history of entering factory farms without the permission of the owners to investigate animal cruelty, he is facing charges of up to 60 years in prison. In the most serious case, Hsiung was offered resolution that involved no prison time, on condition that he refrain from criticizing the company he had investigated ; he and co-defendant Paul Picklesimer refused the offer and plan to go to trial.
Education
Hsiung graduated from the University of Chicago in 2001 and received a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship to study economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but went on leave after his first year to pursue a JD/PhD. He attended the University of Chicago law school with a focus on behavioral law and economics. After graduating, Hsiung taught at Northwestern's Pritzker School of Law as a visiting assistant professor for one year.As a lawyer, Hsiung was involved in environmental advocacy and studied behavioral economics, studying with economics scholars including Eric Posner and Mark Duggan. He partnered with behavioral law and economics scholar Cass Sunstein to write an analysis of the effect of climate change on nonhuman animals.
Direct Action Everywhere
In January 2015, Hsiung organized an "open rescue/investigation" on a certified humane egg farm in Petaluma, California. Hsiung and Direct Action Everywhere protesters climbed over a barbed wire fence to enter an egg farm and extensively recorded video of alleged animal abuses such as confines that were far too small, preening from stress, and lack of water. In January 2015, DxE released a video narrated by Hsiung and showing him rescuing a hen with the help of several other activists. In the video there are birds with blisters and missing feathers. These hens were from a "cage-free" egg farm at Petaluma Farms, a major west-coast supplier to Whole Foods and Organic Valley. Hsiung, as the narrator, uses words like “stench,” “filth,” and “misery” to describe the scene; and shows several birds that appear to have blisters, missing feathers, one apparently caked with feces, as well as birds that appear to be in decent shape. The crew dramatically rescues one injured bird, handing her over the fence, one activist to another, and whisking her to a vet in Berkeley, who declares her in dismal shape.In April 2016, Hsiung and two other members of DxE went to Yulin, China, home of the Yulin dog meat festival, to document the upcoming preparations of the festival. Two of the activists with DxE recorded video of claimed abuses. In one of the videos, dogs were screaming as they were beaten to death. Hsiung and two other DxE activists removed three dogs bound for slaughter from the facility. Hsiung was beaten and arrested in China for the theft of the three dogs. Hsiung was held for two days and then deported.
In 2017, Hsiung, along with four other DxE activists, investigated a pig farm owned by Smithfield Foods in Utah and removed two piglets from the facility. FBI agents were dispatched to look for these piglets and raided two animal sanctuaries in Utah and Colorado. Witnesses of the raids said the FBI agents sought DNA samples from pigs at the facilities as part of a search for the missing piglets. Hsiung was indicted in Utah on multiple charges including felonies and a misdemeanor riot charge relating to a break-in "investigation of animal cruelty" at this Smithfield Foods farm. Journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that the prosecution was politically motivated, as attorneys prosecuting the case had financial ties to Smithfield.
On April 24, 2018, Hsiung was arrested and charged with "threatening bodily injury" in Boulder, Colorado, at Whole Foods after asking questions at the store about the source of its meat products. Musician Moby posted a video questioning whether Whole Foods was "support an unconstitutional police state wherein people aren’t allowed to ask questions."
In May 2018, Hsiung and a large number of Direct Action Everywhere protesters walked into a Santa Rosa Egg Farms facility, seized chickens, and recorded extensive video that they claimed illustrated systemic animal abuses. Hsiung claimed that his actions and those of Direct Action Everywhere were legal, providing a legal opinion to the owners and the employees of the facility when they demanded he and the protesters leave. The opinion asserts that California Penal Code Section 597e and the common law doctrine of necessity permit the removal of sick and dying animals in certain situations, including from commercial facilities DxE investigated. The opinion has been untested in court. Hsiung and Direct Action Everywhere have labeled this, and numerous other actions, as "open rescues."
Another large-scale action occurred on September 29, 2018, when activists, including Hsiung, walked into Petaluma Poultry in Petaluma, CA and provided water to chickens that they claimed were injured and dying and who could no longer walk to reach water on their own. The police allowed the activists to take one hen off the property of the farm and to be provided with veterinary care, but then arrested 58 other activists and booked them on felony conspiracy, felony burglary, and misdemeanor trespass charges.
Hsiung has also been a part of several other high-profile protests and incidents, most notably a disruption of a San Francisco Giants-LA Dodgers baseball game in September 2016 that led to him being tackled by Giants player Angel Pagan on national TV. He was also a high-profile spokesman for a series of protests at Bernie Sanders rallies during the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary over the candidate's support for the dairy industry and refusal to support animal rights against the interests of animal agriculture.
Hsiung has also given various talks at various universities about social activism and animal rights. In November 2014, Wayne Hsiung was a guest speaker at UC Berkeley, where he gave a talk titled "What if everything we think we know about social change is wrong?" In January 2019, Hsiung gave a talk at Stanford University Law School titled "Changing the Law by Breaking It: a Conversation on Activism, Animal Welfare, and the Law with DxE Founder, Wayne Hsiung."