Urgent Support Needed for Prominent AR Activist

This fundraiser was organized for Rachel Ziegler by the DU National Lawyers Guild.

You can read Rachel’s personal statement here.

From investigating farms, rescuing animals, and spending days in jail, to leading workshops, photographing protests, and building communities in multiple cities across the US, Rachel Ziegler is a prominent activist who has spent the past 8 years of her life dedicated to the animal rights movement. She has been the face of countless fundraisers and press pieces for Direct Action Everywhere, and has influenced thousands of activists in the process (DxE). After a five-year legal battle, Rachel’s trial is now just two months away, but, at the last minute, DxE went back on their promise and is  refusing to pay her lawyer. Without warning, DxE’s Lead Organizer, Almira Tanner, sent Rachel’s attorney an email stating that DxE would not pay him, despite their prior agreement. Here’s what happened and why Rachel needs your help.

On September 29, 2018, 58 activists were arrested in a mass rescue attempt of chickens from Petaluma Poultry in California. Of those 58, 6 prominent DxE activists were later charged with multiple felonies in an attempt to “cut the head off the snake” of DxE, in the words of the Sonoma County police. One of these activists was Rachel Ziegler, alongside Almira Tanner (current lead organizer), Wayne Hsiung (former lead organizer and co-founder), Priya Sawhney (former core member), Jon Frohnmayer (DxE Stakeholder), and Cassie King (current core member). This was an unprecedented legal consequence for a mass rescue attempt, as every activist who was on the farm property was swiftly arrested, even those who were told that this was a low-risk demonstration. Jon and Almira have since taken plea deals, leaving Rachel, Wayne, Priya, and Cassie as the remaining defendants. Each has 4 felonies, except Cassie, whose charges were reduced to misdemeanors. 

Over the five years that Rachel has been in this case as a co-defendant, she has never had any public conflict with DxE as an organization and has never posted anything negative about them. She has had concerns about the abusive culture of DxE, which she privately made known to other stakeholders when she stepped down from her fellowship position in 2019. However, she continued to remain on good terms with DxE and was even paid a quarterly stipend to take photos at DxE’s protests up until this recent incident. 

On June 17, 2023, Rachel was shocked to wake up and find that her personal email, provided to her when she became a full-time stakeholder for DxE, had been deactivated without her knowledge or consent. Rachel then received a message from Almira Tanner admitting that she had deactivated her email. Later, Rachel realized that not only did Almira deactivate her email, but she also hacked into it, assuming ownership of her personal and professional documents stored in her Google Drive. This includes a spreadsheet containing client information pertaining to Rachel’s full time photography LLC business, which is her current profession. In addition to losing important business records, this breach of privacy has resulted in Rachel's inability to access critical information related to her ongoing legal cases, her health records, her conversations with family and friends, and other important aspects of her life. Rachel had relied on this email for dozens of accounts that she now no longer has access to. Meanwhile, Almira Tanner retains unauthorized access to Rachel's private data and can also delete, edit, or remove any of Rachel’s data and even change Rachel’s account passwords. Rachel was never told that DxE had the authority to do this with her email. 

DxE members have defended Almira's action, even stating that this does not fit the definition of hacking, since DxE owns the email. However, when an an activist in the past took over DxE's Twitter account by simply logging in with the password that was given to him and then changing the password, Almira referred to this as hacking, and even went as far as to say "Why would anyone want to join an org that hacks emails, etc... How would anyone trust doing actions with folks doing that? Truly mind boggling."

In May 2023, DxE hired both a local attorney and an out-of-state attorney to represent Rachel in her upcoming trial. Chris Carraway, part of the DU Animal Rights Activist Clinic, was her out-of-state attorney. In order for him to act as Rachel’s main counsel, she was also provided a local attorney with a bar license in California. 

Just four days after the email hacking incident, Almira notified Rachel's local California attorney  that DxE was suddenly backing out on their contract and would no longer be supporting Rachel financially in her case. Immediately following, Chris withdrew for a “conflict of interest” and asked Rachel to consent to this withdrawal. The judge hesitantly allowed him to withdraw.

Almira gave Rachel no advance notice that she would pull Rachel’s legal funding, putting Rachel in a position where she is unable to find and fund adequate representation.This act of severance leaves Rachel in a position where the very foundation of planned legal representation that she has been relying on for the past five years is no longer available to her at a time when she needs it the most. This callous act raises questions about DxE’s integrity and its commitment to ensuring a fair trial for its members. One of DxE’s primary strategies is to train and mobilize hundreds of activists to take part in civil disobedience. Activists are under the impression that they can trust DxE to provide legal and financial support if they get arrested at DxE-organized protests. This is clearly not the case if a dissenting view can cause your legal support to be revoked without warning.

Rachel is facing up to 7 years in prison. 

DxE’s betrayal of Rachel, in such a time of need, is something Rachel would have never thought was possible. Throughout the legal battle, DxE covered Rachel's legal expenses and utilized her name and image to fundraise for their open rescue cases. Supporters, including friends and family, were led to believe that their contributions would aid Rachel's case, unaware that DxE would withhold financial support if she expressed views contrary to the organization's interests. DxE is a multi-million dollar organization that claims that a majority of their funding is specifically for activists who face charges after one of their protests. Yet, even if Rachel was offered a plea deal between now and her trial, she would still be left paying thousands of dollars in restitution, travel and attorney fees. To her knowledge, she has no current plea deal offer on the table, despite DxE's claims that there is one. Rachel's attorneys Kevin and Chris did not know of any current plea deals either.

In response to the unfolding events, Almira Tanner has attempted to justify her actions by claiming that Rachel signed a joint defense agreement before she took legal action with DxE, and that this joint defense agreement stated that her financial support was only dependent on her joint defense. When Rachel pressed Almira about this “agreement,” Almira admitted that it is not legally binding and that it’s not an actual agreement. What Almira was referring to is a “Civil Disobedience Guide” that activists are supposed to read while filling out the jail support form before taking on potentially legally risky roles. The Civil Disobedience Guide clearly states that this is not an actual agreement. There is nothing official or legally binding about these documents.

Almira also conveniently omits her own role in contributing to Rachel’s dissociation from DxE. Rachel only said that she wants to disassociate from DxE as her private response to Almira telling her that she deactivated Rachel’s email and after Almira sent out a mass email to organizers about a group chat conversation that Rachel was a part of. 

DxE claims to value talking to people before calling them out, but instead of doing that, Almira took Rachel’s email away, hacked into it, and insinuated that a group of long-time activists – with serious concerns about what DxE is doing to people and animals –  are infiltrators. Almira then pretends as if it’s unreasonable that Rachel would not want to trust or associate with DxE after Almira deactivated her email and took ownership over her Google drive. Almira never attempted to clarify what “dissociate” means. Prior to finding out that Rachel said something that Almira didn’t like in a private group chat, Almira had not approached Rachel once in the five years despite being a co-defendant in Rachel’s case and a personal friend of hers.

The group chat that Rachel was in was a support chat with survivors of DxE who had suffered various forms of harm over the years. This was a chat to vent, share our experiences, and meet new survivors. One survivor, the former Lead Organizer of the Peru chapter, revealed how she narrowly escaped being trafficked to the US after Wayne Hsiung allegedly encouraged her to marry a local activist as a means to relocate to Berkeley. As a teenager, the survivor faced the daunting prospect of uprooting her life in a politically and economically unstable country without adequate means of support. Furthermore, her relationship with the individual who Wayne advocated for her to marry, in addition to drastic age differences between herself and him, was emotionally abusive. When she sought to discuss her experiences, she faced suppression from DxE members, who discouraged others from engaging with the survivor. Members were even removed from a Signal chat for International DxE Organizers for simply supporting the activist.

Unbeknownst to survivors in the group chat, the activist in Peru independently decided to contact the police about a potentially dangerous situation at Golden Gate Fields, not wanting other activists to suffer as she had. She also didn’t want any other activist to almost be killed, as Thomas Chiang almost was at DxE’s last big conference. Thomas was left paying long-term medical bills on his own. Despite the survivor’s report, the police made no arrests, and do not appear to have engaged in any investigation relating to the activity. Given the traumatic experiences endured by the activist/survivor in Peru, and her resulting concerns about Wayne's potential harm, her decision to alert law enforcement, albeit drastic, was an attempt to prevent further harm and protect fellow activists. The empathetic atmosphere within the chat acknowledged the complex circumstances that influenced this young activist's actions. This empathetic response was twisted by Almira and Wayne into a narrative where the call to police was a group effort made by all members in the group chat, when this is simply inaccurate and an insidious/barely veiled attempt to deflect from the harm that has and is continuing to occur in the organization.

Rachel did not call the police, nor did she tell anyone to call the police. She had no knowledge that the police were going to be called before it happened, and didn’t find out that it happened until a day or so later. In short, she expressed empathy with a friend in a private group chat after she found out. Her friend’s actions came from the intention to protect activists from harm. The only party involved whose actions have actually harmed activists is DxE - by urging people of the importance of getting arrested and then leaving them without legal support, having activists nearly killed at actions, retaliating against and silencing victims, and resulting in entire chapters of activists leaving the network.

Rachel's experience is not an isolated incident within DxE. The culture of abuse, cover-ups, and the silencing of allegations of predatory behavior towards vulnerable women has plagued the organization for almost a decade. The exploitation of individuals in the name of animal rights and heroism has become deeply entrenched in the leadership's modus operandi, leading to significant harm not only to activists but also to the animals they aim to protect.

The recent actions by Almira Tanner, twisting events to vilify activists who have spoken out against abuse, are emblematic of the systemic issues within DxE. Almira's claim that Rachel's email was deactivated for the safety of DxE and Wayne Hsiung is an attempt to deflect responsibility and avoid accountability for her own actions. These events also illustrate the unilateral and authoritarian way that DxE is run, despite outward claims the group makes that it is a “decentralized network.” 

Rachel’s disclosure of these events serves as a call to action. It is crucial to highlight the need for ethical conduct within the animal rights movement and the protection of activists' rights.

The following are the expenses that Rachel will need financial help with:

- Attorney fees (travel, hourly rate)

- Hotel and travel for 2 or more weeks for trial

- Missed work during trial and court appearances

University of Denver Sturm College of Law’s (DU) National Lawyers’ Guild (NLG) student chapter releases this statement in support of Rachel Ziegler. We adamantly believe in our organization’s mission to “use law for the people” and believe that Rachel’s animal liberation and whistleblower advocacy work is necessary work for us to support as students invested in movement lawyering.

Specifically of concern to our chapter at DU is that Rachel was represented by our university’s Animal Activist Defense Clinic between May and June 2023. The Clinic was representing Rachel for the criminal charges she faced in connection with liberating animals at a DxE action in 2018. 

Recently, Rachel expressed concerns about the culture of DxE, including allegations of sexual abuse, harassment, and trafficking. Four days later DxE retaliated against her by pulling funding from her legal case. The DU Clinic attorney representing her, Chris Carraway, withdrew from the case because of a “conflict of interest” and asked Rachel to consent to this withdrawal.

DU students have approached the clinic about our concerns regarding the clinic’s withdrawal from Rachel’s case, as well as the allegations of sexual abuse, harassment, and trafficking at DxE, and our concerns were waved off.

We support whistleblowers and stand beside survivors of sexual violence. We refuse to remain idle as Rachel faces retaliation for standing up for what is right. We ask you to do the same.