Jay Caspian Kang at the New Yorker:
Two years ago, I wrote about Wayne Hsiung, the founder of the animal-liberation group Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE. Hsiung is among the most interesting activists I’ve encountered, in part because he faces a nearly impossible task: the public does not like animal-rights activists, and, even if people don’t want beagles to be tortured in testing facilities, it’s relatively easy for them to turn a blind eye to such things. That challenge of advancing a cause that not many people will get behind forced Hsiung and DxE to come up with increasingly novel ways to further their aims. Most famously, they engaged in so-called open rescues, breaking into breeding facilities and factory farms, basically kidnapping distressed animals, and then giving them new homes. Hsiung’s mission, outside of saving animals, was to get arrested and charged with various felonies so that he could then represent himself in court and argue that helping an animal in distress is legally justified.
But, last year, Hsiung made a surprising announcement: he was enrolling in a seminary. In a blog post about the decision, he wrote, “I have spent most of the last 20 years of my life understanding the power of disruption. But one cannot disrupt, effectively or sustainably, when one stands alone.
more here.
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