Not really sure what to put here…I usually put relevant excerpts, but that got this post deleted for doing that
Laura Passaglia, the Sonoma County Superior Court judge who presided over the trial, barred Hsiung from showing most evidence of animal cruelty, depriving him of the ability to show his motives for entering the farms.
What a bitch.
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What part of “the whole truth” does that judge not fucking understand?
The part where she either:
A. Is literally being paid to look the other way
or
B. Doesn’t want anything to come to light that could affect her way of life
Or any combination of those
Or she’s just a bitch
I’d go with A and C there. The whole county is apparently in bed with these massive farms.
I hate this but I think the judge is trying to keep the crimes seperate. The trial is not about what illegal things the farm was doing, it was a trial about this person breaking the law when they broke into the farm. I don’t know what the laws are exactly where this is but a lot of the time animals are owned which puts them in the category of property but with special protections. So the judge is looking at it from you broke into someone’s property to take video or whatever of someone treating their property poorly. I hate this because without doing this it’s incredibly hard to get evidence while going through the process legally. It’s usually setup in a way that gives ample opportunity for the offender to hide any wrong doing before inspection or other laws that hinder the animal rights people. If a police officer showed up without a warrant and walked in and collected evidence it probably couldn’t be used to prosecute them in court anyway so this is a bit like that. The judge might take the mitigating factors into consideration but the trial is still about them breaking into property illegally. The whole truth is primarily focused on the break in
California law is supposed to allow a necessity defense, the fact is they knew the farms were abusing animals (they had undercover people find employment with them and see first hand, which is legal and not trespassing) and they found the same abuse on the day.
You’re definitely allowed to break into a car to rescue a baby. You might also be allowed to break into a hot car to save a dog, in which case you should also be allowed to break into a poultry farm to save abused animals.
They didn’t deny they broke in, but said there was good reason. The judge refused to allow the reason to be heard, and furthermore refused to file briefs from legal experts. What’s more, the prosecutors declined to proceed with the various theft charges, instead opting for a misdemeanor trespassing charge and suping that up with a felony conspiracy charge. Making a felony out of a misdemeanor and not allowing the defense to be heard points to a coordinated attempt targeted solely at the leader of this campaign group.
Yeh, that sounds fucked. Thanks for filling me in. Also if I spent half the time reading the article and listening as I do getting carried away and writing a long winded reply I would probably be able to make a better assessment. Thank you again
You don’t get to break into a car and rehome the baby or dog. They trespassed, broke in, and stole property. If they don’t like the practice, laws, or enforcement of existing laws there are legal ways to change those things. Vigilante Justice isn’t the answer and this criminal isn’t innocent of any of the crimes he’s been found guilty of.
You can find the practice of the slaughter house reprehensible and still maintain a life as a functional law abiding citizen while working towards progress at the same time.
They trespassed, broke in, and stole property.
And yet, the prosecutors here explicitly dropped the charges for breaking and entering and theft. They only went for trespass.
This is because they successfully argued against the other crimes in other trials, and convinced juries that the animals weren’t actually worth anything because they were dead or half dead.
The prosecution intentionally went for the weakest charge, then inflated it into a federal charge, and the judge intentionally didn’t let them defend against it. That reeks of collusion, and a disgustingly biased judge.
The practice of slaughtering isn’t at issue here. The issue is the welfare of the animals while they’re alive.
this criminal isn’t innocent of any of the crimes he’s been found guilty of.
He did not plead innocent to the crime. He admitted to doing the thing that was a statutory offense. However, in fair court proceedings, you should be allowed to give “special reasons” - that is, you should be allowed to present to the court that it was necessary to cause a lesser harm in order to prevent a greater harm. If the court had considered this and ruled against him, that would be one thing, but they didn’t even allow anyone to listen to that argument. That makes the ruling objectively wrong.
Nobody that writes laws are interested in “the whole truth.”
For those who aren’t necessarily concerned about a factory farm environment, they may not consider these animals as “valuable” enough to care.
However, to appeal to those people on a different level, that is the food you eat. And the people producing it are being very very very very protective about how it is produced. They are doing something to your food that they don’t want you to know about, and it certainly isn’t good that they’re trying to hide it.
Factory farming is a huge reason for disease outbreaks. Bird flu? Mad cow disease? Right here, folks. And they’ll package up your food without a thought other than the money they make from it.
Are you okay with the animals you eat living in conditions that could expose you to health risks? I hope you would be outraged if a food company was potentially putting you at risk because of their concern over their profits.
You should care.
Producing food is fucking hard work. I have a family farm where I raise my own beef and vegetables. It’s not easy. I grew up hating it because while I was working the garden, the tobacco and feeding cattle, my friends were doing fuck all.
The human race is so disconnected from their food supply it’s disgusting. People have no clue if someone took a dump beside their lettuce in the field or not. (This is how a lot of those vegetables get diseases when they do recalls.)
But, humans are lazy and want things easy. I wish everyone had to grow their own food for five years to see how difficult it is to feed your face, but it’s never gonna happen. People want the benefit of farming without doing any of the work.
I was gonna raise beef and sell it, but I’d rather just feed my family. Despite growing up hating farming, I have a better appreciation for my food and we need that shit everyday.
As someone who does a bit of gardening, I do appreciate all the efforts put into making sure I get a good and reliable safe source of food.
By raise beef you mean raise cows through rape and then murder them or send them off to be murdered?
You don’t have to rape cows for meat, just for dairy. You can totally get beef without rape.
you don’t need to take cows for dairy, either
no one is raping cows
You should care.
There’s another aspect to it as well. My grandfather suffered from PTSD from working as a butcher almost his entire adult life - I’ve recently learned that it’s a pretty common thing for people working in abattoirs.
If they don’t care abuot the animals, they might (and that’s a very iffy “might”) care about the people.
I just want to point out that most butchers don’t work on the kill line. I can see PTSD being common there, but it is definitely not common for retail butchers. Most retail butchers don’t even see a carcass anymore.
Factory farming is a huge reason for disease outbreaks.
Yes
And they’ll package up your food without a thought other than the money they make from it.
No. Most people want to do good, they don’t want to hurt others. They don’t care about the lives of the animals, but most farmers, factory farmers included would hate to know that they led to people getting mad cow disease.
Most people want to do good, they don’t want to hurt others.
That’s very… naïvely optimistic when it comes to big business.
I’m sure they’d be upset to know that they’d be losing money if a recall happens, but the vast majority of factory farms WILL cut corners dangerously close to make more money.
“Don’t get caught” is the golden rule for the bottom line.
The dxe is about STOPPING animal agriculture altogether, so…
We can’t even guarantee the welfare or basic human kindness towards people.
One step at a time.
You act like it’s mutually exclusive, when it just isn’t. And guess what? Not eating meat and consuming less animal produce is significantly easier than fighting injustice that happens in foreign countries.
Lots of people have it better then factory farms though.
You’re more than likely to go to prison for messing with the rich’s revenue streams.
painfully true
This has been true for a long time. Upton Sinclair, writing over 100 years ago about improving working conditions (for humans) ended up missing the mark and the end result was food quality regulations. Now, folks are trying to expose animal cruelty but end up getting stronger protections for corporations 🤡 we just can’t seem to care about living things 🙁
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Yes, as I said, and great quote to share!
It’s not illegal to “expose” animal cruelty in California, and no one has ever been charged with doing so. Animal cruelty is prosecuted all the time in California. The headline is stupid. The headline is wrong.
You an idiot. Read beyond the headline and you’ll see that in California activists are being charged for being attention to deplorable conditions in animal farms yet the farms they exposed have no charges against them.
was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor trespass and one count of felony conspiracy to trespass last week
Activists aren’t given carte blanche to break the law. That’s called vigilantism. And it’s illegal.
?
I was just showing one of many examples from the article that the activists weren’t “being charged for being attention to deplorable conditions in animal farms” but actual other crimes.
I was agreeing with you, sorry, should have been more specific!
felony conspiracy to trespass
Anyone know what the difference is between a misdemeanor conspiracy to trespass and a felony conspiracy to trespass?
The first sentence literally contradicts the headline. Headline says you could get in trouble for “exposing animal cruelty” while the first sentence says an activist is being charged for “rescuing animals.” They did more than just expose cruelty; they took it upon themselves to stop it and in doing so broke the law. That’s what they are being charged for; not the exposure to the cruelty which is only being exposed because these activists are being arrested for trespassing and theft and it made the news.
The headline is wrong. The headline is stupid.
Message board hypocrisy, a concerto in three movements:
-
Moderato: In which the villain claims someone who hasn’t read or understood the article is an idiot.
-
Adagio cantabile: the friendly townspeople read the article and lo! The villain himself did not understand the article!
-
Allegro scherzando: where it is revealed to all that, by their own criteria, the villain actually called themselves an idiot. Bravo!
-
There’s a bit of difference between “exposing animal cruelty” and stealing livestock.
Bit of a fucked up situation when conscious beings are considered property though.
My cat is a conscious being.
I still own her.
I also have a cat.
I am her legal custodian, she isn’t property.
I was just borrowing it osfficer
It is weird just how secretive the slaughterhouses are.
I don’t usually discuss this sort of thing very much with carnists IRL, because I tend to find their “arguments” and their positions rather tired and boring and in general completely irrational. The “but where do you get your protein?” type of questions or “I tried being a vegan/vegetarian but it didn’t agree with me because of my special DNA due to my ancestry of northern Europeans or whatever” conspiracy theories are especially fun. It’s usually the carnists that go out of their way to be activists about their choices, not me.
I’ll usually answer direct questions and leave it at that. I find there is a certain type of carnist that get especially defensive (almost always men suffering from toxic masculinity) around the very presence of veg*ns and want to get into arguments, especially while eating.
But there have been times where I’ve asked why slaughterhouses have so much secrecy in some of these “conversations” where the carnist just won’t drop the topic and I’ve noticed that gives them some pause. At least for a small glimmer of time. I think it is because these carnist activists are the ones with the most amount of guilt and they know that most (normal) people don’t want to witness what goes on in slaughterhouses…
Are slaughter houses secretive?
I was raised in an agriculture focused community and did the whole FFA thing in highschool. I’ve since moved to another state and am now living the life of a city slicker, so maybe I’ve just become out of touch, but back then none of the “how the sausage is made” stuff was hidden from us. Hell we had a whole field trip to tour a pair of meat processing plants (one for poultry, one for beef).
Have things changed over the last 5-10 years? Is my experience just an outlier?
I think they’re referring to this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
Not necessarily the slaughtering part, but the living conditions that these animals are stuck in, sometimes for years, is barbaric. Imagine being in a cage where you can’t walk and you have to stand in your own shit for days on end.
The ethics of animal slaughter and how it’s done are almost a separate conversation imo. No living creature deserves to be tortured (and outright torture does occur, see Earthlings or Dominion for the details)
The ethics of animal slaughter and how it’s done are almost a separate conversation imo
It is a separate conversation, and I’m glad you pointed it out because it’s an important distinction and one that is far too frequently overlooked.
Bringing an animal into the world with the intent of later killing it when it is entirely unnecessary to do so seems a bit wrong no?
I dunno, maybe your state did not have ag-gag laws.
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people don’t want to witness what goes on in slaughterhouses
That’s exactly why they’re secretive. It’s also true of many other industries and processes. There are a lot of things we benefit from that have unpleasant origins. When it comes to meat, you can make a relatively easy choice about it.
In my country it’s not a secret how these places operate, I went to a slaughter house as a class trip back in high school + one of our relatives owns a massive chicken and cow farm. The animals’ conditions are vastly different here than what I see from these terrifying documentaries.
My favourite kind of carnists are the ones who say “Because you eat none, I’m going to eat two hamburgers!”
Uh, okay. Is that supposed to spite me? Enjoy your heart attack, dickhead.
Oh, right. I didn’t even mention how the tired old Dad “jokes” get very boring, very fast. Especially when repeated nearly every time, by the same set of people, at almost every meal. That, or they nearly reflexively have to talk about how much they love meat, love to hunt, love to fish, love to grill, yadda yadda. No one brought up vegn anything mind you, it’s just the mere presence of any vegn(s) that seems to cause this…shrug.
i like to point them to vegetarian body builders, like scooby1961 for example. the guy eats a lot of nuts.
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Seems like the next option is to arrange for mass arrests in a very public direct action. Massively overflow the jail in that judge’s district with animal rights activists until they’re forced to dismiss the cases.
There’s no way this can backfire.
direct action with the goal of filling jails has a long and very successful history, going back AT LEAST to the IWW Free Speech Fights. It also saw widespread success during the fight for Civil Rights.
Can you bring up an example that wasn’t 50+ years ago?
For profit prison companies:
Rubbing their hands together like an oldschool nintendo villain
Just sub the title for “Wealthy people or corporations are far less likely to be punished than someone whistleblowing that makes them look bad.”
Generically apply that our legal system.
work in a non food producing field that uses the same stringent requirements as food to table is suppose to have
one thing constantly cropping up in workroom discussions is the fact people will grab a competitors product with cheaper inferior questionable ingredients that comes from places not paying employees a proper wage unclean conditions the whole nine yards every time and price is not always the final deciding factor
this will take more than people standing up for animal rights (thanks and shout out to the ones on the front line) might be a whole change of culture that is needed before this issue could be addressed
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This is one thing I really don’t understand, how can you think someone should go to jail for beating a dog, but be happy to fund the slaughter of hundreds of animals over your life.
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Wait…
Do your dogs not eat meat?
Mine don’t.
Unlike cats who are obligate carnivores, dogs are “opportunistic carnivores”. They are able to digest plants, and a high quality vegetarian dog food is actually significantly healthier for them than the " grain-free" diets that have become so popular in the last few years and have been linked to increased heart disease.
After looking into it, I seems this is highly disputed by most of veterinary science, but I’ll admit it’s not well studied and maybe you’re right. But we do know meat is okay for dogs. We do not know if a meatless diet isn’t harmful. I can’t imagine why lean animal protein would be bad for an animal bread from wolves.
And yes, cats absolutely need meat.
You’re disconnecting from what is to be a human being, I feel sorry for you and hope that some day you can get back in sync with nature.
Because cruelty is the point when beating a dog, whereas it’s a byproduct in meat production
Oh hell to the no
Make me
Stop. Trying. To. Force. Your. Religion. Down. Other. Peoples. Throats.
Stop caring about climate change? Nope, I’ll still protest animal agriculture practices
As soon as you suggest people stop eating meat, suddenly they have no moral standing or their change won’t make a difference. It’s just sad. People will hide behind ‘personal choice’ as if it absolves them of supporting the industry and any wrong doing that comes as a consequence of it. You can’t justify breeding an animal into existence for the sole purpose of killing and eating it when it is entirely unnecessary to do so. It’s probably the biggest example of injustice in the modern world, next to slavery.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Hsiung is now being held in jail at least until his sentencing hearing on November 30 (like many other people detained in Sonoma County, he’s only allowed to leave his cell for 30 minutes per day, DxE communications director Cassie King told me).
“A big feature of these trials has been the opportunity to expose the lawlessness of the industry and juxtapose that with the trivial infractions by people who are rescuing animals … When you aren’t able to make that contrast for the jury, it’s a lot harder to win.”
Theft charges have opened the door for activists to show evidence of the health and physical condition of the animals they took, to try to persuade jurors that they were so sick that they wouldn’t have made it to slaughter, making them worthless to their owners — a defense that proved successful in DxE’s recent trials in Utah and Merced, California.
The DA office’s involvement in the Farm Bureau event “was to provide the attendees with information about criminal law as it pertained to trespassing,” Sonoma County Assistant District Attorney Brian Staebell told Vox in an email.
One of DxE’s major goals in its trials has been to win the right to present a “necessity defense,” in which a defendant argues that they had no option but to commit a crime to prevent a greater evil from occurring, like breaking into a hot car to save a baby or dog inside.
For example, Passaglia placed a gag order on Hsiung, barring him from talking to media during the trial, which was condemned as unconstitutional by UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and by the ACLU of Northern California.
The original article contains 3,561 words, the summary contains 279 words. Saved 92%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I hate when animals are tortured, but its hard to defend such an extremist organisation.
Well, they tried decades of lobbying for legal changes and that didn’t work.
The same type of argument can also be made about Israel and Hamas. Yeah there is an enormous point to be made for the Palestinians, a point that should have been fixed like 60-80 decades ago, but that doesn’t take away that Hamas is a horrible organization with horrible people that (as much as I hate death penalties) shoud all be lined up to a wall and shot to make the world a little better. Yes, same should be said about a number of Israeli politicians.
Please keep in mind that it’s possible for both sides to be wrong, and that it’s also possible to be part wrong and part right. Real life isn’t that black and white.
I thought about that analogy, but also thought about climate protestors shutting down traffic and getting arrested for that.
I don’t judge people who eat meat, but I absolutely think factory farming as it exists in the USA is a barbaric system that is in desperate need of reform.
It is, I doubt anyone would disagree with that and the only reason it’s so bad is money. Should be easily fixed with laws but if your politicians are in the pockets of company owners, that becomes difficult.
This is how abortion bombers think
Except nobody was harmed by these protests?
Extremist? Do you think they people who keep living creatures in 2x2 cages for their entire “lives” (if you can even call it that), pump them full of unnatural hormones, and harvest them for their meat are the normal, well-adjusted ones in this scenario? People wanting animals to be treated ethically are only extremists in a world that normalizes brutality
Are they going to prison for exposing animal cruelty, or is it just committing crimes in service of the goal of exposing animal cruelty? I bet I know which.
Well, due to ag gag laws, you’re committing a crime by exposing animal cruelty. So.
I’m not subject to a gag law… I don’t even know what the statement means. I’m also not a journalist, or the subject of a court case, so it’s unlikely to have any impact to post comments on Lemmy.
So freeing livestock is a crime in your eyes?
My eyes don’t define crime. That’s not how it works. The law defines it. And the court looks at the law. I’m not a child so I understand this.
Do you consider Harriet Tubman a criminal too?
Yeah, that’s what makes her brave. We just don’t say she was arrested for “speaking truth to power” or any other sensational nonsense. We say she was arrested for the crime she committed because it makes you think about why that’s even a crime.
Honestly, I believe the vast majority of effective and meaningful protests will involve a crime. Usually, some form of vandalism/trespassing all the way up to theft. We hope not violence against people but sometimes counter protests force hands.
I just think it’s important to own it (I mean, dont confess and get yourself arrested needlessly LOL) because that’s part of the deal. Things rarely happen when everyone is nice and cordial.
So why do we need to differentiate between “arrested for exposing abuse” and “arrested for breaking unjust laws in the process of exposing abuse”?
Because that’s how honesty works. My two phrases were similar, but the headline wasn’t accurate to the truth.
Ethically no, legally yes?
That’s sort of just how laws work. Legal doesn’t mean good.
Exactly. Some people think that if you have an altruistic goal, you’re exempt from the rules everyone else has to follow.
Yes, I actually agree that there are laws worth breaking for protest. I just dislike sensational headlines.
It’s the fact that you are willing to face those charges that makes the act powerful. But phrasing it in a way that makes it look like you are in a totalitarian state, and being punished for speech instead of the crime actually committed does the movement a disservice, as you start erecting your own strawman for people to knock down.
They’re not punished for the speech, they’re punished for breaking the law.
Correct. That’s what I said.
