Local Butcher Shop hangs animal-rights sign under duress to stop protests
By Natalie Orenstein Aug. 2, 2017, 8 a.m.
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/08/...ekly-protests/
Reminiscent of the "smoking kills" labels on packs of cigarettes, a sign denouncing the killing of animals now hangs, counterintuitively, in the window of a North Berkeley butcher shop.
The owners of The Local Butcher Shop on Cedar Street agreed, under duress, to put the sign up in exchange for a promise by animal-rights activists to stop holding weekly demonstrations in front of the store.
The Bay Area chapter of the national non-profit Direct Action Everywhere has protested — sometimes half-naked and covered in fake blood — while butchery classes are in session every Sunday since April. The group, which is also known as DXE, says it will only hold two more protests if the new sign, which says, "Attention: Animals' lives are their right. Killing them is violent and unjust, no matter how it's done," stays up for the next year.
Monica Rocchino, who owns The Local Butcher Shop with her husband and former Chez Panisse chef Aaron Rocchino, said she considers the deal extortion....
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Bowing to pressure, a Berkeley butcher shop makes a deal with vegan protesters
By Maura Judkis
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...stop-doing-it/
The protests were intense: People dripping with fake blood, tightly bound in plastic wrap as if they were cuts of meat. Singing, shouting, lecturing customers. It's what Direct Action Everywhere, an animal rights group, would do every time the Local Butcher Shop would host its butchering classes in its Berkeley, Calif., store.
But after four months, the protests have finally slowed down, and for an unlikely reason: After receiving a list of demands from the group, which also goes by DXE, the butcher shop capitulated. Although the Local Butcher Shop touts its farms' humane practices on its website, owners agreed to hang a sign in their window that reads "Attention: Animals lives are their right. Killing them is violent and unjust, no matter how it's done."....