On a warm night in late September, in arguably , passersby in downtown Durham averted their eyes from a progressive protest.
Six demonstrators held signs and handed out flyers. "Say no to animal abuse," one sign read. Another: "Your choice MATTERS. You can stop the VIOLENCE."
At their center, five protesters in sunglasses held TVs and a laptop and stood back-to-back to form what they called "The Cube of Truth." The screens displayed of cruelty on factory farms: Piglets, beaten against the cement; chicks, slowly pulverized alive.
According to Josh Baldwin, one of the group's co-founders, the protesters try to conceal their identities so audiences focus less on the advocates themselves and more on their message: Treat animals more humanely.
The organization behind the demonstration, North Carolina Animal Advocates United, has gained attention for their animal rights . While they still advocate against factory farms, they've focused their attention more recently on shutting down certain pet stores and pushing for pet seekers to adopt from shelters. They reason that pets tend to garner more sympathy.
"There's huge momentum behind it," Baldwin said. "A lot more people love dogs and (are) willing to go out and stand up for this than other animals."
Fighting for all animals, not just pets, has proven difficult. Madeleine Jones, another co-founder and social media specialist at The Humane League, said that "the most common reaction we get is people not wanting to talk."
Not anger, or resistance. Silence.
Origins and Ethics
NCAAU was founded in May, 2023 by members of the Raleigh Vegans Facebook page looking to fill the gap of vegan advocacy groups in the Triangle.
Their outlines their philosophy: "ALL animals are equal. We are anti-speciesist. We are boldly nonviolent. While we support animal liberation in its entirety, we understand and support welfare initiatives that help meet our goal."
Speciesism, a term popularized by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, is the belief that humans are superior to other animals and have the right to be cruel to them. Some NCAAU members compared it to the hierarchies in racism or sexism.
"Animals want to live," Baldwin said. "They're sentient. They can feel pleasure or pain. They want families. They want homes. They like good food ... I just think it's morally wrong to kill somebody that doesn't want to die."
In theory, his criticism extends to indigenous meat-eating traditions, but, in practice, that population is so small compared to factory farms, Baldwin said he doesn't focus on it.
Instead, they focus on using the Cube of Truth outreaches as opportunities to educate people who might not think about how their food is sourced.
One such lesson includes how labels can trick consumers into thinking products are more ethically produced than they really are. The USDA's term "free-range," for instance, to the outdoors, saying nothing to whether it actually spent any time outside.
Loud and Confrontational
In August of 2023, NCAAU began their first major series of protests, taking up signs outside restaurants that sold foie gras 鈥� duck liver that's been fattened by force-feeding the bird a high calorie diet.
It was at one such protest against Oak Steakhouse in Raleigh that they developed their signature style: Unafraid and highly confrontational.
"Stop force-feeding ducks!" one man screamed at customers and staff inside the restaurant. Protesters chalked "TORTURED DUCK LIVER SOLD HERE" on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, and held large poster board signs reading messages like "FOIE GRAS = DISEASED DUCK LIVER" outside the big glass windows facing diners.
When the steakhouse refused to take foie gras off their menu, Baldwin sent a of the protest to restaurants across the triangle. Five 鈥� M Sushi Cary, M Sushi Durham, M Tempora in Durham, G.58 in Morrisville, and Bluebird in Chapel Hill 鈥� agreed to stop selling it.
They tried similarly confrontational tactics this past November at a on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. They opposed the vendor's use of eggs produced by chickens kept in battery cages, which are rows of small wire crates. To illustrate the point, they had one member don a chicken costume and curl up inside a small cage.
For now, though, these kinds of demonstrations are on pause. "People want to be a part of winning things," Baldwin said, and the in-person protests were unsuccessful and draining. While they might continue them in the future, for now, NCAAU is focusing their efforts in an area that's seen very recent success: Shutting down pet shops.
Pet Store Protests
On March 8, a sunny Saturday, more than a dozen NCAAU members took up signs on Six Forks Road in Raleigh to protest the pet store and "" Superstar Puppies.
For four hours, protesters held signs with phrases like "Adopt. Never shop!" and "Honk if you are against animal cruelty!" beside the highway bordering the Peachtree Market shopping center, where the pet shop is located.
"It's entirely unacceptable, in a state where due to lack of shelter space, that a store is just pumping out puppies for thousands of dollars," Jones said.
She elaborated that North Carolina animal shelters have the , at 14.3% of animals killed.
That demonstration came on the heels of Petopia, a pet shop in downtown Raleigh, this past January following protests and a against the store that grew to nearly 17,000 signatures.
"Please go to your local shelter or rescue," Jones said. "They have wonderful dogs or puppies that desperately need homes."
"There's no reason for it to exist," Scott Gurstein, a member of NCAAU and an animal activist since the 90s, added. He called it "not just unethical and immoral, but completely unnecessary."
The protesters briefly demonstrated in front of the store itself, chanting "What do we want? Ban puppy mills! When do we want it? Now!"
NCAAU protester Alisha Kettner addressed the customers directly, trying to quietly reason with them as they approached the store, then yelling, "You're murdering dogs by buying in here," as the door closed behind the patrons.
"Look, I totally understand, but it's not my mission," Carlos Bautista, a customer at Superstar Puppies, said of the protest. He respected their cause, but added, "in my case, my parents want a specific dog that (they've) always wanted and we're trying to get that for (them)."
A spokesperson for the shop further defended their business, saying, "What are we supposed to do with these dogs? They gotta go to a home too, right?"
But NCAAU emphasized that the way Superstar Puppies sources their dogs 鈥� from for-profit breeders, they claim 鈥� is fundamentally unethical.
While the company they have a "No Puppy Mill Promise," NCAAU co-founder Josh Baldwin says that if a business gets money by breeding puppies, "that's a puppy mill." And with such high euthanization rates in North Carolina shelters, Baldwin says buying a dog from a puppy mill is like killing a dog at the shelter.
After being told by Raleigh police that their permit did not allow for protesting on private property, the demonstrators moved back to the sidewalk next to the highway and attracted a few protesters outside NCAAU.
Luke Luftschein saw the protest while working at the Starbucks across the street and decided to join in. "It's such preventable suffering, and it's suffering for the sake of aesthetic, for the sake of profit, and there are so many animals that are being tossed out onto the street that need a home," they said.
NCAAU three days later in Raleigh's City Hall. Liz Hye, a member of the advocacy group, spoke at the public comment session to advocate for the statewide banning of the commercial sale of dogs.
"I think people just want a family pet and Google 'puppy near me,' and don't really think about the consequences," Hye .
She's lived in Wake County for a decade and has volunteered at the Wake County Animal Center since 2021. The shelter, she says, is required to take in every animal brought to them. In 2024 alone, that was 8,522 animals, according to Hye. About half were adopted.
"Does it sound like we need any additional animals bred and sold in our city?" she said, emphasizing that there are no legal consequences for breeders that "fill our already-stretched shelters and rescues."
She ended her talk by walking out of the chamber, other members of NCAAU in the audience wordlessly standing up and following her out the door.
What's Next
In theory, NCAAU would love to push state lawmakers to abolish NCGS 19A-27, the statute that permits the retail sale of dogs. But their petitions are unlikely to find success, they admit, for two reasons.
First, activists need statewide approval for these bills to pass due to the state's "broad-construction" statute. It prevents local governments from passing legislation that state officials disagree with.
Second, as WRAL has , animal welfare laws are extremely difficult to pass in North Carolina. Even legislation preventing dogs from being tied up outside faces opposition from lawmakers for fear it would be a "slippery slope" to animal rights bills that could harm the state's lucrative hog or poultry industries. North Carolina farms produce more than 4 billion pounds of hog meat per year, from which they generate more than $3 billion of annual gross income, . Poultry is even bigger business. In 2023, North Carolina farms for slaughter for a value of more than $8.6 billion.
So, for now, NCAAU is mostly focusing their efforts on shutting down individual pet shops. They're considering protesting outside the offices of the veterinarians the stores are required to use in order to stay open. If they can prevent vets from working with the pet shops, the stores would be forced to close their doors.
They also plan to continue their Cube of Truth protests. As long as people turn away from the TVs and shut their eyes to the protest, Baldwin says they have a reason to be out there.
"This is standard practice in the industry that people don't know about. People don't want to watch it. Nobody would turn this on for fun."
We don't see it, he says, because the state's animal agriculture industry tries to hide it. "If people saw this and realized this is their food, they'd be turned off by it."
He pointed to North Carolina's "ag-gag" laws like the that prevented the undercover documentation of workplace conditions, including factory farms. The law was ruled by a North Carolina judge in 2020.
Ultimately, though, the protests are an uphill battle. "We're still working on some human rights, and for a lot of people, (they) forget talking about animal rights," Jones said. She believes you can do both. "Factory farming is ."
Regardless of how successful they are, Baldwin says the fight itself is worth it.
"I used to play video games and read comic books and like, now that just seems so pointless," he said. "There's meaning in my life now by helping animals."
