Either Bluestem Brasserie is in trouble, or an animal activist who recently staged a demonstration at the restaurant chose a terrible time to try to spread her message.

As you can see in the video below, as part of Direct Action Everywhere's "It's Not Food, It's Violence" campaign, DAE organizer Kelly Atlas stormed Yerba Buena's Bluestem Brasserie on October 1, entreating diners to stop eating chicken.

Addressing a nearly-empty restaurant, Atlas tells the tale of her rescued chicken, Snow, her voice frequently breaking with emotion.

Snow's fellow chickens, Atlas says, "just wanted to live too, and they deserve their lives. And right now their eggs, and their milk, and their bodies are on plates inside this restaurant."

Bluestem has two chicken dishes on their menu: a "half chicken two ways" is served for dinner, for $26. On Tuesdays during lunch, they offer a "crispy chicken sandwich" for $16.

You can meet Snow, the chicken who was saved from a Bluestem plate (that Glenn Beck clip ends quickly, I promise) in the video below.

In the video, Atlas mulls the question of what makes one animal a pet (like her dogs) and another animal meat (like her chicken). It's an interesting query to discuss!

But perhaps there would be a larger number of folks debating this issue if activists chose a more popular restaurant, or arrived at a time where there are actually people dining? (Not that we're suggesting that, just spitballing, here!)

After all, according to DAE's "next action" page, Atlas' demonstration isn't the only one planned: all October, diners can expect to see activists "enter a place where animal bodies are being served or sold, separately and secretly but all in funeral attire. One activist brings a small coffin. Another brings a small stand. Two others bring in flowers. They all converge in the general area where the animal flesh is being sold."

It'll go something like this:

Looking at that plan, Bluestem (which refused to comment on the incident to SF Gate, except to say it was "very bad") and its two or three customers got off pretty easy. That said, if you see one of these "Ghosts in the Machine" actions going down, take some video and send it our way!