Futility of "Big Green" activism

SUBHEAD: To minimize human suffering and protect ecosystems, working locally to build resilience is the best strategy.

By Richard Heinberg & Tim DeChristopher on 29 March 2018 for Resilience -
(http://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-03-29/getting-past-trump-part-3-the-futility-of-big-green-activism-a-conversation-with-tim-dechristopher/)


Image above: Still image from film Bidder 70 of Tim DeChristopher . In 2008 the environmental activist made bogus bids for 22,000 acres of federal land up for auction. Some people found his actions inspiring, but after the courts finished with him, he found himself in jail. The film Bidder 70 follows DeChristopher’s growth as an outspoken activist even as the criminal case against him intensified. From (http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/through-lens-bidder-70-0).

If environmentalists hope to have any real success in the age of Trump, they will have to change strategies and tactics in response to a transformed political and social context.

Back in the long-ago, hard-to-recall days before Trump became president, environmental (as well as peace and human rights) nonprofit organizations engaged in a routine, ritualized two-part dance of raising money from contributors, and then trying to convince policy makers to do something to save the world — or at least reduce the scale of harms being done.

What was actually accomplished was never enough to actually turn society in the direction of sustainability, but the effort was in some respects its own reward: Activists felt useful, and in some cases, fundraising produced enough to pay salaries. And there were occasional victories to celebrate.

Now the United States is led by an authoritarian who is steadily undermining our democratic norms and institutions, and a Congress that is either bought and paid for by moneyed interests, or is too scared to challenge them meaningfully.

It’s clear that no amount of cajoling, wheedling, imploring, threatening or explaining will convince Congress or the executive branch of the federal government to do anything whatsoever to address the panoply of do-or-die problems confronting us. Why even bother asking them?

Recall it was the failure of elites to address real underlying problems that contributed to the advent of Trump in the first place. Now, of course, at least from environmentalists’ perspective, Trump is making everything much, much worse: It’s probably fair to say that the Trump administration has never met an environmental regulation it didn’t want to kill.

What should environmentalists do under these changed circumstances? What strategies should environmental organizations pursue?

In order to get some helpful perspective, I recently corresponded with activist Tim DeChristopher, cofounder of Climate Disobedience Center. I respect DeChristopher for two important reasons: He has a good understanding of the range of overshoot issues humanity currently faces, and he has the courage of his convictions (he spent nearly two years in federal prison for a creative act of civil disobedience recounted in the documentary film Bidder 70).

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of my conversation with DeChristopher.

I first asked Tim what he thought about the actions of the big mainstream environmental organizations in the context of the new Trump administration.

Tim DeChristopher:
I really don’t think that most mainstream climate environmental organizations are operating with any kind of intentional strategy in which they think that what they are doing will lead to positive change.

When groups are mobilizing their members to “send a message” or “make their voices heard” to [US Secretary of the Interior Ryan] Zinke, [Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott] Pruitt or Trump, I doubt any staffers in those groups actually think that what they are doing has any potential of working.

I think they are hemmed-in by the norms of social movement organizing. Those norms demand relentless optimism and positivity, so there is very little room for open reflection on our mistakes, changing direction or acknowledging that certain goals are no longer possible. Those norms also define leadership around knowing what to do and giving people tangible and immediate things to do.

I think most organizations and leaders would feel extremely nervous about saying to their community, “I don’t know what needs to be done in this unprecedented situation.” There is a mainstream assumption that they would no longer be justified in their leadership position if they expressed that uncertainty. But I think one of our most critical needs for a future of climate chaos is to develop a model of uncertain leadership.

This is a kind of leadership that can hold space for sitting with uncertainty and empower a broader community of people to actively think and work in that space of vulnerability. Such leadership is embodied not in one’s ability to control a situation, but in one’s courage to engage with and relate to the situation.

Richard Heinberg: 
Historically, nonviolent protest and civil disobedience have developed as successful strategies for social change mostly within the context of liberal democracies. For example, there has been some discussion about whether [Mahatma] Gandhi’s efforts would have been as successful if Britain had not had a free press and other democratic institutions.

Without a free press, regimes can simply imprison and kill protesters with minimal public awareness of either the protest or its repression. How do you think protest might evolve if the US continues its trajectory toward authoritarianism?

Tim DeChristopher:
I think that Trump has certainly changed the dynamics of civil disobedience at the federal level. It’s worth noting that Erica Chenoweth’s research has shown that nonviolent civil resistance is often more effective under authoritarian regimes, but I think Trump represents a very rare kind of power.

Part of the efficacy of civil disobedience is often that it pulls back the facade of decency or democracy to reveal power that is actually rooted in violence.

The police violence at Standing Rock was an embarrassment to Obama because he had hinged his authority on lofty ideals, but in fact his real power was the state’s monopoly on violence. Even Bush Jr. ran on a platform of being a “compassionate conservative.” It was a lie, but he needed that lie.

Trump, however, never tried to project a facade of compassion or even decency. His power is based on ruthlessness and the breaking of taboos. If he is put into a position in which he has to violently repress nonviolent dissent, it may actually strengthen his power rather than undermine it.

In terms of media, I think our trajectory is not one of outright suppression of a free press to the point of avoiding public awareness, but rather a bifurcation of the press and social media to the point that no one has to accept anything they don’t want to believe.

This is a serious challenge not only for civil disobedience, but for all social change efforts regardless of strategy. It is further exacerbated by new video manipulation technologies. It is very hard to see how we avoid either nihilism or civil war.

Richard Heinberg:  
So, what to do?

Tim DeChristopher:
My current thinking is that our best bet to overcome these challenges is making protest far more diffuse and widespread. With the lack of a central narrative or even a consensus reality, big iconic protests with famous people will likely continue to become less effective.

But we all have a small circle of people whom we can influence in ways that are not dependent on media. Because our current culture has such justifiable skepticism of manipulation, one’s own willingness to sacrifice is more critical than ever for using our influence effectively, so I think civil disobedience will continue to play an important role for that.

So perhaps this is to say that protest needs to follow the path that needs to be followed for so many other changes we need to make: more localized, more diverse, more people involved, more experimentation. No goddamn mono-crop social movements!

Richard Heinberg:
How is your own organization, the Climate Disobedience Center, dealing with these issues and challenges? What concrete actions are your taking that different from the strategies of the ‘Big Green’ groups?

Tim DeChristopher: The Climate Disobedience Center began as a resource and support center for folks doing civil disobedience against the fossil fuel industry.  At the time, a certain brand of safe and limited civil disobedience was being increasingly embraced by the mainstream of the climate movement.

We felt that there was an opportunity to work with those folks who were engaging in direct action and help them manifest the full potential of vulnerable and transformative civil disobedience. We primarily ended up filling the particular void in the movement around supporting folks after the point of arrest as they engage with the court system.

Over time, we realized that rather than providing a plug-in service that could easily interface with a mainstream model, we were approaching this work with a fundamentally different paradigm that demanded a holistic structure.

So we refocused our efforts on building small praxis groups of holistic support, like a cross between an affinity group and a small group ministry. These are groups of folks who support one another to live with integrity in a time of climate crisis.

One piece of that is the moral responsibility to act to mitigate whatever harms can still be avoided, but we believe that work cannot be detached from the need to build resilient communities as well as grieve for that which is already being lost.

As these are largely unprecedented challenges, we are trying to create the practices of mutual support that allow for as much experimentation and creativity as possible.

---

DeChristohper emphasizes that simply getting rid of Trump as first priority will not solve the environmental crisis. If the system wasn’t sufficiently self-correcting before, and if the status quo is irreparably broken, then it’s clear that some other change in strategy is needed.

He also calls for more local and experimental activism and civil disobedience, warning that large-scale protests could simply become indiscernible components of the noise being generated by the implosion of the US political system.

My own tendency is to look at the big picture. In that regard, my gut and intellect both tell me that the Trump interval is best understood as a stage in societal collapse. Each stage of that process will no doubt follow its own internal logic.

As the stages progress, larger scales of societal organization (international institutions, then nation states) will tend to fail first. Therefore the usefulness of national and global strategies for resistance and repair will tend to gradually diminish.

If we want to minimize human suffering and protect ecosystems, then working locally to build community resilience is probably the best strategy available. The reasons are plentiful and the rationale only grows stronger as our context evolves.

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Mexico City superhero

SUBHEAD: Clogged with traffic, the capital is hard for pedestrians. Enter Peatónito, wrestling for safer streets.

By Dulce Ramos on 8 November 2015 for the Guardian -
(http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/09/unmasked-mexico-city-superhero-wrestling-pedestrian-rights)


Image above: Masked campaigner Peatónito pushes back a car that has strayed on to a pedestrian crossing in Mexico City. Photograph by Sean Smith. From original article.

The traffic light turns red at the corner of Avenida Juárez and Eje Central, the busiest pedestrian crossing in Mexico City, used by around 9,000 people every hour. Tonight, a driver stops his grey Peugeot exactly on the crossing where the masses are trying to pass. His car is now a steel barrier for those trying to reach the Palacio de Bellas Artes.

A masked man dressed in black makes his way through the river of people, walking purposefully towards the Peugeot. His black and white striped cape, reminiscent of a zebra crossing, flaps behind him. He goes to the car, flings his cape over his shoulder, and pushes the Peugeot backwards to make space.

“My name is Peatónito, and I fight for the rights of pedestrians,” he says, introducing himself. The driver smiles and reverses willingly and eventually the pair shake hands. With the pedestrian crossing again flowing as it should, Peatónito heads back to the pavement where he will wait until he is needed again. The traffic light turns green.

Since 2012, Mexico City has had a “superhero” defending its pedestrians: Peatónito, or Pedestrian Man. Three years after he first appeared on the streets, armed with a highway code and a white aerosol can to spray zebra crossings and pavements where none existed, Peatónito can take pride in the victories that he and his fellow transport rights activists have achieved.

Together, they fight for a safer, more efficient way for people to get around the capital – which has 5.5m vehicles in circulation – on foot.

The triumphs are tangible. This August, Mexico City’s government presented a new set of road traffic regulations with reduced speed limits on primary routes (that is, slower routes) from 70km/h to 50km/h. The reduced speed limit isn’t a mere whim on the part of the activists; it’s possible to measure how dangerous the streets of the capital are. In Mexico City, 52 accidents in every 1,000 are fatal. In the entire country, the rate is 39 deaths for every 1,000 accidents.

Another battle that has been fought and won is the implementation of “Vision Zero”, a series of public policies aimed at eradicating road traffic deaths, which activists worldwide have been backing for years. Their aims: an ethical focus to ensure that human life is prioritised; shared responsibility between those who design the roads and those who use them, and street safety and mechanisms for change.

The Netherlands, Sweden and the UK are among the pioneering countries to adopt Vision Zero (the first two just under 20 years ago). Then came US cities like Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and eight more. In Mexico, the initiative has been taken up – at least as a point of discussion – in Torreón, an industrial city in the state of Coahuila, and in Mexico City.

If today pedestrians are at the centre of Mexico City’s new road traffic regulations – having relegated cars from the top of the agenda – it is in large part the result of years of activism influencing the city’s policies on road traffic safety.

The dangers of walking

But why does Mexico City need a superhero like Peatónito? And how did the country’s first group of pedestrian rights activists emerge in the capital? If you consider that Mexico City combines the biggest concentration of cars, inadequate road infrastructure, and a total lack of road safety culture, it is not surprising that there are more deaths on the city’s streets than on any others in Mexico.

According to the National Council for the Prevention of Accidents, in 2013, 491 pedestrians died in road traffic accidents in Mexico City. This is equivalent to 6% of all the pedestrian deaths recorded that year in the country. In contrast, when we look at the number of fatalities among drivers and vehicle passengers, the figure is cut by half.

Only 265 of those killed in road traffic accidents in 2013 were behind the wheel or in the car at the time. Being a pedestrian in the world’s fourth most populous city is to risk one’s neck on a daily occurrence.

Despite the fact that in Mexico City, just three out of every 10 journeys are made by car, for decades the government has favoured investment in public works that favour car usage. Walking around the city may well be for the adventurous types, statistically speaking, but Mexico City is full of people who make their journeys on two feet: navigating cars, running after buses that don’t stop where they should, risking their lives on the public bicycle system.

Looking after all these people are the traffic police, but there is little they can do in a city of feverish drivers who will do anything to arrive at their destination on time.

Convincing Mexico’s inhabitants to use their cars less would not only reduce the number of traffic accidents, but would improve the functionality of the city by cutting, for example, the time it takes to commute across the metropolitan zone. Daily transport services in the form of ramshackle buses, driven recklessly, head to the centre crammed with passengers from the suburbs. The underground system, the Metro, has not been properly serviced in years and is also packed to dangerous extremes each morning.
Mexico City, like other cities in the world, doesn’t boast services such as “park and ride” or “incentive parking” – those car parks that allow commuters heading for city centres to leave their vehicles and transfer to public transport connections for part of the journey.
With a general outlook like this, it is little wonder that people opt to use their cars each day to get around, despite it taking up to two or three hours for them to reach their destination.
It’s for all these reasons that Peatónito swoops down onto the streets of Mexico City, backed by a network of activists intent on putting a stop to such problems and making the city more civilised and habitable.

Peatónito unmasked

The man behind Peatónito’s mask is Jorge Cáñez, a 29-old political scientist who works in a civic technology lab for the city government. Twice a week, he dresses as a superhero and takes to the streets to expose serious and minor traffic violations.

“In Mexico City, just moving from A to B is the most hazardous, complicated and inefficient thing imaginable,” says Peatónito, in a bar in the Roma district, one of the city’s most pedestrian-friendly areas, where cyclists and motorcyclists can move around in relative safety. He recalls how his activism began when he had to endure the daily torment of travelling by bus from his house to university.

“When I was a student, I told myself: ‘I’m not going to rest until I find out the reason why public transport from my house to university is so bad, and until I find a solution’.” Thus, 10 years ago, Cáñez began investigating how Mexico City’s public transportation policies are conceived. What he didn’t know was that he wasn’t alone.

In 2010, with the arrival in of the Metrobús, Mexico City’s first bus system in the style of busway or BRT (Bus rapid transit), the agenda around transportation began to be more visible. And yet, groups of urban cyclists had already spent more than 20 years trying to highlight the importance of developing a city that is more amenable to different modes of transport. In 2010, the collective “Walk, Build a City”, the first group of pedestrian rights activists in the country, began to make themselves known.

 

That year, on 21 March, members of the collective painted a pavement on a controversial highway that was built without the normal public bidding process and which damaged green areas.It seemed no one felt it important that the pedestrians should have a designated path, despite the fact they were forced to use that space if they wanted to take the bus.

It took those citizens longer to paint the pavement than for the government to remove it. “We promise to paint a better one,” officials said. And although it took some time, in the end they did designate a narrow strip along the bridge to pedestrians. It was the first of many victories for the pro-mobility activists.

‘The road can be a ring’

Was it necessary to create a character that resembled something out of a Lucha Libre fight to raise awareness about the risks to Mexico City’s pedestrians? Jorge Peatónito isn’t sure, but he believes creativity is a powerful weapon for activists.

“Lucha Libre is deep-rooted in Mexican life, but the idea [for Peatónito] came to me the day I took a few foreign friends along to see a fight. If we’ve had Superbarrio (another Mexican self-claimed superhero who fought causes on behalf of the city’s lower classes in the 1990s), why can’t we imagine the street as a wrestling ring?” This is how his activism acquired its comedy touch.

Humour aside, Peatónito is well aware that in real life superpowers don’t exist, and was himself involved in a car crash four months ago, when a car rammed his bicycle near the Tepito neighbourhood, an area of the city that is notorious for its gangs and black market. Fortunately, he was unhurt – traffic chaos is his kryptonite, he says.

Notwithstanding the risks of the job, Cáñez finds it rewarding and has no plans to abandon his superhero persona: “I do it all for the love of art, to do something for the city. Financially speaking, Peatónito hasn’t earned me more than the fee for a few talks and a couple of trips. That’s it. The best thing is the satisfaction of communicating a message in a powerful way.”

In 2010, with the arrival in of the Metrobús, Mexico City’s first bus system in the style of busway or BRT (Bus rapid transit), the agenda around transportation began to be more visible. And yet, groups of urban cyclists had already spent more than 20 years trying to highlight the importance of developing a city that is more amenable to different modes of transport. In 2010, the collective “Walk, Build a City”, the first group of pedestrian rights activists in the country, began to make themselves known.

That year, on 21 March, members of the collective painted a pavement on a controversial highway that was built without the normal public bidding process and which damaged green areas.It seemed no one felt it important that the pedestrians should have a designated path, despite the fact they were forced to use that space if they wanted to take the bus.

It took those citizens longer to paint the pavement than for the government to remove it. “We promise to paint a better one,” officials said. And although it took some time, in the end they did designate a narrow strip along the bridge to pedestrians. It was the first of many victories for the pro-mobility activists.

‘The road can be a ring’

Was it necessary to create a character that resembled something out of a Lucha Libre fight to raise awareness about the risks to Mexico City’s pedestrians? Jorge Peatónito isn’t sure, but he believes creativity is a powerful weapon for activists.

“Lucha Libre is deep-rooted in Mexican life, but the idea [for Peatónito] came to me the day I took a few foreign friends along to see a fight. If we’ve had Superbarrio (another Mexican self-claimed superhero who fought causes on behalf of the city’s lower classes in the 1990s), why can’t we imagine the street as a wrestling ring?” This is how his activism acquired its comedy touch.

Humour aside, Peatónito is well aware that in real life superpowers don’t exist, and was himself involved in a car crash four months ago, when a car rammed his bicycle near the Tepito neighbourhood, an area of the city that is notorious for its gangs and black market. Fortunately, he was unhurt – traffic chaos is his kryptonite, he says.

Notwithstanding the risks of the job, Cáñez finds it rewarding and has no plans to abandon his superhero persona:

“I do it all for the love of art, to do something for the city. Financially speaking, Peatónito hasn’t earned me more than the fee for a few talks and a couple of trips. That’s it. The best thing is the satisfaction of communicating a message in a powerful way.”

.

MLK - A Call to Conscience

SUBHEAD: A film about Martin Luther King's commitment to peace and social justice.

By Ray Catania on 26 February 2014 in Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2014/01/mlk-call-to-conscience.html)


Image above: From (http://lifeondoverbeach.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/mlk-the-ultimate-measure-of-a-man/).

WHAT:
Free Movie: MLK: A Call to Conscience, narrated by Tavis Smiley of PBS, details the controversial opposition that Dr King took on the Vietnam War and militarism, evoking the anger of then President Johnson and the FBI's J Edgar Hoover.

There will also be music by Kauai social justice activists Blu Dux and Danitza Galvan, and short speeches by Raise the Wage HI, Local 5 Hotel Workers Union and Pride at Work, Kauai Chapter.

WHERE:
Kapaa Public Library
1464 Kuhio Hwy
Kapaa, HI 96746

WHEN:
Sunday, February 9th, 2014 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm.

CONTACT:
Ray Catania
Phone 808-634-2737 or 808-332-0952   
Email: may11nieteen71@gmail.com

SPONSOR:
The event is presented by Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice, Raise the Wage HI, and Pride at Work Kauai Chapter.

MORE:

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on war than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Martin Luther King, Jr

Spoken one year before Dr King was assassinatd in Memphis, Tennessee.  Dr King was about to lead a march of mostly African-American sanitation workers who were fighting agains "Jim Crow" racism and for decent waes and union recognitions.

During his adult life, Dr King was never neutral on issues of social injustice.  Because he acted on his beliefs, he and his supporters would face brutal attacks and arrest.

The movie delves into one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s greatest speeches, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," which Dr. King delivered on April 4, 1967. Today this speech is acknowledged to be one of the most powerful ever written by Dr. King and Smiley deconstructs the meaning of the speech, as well as put it in a contemporary context, particularly in light of our nation's current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

ONLINE:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/mlk-a-call-to-conscience/

Video above: Trailer for movie "MLK: A Call to Conscious". From (http://youtu.be/72peuBUy5E4).

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Peaceful Protest a Crime 10/12/12
 

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Domestic Peace Force

SUBHEAD: Is that why Homeland Security purchased so many assault weapons and people killing ammo?

By Mac Slavo on 4 February 2013 for SHTF Plan -
(http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/are-all-those-guns-and-ammunition-for-obamas-civilian-national-security-force_02042013)


Image above: Detail of poster for Obama Domestic Peace Force. From original article and (http://daletoons.blogspot.com/).

Speculation abounds surrounding the 2 billion rounds of ammunition purchased by the Department of Homeland Security and other national alphabet agencies in recent years. Moreover, as the White House and their cohorts in Congress contemplate the disarming of American citizens, the very assault weapons purported to be so dangerous in the hands of law abiding gun owners are being purchased in mass quantities by local and federal law enforcement agencies.

So what is the purpose and motivation behind the government’s continued efforts to stockpile so much firepower? One frightening theory could explain what the President and his national security apparatus are up to.

The following excerpted From article by Joseph Farah 'Why is US stockpiling Guns & Ammo? 

Many of you will remember a story I broke a long time ago – about presidential candidate Barack Obama’s little-noticed announcement that, if elected in 2008, he wanted to create a “civilian national security force” [or domestic peace force] as big, as strong and as well-funded as the Defense Department.

Here’s what he actually said at a campaign stop in Colorado July 2, 2008:

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

Could what we see happening now in the Department of Homeland Security be the beginning of Obama’s dream and our constitutional nightmare?

We never heard another mention of Obama’s “civilian national security force” again. Not in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 or 2012.

But that brings us up to 2013 and the highly unusual stockpiling of firearms and ammo by Homeland Security – firearms and ammo that Obama would like to deny to ordinary citizens who are not members of his domestic army.

Well, I hate to say it, but I may have predicted this, too.

In a Halloween column last fall, I stated that, if re-elected, Obama would “declare a full-scale war on his domestic opposition.”

I wasn’t joking. I was deadly serious – so serious, in fact, that I did something I pledged I would never do: Vote for Mitt Romney. It was a matter of self-defense and self-preservation. I said then that a second term of Obama might mean we would never see another free and fair election in America. (I’m not even sure we saw one in 2012.) 

I suggested due process would go the way of the horse and buggy. I said I expected Obama would move to shut down or destroy all independent media. I even speculated that his biggest critics would eventually be rounded up in the name of national security.

Think about it.

Why does the civilian Department of Homeland Security need billions of rounds of ammunition?

This is the agency that is responsible for policing the border. But it doesn’t.

This is the agency that is responsible for catching terrorists. But it doesn’t.

So why does Homeland Security need so many weapons and enough hollow-point rounds to plug every American six times?

The official explanation? Target practice.  See this Fox News Story on ammo purchases:

As for concern about the type of bullets — hollow points, which expand upon impact — the statement said the type is “standard issue” and is used during “mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions.”

While the majority of Americans will take this explanation at face value, there are some key facts that suggest the Department of Homeland Security is mobilizing for a significant future action against the American people.

• The US military has been actively war-gaming worst-case scenarios that include economic collapse and civil unrest, going so far as to simulate wide-scale food riots.
  
  
• Just last month the military deployed gunships over Miami and executed a training exercise with local police departments. A few days later, similar exercises were held in Houston, TX. Last year these “exercises” also included ground forces, armored personnel carriers and tanks on the streets of St. Louis.
  
  
• Despite overwhelming opposition, there is an overt and focused movement to disarm Americans of their right to bear semi-automatic personal defense rifles and any other firearms deemed dangerous to the public. Those calling for this disarmament qualify their positions by claiming these weapons are not necessary for sporting, hunting, or personal defense. As if this provision of the US Constitution doesn’t even exist, there is a total blackout on the fundamental intent of the Second Amendment, which allows for citizens to bear arms to protect themselves against tyrannical government.
  
  
• Heavily armored vehicles have been spotted all over the country, and many local law enforcement agencies have taken possession of these vehicles, normally reserved for military engagements, and have put them to use in neighborhoods and communities around America.
  
• Congress has authorized the deployment of some 30,000 surveillance drones in the skies of America, to be available for use by intelligence agencies by 2015.
  
  
• The National Security Agency is building a massive spy center capable of recording, aggregating and analyzing every digital interaction on the planet – phones, internet, purchasing patterns, travel, and even what we say in the privacy of our own homes. A 30 year veteran of the NSA says the data mining program is so vast it will “create an Orwellian state.”
  
  
• The US government, in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, has created legislation that directly targets American citizens. The Patriot Act makes it possible for anyone who is identified as attempting to subvert government legitimacy as a terrorist, and also allows for the warrantless wiretapping of everyone for any reason. Under the Patriot Act and expanded government definitions, just about anyone now qualifies as a domestic terrorist.
  
  
• The National Defense Authorization Act takes the Patriot Act even further, allowing the government to detain anyone suspected of being a terrorist indefinitely and without trial – this includes American citizens living in the United States.
  
  
• And, as Joseph Farah points out, the President specifically claimed he would create a civilian national security police force as large as the US military. If he meant it, then we’re talking about 2 million or so civilians that will be armed, deputized and backed by the government. To do what? We’re not quite sure, but apparently we need these civilians for something important, or else the President wouldn’t have brought it up.

These are but a few examples of what our government has been up to. There are hundreds of others.

Now put all those together and the complete puzzle begins to emerge.

This surveillance infrastructure and control grid are being designed not for foreign terrorists or rogue nations that may do harm to America. They have been designed for you.

You, my fellow American, are the enemy.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: DHS to the Rescue 9/12/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Traing of supression of Americans 4/10/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Feds hunkering down for upheaval 3/19/12

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DHS to the rescue

SUBHEAD: The Department of Homeland Security is planning on facing the American people with new heavily armored vehicles.

By Mac Slavo on 12 September 2012 for SHTFplan.com -
(http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/what-are-the-milipolice-planning-on-doing-with-these-heavily-armored-vehicles_09122012)


Image above: Armored MaxxPro acquired by the department of Homeland Security. From original article.

With a massive biometric FBI surveillance system going live across the United States in recent weeks, tens of thousands of drones to be flying over American skies within just a few years, over 1 billion rounds of ammunition being acquired by non-military government agencies, and host of laws and executive orders outlining military and police emergency response plans to lock down the United States, it isn’t much of a stretch to suggest that our government is preparing for something that aims to fundamentally transform America as we know it today.

New evidence for a coming lock-down of America is presented to the public by citizen journalists and alternative media on an almost weekly basis, which suggests that whatever is being planned is on a much more accelerated schedule now than ever before.


Image above: Note stenciled "Police/Rescue" to make it seem they'll be looking out for your interest. From original article.

The latest, from alternative news hub Rense.com, indicates that Department of Homeland Security is expecting significant push-back in the very near future, which explains why they would need some 2,500 heavily armored vehicles with DHS Police/Rescue logos:

What could they need equipment like this for here in the US?  They are hitting the road with it.  Caravans of National Guard equipment but with new never before seen equipment in the convoys. Take a close look at what is painted on the side of the Black Humvees. The Humvees are fully armored the same standard used by our military.

The use of the word ‘Rescue’ is an obvious psy op…makes it sound nice and benign, kind of like a life-saving paramedic ambulance and not a domination and death machine.  The Posse Comitatus Act is gone.

They are gearing up for serious business and are training the National Guard, FEMA and Police with them.  The latest batch of 2,500 GLS vehicles don’t come more heavily-armored.  The GLS is the larger vehicle on the trailer below. It is a deadly serious piece of equipment and they have never been used inside the US until now.  All information in this email has been released publicly.

Image above: MaxxPro MRAP armored vehicle on flatbed truck. From original article.

The United States government is and has been planning for unlikely events like war and societal collapse for many years. This year President Obama has implemented, by Executive Order, doomsday response plans that would essentially give the government an unprecedented ability to nationalize large industries, personal farm and ranch land, and even your skills and labor in the event of a declared emergency. A control grid is being put into place to handle what they know is coming.

The only question is: What, exactly, is it that is coming to America?

---

DHS MaxxPro Specifications
By Truther on 7 September 2012 for Pakalert Press
(http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/09/07/dhs-ramps-up-to-subdue-and-kill-americans/)

The International MaxxPro is Navistar Defense’s Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle and incorporates the latest design in armoring technology. Extensively tested by the military and used in theater today, the MaxxPro features a V-shaped hull and other design features that greatly improve survivability. With so much protection, it’s the vehicle that every crew wants when they’re out in the field. MaxxPro MRAP specifications:

Length: 254″ (21.2 feet)
Width: 102″ (8.5 feet)
Height: 120″ (10 feet)
Wheel base: 153″ (12.8 feet)
Curb weight: 37,850 lbs. (18.9 tons)
Engine: MaxxForce 9.3 Diesel 

The MaxxPro MRAP is built to withstand ballistic arms fire, mine blasts, IEDs, and other emerging threats. Its V-shaped hull helps deflect blasts out and away from the crew and its armoring can be customized to meet any mission requirement.

The installation contract retrofits 2,717 vintage MaxxPro vehicles (work performed in West Point, Mississippi) with a new rolling chassis. This chassis enhancement included the addition of the DXM™ independent suspension, a MaxxForce® 9.3 engine, and a 570 amp alternator and driveline. The work was completed at the end of May 2012.

.

Hawaiian Sovereignty Issues

SUBHEAD: The three articles cited below illustrate real problems facing the future of Hawaiian sovereignty.  

By Juan Wilson on 17 September 2011 for Island Breath - 
  (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2011/09/hawaiian-sovereignty-issues.html)

 
Image above: A Pan Am 1930's ad with fanciful mythical Waikiki view of Diamond Head to appeal to Americans to fly to an exotic foreign land. There wasn't much left of Hawaii after they arrived. From airline travel poster sale on Ebay.

Yesterday the United Kingdoms Guardian newspaper published three disparate articles about people of very different cultures having difficulty expressing their own cultures and achieving their own sovereignty. In the first case -

Amish Jailed on Principle Since 2008 a conservative wing of the Amish religion has been involved with defying the authority of the "Englishers" to control their lives. They perceive their culture as separate from the United State and its local governing bodies. They run their own schools. Live off the power, water, food grid of the dominant society. They live in a truly cooperative community largely within the constraints of 19th century technology. They have their own style and sense of decorum that they do not want it violated. Now they are beginning to act with civil disobedience to rules that infringe on their culture. In the second case -

Cherokee seek blood quantum The 1866 Cherokee Nation constitution allowed all residents of their territory to become free citizens. That included whites, as well as indigenous Cherokees. The large and well-off Cherokee nation was primarily in the agricultural Southeast. As most Southerners with land, the Cherokee had many African slaves. In 1866 they were allowed to be Cherokee citizens and were called Cherokee Freedmen. Many blacks and Cherokee intermarried in the decades that followed. Now the Cherokees want to eject the Freedmen unless they can prove a blood quantum of native Cherokee. To compound the problem the US Federal Government is stepping in to fight this as a civil rights issue (while hypocritically recognizing other native Americans by their blood heritage). It seems everybody has this one wrong. And lastly -  

Palestinians ignore US on UN statehood The United States has been pretending to be a fair broker between the Palestinian desires for a nation and the ever expanding Israeli foreign occupancy. With the US on the case, things haven't exactly worked out. The Palestinians are fed up with waiting for justice. They want sovereignty now. They intend to take the issue to the United Nations Security Council to get status as a member nation. The US may be forced to veto the vote in the Security Council. Behind the scenes the US is twisting the arms of the temporary UNSC members to vote against the Palestinians so that American hands will be clean. If that happens the Palestinians are ready to go to the UN General Assembly where they can likely get an enhanced Observer Nation status. To me the lessons of these stories for Hawaiians are:

• With clear perspective know your culture well enough to see where it is separate from the dominant occupying authority. If necessary act with civil disobedience to maintain the principles and integrity of your culture.
• Don't reduce your nationhood to ethnicity. Embrace those that wish to share your culture and nation. Don't trust the United States to act in the interest of either even in the best of cases.
• Move on without the United States. Appeal to the world. You don't need the US to achieve freedom and sovereignty. Waiting for America to make an acceptable deal with your enemies is likely never to happen.

Amish Jailed on Principle

SUBHEAD: Eight men from conservative sect refuse triangles on their horse-drawn buggies – then refuse to pay fine. By Jo Aditunji on 17 September 2011 for the Guardian - (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/17/amish-jailed-kentucky-warning-triangle-fine) Image above: Amish buggy with no fluorescent orange triangle on the back. From (http://www.patchwork-europe.com/Who-are-the-Amish).

Eight Amish men have been jailed by a judge in Kentucky for non-payment of fines after refusing to fix reflective orange warning triangles to the back of their horse-drawn buggies.

The unusual suspects, whose mugshots have been published online, were arrested for misdemeanours. A ninth man was arrested but not jailed.

The group hail from the stricter Old Order Swartzentruber sect and objected to the bright triangles on modesty grounds, saying they were barred from wearing or displaying anything bright or colourful.

Members of the sect can affix reflective tape to their vehicles but refuse the orange triangle – a legal requirement on slow-moving vehicles.

After their arrest, the group subsequently refused to pay any fines as that would, in turn, mean recognising the law they refuse to obey.

Judge Deborah Hawkins of Graves County district sentenced eight of the men to between three and 10 days in jail for their refusal to pay up.

Local television station WPSD reported that a "concerned citizen" had paid the fine for the ninth man so that he could be with his sick child.

The case has been running since 2008 and the men have been represented by a civil rights group, but it was reported that their latest appeal was refused in June. William Sharp, their lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, invoked their constitutional right to religious liberty.

"This case is about the right of Kentuckians to freely exercise their religious beliefs and, by necessity, the limits of government's ability to impose a substantial burden on that right."

Because of the belief no bright clothing should be worn, the men were given dark-coloured jumpsuits to wear rather than standard issue orange overalls.

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Cherekee seek blood quantum 9/17/11 Ea O Ka Aina: Palestinians ignore US on UN statehood 9/17/11 Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaiian Sovereinty Issues 09/17/11 Ea O Ka Aina: Volcom - A Common Future 9/16/11 .

McKibben arrested at White House

SUBHEAD: Jailed over Big Oil's attempt to wreck the planet Bill McKibben offers tribute to the wisdom of Martin Luther King. By Bill McKibben on 24 August 2011 for Tom's Dispatch - (http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175435/tomgram%3A_bill_mckibben%2C_jailed_over_big_oil%27s_attempt_to_wreck_the_planet/) Image above: Bill McKibben as he was arrested in front of White House protesting tar sands pipeline across country. From (http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/08/20/300275/keystone-xl-tar-sands-action-day-one/).

I didn’t think it was possible, but my admiration for Martin Luther King, Jr., grew even stronger these past days.

As I headed to jail as part of the first wave of what is turning into the biggest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement for many years, I had the vague idea that I would write something. Not an epic like King's “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” but at least, you know, a blog post. Or a tweet.

But frankly, I wasn’t up to it. The police, surprised by how many people turned out on the first day of two weeks of protests at the White House, decided to teach us a lesson. As they told our legal team, they wanted to deter anyone else from coming -- and so with our first crew they were… kind of harsh.

We spent three days in D.C.’s Central Cell Block, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds like it might be. You lie on a metal rack with no mattress or bedding and sweat in the high heat; the din is incessant; there’s one baloney sandwich with a cup of water every 12 hours.

I didn’t have a pencil -- they wouldn’t even let me keep my wedding ring -- but more important, I didn’t have the peace of mind to write something. It’s only now, out 12 hours and with a good night’s sleep under my belt, that I’m able to think straight. And so, as I said, I’ll go to this weekend’s big celebrations for the opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on the Washington Mall with even more respect for his calm power.

Preacher, speaker, writer under fire, but also tactician. He really understood the power of nonviolence, a power we’ve experienced in the last few days. When the police cracked down on us, the publicity it produced cemented two of the main purposes of our protest:

First, it made Keystone XL -- the new, 1,700-mile-long pipeline we’re trying to block that will vastly increase the flow of “dirty” tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico -- into a national issue. A few months ago, it was mainly people along the route of the prospective pipeline who were organizing against it. (And with good reason: tar sands mining has already wrecked huge swaths of native land in Alberta, and endangers farms, wild areas, and aquifers all along its prospective route.)

Now, however, people are coming to understand -- as we hoped our demonstrations would highlight -- that it poses a danger to the whole planet as well. After all, it’s the Earth’s second largest pool of carbon, and hence the second-largest potential source of global warming gases after the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. We’ve already plumbed those Saudi deserts. Now the question is: Will we do the same to the boreal forests of Canada. As NASA climatologist James Hansen has made all too clear, if we do so it’s “essentially game over for the climate.” That message is getting through. Witness the incredibly strong New York Times editorial opposing the building of the pipeline that I was handed on our release from jail.

Second, being arrested in front of the White House helped make it clearer that President Obama should be the focus of anti-pipeline activism. For once Congress isn’t in the picture. The situation couldn’t be simpler: the president, and the president alone, has the power either to sign the permit that would take the pipeline through the Midwest and down to Texas (with the usual set of disastrous oil spills to come) or block it.

Barack Obama has the power to stop it and no one in Congress or elsewhere can prevent him from doing so. That means -- and again, it couldn’t be simpler -- that the Keystone XL decision is the biggest environmental test for him between now and the next election. If he decides to stand up to the power of big oil, it will send a jolt through his political base, reminding the presently discouraged exactly why they were so enthused in 2008.

That’s why many of us were wearing our old campaign buttons when we went into the paddy wagon. We’d like to remember -- and like the White House to remember, too -- just why we knocked on all those doors.

But as Dr. King might have predicted, the message went deeper. As people gather in Washington for this weekend’s dedication of his monument, most will be talking about him as a great orator, a great moral leader. And of course he was that, but it’s easily forgotten what a great strategist he was as well, because he understood just how powerful a weapon nonviolence can be.

The police, who trust the logic of force, never quite seem to get this. When they arrested our group of 70 or so on the first day of our demonstrations, they decided to teach us a lesson by keeping us locked up extra long -- strong treatment for a group of people peacefully standing on a sidewalk.

No surprise, it didn’t work. The next day an even bigger crowd showed up -- and now, there are throngs of people who have signed up to be arrested every day until the protests end on September 3rd. Not only that, a judge threw out the charges against our first group, and so the police have backed off. For the moment, anyway, they’re not actually sending more protesters to jail, just booking and fining them.

And so the busload of ranchers coming from Nebraska, and the bio-fueled RV with the giant logo heading in from East Texas, and the flight of grandmothers arriving from Montana, and the tribal chiefs, and union leaders, and everyone else will keep pouring into D.C. We’ll all, I imagine, stop and pay tribute to Dr. King before or after we get arrested; it’s his lead, after all, that we’re following.

Our part in the weekend’s celebration is to act as a kind of living tribute. While people are up on the mall at the monument, we’ll be in the front of the White House, wearing handcuffs, making clear that civil disobedience is not just history in America.

We may not be facing the same dangers Dr. King did, but we’re getting some small sense of the kind of courage he and the rest of the civil rights movement had to display in their day -- the courage to put your body where your beliefs are. It feels good.

• Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, founder of 350.org, and a TomDispatch regular. His most recent book, just out in paperback, is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: DC Tar Sands Action Arrests 8/20/11 .

Tim DeChristopher court statement

SUBHEAD: Environmental activist says; "I do not want mercy. I want you to join me."

[CommonDream's note: Tim DeChristopher, who was sentenced Tuesday to two years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine for 'disrupting' a Bureau of Land Management auction in 2008, had an opportunity to address the court and the judge immediately before his sentence was announced. This is his statement] 

By Tim DeChristopher on 27 July 2011 for Common Dreams -  
(http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/26-13)

 
Image above: Detail of portrait by Robert Shetterly (http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org). From original article.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak before the court. When I first met Mr. Manross, the sentencing officer who prepared the pre-sentence report, he explained that it was essentially his job to “get to know me.” He said he had to get to know who I really was and why I did what I did in order to decide what kind of sentence was appropriate. I was struck by the fact that he was the first person in this courthouse to call me by my first name, or even really look me in the eye. I appreciate this opportunity to speak openly to you for the first time. I’m not here asking for your mercy, but I am here asking that you know me.

Mr. Huber has leveled a lot of character attacks at me, many of which are contrary to Mr. Manross’s report. While reading Mr Huber’s critiques of my character and my integrity, as well as his assumptions about my motivations, I was reminded that Mr Huber and I have never had a conversation. Over the two and half years of this prosecution, he has never asked my any of the questions that he makes assumptions about in the government’s report. Apparently, Mr. Huber has never considered it his job to get to know me, and yet he is quite willing to disregard the opinions of the one person who does see that as his job.

There are alternating characterizations that Mr Huber would like you to believe about me. In one paragraph, the government claims I “played out the parts of accuser, jury, and judge as he determined the fate of the oil and gas lease auction and its intended participants that day.” In the very next paragraph, they claim “It was not the defendant’s crimes that effected such a change.”

Mr Huber would lead you to believe that I’m either a dangerous criminal who holds the oil and gas industry in the palm of my hand, or I’m just an incompetent child who didn’t affect the outcome of anything. As evidenced by the continued back and forth of contradictory arguments in the government’s memorandum, they’re not quite sure which of those extreme caricatures I am, but they are certain that I am nothing in between. Rather than the job of getting to know me, it seems Mr Huber prefers the job of fitting me into whatever extreme characterization is most politically expedient at the moment.

In nearly every paragraph, the government’s memorandum uses the words lie, lied, lying, liar. It makes me want to thank whatever clerk edited out the words “pants on fire.” Their report doesn’t mention the fact that at the auction in question, the first person who asked me what I was doing there was Agent Dan Love. And I told him very clearly that I was there to stand in the way of an illegitimate auction that threatened my future. I proceeded to answer all of his questions openly and honestly, and have done so to this day when speaking about that auction in any forum, including this courtroom.

The entire basis for the false statements charge that I was convicted of was the fact that I wrote my real name and address on a form that included the words “bona fide bidder.” When I sat there on the witness stand, Mr Romney asked me if I ever had any intention of being a bona fide bidder. I responded by asking Mr Romney to clarify what “bona fide bidder” meant in this context. Mr Romney then withdrew the question and moved on to the next subject. On that right there is the entire basis for the government’s repeated attacks on my integrity. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff, your honor.

Mr Huber also makes grand assumptions about my level of respect for the rule of law. The government claims a long prison sentence is necessary to counteract the political statements I’ve made and promote a respect for the law. The only evidence provided for my lack of respect for the law is political statements that I’ve made in public forums.

Again, the government doesn’t mention my actions in regard to the drastic restrictions that were put upon my defense in this courtroom. My political disagreements with the court about the proper role of a jury in the legal system are probably well known. I’ve given several public speeches and interviews about how the jury system was established and how it has evolved to it’s current state.

Outside of this courtroom, I’ve made my views clear that I agree with the founding fathers that juries should be the conscience of the community and a defense against legislative tyranny. I even went so far as to organize a book study group that read about the history of jury nullification.

Some of the participants in that book group later began passing out leaflets to the public about jury rights, as is their right. Mr Huber was apparently so outraged by this that he made the slanderous accusations that I tried to taint the jury. He didn’t specify the extra number of months that I should spend in prison for the heinous activity of holding a book group at the Unitarian Church and quoting Thomas Jefferson in public, but he says you should have “little tolerance for this behavior.”

But here is the important point that Mr Huber would rather ignore. Despite my strong disagreements with the court about the Constitutional basis for the limits on my defense, while I was in this courtroom I respected the authority of the court. Whether I agreed with them or not, I abided by the restrictions that you put on me and my legal team. I never attempted to “taint” the jury, as Mr Huber claimed, by sharing any of the relevant facts about the auction in question that the court had decided were off limits.

I didn’t burst out and tell the jury that I successfully raised the down payment and offered it to the BLM. I didn’t let the jury know that the auction was later reversed because it was illegitimate in the first place. To this day I still think I should have had the right to do so, but disagreement with the law should not be confused with disrespect for the law.

My public statements about jury nullification were not the only political statements that Mr Huber thinks I should be punished for. As the government’s memorandum points out, I have also made public statements about the value of civil disobedience in bringing the rule of law closer to our shared sense of justice. In fact, I have openly and explicitly called for nonviolent civil disobedience against mountaintop removal coal mining in my home state of West Virginia. Mountaintop removal is itself an illegal activity, which has always been in violation of the Clean Water Act, and it is an illegal activity that kills people.

A West Virginia state investigation found that Massey Energy had been cited with 62,923 violations of the law in the ten years preceding the disaster that killed 29 people last year. The investigation also revealed that Massey paid for almost none of those violations because the company provided millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions that elected most of the appeals court judges in the state.

When I was growing up in West Virginia, my mother was one of many who pursued every legal avenue for making the coal industry follow the law. She commented at hearings, wrote petitions and filed lawsuits, and many have continued to do ever since, to no avail. I actually have great respect for the rule of law, because I see what happens when it doesn’t exist, as is the case with the fossil fuel industry.

Those crimes committed by Massey Energy led not only to the deaths of their own workers, but to the deaths of countless local residents, such as Joshua McCormick, who died of kidney cancer at age 22 because he was unlucky enough to live downstream from a coal mine. When a corrupted government is no longer willing to uphold the rule of law, I advocate that citizens step up to that responsibility.

This is really the heart of what this case is about. The rule of law is dependent upon a government that is willing to abide by the law. Disrespect for the rule of law begins when the government believes itself and its corporate sponsors to be above the law.

Mr Huber claims that the seriousness of my offense was that I “obstructed lawful government proceedings.” But the auction in question was not a lawful proceeding. I know you’ve heard another case about some of the irregularities for which the auction was overturned. But that case did not involve the BLM’s blatant violation of Secretarial Order 3226, which was a law that went into effect in 2001 and required the BLM to weigh the impacts on climate change for all its major decisions, particularly resource development.

A federal judge in Montana ruled last year that the BLM was in constant violation of this law throughout the Bush administration. In all the proceedings and debates about this auction, no apologist for the government or the BLM has ever even tried to claim that the BLM followed this law. In both the December 2008 auction and the creation of the Resource Management Plan on which this auction was based, the BLM did not even attempt to follow this law.

And this law is not a trivial regulation about crossing t’s or dotting i’s to make some government accountant’s job easier. This law was put into effect to mitigate the impacts of catastrophic climate change and defend a livable future on this planet. This law was about protecting the survival of young generations. That’s kind of a big deal. It’s a very big deal to me. If the government is going to refuse to step up to that responsibility to defend a livable future,

I believe that creates a moral imperative for me and other citizens. My future, and the future of everyone I care about, is being traded for short term profits. I take that very personally. Until our leaders take seriously their responsibility to pass on a healthy and just world to the next generation, I will continue this fight.

The government has made the claim that there were legal alternatives to standing in the way of this auction. Particularly, I could have filed a written protest against certain parcels. The government does not mention, however, that two months prior to this auction, in October 2008, a Congressional report was released that looked into those protests.

The report, by the House committee on public lands, stated that it had become common practice for the BLM to take volunteers from the oil and gas industry to process those permits. The oil industry was paying people specifically to volunteer for the industry that was supposed to be regulating it, and it was to those industry staff that I would have been appealing.

Moreover, this auction was just three months after the New York Times reported on a major scandal involving Department of the Interior regulators who were taking bribes of sex and drugs from the oil companies that they were supposed to be regulating. In 2008, this was the condition of the rule of law, for which Mr Huber says I lacked respect. Just as the legal avenues which people in West Virginia have been pursuing for 30 years, the legal avenues in this case were constructed precisely to protect the corporations who control the government.

The reality is not that I lack respect for the law; it’s that I have greater respect for justice. Where there is a conflict between the law and the higher moral code that we all share, my loyalty is to that higher moral code. I know Mr Huber disagrees with me on this.

He wrote that “The rule of law is the bedrock of our civilized society, not acts of ‘civil disobedience’ committed in the name of the cause of the day.” That’s an especially ironic statement when he is representing the United States of America, a place where the rule of law was created through acts of civil disobedience. Since those bedrock acts of civil disobedience by our founding fathers, the rule of law in this country has continued to grow closer to our shared higher moral code through the civil disobedience that drew attention to legalized injustice.

The authority of the government exists to the degree that the rule of law reflects the higher moral code of the citizens, and throughout American history, it has been civil disobedience that has bound them together.

This philosophical difference is serious enough that Mr Huber thinks I should be imprisoned to discourage the spread of this idea. Much of the government’s memorandum focuses on the political statements that I’ve made in public.

But it hasn’t always been this way. When Mr Huber was arguing that my defense should be limited, he addressed my views this way: “The public square is the proper stage for the defendant’s message, not criminal proceedings in federal court.” But now that the jury is gone, Mr. Huber wants to take my message from the public square and make it a central part of these federal court proceedings. I have no problem with that. I’m just as willing to have those views on display as I’ve ever been.

The government’s memorandum states, “As opposed to preventing this particular defendant from committing further crimes, the sentence should be crafted ‘to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct’ by others.” Their concern is not the danger that I present, but the danger presented by my ideas and words that might lead others to action. Perhaps Mr Huber is right to be concerned. He represents the United States Government. His job is to protect those currently in power, and by extension, their corporate sponsors.

After months of no action after the auction, the way I found out about my indictment was the day before it happened, Pat Shea got a call from an Associated Press reporter who said, “I just wanted to let you know that tomorrow Tim is going to be indicted, and this is what the charges are going to be.” That reporter had gotten that information two weeks earlier from an oil industry lobbyist. Our request for disclosure of what role that lobbyist played in the US Attorney’s office was denied, but we know that she apparently holds sway and that the government feels the need to protect the industry’s interests.

The things that I’ve been publicly saying may indeed be threatening to that power structure. There have been several references to the speech I gave after the conviction, but I’ve only ever seen half of one sentence of that speech quoted. In the government’s report, they actually had to add their own words to that one sentence to make it sound more threatening.

But the speech was about empowerment. It was about recognizing our interconnectedness rather than viewing ourselves as isolated individuals. The message of the speech was that when people stand together, they no longer have to be exploited by powerful corporations. Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.

But the sentencing guidelines don’t mention the need to protect corporations or politicians from ideas that threaten their control. The guidelines say “protect the public.” The question is whether the public is helped or harmed by my actions. The easiest way to answer that question is with the direct impacts of my action.

As the oil executive stated in his testimony, the parcels I didn’t bid on averaged $12 per acre, but the ones I did bid on averaged $125. Those are the prices paid for public property to the public trust. The industry admits very openly that they were getting those parcels for an order of magnitude less than what they were worth. Not only did those oil companies drive up the prices to $125 during the bidding, they were then given an opportunity to withdraw their bids once my actions were explained. They kept the parcels, presumably because they knew they were still a good deal at $125.

The oil companies knew they were getting a steal from the American people, and now they’re crying because they had to pay a little closer to what those parcels were actually worth. The government claims I should be held accountable for the steal the oil companies didn’t get. The government’s report demands $600,000 worth of financial impacts for the amount which the oil industry wasn’t able to steal from the public.

That extra revenue for the public became almost irrelevant, though, once most of those parcels were revoked by Secretary Salazar. Most of the parcels I won were later deemed inappropriate for drilling. In other words, the highest and best value to the public for those particular lands was not for oil and gas drilling. Had the auction gone off without a hitch, it would have been a loss for the public. The fact that the auction was delayed, extra attention was brought to the process, and the parcels were ultimately revoked was a good thing for the public.

More generally, the question of whether civil disobedience is good for the public is a matter of perspective. Civil disobedience is inherently an attempt at change. Those in power, whom Mr Huber represents, are those for whom the status quo is working, so they always see civil disobedience as a bad thing. The decision you are making today, your honor, is what segment of the public you are meant to protect. Mr Huber clearly has cast his lot with that segment who wishes to preserve the status quo.

But the majority of the public is exploited by the status quo far more than they are benefited by it. The young are the most obvious group who is exploited and condemned to an ugly future by letting the fossil fuel industry call the shots. There is an overwhelming amount of scientific research, some of which you received as part of our proffer on the necessity defense, that reveals the catastrophic consequences which the young will have to deal with over the coming decades.

But just as real is the exploitation of the communities where fossil fuels are extracted. As a native of West Virginia, I have seen from a young age that the exploitation of fossil fuels has always gone hand in hand with the exploitation of local people. In West Virginia, we’ve been extracting coal longer than anyone else. And after 150 years of making other people rich, West Virginia is almost dead last among the states in per capita income, education rates and life expectancy.

And it’s not an anomaly. The areas with the richest fossil fuel resources, whether coal in West Virginia and Kentucky, or oil in Louisiana and Mississippi, are the areas with the lowest standards of living. In part, this is a necessity of the industry.

The only way to convince someone to blow up their backyard or poison their water is to make sure they are so desperate that they have no other option. But it is also the nature of the economic model. Since fossil fuels are a limited resources, whoever controls access to that resource in the beginning gets to set all the terms. They set the terms for their workers, for the local communities, and apparently even for the regulatory agencies.

A renewable energy economy is a threat to that model. Since no one can control access to the sun or the wind, the wealth is more likely to flow to whoever does the work of harnessing that energy, and therefore to create a more distributed economic system, which leads to a more distributed political system. It threatens the profits of the handful of corporations for whom the current system works, but our question is which segment of the public are you tasked with protecting. I am here today because I have chosen to protect the people locked out of the system over the profits of the corporations running the system. I say this not because I want your mercy, but because I want you to join me.

After this difference of political philosophies, the rest of the sentencing debate has been based on the financial loss from my actions. The government has suggested a variety of numbers loosely associated with my actions, but as of yet has yet to establish any causality between my actions and any of those figures. The most commonly discussed figure is perhaps the most easily debunked. This is the figure of roughly $140,000, which is the amount the BLM originally spent to hold the December 2008 auction.

By definition, this number is the amount of money the BLM spent before I ever got involved. The relevant question is what the BLM spent because of my actions, but apparently that question has yet to be asked. The only logic that relates the $140,000 figure to my actions is if I caused the entire auction to be null and void and the BLM had to start from scratch to redo the entire auction.

But that of course is not the case. First is the prosecution’s on-again-off-again argument that I didn’t have any impact on the auction being overturned. More importantly, the BLM never did redo the auction because it was decided that many of those parcels should never have been auctioned in the first place.

Rather than this arbitrary figure of $140,000, it would have been easy to ask the BLM how much money they spent or will spend on redoing the auction. But the government never asked this question, probably because they knew they wouldn’t like the answer.

The other number suggested in the government’s memorandum is the $166,000 that was the total price of the three parcels I won which were not invalidated. Strangely, the government wants me to pay for these parcels, but has never offered to actually give them to me. When I offered the BLM the money a couple weeks after the auction, they refused to take it. Aside from that history, this figure is still not a valid financial loss from my actions.

When we wrote there was no loss from my actions, we actually meant that rather literally. Those three parcels were not evaporated or blasted into space because of my actions, not was the oil underneath them sucked dry by my bid card. They’re still there, and in fact the BLM has already issued public notice of their intent to re-auction those parcels in February of 2012.

The final figure suggested as a financial loss is the $600,000 that the oil company wasn’t able to steal from the public. That completely unsubstantiated number is supposedly the extra amount the BLM received because of my actions. This is when things get tricky. The government’s report takes that $600,000 positive for the BLM and adds it to that roughly $300,000 negative for the BLM, and comes up with a $900,000 negative. With math like that, it’s obvious that Mr Huber works for the federal government.

After most of those figures were disputed in the presentence report, the government claimed in their most recent objection that I should be punished according to the intended financial impact that I intended to cause. The government tries to assume my intentions and then claims, “This is consistent with the testimony that Mr. DeChristopher provided at trial, admitting that his intention was to cause financial harm to others with whom he disagreed.”

Now I didn’t get to say a whole lot at the trial, so it was pretty easy to look back through the transcripts. The statement claimed by the government never happened. There was nothing even close enough to make their statement a paraphrase or artistic license. This statement in the government’s objection is a complete fiction.

Mr Huber’s inability to judge my intent is revealed in this case by the degree to which he underestimates my ambition. The truth is that my intention, then as now, was to expose, embarrass and hold accountable the oil industry to the extent that it cuts into the $100 billion in annual profits that it makes through exploitation.

I actually intended for my actions to play a role in the wide variety of actions that steer the country toward a clean energy economy where those $100 billion in oil profits are completely eliminated. When I read Mr Huber’s new logic, I was terrified to consider that my slightly unrealistic intention to have a $100 billion impact will fetch me several consecutive life sentences. Luckily this reasoning is as unrealistic as it is silly.

A more serious look at my intentions is found in Mr Huber’s attempt to find contradictions in my statements. Mr Huber points out that in public I acted proud of my actions and treated it like a success, while in our sentencing memorandum we claimed that my actions led to “no loss.” On the one hand I think it was a success, and yet I claim it there was no loss. Success, but no loss.

Mr Huber presents these ideas as mutually contradictory and obvious proof that I was either dishonest or backing down from my convictions. But for success to be contradictory to no loss, there has to be another assumption. One has to assume that my intent was to cause a loss. But the only loss that I intended to cause was the loss of secrecy by which the government gave away public property for private profit.

As I actually stated in the trial, my intent was to shine a light on a corrupt process and get the government to take a second look at how this auction was conducted. The success of that intent is not dependent on any loss. I knew that if I was completely off base, and the government took that second look and decided that nothing was wrong with that auction, the cost of my action would be another day’s salary for the auctioneer and some minor costs of re-auctioning the parcels.

But if I was right about the irregularities of the auction, I knew that allowing the auction to proceed would mean the permanent loss of lands better suited for other purposes and the permanent loss of a safe climate. The intent was to prevent loss, but again that is a matter of perspective.

Mr Huber wants you to weigh the loss for the corporations that expected to get public property for pennies on the dollar, but I believe the important factor is the loss to the public which I helped prevent.

Again, we come back to this philosophical difference. From any perspective, this is a case about the right of citizens to challenge the government. The US Attorney’s office makes clear that their interest is not only to punish me for doing so, but to discourage others from challenging the government, even when the government is acting inappropriately. Their memorandum states, “To be sure, a federal prison term here will deter others from entering a path of criminal behavior.” The certainty of this statement not only ignores the history of political prisoners, it ignores the severity of the present situation.

Those who are inspired to follow my actions are those who understand that we are on a path toward catastrophic consequences of climate change. They know their future, and the future of their loved ones, is on the line. And they know were are running out of time to turn things around. The closer we get to that point where it’s too late, the less people have to lose by fighting back. The power of the Justice Department is based on its ability to take things away from people.

The more that people feel that they have nothing to lose, the more that power begins to shrivel. The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today. And neither will I. I will continue to confront the system that threatens our future.

Given the destruction of our democratic institutions that once gave citizens access to power, my future will likely involve civil disobedience. Nothing that happens here today will change that. I don’t mean that in any sort of disrespectful way at all, but you don’t have that authority. You have authority over my life, but not my principles. Those are mine alone.

I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me. If you side with Mr Huber and believe that your role is to discourage citizens from holding their government accountable, then you should follow his recommendations and lock me away. I certainly don’t want that. I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false.

I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government. I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience. If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them. You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path.

You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing. You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM. You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away.

At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow. The choice you are making today is what side are you on.

• Tim DeChristopher is a climate activist and board member for the climate justice organization Peaceful Uprising.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Prison for Tin DeChristopher 7/26/11 .

Prison for Tim DeChristopher

SUBHEAD: For him and others civil disobedience the key to fixing climate change?  

By Tom Zeller Jr. on 26 July 2011 for Huffington Post -  
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/26/tim-dechristopher-civil-disobedience_n_910406.html)


Image above: An undaunted and defiant Tim DeChristopher rallies his supporters after being found guilty of crashing a federal oil and gas lease auction outside the Frank Moss Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City 3/3/11. From (http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/51658269-90/among-arrested-capitol-climate.html.csp).
  


On Dec. 19, 2008, a 27-year-old man named Tim DeChristopher, troubled by American energy policy and its contribution to global warming, broke the law.

He did so by attending a federal auction in Utah, where energy developers were bidding on parcels of Utah wildland that the Bush administration had made available for oil and gas development. DeChristopher bid aggressively, driving up the price of some parcels and winning 14 of his own -- some 22,000 acres in all -- to the tune of $1.8 million. He had no means to pay.

"I understand that prison is a very horrible place," DeChristopher told me last fall, when I had a chance to sit down with him for a lengthy interview. "But I've been scared for my future for a long time. And I think the scariest thing that I see is staying on the path that we're on right now. Obedience, to me, is much scarier than going to prison."

He faced 10 years and some $750,000 in fines.

On Tuesday, the now 29-year-old DeChristopher, who was convicted in March of two felonies associated with his exploits, was sentenced to two years in prison and was promptly taken into custody. He also faces $10,000 in fines.

The judge had barred DeChristopher's defense team from explaining to the jury why he disrupted the auction -- because he saw the auction as both illegal and contributing to the "exacerbation of global warming and climate change," according to court documents.

"We're not here about why he did it," U.S. District Judge Dee Benson said at one point during the trial. "We're here about whether he did it."


He did.

DeChristopher's actions have prompted comparisons to Herny David Thoreau's refusal to pay taxes in protest of slavery, and even to Rosa Parks' refusal to be relegated to the back of the bus because she was black. And indeed, it has been a feature of many social movements, when legal avenues have been tried and exhausted -- and when it becomes clear that the system is set up to efficiently deflect and patiently defer demands for change -- that individuals and groups, dedicated to a cause, decide it's time to start peaceably breaking some rules.

For a growing number of Americans concerned about climate change -- and frustrated by the lack of action in Washington -- that time has come.

"People who understand the depth of the climate crisis have long since changed their light bulbs and their lifestyles," said Bill McKibben, an environmentalist and climate activist, "and they know that moral witness is the next step towards shifting our society on a sustainable path."

Part of bearing moral witness involves ignoring certain rules about congregating in front of the White House, and McKibben is among those leading an event next month that aims to do just that.

In this case, the group's target is the Keystone XL pipeline project -- a contentious proposal to build a pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf Coast. Environmentalists abhor the tar sands, a gooey mix of sand and oil that requires copious amounts of water, energy -- and greenhouse gas emissions -- to produce.

James Hansen, the NASA scientist and the godfather of the modern climate movement, laid out the stakes in an essay published at Climate Story Tellers in June: "If emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels -- including tar sands -- are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth’s climate," Hansen wrote. "Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over."

The Keystone project hinges on State Department approval, and while opponents have managed to slow down that agency's deliberations, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has said in the past that she is inclined to approve it. Pressures have also come from business lobbies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has called for swift approval of the pipeline, and congressional Republicans, who pushed a bill through the House on Tuesday that would require the State Department to make a decision by Nov. 1.

In a clarion call dubbed Tar Sands Action, Hansen, McKibben and other environmental leaders are soliciting volunteers to descend on Washington at any point between Aug. 20 and Sept. 3. They plan to make their opposition to the pipeline known by occupying the pavement directly in front of the White House -- an area with specific rules regarding demonstrations, including an edict that protesters keep moving.

From the invitation:

[I]t’s time to stop letting corporate power make the most important decisions our planet faces. We don’t have the money to compete with those corporations, but we do have our bodies, and beginning in mid August many of us will use them. We will, each day, march on the White House, risking arrest with our trespass. We will do it in dignified fashion, demonstrating that in this case we are the conservatives, and that our foes — who would change the composition of the atmosphere -- are dangerous radicals. Come dressed as if for a business meeting — this is, in fact, serious business.

And another sartorial tip — if you wore an Obama button during the 2008 campaign, why not wear it again? We very much still want to believe in the promise of that young Senator who told us that with his election the ‘rise of the oceans would begin to slow and the planet start to heal.’ We don’t understand what combination of bureaucratic obstinacy and insider dealing has derailed those efforts, but we remember his request that his supporters continue on after the election to pressure his government for change. We’ll do what we can.

Not everyone thinks nonviolent disobedience is the answer.

Former Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson, a climate change activist himself, told The Deseret News on Monday that he thought DeChristopher's actions were useless. "I doubt his actions convinced one person who did not already agree urgent action needs to be taken to protect our climate," Anderson was quoted as saying.

And Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist and climate gadfly, perhaps best known as the author of the books “The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It," said in an email message that he also doubted the effectiveness of such forms of protest.

"Climate change has dropped down the political agenda, so I can perfectly understand why activists would turn to measures to attract more attention to it," Lomborg said. "But unfortunately, more attention is not what is actually needed to solve this problem — there has already been plenty of global attention focused on promises of carbon cuts that just haven’t happened. What is needed is a focus on smarter, more effective solutions than carbon cuts."

The solution, Lomborg added, involves increases in investment of green energy research and development, so that it eventually becomes cheaper than fossil fuels. But that is "not an easy policy to convert into activism," he said. "It’s hard, I guess, to chain yourself to an increased R&D budget."

But then, such policies are precisely what Americans of all stripes, who are fed up with political inertia in Washington, say they are hoping to nudge by risking arrest -- or even prison, in DeChristopher's case.

"I think that one of the things that critics need to remember is that civil disobedience has always played a role in social movements," said Lindsy Floyd, a program coordinator with the Environmental Humanities Education Center and an organizer with Peaceful Uprising, a group co-founded by DeChristopher after his action at the lease auction. The group's first core principle: "We refuse to be obedient to injustice."

Floyd said she was "sick of signing petitions and 'liking' things on Facebook," adding that her contributions to nonprofit groups working to preserve Utah wilderness have proved ineffectual.

"The system in place is designed to limit our effectiveness as citizens and agents of change," she said. "To critics, I ask: if not civil disobedience, then what?"

See also: 
 Ea O Ka Aina: Climate Change Civil Disobedience 4/27/11 
Ea O Ka Aina: Environmentalist going to prison 3/4/11
Ea O Ka Aina: One Man's Bid 12/27/08 .