The Tar Sands Action (smile)

Photo by Shadia Fayne Wood

by Ted Glick

My mind has been a jumble the last couple of days as I’ve tried to think about what I would be saying in this column. I knew I would be writing about the historic and amazing Tar Sands Action in Washington, D.C.

I am literally smiling as I embark on this writing journey. There was so much positive energy, so many wonderful experiences, so much hope for the future in and around the two weeks of sitting-in and standing-in in front of the White House, August 20-September 3.

One of the things I will never forget is how, day after day, new people kept arriving at Lafayette Park in the morning prepared to walk across the street and get arrested, 1252 of them. Wave after wave, daily, this kept happening. And over the last four days, from August 31 to September 3, the numbers kept getting bigger and bigger each day. On the last day, 243 people crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and stood and sat, first in the rain—most without rain gear--and then in the hot sun, some for four hours, before being arrested.

The vast majority of those arrested had never done so before. They were from all over the country, just about every single state. They ranged from teenagers to grandparents in their 80s, predominantly white but racially diverse, people of faith, landowners, movie celebrities, climate scientists, elected officials and more.

Then there was Kandi Mossett of the Indigenous Environmental Network and North Dakota, speaking Friday morning in Lafayette Park before she and others crossed over and got arrested, speaking from the heart, speaking of the many people close to her who have died of cancer at young ages because of the fossil fuel industry’s poisoning of her community’s air and water. Was there anyone in the audience of hundreds not moved to tears?

There were the young people Saturday morning and afternoon who sang and chanted for hour after hour on the Lafayette Park sidewalk to keep up the spirits and energies of those across the street in front of the White House who kept waiting for hours for their turn to be handcuffed and put into police wagons or buses.

There were the sobering things I learned about the tar sands throughout the two weeks, especially from the Indigenous people from Alberta province in Canada who have been leading this struggle for years: The second-largest area of (extra-dirty and thick, tar-like) oil in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia. The ethnocide of Indigenous people taking place as their land, water, health and millennia-old culture are being devastated as the forests are destroyed and massive strip mines moonscape the land. All of the toxic chemicals that must be added to the thick tar sands oil in order for it to be able to flow through pipelines, which increases the likelihood of corrosion and leaks. The plan for the pipeline to be built over the Ogallala Aquifer, water source for many millions in the US, and the ecologically sensitive Sand Hills of Nebraska.

There was the statement by our nation’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen, that if the Keystone XL pipeline is built and the tar sands is fully exploited, it’s “game over” for the planet as far as surviving climate change.

There was all the news coverage, this issue becoming all of a sudden a major national story. In retrospect, the decision of those who called this action for the “dog days” of late August, when Congress and the President are out of town, turns out to have been very prescient. There was lots of press coverage in the first week which then led to even more and more extensive coverage in the second week, including Bill McKibben being on the national PBS news program. Tim DeChristopher reported to friends that the protests were one of the three national news stories on the late night television news he saw in the Nevada jail where he’s currently housed.

There hasn’t been an action like this in the United States for a long, long time. The last ones I know of in terms of comparable numbers were the 1414 people, my late ex-wife and excellent political artist Peg Averill among them, arrested in Seabrook, New Hampshire in 1977 outside the site where a nuclear reactor was beginning to be built, and the many thousands arrested over several days in early May of 1971 in Washington, D.C. in a Vietnam war protest.

But neither of them went on for two straight weeks.

I know that some of those not in touch with what’s been happening within the climate movement in recent years were amazed to watch the Tar Sands Action unfold over these two weeks. But it didn’t come out of nowhere.

Two and a half years ago thousands of people were prepared to be arrested at the Capitol Coal Plant action in Washington, D.C. Then, more recently, there was the 10,000-person Power Shift conference and actions in mid-April in D.C. and the powerful, week-long March on Blair Mountain of hundreds, and a thousand on the last day, in early June. There was the example and leadership of Tim DeChristopher, who publicly called for just this kind of day-after-day, provoke-a-political-crisis type of action from the stage at Power Shift, three months before he was sentenced to two years in prison. And, without question, there was the exemplary, day-to-day leadership given by Bill McKibben. Without Bill, without his passion, his tireless work, his writing and speaking, this action never would have happened.

But it wasn’t a one-man show, not at all. Scores of mainly young people worked hard leading up to and during the two weeks of the action doing all of the things needed to make this be such a success. When Bill and 51 others were unexpectedly kept in jail for 53 hours after the first day’s action, there wasn’t an iota of letting up or hesitation. On the second day, as those 52 sat in jail, 45 people crossed over to the White House sidewalk, all of them knowing they could receive the same treatment. As it turned out, the willingness of those 45 to not back down, to show the police that we were serious about our plans for scores to get arrested each day for two weeks, led to a dramatic pull-back by the police. They went back to their original plan to use “post-and-forfeit,” essentially a $100 fine on everyone arrested, and then let them go within a few hours of their being arrested.

At the rally in Lafayette Park on September 3^rd, it was announced by Bill McKibben that there were plans being developed to keep this movement going. It has to; Obama is supposed to make a decision about the Keystone XL pipeline by the end of the year. One big upcoming date is October 7^th, when the last of a number of public hearings around the country on that pipeline will be held in Washington, D.C.

Bill also reported on an action taken in Seattle, Wa. where 40 or so people paid a visit to the newly-opened office of the Obama re-election campaign. A repetition of that tactic would be a way to keep getting the attention of Obama and his people: public visits to such offices all over the country, especially by people who worked for and/or voted for him in 2008, so that the Obama campaign understands that we are serious, that we expect Obama to finally carry through on his promises during the 2008 campaign.

“Let’s be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil.” That’s one of the things Obama said, along with this big applause line, that his election was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

He hasn’t yet delivered. Worse, he and his administration have opened up public lands in Wyoming for coal mining, allowed most mountaintop removal permits to proceed forward, done nothing to stop natural gas fracking, supported the expansion of deepwater ocean drilling beyond the Gulf of Mexico and, so far, given lots of indications that he will approve the Keystone XL pipeline. These methods of extreme extraction of fossil fuels are exactly the wrong direction to be going.

Michael Marx of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil campaign gave an excellent speech on Saturday in Lafayette Park. He called for us to help Obama find his “inner lion” so that he can finally begin to do what he promised he would do in 2008, which will only help his chances of reelection. He went on to say that if that is going to happen we need to find our own inner lions and we need to “bare out teeth.”

For those who want to see Obama reelected, for those who are turned off by all of his administration’s many betrayals of his campaign promises and unsure of what they’ll be doing about the Presidential election, and for those who have had it with both Republicans and Democrats, the campaign to defeat the Keystone XL pipeline is a classic unifying issue, an urgent issue. The next few months are key. Let’s keep building the Tar Sands Action momentum and win one for the people and the earth this year. 

Si, se puede!

Ted Glick is the National Policy Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He worked on the Tar Sands Action for two months. Past writings and more information can be found at http://www.tedglick.com. Follow him on twitter @jtglick.

How to Remember 9/11

by Margaret Kimberley

In a few weeks, it all begins again: the howling scream-whine of a narcissistic nation oscillating wildly between fits of megalomania and depressive woe-is-me-ism. “Will there be calls for a true investigation into what the government knew and how that knowledge might have prevented the tragedy?” Not a chance – that would spoil the pity-party. But you can be sure that “anyone who dares suggest that our country also inflicts terror will not be given serious consideration.” Is the United States capable of serious – and civilized – collective thought? Certainly not in the last ten years.

 “The country is now in a permanent state of warfare.”

The awful words and platitudes are already being written and spoken: “Ten years later,” “ten years on,” “tenth anniversary,” “how to talk to the children,” “where were you when it happened,” etc, etc, etc. Of course I am speaking of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

If Osama bin Laden thought he could change or destroy the American system he was very much mistaken. Just a few days after the terrible events took place, cheap items allegedly honoring the dead began appearing for sale in New York, the city that was supposed to be in a deep state of mourning. Americans, led by the corporate media, rallied around George W. Bush, their illegitimate president, and were told to go forth and shop and not ask any inconvenient questions about who knew what and when they knew it.

We had to go to war against Afghanistan, so we were told, and only one member of Congress, Congressional Black Caucus member Barbara Lee, voted against the action. The country is now in a permanent state of warfare. The attacks were used as a pretext for invading and occupying Iraq and establishing secret prisons around the world. Words like water boarding, a form of torture, came into being and Guantanamo became a place where the United States threw away its Constitution and the rights it once guaranteed to citizens and non-citizens alike.

“Barack Obama has moved further to the right in ways that Bush never dreamed of.”

The military tribunals and all of those wars outlived the president who established them. His Democratic successor has no intention of undoing any of the things that Bush was vilified for doing. It isn’t surprising, given that progressives don’t care if his presidency is in some ways worse than Bush’s. Barack Obama has moved further to the right in ways that Bush never dreamed of.

Books, articles, documentaries, and ceremonies will be solemnly presented over the next three weeks. They will culminate in a ghastly parade of dreadful politicians, making solemn speeches and pretending to care about humanity. The families, more accurately some relatives of some of the victims, will be placed front and center and deified only for the purpose of justifying government evil doing on behalf of their deceased loved ones. The group September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, who actively oppose efforts to use their loved ones as rationales for the commission of violent acts, remain largely unknown to the public.

The system certainly didn’t miss a stride in the past ten years. Yet another World Trade Center tower is being built, and like its first iteration, on the government’s dime, with government agencies filling the office space and tax payer subsidies to the few private businesses which will be located there.

Will the endless commemoration bring any discussion of American’s history with the Taliban? 

Will the corporate media tell us how they were first supported and armed by the United States?

Will there be any revelations of Israeli “moving companies” and “photographers” coincidentally appearing on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River that fateful morning? Will there be calls for a true investigation into what the government knew and how that knowledge might have prevented the tragedy?

“The next three weeks will be an endless and shameless display of hyper patriotism and obvious money making.”

These questions are rhetorical because the answer to each one is obviously in the negative. The next three weeks will be an endless and shameless display of hyper patriotism and obvious money making. The effect will be to further propagandize an already ignorant nation and re-traumatize the masses with an endless loop of planes crashing into skyscrapers, desperate victims jumping to their deaths, fire fighters, police officers and weeping relatives.

Anyone who suggests moving on or asking for answers will be given no attention whatever, or will be given the spotlight only for the purpose of being dismissed and demonized. No one will be allowed to make any real connections with the suffering of people outside of this country. No one will be allowed to say that we should not inflict similar suffering with drone strikes in Afghanistan, or proxy terror in Somalia, or NATO backed bombing in Libya. Anyone who dares suggest that our country also inflicts terror will not be given serious consideration.

It is appropriate to remember the dead, but those memories should be extended to all the people of this planet. It is disgraceful for Americans to think that they are alone in their suffering or that their government doesn’t dispense its own brand of death. Remember September 11th if you will, but not in the way that the government and its corporate media lackeys demand.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. 

Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.

US eco-activist Tim DeChristopher speaks out from prison

AP Photo

 Tim DeChristopher was jailed for two years in July for disrupting an oil and gas industry auction.   The following text appeared in a handwritten letter from Tim DeChristopher addressed to Grist’s Jennifer Prediger. Grist is an online independent news report.

If I had ever doubted the power of words, Judge Benson made their importance all too clear at my sentencing last month. When he sentenced me to two years in prison plus three years probation, he admitted my offense "wasn't too bad." The problem, Judge Benson insisted, was my "continuing trail of statements" and my lack of regret. Apparently, all he really wanted was an apology, and for that, two years in prison could have been avoided. In fact, Judge Benson said that had it not been for the political statements I made in public, I would have avoided prosecution entirely. As is generally the case with civil disobedience, it was extremely important to the government that I come before the majesty of the court with my head bowed and express regret. So important, in fact, that an apology with proper genuflection is currently fair trade for a couple years in prison. Perhaps that's why most activist cases end in a plea bargain.

Since that seems like such a good deal, some people are asking why I wasn't willing to shut my mouth and take it. But perhaps we should be asking why the government is willing to make such a deal. The most recent plea bargain they offered me was for as little as 30 days in jail. (I'm writing this on my 28th day.) So if they wanted to lock me up for two years, why would they let me walk for an apology and keeping my mouth shut for a while? On the other hand, if they wanted to sweep this under the rug, why would they cause such a stir by locking me up? Why do my words make that much of a difference?

With all criminal cases, of which 85 percent end in a plea bargain, the government has a strong incentive to avoid a trial: In addition to cutting the expense of a trial, a plea bargain helps concentrate power in the hands of government officials.

The revolutionaries who founded this country were deeply distrustful of a concentration of power, so among other precautions, they established citizen juries as the most important part of our legal system and insisted upon constitutional right to a jury trial. To avoid this inconvenience, those seeking concentrated power free from revolutionaries have minimized the role of citizens in our legal system. They have accomplished this by restricting what juries can hear, what they can decide upon, and most importantly, by avoiding jury trials all together. It is now accepted as a basic fact of our criminal justice system that a defendant who exercises his or her right to a jury trial will be punished at sentencing for doing so. Transferring power from citizens to government happens when the role of citizens gets eliminated in the process.

With civil disobedience cases, however, the government puts an extra value on an apology. By its very nature, civil disobedience is an act whose message is that the government and its laws are not the sole voice of moral authority. It is a statement that we the citizens recognize a higher moral code to which the law is no longer aligned, and we invite our fellow citizens to recognize the difference. A government truly of the people, for the people, and by the people is not threatened by citizens issuing such a challenge. But government whose authority depends on an ignorant or apathetic citizenry is threatened by every act of open civil disobedience, no matter how small. To regain that tiny piece of authority, the government either has to respond to the activist's demands, or get the activist to back down with a public statement of regret. Otherwise, those little challenges to the moral authority of government start to add up.

Over the last couple hundred years of quelling dissent, the government has learned a few things about maintaining power. Sometimes it seems that the government has learned more from our social movement history than we as activists have. Their willingness to let a direct action off with a slap on the wrist while handing out two years for political statements comes from their understanding of the power of an individual. They know that one person, or even a small group, cannot have enough of a direct impact on our corporate giants to really alter things in our economy. They know that a single person can't have a meaningful direct impact on our political system. But our modern government is dismantling the First Amendment because they understand the very same thing our founding fathers did when they wrote it: What one person can do is to plant the seeds of love and outrage in the hearts of a movement. And if those hearts are fertile ground, those seeds of love and outrage will grow into a revolution.

Source:

http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-08-29-letter-from-prison-tim-dechristopher-speaks