Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby Laodicean » Tue Jul 26, 2011 11:53 pm

Image

I Do Not Want Mercy, I Want You To Join Me
by Tim DeChristopher

Tim DeChristopher, who was sentenced today to two years in federal prison for disrupting a Bureau of Land Management auction in 2008, had an opportunity to address the court and the judge today immediately before his sentence was announced. This is what he said:

Thank you for the opportunity to speak before the court. When I first met Mr. Manross, the sentencing officer who prepared the presentence 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.


http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/26-13
User avatar
Laodicean
 
Posts: 3509
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:39 pm
Blog: View Blog (16)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby Laodicean » Wed Jul 27, 2011 12:40 am

User avatar
Laodicean
 
Posts: 3509
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:39 pm
Blog: View Blog (16)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby StarmanSkye » Wed Jul 27, 2011 3:44 am

Incredible -- What an absolutely beautiful shining light Tim is. The contrast between a man of principle speaking Truth to Power and a corrupt system of governmental abuse of power could hardly be greater. This debacle of monumentally perverted justice epitimizes the absurd travesty of epic hypocrisy, as the state's agents make the preposterous claim that they represent the highest moral legitimacy.


I can scarcely recall another trial that was more unjust and just out-and-out grotesque. This outrageous mockery of what rule of law has become is the inevitable result of the insidious debauchery of the American Republic as it has been supplanted and transformed by the vileness that is Corporatism.

This ought to be spread far and wide as a wake-up call to how deformed the courts have become, a tribute to the courage and selfless conviction of a princpled activist, and an inspiration to people everywhere in the face of widesread monstrous betrayal of the public's trust by elected and appointed officials.
StarmanSkye
 
Posts: 2670
Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2005 11:32 pm
Location: State of Jefferson
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby stefano » Wed Jul 27, 2011 4:59 am

Wow, thanks. First time I've heard of the guy. I love this: "It was about recognizing our interconnectedness rather than viewing ourselves as isolated individuals." That's pretty much always what it's about.

Some more background on the charges and trial here:

Judge Dee Benson strictly limited how much the defense could say about federal energy policies and climate change, which Mr. DeChristopher has said in numerous interviews were his primary motivations in going to the auction.

Mr. DeChristopher repeatedly said his specific hope was that by delaying the auction, the leases could be reconsidered by the Obama administration, which was then just about to take office.

But the jury, beyond a few cryptic references during the trial, was told only that Mr. DeChristopher had strong environmental beliefs.
User avatar
stefano
 
Posts: 2672
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 1:50 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby bks » Wed Jul 27, 2011 7:31 am

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Image
bks
 
Posts: 1093
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 2:44 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:20 am

.

In awe. Can we aspire to even a tenth of this righteous courage?

.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 16007
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby Laodicean » Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:53 pm

For those on FB:

Tim's page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-DeCh ... 5507651565

And you can write to him here if so inclined:

Tim DeChristopher (booking number 201106916)
c/o Davis County Correctional Facility
PO Box 130
Farmington, UT 84025
(If you're media, please respect that he has VERY limited visits and is saving those for his loved ones.)
THANK YOU all for your support, your kind words and your willingness to stand behind him. The best gift we can give him now is to KEEP FIGHTING!
User avatar
Laodicean
 
Posts: 3509
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:39 pm
Blog: View Blog (16)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby stickdog99 » Wed Aug 03, 2011 4:11 am

Just saw this for the first time. It is slowly dawning on me that we are in the late 1930s in Germany.

We elect our scum, service our Farbens and jail our heroes.
stickdog99
 
Posts: 6589
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:42 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby ConcreteJungle » Wed Aug 03, 2011 5:54 am

JackRiddler wrote:.

In awe. Can we aspire to even a tenth of this righteous courage?

.


By heeding his word and joining him, I believe we might reach 1/100th.
ConcreteJungle
 
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu May 19, 2011 7:33 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby Laodicean » Thu Oct 20, 2011 7:57 pm

Exclusive: Interview With Jailed Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher

POSTED: OCTOBER 19, 3:30 PM ET | By JEFF GOODELL RollingStone

Lots of people talk about how committed they are to taking action to solve the climate crisis – but few people have as much skin in the game as Tim DeChristopher. Last July 26, DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in federal prison for disrupting a federal auction for oil and gas leases back in 2008. He spent a few days in the county jail before being moved to a private prison in Nevada. Now he’s doing time at Herlong Federal Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in Northern California. If all goes well, he will be released on April 21, 2013. DeChristopher has limited access to the phone, but I was able to reach him the other night and talk with him about his life behind bars, as well as what the emergence of the Occupy protests mean for the climate and environmental movement.

How are you holding up?

I feel like I’m doing pretty well. I get a lot of time to just read and reflect and write letters, and I feel like I’m recharging myself, and refocusing. I just finished reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom.

What’s your living situation like?

It’s a big open room. It’s like a cubicle instead of a cell, with seven-foot walls around it. We have a desk, a chair, a couple of lockers. I have a job working in food service for breakfast and lunch – that takes up about two hours of my time each day. I’m finished with that shortly after breakfast, which is at 6 a.m. Then I usually walk a couple of miles as the sun is coming up. Then I read for a while. Lunch is at 10:30. In the afternoon, I work out. Then more reading and writing. Then I take a walk again around sunset. That's about it.

Are you able to keep up with the news from the outside world?

Yeah, they keep the TV news on here pretty often. And I’m able to get magazine subscriptions, and other folks here get the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, so I am able to read those.

What's your take on the Occupy Wall Street protests?

It’s been very exciting to watch. It’s one of the most promising developments we’ve had in a long time in this country. Most of the things that activists have done for as long as I’ve been involved have been very contained, very controlled. This is the first time in a long time that we’ve had protests that no one person or one group is really controlling or pulling the strings on – and that’s part of why the Establishment is so scared of it.

Environmental and climate activists have tried to organize major protests that command people’s attention but have largely failed. Why has Occupy Wall Street succeeded?

I haven’t seen the environmental movement try this kind of thing. I’ve never seen an environmental group launch something that didn’t have an end-date or that they couldn’t completely control. Nobody knows if anyone in the environmental moment could have done anything like this, because most of the leaders in the movement were too afraid to try. That’s really a lot of what has defined the strategy of the environmental movement for the past decade or so – it’s the fear of making a mistake.

So what are lessons in this for the climate movement?

I think what’s important is that these protests are not one-day actions. From the perspective of those in power, when there is a one-day action, no matter how big it is, no matter how many towns it’s in all across the country, those politicians or executives know that all they have to do is keep their head down for that one day and it will pass by, the news cycle will move on, and everyone will forget about it. But this is something that’s not going away, and that’s also what’s inspiring people to join in.

It’s hard not to contrast the Occupy protests with the demonstrations in Washington D.C. against the Keystone pipeline last summer. The Keystone action was very buttoned-down, very respectable. That’s not at all what is happening here – there’s lots of anger on display.

That’s true – and it’s true about the Left in general. And I think it’s why the Tea Party had so much success – they were the only ones expressing outrage about where the country is heading. They didn’t have any intellectual argument to back it up, but they were the only ones who were expressing the way that people were actually feeling – which was pretty angry. So a lot of people followed them, not with their heads, but with their hearts. And I think that’s something that is often missing on the Left.

So in your view, what does the climate movement need to do right now?

I don’t know – campaign for Jon Huntsman? [laughs]. I actually think he would be far better on climate issues than Obama. (I don’t think I had hopes of radical change from Obama, but even so, he has been phenomenally disappointing, especially on climate change.)

But a big part of what the climate movement needs to do is get behind the Occupy protests. Everybody in the activist world is looking for that soft-spot. Everyone is charging the wall, and most people get repelled. Most actions don’t really go anywhere because they run up against that hard wall. The Occupy protests have hit a soft spot. They have found that little crack. And now they are pushing, and they are making that crack grow. The rest of us need to keep pushing and break that hole in the wall.

One of the things that’s been made clear in the last few years is that we’re not going to deal appropriately with the climate crisis under the system of corporate rule that we have right now. We can’t deal with the climate crisis without overthrowing that corporate rule – and hopefully the Occupy protests can hold out until we do that and establish a democratic government in this country. Because that’s what it’s going to take, not just to deal with the climate crisis and reduce emissions, but also to try to prepare for the inevitable changes that we’re already on track for. I think we have to return power to the citizens if we’re going to have any hope of holding on to our humanity through the rough period that is inevitably ahead.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/bl ... r-20111019
User avatar
Laodicean
 
Posts: 3509
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:39 pm
Blog: View Blog (16)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby Hammer of Los » Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:05 am

Thanks for the info guys.

God Bless Tim De Christopher!
Hammer of Los
 
Posts: 3309
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2006 4:48 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 21, 2011 9:21 am

I join you
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby Laodicean » Sat Oct 22, 2011 2:51 pm

Image
User avatar
Laodicean
 
Posts: 3509
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:39 pm
Blog: View Blog (16)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby Laodicean » Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:12 pm

Letter from an imprisoned activist: Time to ‘play dirty’ for the climate’s sake

BY TIM DECHRISTOPHER

14 NOV 2011 3:48 PM

It goes without saying that politics is a dirty system. It's so dirty that I believe there are only three reasonable approaches to politics: apathy/despair, overthrowing the system, or playing dirty to win. I'll assume that the apathetics either aren't reading this or will soon stop reading to go watch cat videos on YouTube. The second option, revolution, is growing more plausible, and the climate movement should fully support those efforts. The occupations of Wall Street and D.C. have found a weak spot in the wall of corporate power that keeps people out of the halls of influence. Everyone needs to push that spot until we break through the wall and have a new constitutional convention to establish a democracy in this country.

But this is actually about the third option, playing dirty, and it's intended for those of you who intend to vote next year. I know lots of smart, engaged people who don't participate in politics because they don't want to play dirty. I understand their position as a sensible one. What I don't understand is the large percentage of liberals who avidly engage with the political system but refuse to win.

It has become quite clear over the last few years that the climate movement does not have any real political power. That said, reality has been revealed by the Waxman-Markey bill, Copenhagen, and the complete lack of policy response to Upper Big Branch, Deepwater Horizon, and Fukushima. Kicking the Keystone can down the road does not redeem Obama's failure to take advantage of his unprecedented opportunity and responsibility to turn the tide of climate change. Take a look at Rolling Stone's recent article about 10 things Obama can do for the climate. If you really expect him to do many of those things, here's some cat videos while you wait. The question is how the movement gets power.

Special interest groups don't have political power because of their nice personalities and good looks. Groups with power got it by demonstrating they were willing to take politicians out of office. That's why Barack Obama needs to lose in 2012, and he needs to know that it was our fault.

The refrain from Democratic apologists is, "What are you gonna do? Vote Republican? They would be even worse." Imagine this kind of reasoning being used on the other side. Let's say Texas Republican Joe Barton allows a meager $10-per-ton tax on carbon, then tries to explain it to Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson by saying, "But Rex, if there was a Democrat in my place, it would have been $50 a ton." It's unthinkable. Even though Barton has light crude flowing through his veins, Tillerson would Temple-Of-Doom-punch Barton's oily heart right out of his chest and nail it to the office door of his Democratic replacement as a warning to others. People like Tillerson know there are no friends in politics, only those who fear you enough to do what you want.

A good first step toward gaining political power for the climate movement would be to primary a few fossil-fuel-friendly Democratic representatives. With just three primary challenges and hopefully one victory, the climate movement could establish itself as a serious force. (It's not too late and you're not too unprepared. In November 2009, a few activists who knew nothing about elections decided to challenge Blue Dog Jim Matheson using a Criagslist help wanted ad. We split the delegate vote and forced a runoff primary that cost Matheson $1.2 million.) While we tend to focus a lot of attention on Obama's failures on climate change, congressional Democrats have been equally pathetic in their failure to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, especially when they controlled the majority in the House.

The climate movement could also rock the boat by campaigning for Jon Huntsman right now. Aside from playing dirty, I genuinely believe that Jon Huntsman would make a better president than Obama. While Huntsman was my governor, I saw him show integrity in the face of a Utah state legislature that makes the U.S. House look sane. Huntsman took very public steps to address climate change even while the legislature passed a bill that literally said the science of climate change was a U.N. conspiracy to limit human population. He has guts, which is more than anyone can say for Obama, who has demonstrated the wisdom of Edward Abbey's words, "Without courage, all other virtues are worthless." If Huntsman wanted an endorsement from a lefty activist felon in prison, he would have it.

Of course Huntsman can't win his party's batshit crazy primary. But building political power is all about looking beyond the next election. Very public support for Huntsman from the climate movement could create some interesting public discussion about how the Dems have failed to address the climate crisis. Campaigning for Huntsman might also scare Obama enough that he takes some steps over the next year to try to win us back.

But come 2012, the climate movement will still face that arrogant taunt, "Whaddaya gonna do? Let a Republican win?" If this movement is ever going to get serious political power, the answer needs to be yes. This is where things get dirty. Like any abusive relationship, this movement will always be taken for granted if it's not willing to turn its back on Obama. He needs to lose, and everyone needs to know it was us. Instead of making phone calls for Obama, those who helped him get elected should make phone calls to Obama explaining why they turned. Much of the youth climate movement has already announced that it won't actively campaign for Obama as it did in 2008, and logically this is no different than voting for his opponent. By not knocking on doors anymore, each activist affects dozens of votes, whereas voting for someone else is just one vote. But emotionally it feels like a much bigger leap. It almost feels dirty.

Perhaps that's part of why so many people are in the streets, not trying to sway politicians, but to overthrow them. To step into the current political arena, we have to play dirty if we're going to make any progress. Then again, there's always cat videos.


http://www.grist.org/politics/2011-11-1 ... hristopher
User avatar
Laodicean
 
Posts: 3509
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:39 pm
Blog: View Blog (16)

Re: Tim DeChristopher: No Mercy...Join Me

Postby Simulist » Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:32 pm

My back is already turned on Obama (okay, the truth is: it's my back-side), so if people want to vote the traitorous Democrats out of office then I wish them well.

That said, I wouldn't be banking on "the American vote" as an effective tool of opposition anytime too soon. After all, who ultimately counts the votes? Those in the system who are already in power, that's who.

The system itself must be stopped, including the fiction of "democracy" in the United States.
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
    — Alan Watts
User avatar
Simulist
 
Posts: 4713
Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2009 10:13 pm
Location: Here, and now.
Blog: View Blog (0)

Next

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 167 guests