direct action

By Anne Meador - DC Media Group, April 4, 2016

The Sheriff, District Attorney and a judge in Huntingdon County, PA may have stretched the law and infringed on individual civil rights in assisting a gas transmission company to get a wildlife sanctuary cleared for pipeline construction.

Sunoco Logistics Partners is in the midst of eminent domain proceedings in Central Pennsylvania to construct the Mariner East 2 pipeline. A court order favorable to the company, punitive bail set for activists resisting the clear-cut for the pipeline, plus allegations of endangerment and arbitrary arrests–one allegedly ordered by the District Attorney–point to local courts and law enforcement looking out for Sunoco’s interests.

A judge issued an emergency injunction on March 28 to allow Sunoco to proceed with clear-cutting three acres of the Gerhart family’s land, even though they are still pursuing litigation. Their supporters took to the trees on March 29-31 in an attempt to stop or delay the chainsaw crew. Three tree-sitters were backed up by a support team in a civil disobedience action “of last resort.”

Sheriff’s deputies arrested one of the property owners and two of the liaisons between the tree-sitters and law enforcement officers. For the activists, the judge set bail out of proportion to the misdemeanor charges. In one case, bail was set at $200,000.

The pipeline resisters say that the safety of the three tree-sitters was threatened, and law enforcement officers refused to stop crews from cutting down trees near them. With high wind speeds, there was danger of creating a wind tunnel by clearing a long path for the pipeline. “They told us the people should get down if they didn’t want to be cut down,” said Megan Holleran.

Liz Glunt was arrested when she crossed into the right-of-way to warn tree-cutters that they were getting too close. She met the $100,000 bond and was released the next day.

Property owner Ellen Gerhart says she wasn’t near the right-of-way when she was arrested, although she was alarmed that a tree had been felled so close to the one her daughter perched on that it brushed it on the way down. The deputies said she had been arrested because she was “in the danger zone.”

Alex Lotorto said he had been asked to come to the Gerharts’ and take on the role of police liaison. He assists landowners around the state who are facing pipeline easements with things such as getting attorneys to negotiate for them. He called a civil disobedience action like this one a last resort for landowners to consider only when nothing else has worked. “It’s a piece of leverage they have in these one-sided negotiations,” he said.

At the Gerharts’, he said he spent 3 1/2 hours discussing everyone’s intentions with police officers and rules and regulations pertaining to the right-of-way and wetland boundaries. His aim, he said, was to make sure that everyone remained safe. The state police, however, ran a background check on him and discovered that he had participated in protests like this one before.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested him and said they did so on the orders of the Huntingdon County District Attorney, according to Lotorto. (The District Attorney had not returned calls by press time.) Lotorto maintains that he never stood in the right-of-way, raised his voice or refused to answer a question.The official grounds for the arrest were that he was carrying a two-way radio. Lotorto says he used it only to communicate with others on the ground, and he was not involved in the tree-sit.

By Reid Frazier - The Allegheny Front, March 30, 2016

Web Editor's Note: This campaign involves members of the IWW.

As the chain saws revved nearby, Elise Gerhart was literally up a tree Tuesday protesting a pipeline slated to course through her family’s wooded property.

Gerhart, 29, of Huntingdon, and about 20 protesters coalesced around the Gerhart property as a work crew—chaperoned by local sheriff’s officers—took down trees along the property. Two protesters were arrested as the work crews cleared land for Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 2 pipeline, which will carry natural gas liquids from Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia area.

The company was granted a right-of-way on the Gerhart’s land by a judge through eminent domain in January. Though they are appealing that decision, the Gerharts were ordered by Huntingdon County Common Pleas Court Judge George Zanik Monday to stay clear of the chain saw crews.

Elise Gerhart said she didn’t know what else to do, so she climbed a tree early Tuesday to keep the crews away from at least one tree. 

“We’ve been forced to do this because the government isn’t protecting us,” Gerhart said, wearing a helmet and sitting on a platform wedged between branches of the tree, 40 feet in the air. “These agencies aren’t doing their job to protect the people and the environment.”

Two protesters were arrested for violating the judge’s orders. Huntingdon County District Attorney Dave Smith says the protesters were Elizabeth Glunt of Altoona and Alexander Lotorto of Milford. Bail for each was set at $100,000.

The chainsaw crew was attempting to finish the cutting by March 31, the end of tree-clearing season established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect migratory birds and the Indiana bat.

Elise Gerhart said she would stay in the tree until the end of the week, when the tree-clearing season ends.

The Gerharts bought the property in 1982 and have participated in a state program to preserve forestland on their property.

As she watched a chainsaw crew cut down a tall tree, Ellen Gerhart, Elise’s mother, teared up.

“It’s our little part we thought we could do some good in by at least protecting three acres of Pennsylvania.” 

The Gerharts are among dozens of property owners in Pennsylvania fighting with Sunoco over Mariner East 2. The $2.5 billion pipeline travels through 2,700 properties in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Company spokesman Jeff Shields said in an e-mail that the pipeline will carry “mostly propane and butane, with some ethane.” These liquids can be used for home heating but also as the raw materials for plastics. Shields says the ethane would be exported from the Marcus Hook industrial complex in Philadelphia overseas but eventually could be “part of other petrochemical processing units” at the complex. 

“(T)oday Sunoco Pipeline proceeded under the law and continued with our tree-felling activity in Huntingdon County,” Shields said. “We will continue to work with landowners to address their individual needs and concerns, but as the court noted, protesters do not have the right to prevent Sunoco Pipeline from conducting lawful activity.”

By Dan Fischer - CounterPunch, March 8, 2016

Paul Krugman has been writing about “salvation”. When it comes to global warming, the normally hard-headed economist puts aside his skepticism and awaits the fall of solar panels from heaven. Or rather, from Democratic politicians and polluting industries that dominate their climate policies. In a 2014 piece “Salvation Gets Cheap,” Krugman contended that thanks to price drops in renewable energy, small policy changes could put salvation “within fairly easy reach.” In last month’s “Planet on the Ballot,” Krugman argued that electing Hillary Clinton president would mean “salvation is clearly within our grasp”.

“So is the climate threat solved? Well, it should be.” The progressive pundit offers countless feel-good predictions along these lines. A deeper look at Krugman’s words, however, reveals a disturbing indifference to the loss of millions of lives, livelihoods, and homes. Currently, an estimated 400,000 people die each year from climate change, 98 percent of them in the Global South, according to the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a study commissioned by twenty governments. Krugman looks away, instead seeing salvation in pathways that increase global warming far above today’s already genocidal amount.

While he mocks conservative climate change deniers, Krugman himself is in denial about the necessary solutions. A fast-paced transition, while technologically possible, is not compatible with economic growth. This presents a problem for Krugman, who has spent his career defending a capitalist economic system requiring infinite growth. “All that stands in the way of saving the planet,”the Nobel prize winner declares in “Salvation Gets Cheap,” “is a combination of ignorance, prejudice and vested interests.” Unfortunately, his own columns offer a vivid illustration. Krugman’s liberal climate denialism has five basic steps.

By x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, March 3, 2016

The IWW has long been associated, for better or worse, with the tactic of "sabotage", so much so that it has become an essential part of the Wobbly lexicon (even though the tactic predates the IWW by at least a century). As I have detailed elsewhere¹, the radical environmental movement, initiated principally, though not exclusively, by Earth First!, beginning in the very late 1970s in the United States, drew much cultural inspiration from the One Big Union (and to a much lesser degree, some of its economic critique of capitalism). One of the most celebrated such "borrowings" was the strategy of direct action.

A classic IWW slogan, which appeared on many of the IWW's literature and imagery, reads "direct action gets the goods". The black cat or the wooden shoe (otherwise known as a "sabot"), often associated with the IWW, symbolizes "sabotage," and these same symbols and slogans would later appear in Earth First! literature and iconography.

Earth First! cofounder, Dave Foreman popularized "monkeywrenching" (sometimes also called "ecofefense"), a series or class of tactics involving small bands of anonymous guerillas entering into wilderness areas slated to be developed or have their resources extracted and vandalized the equipment that was to be used in the process or set traps that would hamper the same equipment from smooth and timely operations. This has often been called sabotage (or sometimes ecotage).

However, sabotage and monkeywrenching are not the same thing. In fact, many who practice, or at least preach, using the latter do not understand the difference, and economic conditions which led to the adoption of the former by workers. Indeed, may of them don't understand sabotage at all, and that's no coincidence. What most people have heard or read about the IWW and "sabotage" is fairly inaccurate, and most accounts are more romantic fiction than historical fact.

By The Heathrow 13 - Plane Stupid, February 29, 2016

On the 24th of February, we - the Heathrow 13 - were sentenced to 6 weeks in prison, suspended for 12 months, with an additional 120 to 180 hours community service on top. Whilst we are happy to not be in prison right now, this is far from a complete victory.

As our barrister  QC Kirsty Brimelow, so eloquently argued, there is a long tradition of direct action in the UK, and a convention for sentencing within the legal system. In fact Lord Hoffman, in an influential ruling, went as far as to say that it is the mark of a civilised society to accommodate this, and that the legal convention is for sentences such as a conditional discharge or community service. In this light, our barristers argued that our action clearly did not cross the custodial threshold – i.e. our sentence should not be imprisonment, immediate or suspended. The fact that Judge Wright chose to give us a suspended sentence marks a shift in the way protesters are treated, going against the normal convention. 

Experts have suggested that if magistrates impose custody for minor offences, that produces an incentive for activists to commit more serious offences. This is because more serious crimes are dealt with by a jury, who are more likely to be understanding of the issues. Whilst more radical actions are welcome, and in fact are necessary to tackle the scale of climate change, repression from the judicial system is not.

As we went into court on the 24th, all of us were prepared for the possibility for prison. We all experienced a rollercoaster of emotions, from fear and stress to defiance and pride. The support and love we were shown by family, friends and the wider movement made us feel all the more ready to deal with a potential prison sentence. Had we gone to prison, we would have depended on this support network around us. We all feel so grateful for this.

Yet, we should reflect on this as a form of privilege. There are over 85,000 people in prison in the UK, not including immigration detention centres, secure children's homes or those detained under the Mental Health Act. Those imprisoned are disproportionately from poor, minority backgrounds and are likely to have suffered various forms of abuse in their lives. Vulnerable people are the ones being targeted by the judicial system. These people are highly unlikely to be able to gain the same kind of support a high profile privileged group such as ours could.

By Ella Gilbert MSc - Mashable, February 23, 2016

Editors Note: Ella Gilbert MSc (as well as several other members of the #Heathrow13) are dues paying members of the IWW. for more details about the struggle, please visit Plane Stupid.

Update from the Guardian:

Six women and seven men have avoided jail for trespassing at Heathrow, following a protest against the possible expansion of the airport.

The activists, dubbed the Heathrow 13, were given sentences of six weeks suspended for 12 months, meaning they would not have to go to prison immediately.

They had been found guilty in January of aggravated trespass and entering a security-restricted area of an aerodrome. They had been warned by district judge Deborah Wright to expect a custodial sentence.

Read more...

For more on the sentencing of the Heathrow 13, see also:

• Climate Protesters Avoid Jail - By Melanie Mattauch, Ecowatch, February 25, 2016
• #Heathrow13 to continue climate fight following court ruling - By Joanna Peasland, Climate Change News, February 25, 2016
• #Heathrow13: the systemic violence of climate change - By Ali Tamlit, The Ecologist, February 25, 2016
• Heathrow 13 avoid jail term following Plane Stupid runway climate change protest - By Ewan Palmer, International Business Times, February 24, 2016
• The noble cause of the Heathrow 13 - By John McDonnell MP, The Ecologist, February 24, 2016
• The Heathrow 13 are the only role models that count for my generation - By Anna Wild, New Internationalist, February 23, 2016
• Heathrow 13: The UK’s first climate prisoners? - By Melanie Mattauch, 350.org, February 23, 2016
• Jailing the #Heathrow13 for Protecting the Climate is a “Redline” - By Andy Rowell, Oil Change International, February 23, 2016
• The Heathrow 13: the resistance against a third runway - By Ali Tamlit, ROARmag, February 22, 2016
• 13 climate criminals who should be in jail - By Tom Walker, Red Pepper, February 23, 2016

LONDON — Today I’ve been packing my bag for prison.

That sentence never gets less weird. It’s a task that most people will never have to do, or even think about doing, so it’s been a learning curve. Take this for example: you can’t take black clothes into prison. This is a serious problem for someone whose entire wardrobe is black.

If you’re wondering why I’m having to do this, here’s why: on Wednesday, myself and 12 others from direct action network Plane Stupid will be sentenced to “almost inevitable” (in the words of the judge) custodial sentences for our part in a direct action that happened last year.

In July, the #Heathrow13 occupied one of Heathrow’s runways for six hours: the longest airport occupation in the UK to date, and the most high profile. We managed to stop 25 planes and in so doing prevented the emission of hundreds, if not thousands, of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Aircraft are hugely polluting machines. They spew out air pollutants like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides that cause serious health effects for wildlife and for people living in the local area, as well as climate-damaging greenhouse gases. I’m sure I don’t need to explain that greenhouse gases cause climate change by trapping heat in the atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise and altering the way the climate functions. Carbon dioxide is the most obvious of these warming gases, but many others are also emitted by plane exhausts, such as oxides of nitrogen, which trigger the formation of ozone when emitted at altitude, and water vapour. All of these have a significant warming effect, especially when emitted at aircraft cruising altitude, several kilometres above the ground.

One of the major problems with aviation is that it cannot really be decarbonised. It takes a lot of energy to fly a heavy metal object full of people at hundreds of miles an hour across the world. Unfortunately, the technology is not yet there to allow planes to fly using hydrogen or electric fuel cells, which means that for now at least, jet fuel is very much fossil fuel based. Although efficiency improvements can reduce some of its impact, demand for aviation is enormous and any efficiency improvements are vastly outstripped by the rapid growth in passenger volumes. Many airlines, incl. United, are experimenting with biofuel blends as a possible transition fuel of sorts. But most biofuels are no better for the climate than oil. It’s not a serious solution.

What this means is that aviation is still a heavily polluting industry and will probably continue to be so for many years to come. However, action needs to be taken to combat climate change – something recognised in law by the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act. This stipulates that UK emissions must be reduced by 80% from 2005 levels before 2050. That’s a big cut, but it might be possible if every sector in the UK economy makes aggressive and sustained reductions in their emissions.

However, aviation is being given something of a free ride – a proposed third runway at Heathrow, which would emit another 9 million tonnes or so of CO2 per year (emissions on a par with the whole of Kenya). We cannot build new runways if we are to prevent climate change –- and doing so undermines all of our other efforts to reduce emissions across the board.