Latest Updates for Tim DeChristopher’s Sentencing

Tim said “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.” I would go even further: the government is not the sole voice of moral authority, and it is not any voice of moral authority. I don’t think ...

Tim DeChristopher is followed by reporters as he walks to the courthouse before sentencing.Photo: Jennifer PredigerThe following text appeared in a handwritten letter from Tim DeChristopher addressed to Grist’s Jennifer Prediger. 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 ...

If we allow the law to dictate what is fair as in the case of putting Tim DeChristopher behind bars—for committing civil disobedience in the name of a livable future, for raising a paddle to expose corruption between industry and government—then we are not just prisoners but slaves to the corporations in bed with the ...

Activist spends first day in prison as civil disobedience group vows to use two-year sentence to build momentum for further protests. “Consider this your call to action,” says Peaceful Uprising.

(Lindsy) 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 ...

It’s not often that cops — and those whom they arrest — express mutual praise. But that unlikely twist is part of the aftermath of Tuesday’s wholesale arrests at the federal courthouse… Police Chief Burbank said it was “the smoothest arrest of 26 individuals that I have ever seen.”

Many had said they hoped DeChristopher would be given community service in lieu of prison time. “He’s a decent young man, he should be allowed to move on with his life. He didn’t harm anybody, and he didn’t do it out of greed,” said Delphi Alvarado, 53, of Salt Lake City.

The sentence — condemned by protestors who staged a sit-in outside the Salt Lake City courthouse, locking themselves together with plastic ties — follows DeChristopher’s high-profile spoiling of a federal auction in late 2008.

Massey’s April 2010 mine explosion killed 29 miners, but the company maneuvered out of lawsuits with only paying fines. No one went to jail. Similarly, the BP oil disaster killed 11 men, injured 17 others, contaminated hundreds of miles of coastline, shut much of the Gulf down to fishing and caused untold environmental damage. BP still ...

Tim DeChristopher, the environmental activist who disrupted a 2008 government auction with fake energy lease bids, faces sentencing after his March conviction. He could go to jail for up to 10 years. To some, it's a justifiable sentence for an audacious man who tried to take the law in his own hands and ultimately created ...

DeChristopher was feeling good about having stood up for what he feels is right, despite the consequences. “It’s made me start to view myself as a powerful activist, as somebody who can be a powerful agent of change. Not somebody who’s a victim of my society.” Organizers from Peaceful Uprising are prepared for an emotional ...

Tim is a hero to me, the kind of hero Peter, Paul and Mary stood up for consistently over the last 50 years. There is a massive complicity in America today between the corporations that fund elections and the officeholders they elect. Actions like Tim’s are aimed at disrupting that complicity. For our children, for ...

Prosecutors urge judge to make example of environmentalist What’s fair punishment for an environmentalist who submitted phony lease bids in order to derail oil and gas drilling on public land near national parks? A judge will decide Tuesday and has the option of going as far as 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine. Tim DeChristopher, ...

DeChristopher has become a cause célèbre for many environmental activists. In an interview Monday, he said he has been prosecuted not because of what he did, but because he urged other activists to follow in his footsteps.

DeChristopher has prepared himself for a prison sentence; he plans to write a prison journal on the criminal justice system, and hopes his actions will inspire others to fight for the environment. The 30-year-old activist tells Mother Jones now that he would “definitely not” have it another way if he could wind back the clock.

After reviewing the leases; it was found that only about 20% of the 116 parcels up for auction that day were legal. The orchestrators and deal brokers who put these illegal deals together face no charges, while DeChristopher, for stopping illegal sale of public lands faces up to 10 years in prison and fines totaling ...

Tim’s sentence is clearly designed to send a message to anyone else who might be thinking of defying the government, even in the most peaceful and civil way. The feds charged him with financial fraud, as if his goal had somehow been to make money from his actions. As a result he faces not a ...

“We know that now I’ll have to go to prison,” DeChristopher said. “If we’re going to achieve our vision, many after me will have to join me as well.” Many in the crowd called back: “I’ll join you.”

Tim said he believed the looming dangers of climate change and environmental impact from drilling were so great and urgent that he had no choice but to take whatever action he could to stop the drilling program… “Unlike a person demolishing a home to create a firebreak,” Judge Benson wrote, “DeChristopher’s actions were more akin ...

Instead of joining his protester friends on the snowy sidewalk outside the Bureau of Land Management office in Salt Lake City, Tim DeChristopher took a seat inside. In a room milling with oil and gas men who knew one another by sight, he was the unknown in a red parka, registering as a bidder in ...