For more details, information, and resources, visit the full Climate Trial page.
June 23rd, 2011: climate activist Tim DeChristopher will be sentenced at the Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah, after being convicted of two felony charges in March. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine for peacefully derailing an oil and gas lease auction in December 2008.
Tim’s conviction is a miscarriage of justice that threatens all citizens who desire a livable future and a representative government. During Tim’s trial in March, people from all over the country responded to the government’s attempt at intimidation with joy and resolve; this time, we must acknowledge our anger–we must, as Terry Tempest Williams observed, summon “new volumes of outrage and love.”
1. June 23rd; Day of Sentencing: We asked people to join us in Salt Lake for Tim’s trial in March. The invitation stands for sentencing, but we know many people cannot be here. Therefore, we encourage you to go to the federal courthouse in your state on June 23rd. Show the justice system that their actions are unacceptable; make it clear that when they persecute one citizen, they threaten us all. Demonstrate your outrage, and the love you have for the world you want to create. The justice system wants to see the flame of activism die out; show them that we are only becoming stronger. We know by observing history that nonviolent movements are more effective than destructive ones. Remember, we are dismantling a system that is loyal to greed and fueled by fear. We will not change that through fighting with the police or destroying property. We will defeat these things by using outrage as fuel for our courage, generosity, and resolve.
2. June 24th: Boot camp BBQ: We immediately begin the work of reclaiming our communities. On June 24th, we will host an open, day-long gathering in a Salt Lake City public park. For the first part of the day, we will conduct mass-trainings in nonviolent action and action planning techniques; then we’ll break out to put them to use. As food is prepared, we’ll pull together to plan community-wide actions for the following day. As twilight falls, with full bellies and the satisfaction of creating a great plan, we’ll listen to live music and dance.
3. June 25th: Community Audit Action: During the boot camp BBQ, we will choose “hot and cool spots” in Salt Lake Valley. We will use a “shotgun approach” to visit each of these. Hot spots are places where unchecked greed threatens our collective future, poisons our environment, and marginalizes our neighbors.Cool spots are places where organizations are already at work creating the world we want to see. Together, we will show the hot spots just how we feel about their destructive agenda, and honor the cool spots for their integrity and praxis.
The date of Tim’s sentencing marks the 23-year anniversary of NASA scientist James’ Hansen memorable testimony to Congress, on June 23rd, 1988. For the first time, Hansen confronted our leaders about the threats of a warming planet. Hansen stated that Earth had entered a long-term warming trend, the result of human-made greenhouse gases. Extracting data from scientific studies, observations and basic physics, he concluded that the evidence was strong enough that it was time to “stop waffling.”
Almost a quarter of a century later, we still find ourselves trying to convince politicians to take us seriously.
Once we realize that signing petitions from the convenience of our computers and cruising our social media networks just isn’t enough, we’re faced with intimidation. An oppressive system seeks to divide us, and to force us to live in fear of sharing our convictions and our ideals. When we witness a wrong being committed, is it not our moral imperative to make it right—especially when it threatens human rights, social justice, and our very survival?
Consider this our call to you. On June 23rd, show the world that we will not be intimidated; that it is our right to challenge the status quo; that we embrace peaceful civil disobedience as a tradition and as a vital tactic, if it means standing in the way of corporate rape and pillaging of our planet; that we will demand jury trials and empower our peers to be the true conscience of their community.
If you can come to Salt Lake City, we welcome you with open arms. If you cannot, find a federal courthouse near you. Demonstrate. Stand in joy and resolve. Show your outrage that one of our brothers could face the most severe sentence in history for a nonviolent direct action— raising a bidder paddle.
Reclaim your voice. Because you are not alone. The entire climate justice movement is standing behind you.
Questions or ideas? bidder70@peacefuluprising.org
US Uncut website has a method that worked in England and can work here.
If someone from S.W. Colorado needs a ride to Salt Lake City, UT for Peaceful Uprising’s June 23, 24 & 25 events related to Tim’s sentencing, I MIGHT be able to help.
I will be leaving S.W. Colorado on June 21 or 22 for a training in Las Vegas, NV and could swing up to SLC to drop you off there and pick you up for the return to Colo. on June 27 (if you haven’t found another ride home sooner). You could ask PU about helping w/ preparations & local transportation. And perhaps a place to stay (from what they said when they were at the Mountainfilm festival here recently). Email me A.S.A.P. so we can get in touch by phone.
is there a meeting place and time for salt lake on the 23rd?
the punishment for what he did does not fit the so called crime.
Something the day before sentencing to give the Court something to think about?
At first I thought this was all pretty petty–some sales fell through. That happens everywhere in the world. Probably has for these lease sales. Slap on the wrist for a young guy is excessive. But then I realized this was an intelligent protest of the oil companies–hugely frightening to our corporate masters so he might get buried in the prison system. If the powers that be were smart they would give no punishment and a promise to dismiss the case in a year if no further charges. No big news, no martyr, no more civil disobedience from him.
Is our government ever that smart? No body as a shrine makes the house in Pakistan the shrine. Tim in jail unfairly rallies the world. I hope he does not have to go through it.
A great idea for SLC, if the court is in session or if it is big enough to make MSM (though they have every incentive NOT to cover it).
I would really love to come to SLC for these events—OOPS! it is the exact date of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations annual General Assembly (GA) in Charlotte, N.C., and I am an off-site delegate, tied to my Paramus, N.J., location on behalf of my congregation—can’t even go to the Newark federal court. Major Bummer. Any UUs on this list, please contact GA planners to ask that Tim’s sentencing be included somehow—I am not sure that there are any plenary sessions that day, but there must be a way to send a message—this is truly a valid Action of Immediate Witness, I will gladly help draft one.
For you nonUUs reading this, sorry to get so detailed. I will take this offline; anyone interested in action at GA, please E-mail me at SJGUU (aol.com).
Check out US Uncut website for ideas on what you CAN do!
I will start planning on a solidarity rally at the Federal Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale.
(1) Balance the federal budget by ending the wars of fascist capitalist aggression in the Middle East.
(2) Balance the federal budget by removing all of the fascist capitalist war machine, i.e. the American military, from the Middle East.
(3) Balance the federal budget by drastically downsizing the fascist capitalist war machine.
(4) Balance the federal budget by ending all of the pork-barrel new weapons programs for the fascist capitalist war machine. In all cases the capitalist war machine doesn’t have a need for these new weapons. The only reason they are being developed is to provide a market for American armaments corporations.
(5) Balance the federal budget by closing all 900+ foreign military bases used by the fascist capitalist war machine.
(6) Balance the federal budget by outlawing and disbanding all of the extremely expensive private fascist armies such as Blackwater, DynCorp and Blackhawk.
(7) Balance the federal budget by ending all military aid for Egypt, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, Columbia, Honduras, Iraq, Tunisia, Jordan, etc., etc., etc.
(8) Balance the federal budget by ending all subsidies for the very profitable oil, natural gas and coal corporations, the nuclear power industry, the very profitable large agricultural corporations, etc., etc., etc.
(9) Balance the federal government by dismantling the huge and growing federal police-state security apparatus.
(10) Balance the federal budget by ending the extremely wasteful and ineffective war on drugs.
(11) Balance the federal budget by shutting down all of the illegal foreign prisons operated by the CIA.
(12) Balance the federal budget by shutting down the US Army’s notorious Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School for the Americas. The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation trains police and military officers for fascist capitalist Central and South American governments that use them to brutally suppress political dissent.
(13) Balance the federal budget by maintaining the separation of church and state and ending all federal Faith-based initiatives. In other words, get the federal government out of the business of promoting religion. The Christian churches are very profitable capitalist business operations that can afford to finance their extremely reactionary parochial schools.
(14) Balance the federal budget by raising the taxes on the obscenely wealthy pro-fascist capitalist class, their extremely profitable pro-fascist corporations and their highly overpaid pro-fascist corporate management.
(15) Balance the federal budget by ending the war of fascist capitalist aggression in Libya and ending the military build-up for a war with Iran and/or North Korea.
Love you list, could add to it. Would like your permission to copy it to send to my “representatives”.
Excellent post, and great ideas. I needed some fuel for my dissenting fire, and will start moving on setting up a rally in Concord, NH on June 23rd. Inshallah…