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Watching Tim speak in the courtroom, watching him utter words that would be echoed and transported across oceans, seeing him in all his candor and vulnerability, I realized that it’s the most powerful I’ve ever seen him. As he earnestly looked the judge straight in the eye asking him to join him — to join us — I simply could not ignore the eery yet deeply moving sensation that this statement would be one for the history books.
[quote]“This is what hope looks like… This is what patriotism looks like… This is what love looks like.”
-Tim DeChristopher. July 26th 2011. Salt Lake City Federal Courthouse (Read full statement here)[/quote]
On that day, in that courtroom, his invitation fell on deaf ears. Judge Benson did not open up his heart to Tim’s plea and instead chose to respond with the inflexible “rule of law,” the systemic stance that an empowered citizen effectively challenging the status-quo should be contained and silenced.
In those initial nauseating and destabilizing moments, I simply could not process the judge’s words. 24 months of federal incarceration? To be taken into custody forthwith by US Marshals? Chained up like a dangerous criminal? All after making it crystal clear that the prison sentence was the result of Tim’s outspoken political views?
Crushed by the daunting realization that there would be no final good-bye, no last hug, I rushed down the courthouse steps, dizzy and in shock. Despite my personal trauma, the world needed to know, needed to hear Peaceful Uprising’s outrage and our call for a peaceful, directed, and sustained response.
Two weeks after his sentencing, I feel as though I’m finally emerging from a state of shock. Speaking to him through a monitor at the local county jail, seeing his strong smile, I finally accepted the fact that my friend is behind bars and will remain there for another 102 long weeks.
Digging up dirt at Sego Lily School, which will be the first net-zero school in the nation
With every supportive message, email and phone call I’ve received, I’m gratefully reminded that this IS what love looks like. Love is an entire community crying, raging, screaming, breaking down, and holding one another. Love is the tough conversations that ensue, the restorative gatherings, the gardening and digging up dirt together, the willingness to stand for one another – despite our mistakes and shortcomings. Even when my knees go weak, even when my body won’t sustain its own weight, I know that someone is there to catch me.
Reverend C.T. Vivian, a civil rights activist, once said that you do not walk away from a movement. A fervent admirer of that era, Tim has often daydreamed of a Climate Justice movement in which every single one of us feels empowered to act, knowing that someone somewhere would have our back.
Tim never ran from the punishment he faced, knowing that his sacrifice could stir something up in us, in our community, in our movement. It has. Witnessing the massive out pouring of support that his unjust sentence has generated, my heart swells and I smile, knowing that it now feels as real as ever.
Our hearts are broken today, as we witness our industry-ruled justice system attempt to alienate us from one another, but we can choose our response – because only WE govern our principles. The best gift we can offer Tim today is a Climate Justice movement that acts on its ideals, committed to an authentic nonviolent resistance.
Every one of us is a powerful agent of change and we are not alone — we are all of us fingers, connected to a mighty fist.
I invite you to take a stand in your community, to develop your vision of a healthy and just world with your neighbors, and act with the full confidence that there is an entire movement standing behind you. Personally, I make a commitment to you, to my community, to honor you and the work that you do, no matter how hard the going gets. Join one of the numerous peaceful, sustained uprisings emerging all over the country these coming months?
Drawing from the movements of the past, we will relentlessly continue to seek a “society that can live at peace with its conscience,” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once called for.
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MUST WATCH…..PLEASE SHARE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbRnDWh2A5w
The TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY takes time. Anything worthwhile in life takes time and patience. Stay true to your Self moving forward in the direction of your dreams and keeping your goal fixed in your mind’s eye. In the end you will find your heart’s desire. Our greatest lessons and blessings often emerge from what appeared to be a “tragic situation”. We grow because of pain, not in spite of it….
I am just a baby environmentalist. I have all the correct views, but none of the “know how” to get started with an organization. basically everybody I really know doesnt see the sence in what I do.
so this is just a way for me to reach out to others that think like I do. If you live in the Salt lake/taylorsville/downtown area and know some way for me to help out or get started. please email me at jposhuarice@yahoo.com
-Joshua
Tim DeChristopher
#2011 – 06916
c/o Davis County Correctional Facility
PO Box 130
Farmington, UT 84025
Thank you very much, David.
Would someone please post Tim’s mailing address at the prison? I’d like to write to him as well.
Beautifully written, Henia. Thank you for sharing it with me.
What Christopher has done, and does for us now, haunts my conscience. What you do, disturbs me in the same way. It causes me to ask the painful question, “Am I doing enough? Am I risking enough?”
I know I am one of the fortunate few. I read somewhere that Average American reads at a 7th grade level. And there is so much illiteracy in the world that only one out of four women can read. I am one of the few who can read books like “Eaarth” and learn in detail what is being done in my name.
There are 300 million people in the United States. Fox news strangles 100 million household’s access to information about climate change. It washes over people, soaking them in fear and ignorance.
I am one of the few who understands and can help others to understand.
I read recently that most social change is achieved by only 2% of the population. Are we that two percent? Does that mean that each and everyone of us is indispensable, and if any of us run away, the entire thing could fail?
Last night we watched a children’s movie about a boy with special powers, who was afraid of the responsibility his powers demanded of him. He ran away, and because he was away, his entire tribe was murdered.
Debra wrote that “love is the great destroyer”. That feels true. It feels like small self must die, or be willing to die as MLK was, for the greater beloved community.
What a terrifying thing. And even more terrifying to realize that the only other choice besides love, is to run away, and be haunted by the guilt of what you have allowed to happen.
This is part of a letter I wrote to Tim last week. It seems fitting to share it here with you, following Henia’s post.
“Change has to be fueled by love. What most don’t realize is that love is the great destroyer. Love is not the opposite of hate. Which is why the demonstrations outside the courthouse, infused with dignity and with song, were so powerful, and why your statement to the court is so disarming. You presented them with a choice: they could have humbly – joyfully! – accepted your invitation to join you in “standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government”, or they could rigidly and fearfully hold to their own belief system and insist that their way is the right way. The point is that, from a place of love, you put a choice before them that they were not expecting, could not have seen coming, that was so outside of their view of humanity that the best Judge Benson could do was comment that you had made a “fine speech”. But love doesn’t always come as a mighty flood – sometimes love starts as a tiny crack in the dam, and little by little gains force until the dam gives way.
William James wrote:
I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible forces that work individual to individual by creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like capillary oozing of water, yet which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monument of man’s pride.
How great it would have been if Judge Benson had looked you sternly in the eye and said, “Young man, I sentence you to two years hard labor in St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans. After two years come back to this court and tell me what you did to heal, what you did to rebuild, what you did to transform pain and suffering and destruction into new life.” Judge Benson’s own transformation could have come in that moment. That would have been a flood, a rush of conscience and consciousness. He would have joined you, not just in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government, but in his own liberation. Instead, the “tiny invisible forces” are doing their work and they will work on him as well. Not soon enough to keep you out of prison, but prison will not stop those forces, because nothing can.”