(W)e who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.- Letter from Birmingham Jail
Judge Acquits Three Climate Activists Who Shut Down Tar Sands Pipelines
A month before the 2016 election, anti-pipeline activists staged an unprecedented coordinated action to shut down the flow of oil from Canada to the United States. On October 11, 2016, activists in North Dakota, Washington, Montana and Minnesota turned the manual safety valves on four pipelines, temporarily halting the flow of nearly 70 percent of the crude oil imported to the United States from Canada. They came to be known as the “valve turners.” What followed was a lengthy legal battle that ended with some of the activists in jail. But on Tuesday, three valve turners who broke into an oil pipeline facility in Minnesota on that day in 2016 were acquitted. We speak with the valve turners themselves, Annette Klapstein and Emily Johnston, about their acquittal. Johnston is a poet and co-founder of 350Seattle.org, and Klapstein is a retired attorney for the Puyallup Tribe and member of the Raging Grannies. We also speak with their attorney, Kelsey Skaggs.
And Dr. James Hansen who kind of goes off point in the middle about Global Warming and the dire situation we find ourselves in, so hopefully I was able to find cuts that sort of edit that part out. If you want to visit you’ll find it here and here
We Need Civil Disobedience to Fight Climate Change