Wonk Room‘s Brad Johnson has the story:
Four climate activists are being held in a West Virginia jail for protesting how coal mining is killing the people and land of their state. On Tuesday, December 29, four activists with Climate Ground Zero “” a grassroots campaign of non-violent civil disobedience in southern West Virginia to address mountaintop removal coal mining “” were arrested for trespass at their homes in Rock Creek, West Virginia:
Mat Louis-Rosenberg, Jacqueline Quimby, Kimberly Ellis and James McGuinness were taken to the Kanawha County Courthouse by State Police by West Virginia State Trooper Lt. Bowers. The charges stem from a October 10 demonstration at Walker CAT’s headquarters, which challenged Walker’s misleading pro-coal advertising campaign at which Gabe Schwartzman, 19, and David German, 18, were arrested by City of Belle Police and cited for trespassing on a structure or conveyance. The two had unfurled a banner which read, “Yes, Coal is Killing West Virginia’s Communities.”
According to Climate Ground Zero, the four activists remain in police custody in the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver, WV. They have yet to see a magistrate and have not been informed of their charges, other than trespassing, which, if proven, would result in a maximum one-hundred-dollar fine.
“This is outrageous behavior on the part of the Kanawha County prosecutors.” said Climate Ground Zero campaign director Mike Roselle.
“These four people are guilty of nothing. They were simply present during a
demonstration last October and none of them were ever informed at any time that they were trespassing. Usually in this type of case they simply write you a ticket or mail you a summons. To drag them out of their homes and refuse to allow any bail violates their most basic constitutional right to due process.”
Climate Ground Zero is part of a growing international movement using nonviolent civil disobedience to protest the ravages of fossil fuel extraction and the global damages of climate change.
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Any coverage of this in the MSM? Any at all?
They can have their day in court. If they were not trespassing, they should win their case.
I guess if the vested fossil fuel interests can’t argue AGW away they’re willing to settle for having a chilling effect on political discourse.
Once again: The FF interests and their ideological and financial hangers on have barely begun to fight.
The trespassing Occured Oct 10. I suspect they were blocking a road.
Have to respect boundaries.
How about respect for the law, by law enforcement. They do have the right to due process, officaly charge them or let them go. We have not entered the dark ages yet!
5. K. Nockels says: “We have not entered the dark ages yet!”
Well, I’m not prepared to argue the point with you, but a question that has plagued me for some years now is this: “If you were in a dark age, would you know it, and how would you know it?”
Per T Lehman, #’s 2 and 4 above, I think the larger issue is that these individuals were arrested without any prior notification THAT they were or even might be trespassing, and that they were then denied bail. The timing of these arrests seems particularly suspicious, coming as it does 3 1/2 months after the event. Plus the fact that the response to the alleged tresspass is arrest w/o bail rather than mere citation. This looks very much like an attempt by the county and possibly state authorities to use intimidation and fear against the civil population in order to cow them into complacency.
Money speaks louder than conscience, obviously. Wonder how much the officials are being paid?
If Blankenship and Massey Coal can buy off State Supreme Court judges, purchasing a few local sheriffs should be no big deal. West Virginia is like a Third World petro state, corrupt from top to bottom.
We still have a US Constitution, though, as assaulted as it has been lately. I hope a legal firm steps to these “trespassers”‘ defense, and countersues the Sheriff’s office.
The fossil fuel plutocrats are making the US into a third world nation. If this were a nation of (non-corporatized) laws, then West Virginia is a criminal that violates the Constitution and is therefore anti-American. So go ahead and violate citizen right to free speech WV while you destroy American mountains and then lay your body down to rot along with the hubris of your destruction. No shame Senator Byrd? Perhaps too old to acknowledge the similarities between corporatism and fascism. The very idea that destruction of forest and mountain is a “job” is pathetic.
Who pays the legal fees?