Speaker 1: Now you might think of the Mounties as kind of
Speaker 1: like Dudley do, right, They always get their man. They
Speaker 1: ride around in the musical ride with their red jackets.
Speaker 1: The Mountains make no mistake. They are a vicious colonial militia.
Speaker 1: They were formed in order to break the backs of
Speaker 1: the indigenous resistance on the prairies, to open up the
Speaker 1: land to railways and western expansion by settlers. And they
Speaker 1: are still doing that job here on the colonial frontier
Speaker 1: in Northern VC, except these days they have helicopters and
Speaker 1: attack dogs and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2: The response from the authorities, like the police, whenever that
Speaker 2: I say protests against oil companies, it's always different from
Speaker 2: how they respond to other protests.
Speaker 3: After about two hours of a standoff, they just line
Speaker 3: up the riot squad and just marched the mean you know,
Speaker 3: I remember them performing together. Reminded me a bunch of
Speaker 3: that have puffed up turkeys. I went and then went
Speaker 3: in and surrounded all these poor kids and started arresting
Speaker 3: them and moving on.
Speaker 4: So technically the investigation is still on and I can't
Speaker 4: plan around it. I can't, and I don't know when
Speaker 4: it's going to end, So I don't know how long
Speaker 4: it will take.
Speaker 5: When the former colonies acquired independence. In the advent of dicolonization,
Speaker 5: largely after the Second World War and the advent of
Speaker 5: the United Nations, the former imperial powers needed a legal
Speaker 5: system to protect the economic interests of their corporations.
Speaker 6: When I went to surrender.
Speaker 7: To the FBI, I thought it was going to be kind.
Speaker 6: Of a straightforward, more of a like a clerical matter.
Speaker 8: But I ended up being put into shackles and taken
Speaker 8: into custody for a good part of the day without
Speaker 8: a lot of explanation of.
Speaker 6: What was happening or why that was necessary. That was
Speaker 6: Kainda Gata in Canada, Fine Faced Dunamini in Nigeria, David
Speaker 6: Shubridge in Australia, Disha Robbie in Bangalore, Marcos, Oriana and Chile,
Speaker 6: and Joanna Altman Smith in the US. Across the globe,
Speaker 6: people advocating for climate action, whether they're students showing up
Speaker 6: protests or lawyers arguing in court, are being retaliated against
Speaker 6: by industries and politicians that feel threatened by that advocacy.
Speaker 6: I'm Amy Westerwald, and over the next several months we
Speaker 6: will be following this trend across borders, looking at everything
Speaker 6: from the history of environmental protest and the suppression of it,
Speaker 6: to the way think tanks help to push legislation that
Speaker 6: criminalizes protests, to tactics used by both corporations and law enforcement,
Speaker 6: from infiltrating movements to stripping environmental organizations of their nonprofit
Speaker 6: status and labeling protesters domestic terrorists. For land and water
Speaker 6: defenders around the world, being labeled a criminal can have
Speaker 6: severe personal consequences, from social isolation to post traumatic stress,
Speaker 6: to years of incarceration, and, at the extreme end, assassination.
Speaker 6: Most serious repercussions fall on populations that are already routinely criminalized,
Speaker 6: particularly people of color and indigenous people, especially in places
Speaker 6: that have experienced colonialism in its most brutal forms. Criminalization
Speaker 6: also impacts the broader climate and environmental movements, draining them
Speaker 6: of vital resources and key organizers. Ultimately, our ability to
Speaker 6: avoid the worst outcomes of the climate crisis depends on
Speaker 6: the success of people organizing to protect the land and water.
Speaker 6: To edit this series, we've brought on a reporter who's
Speaker 6: been covering this issue longer than most, Alleen Brown. You
Speaker 6: might recognize her name from her last gig at the Intercept. Now,
Speaker 6: Alleen is an independent investigative reporter, contributing to lots of
Speaker 6: different publications and publishing her own newsletter too, called Eco Files.
Speaker 6: Working with Allen and with reporters on almost every continent,
Speaker 6: we'll be bringing you stories that help to trace the
Speaker 6: roots of this trend. We're going to highlight successful fights
Speaker 6: against it as well and humanize activists that the media
Speaker 6: has helped to vilify and dehumanize for far too long.
Speaker 6: You might remember us talking about how this trend has
Speaker 6: unfolded in the US in previous episodes, where we've covered
Speaker 6: the rollout of so called critical infrastructure laws that increase
Speaker 6: both the fines and jail time associated with trespassing near
Speaker 6: anything deemed critical infrastructure, which can include anything from a
Speaker 6: pipeline to a road. Environmental defenders sometimes use tactics like
Speaker 6: non violent direct action or civil disobedience to prevent the
Speaker 6: construction and operation of polluting projects that can involve physically
Speaker 6: standing in the way of construction equipment or trespassing on
Speaker 6: private property. More rarely, some activists physically damage equipment. These
Speaker 6: acts cost companies money, and sometimes they lead to arrest
Speaker 6: under existing trespass or vandalism laws, but in recent years,
Speaker 6: corporations have been pushing for new laws specifically designed to
Speaker 6: punish and prevent disruptive environmental protests. These laws add additional
Speaker 6: jail time and fines to those already existing trespass and
Speaker 6: vandalism laws. The first step towards passing those laws is
Speaker 6: defining so called critical infrastructure and making sure that the
Speaker 6: definition of critical infrastructure includes harmful projects like new fossil
Speaker 6: fuel developments. Framing those projects as critical to the security
Speaker 6: of a community or to the country helps to underpin
Speaker 6: the efforts to frame opponents of dam's minds, oil pipelines,
Speaker 6: or coal plants as criminal threats worthy of harsh laws.
Speaker 6: Independent researcher Connor Gibson has been following that trend for
Speaker 6: more than five years.
Speaker 9: So last time we talked it was I want to say,
Speaker 9: late twenty twenty one, early twenty twenty two, and it
Speaker 9: sounds like in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three
Speaker 9: some more of these fossil fuel backed anti protest bills
Speaker 9: have been making their way through state legislatures. So I
Speaker 9: want to have you first start with a little bit
Speaker 9: of like a lay of the land.
Speaker 6: With these new laws that have come into the.
Speaker 10: Sure, I think coming out of twenty twenty, I believe
Speaker 10: the count was seventeen laws or seventeen states with laws
Speaker 10: that upped the penalties for nonviolent acts of protests, usually
Speaker 10: extremely targeted at fossil fuel infrastructure protest and protests at
Speaker 10: fossil fuel construction sites. And obviously we're talking about the
Speaker 10: protests over the Keystone Excel pipeline, the Dakota Access pipeline,
Speaker 10: and Bayou Bridge and the Enbridge Line three pipeline. Those
Speaker 10: are the main things that the industry had in the
Speaker 10: crosshairs when they were devising this strategy to make nonviolent
Speaker 10: trespass a very serious felony charge rather than a less
Speaker 10: serious misdemeanor, as well as a lot of bills that
Speaker 10: target organizations with conspiracy charges and fines if they're affiliated
Speaker 10: with these people, in order to broaden that shilling effect.
Speaker 10: In twenty twenty two, there was one state that joined
Speaker 10: the trend, and that was Alabama. But in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 10: now the trend has had a resurgence and two new
Speaker 10: states already passed laws this year. The first was Utah
Speaker 10: and as of yesterday. A bill that was finalized in
Speaker 10: Georgia is now on the governor's desk, and I imagine
Speaker 10: that will not be vetoed in the state of Georgia.
Speaker 10: So if my count is correct, we now have twenty
Speaker 10: states with these kinds of anti protest laws on the books.
Speaker 6: That was Gibson bringing me an update in April twenty
Speaker 6: twenty three. Four months later, another state joined their ranks,
Speaker 6: bringing the total to twenty one states. Those laws began
Speaker 6: to proliferate in the wake of the Standing Rock protests,
Speaker 6: which began in twenty sixteen and continued into twenty seventeen.
Speaker 6: Activists were protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was being
Speaker 6: built to transport oil from the back in oil fields
Speaker 6: in North Dakota to southern Illinois. It posed a threat
Speaker 6: to water resources because it was running beneath the Mississippi
Speaker 6: River and the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
Speaker 11: Criminal book gets your money somewhere else.
Speaker 6: In the wake of those protests, fossil fuel lobbyists helped
Speaker 6: to write new legislation targeted at criminalizing pipeline protests and
Speaker 6: then spread it through the American legislative Exchange Council or ALEC.
Speaker 6: ALEC is a nonprofit group that connects state legislators to
Speaker 6: industry groups and helps to draft and distribute industry friendly legislation.
Speaker 3: Is really because we have seen more and more dangerous
Speaker 3: and struct attacks going in progress.
Speaker 6: This tape is not the greatest. But that's Derek Morgan,
Speaker 6: who is the Senior VP of Public Affairs for the
Speaker 6: American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers at the time, a trade
Speaker 6: group group representing the interests of refinery and pipeline companies,
Speaker 6: speaking at a conference about the critical infrastructure legislation that
Speaker 6: his group helped to write. Today, he is the executive
Speaker 6: vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a right wing think
Speaker 6: tank that has also helped to vilify environmental protesters and
Speaker 6: fight against climate action. Like others who support these sorts
Speaker 6: of laws, Morgan paints things like sabotaging engines and construction
Speaker 6: machinery as dangerous. But anti protest legislation is only one
Speaker 6: way that governments or industries are trying to suppress environmental protest.
Speaker 6: We're going to be back with a global look at
Speaker 6: other tactics in just a minute after this quick break.
Speaker 6: I MM Welestervelt and this is a new series from
Speaker 6: the teams behind Drilled and Damages. The Real free speech
Speaker 6: threat stay with US. Labeling protesters as terrorists has proven
Speaker 6: to be an effective tactic for decades. It's a term
Speaker 6: that has the power to transform someone using nonviolent tactics
Speaker 6: to protect their ancestral homeland into a threat deserving the
Speaker 6: attention of a nation's highest law enforcement or even military officials.
Speaker 6: It also comes with sentencing enhancements that can dramatically increase
Speaker 6: the jail time someone serves if convicted. The label often
Speaker 6: requires first redefining the term violence to cover harm to
Speaker 6: property in the US that was underway by the eighties.
Speaker 6: Among the initial targets were Earth First anti logging activists
Speaker 6: because they deployed monkey wrenching tactics like sitting in trees
Speaker 6: to stop them from being cut down and sabotaging logging equipment.
Speaker 6: Here's Jeremy Walker, a professor at the U University of Technology,
Speaker 6: Sydney who researches various things related to the obstruction of
Speaker 6: climate action.
Speaker 12: One of the key activists in California was a woman
Speaker 12: called Judy Barry. Judy Barry was very successful in mobilizing
Speaker 12: you know protests people to come and actually occupy logging
Speaker 12: operations and getting the way. And the problem with Judy
Speaker 12: Barry was that she was very good at speaking to
Speaker 12: the logging company's employees and the unions, and the classic
Speaker 12: tactic that was used against environments, of course, saying, oh,
Speaker 12: they just want to take your jobs away. But she
Speaker 12: managed to win the forestry unions on side and work
Speaker 12: with them towards a kind of you know, proposing a
Speaker 12: kind of forestry plan. And then at some point Judy
Speaker 12: Barry with a partner, got into their car and a
Speaker 12: bomb exploded in their car. And interestingly enough, the local
Speaker 12: police were quickly put off the case, and someone came
Speaker 12: from the FBI and they charged Judy Barry. They said
Speaker 12: that they accused her of carrying a bomb to blow
Speaker 12: something up, and that her own bomb had gone off
Speaker 12: and disabled her.
Speaker 6: Barry spent the next few decades maintaining her innocence, asking
Speaker 6: the police to investigate what she and her fellow activist
Speaker 6: Gerald Churney said was clearly an assassination attempt, and fighting
Speaker 6: to force the FBI to preserve the evidence that proved it.
Speaker 6: Barry died in nineteen ninety seven, so she wasn't alive
Speaker 6: to see the FBI and Oakland police eventually pay Earth
Speaker 6: First four point four million dollars for violating their constitutional rights.
Speaker 6: But even when activists get justice, or when the charges
Speaker 6: don't stick in the first place, accusations of terrorism can
Speaker 6: keep people tied up in court for years and have
Speaker 6: a general chilling effect on activism. Painting environmentalists as terrorists
Speaker 6: took off again in the US with the Earth Liberation
Speaker 6: Front and Animal Liberation Front in the nineteen nineties and
Speaker 6: early two thousands. Both groups used vandalism and in some cases,
Speaker 6: arson to get their point across. Here's Earth Liberation Front
Speaker 6: activist Daniel McGowan explaining it in a twenty eleven Frontline documentary.
Speaker 6: You saw the mills.
Speaker 3: Are you going into the forest and you stumble upon
Speaker 3: a clear cut like it just blew me away.
Speaker 6: Just the arrogance of it. I was like, man, this
Speaker 6: is butchered.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 6: It made me think, like, why are we being so gentle?
Speaker 12: Why are we so gentle in our activism when this
Speaker 12: is what's happening.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 6: Other LF activists would explain over the years that they
Speaker 6: realized that in some cases, burning down a building or
Speaker 6: breaking machinery accomplished something that letter writing and other types
Speaker 6: of political activism had failed to do for years, shut
Speaker 6: down the activity they were trying to protest. By the
Speaker 6: time ELF was at its most active, industry groups had
Speaker 6: already spent years sharing information on environmental activists and the
Speaker 6: movement in general with the FBI and pressuring the agency
Speaker 6: to take stronger action against eco sabotage. But it wasn't
Speaker 6: until nine to eleven and the launch of a global
Speaker 6: war on terrorism that the label of eco terrorists really stuck.
Speaker 6: It's a theme that has repeated itself in other places.
Speaker 6: When governments cracked down on so called terrorists, environmental defenders
Speaker 6: are often netted in the process. The FBI spent decades
Speaker 6: hunting down ELF activists. At one point, the Earth Liberation
Speaker 6: Front and the Animal Liberation Front were deemed the country's
Speaker 6: primary domestic terrorism concern. Activists from those groups were placed
Speaker 6: on the FBI's Most Wanted liss right along with Osama
Speaker 6: bin Laden. Bin Laden, of course, was wanted in connection
Speaker 6: with the September eleventh attacks that killed nearly three thousand people.
Speaker 6: By contrast, neither the Earth Liberation Front nor the Animal
Speaker 6: Liberation Front ever killed anyone, but the FBI justified chasing
Speaker 6: after them by accusing them of a sort of economic
Speaker 6: terrorism that kept logging and mining and animal agriculture companies
Speaker 6: afraid that they might be the next target, that theirs
Speaker 6: might be the next building set ablaze.
Speaker 13: Jess's home was rated by the FBI, and then two
Speaker 13: years later a federal Grand Jurian dieded Jess on multiple
Speaker 13: charges and she was placed on house arrests, and in
Speaker 13: her sentencing hearing in twenty twenty one, she received an
Speaker 13: eight year prison sentence.
Speaker 6: This is Charlotte Grubman, a researcher, abolitionist, and organizer for
Speaker 6: the Free Jess Team. Jess is Jessica Resnachek, who's been
Speaker 6: in jail for two years now and was laid as
Speaker 6: a domestic terrorist for using welding tools to pierce above
Speaker 6: ground valves along the Dakota Access Pipeline in Iowa. Many
Speaker 6: of the Ochetti Shakuwan water protectors that launched the fight
Speaker 6: to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline also faced harsh sentences
Speaker 6: and violent police tactics and bore the trauma of watching
Speaker 6: their homeland transformed into a militarized zone. With armored personnel carriers,
Speaker 6: attack dogs, helicopters flying above, and an army of police,
Speaker 6: National Guard members and ex military private security guards, all
Speaker 6: working together to protect the pipeline. But Resnachek was one
Speaker 6: of the only pipeline opponents actually convicted for terrorism.
Speaker 13: And she was a domestic terrorism enhancement and was ordered
Speaker 13: to pay three point two million dollars to Energy Transfer Partners,
Speaker 13: which owns the Dakota Access pipeline in restitution.
Speaker 6: Another activist who joined Resnachek in the sabotage, Ruby Montoya,
Speaker 6: received a similar sentence. However, in the midst of the
Speaker 6: grueling prosecution, Montoya flipped her defense, arguing that she'd been
Speaker 6: coerced into these actions. It's an often overlooked but common
Speaker 6: feature of criminalization. Under pressure from the state, movement members
Speaker 6: at times turn against their former collaborators and friends, causing
Speaker 6: painful and deeply personal divisions within the movement and particular communities.
Speaker 6: The trend of labeling environmental defenders terrorists is only continued
Speaker 6: after Standing Rock. This year, forest defenders protesting a police
Speaker 6: training facility being built in Atlanta, a facility the activists
Speaker 6: called copp City, were charged as domestic terrorists under a
Speaker 6: Georgia law that was initially designed to respond to mass killings.
Speaker 6: They included nine people whose arrest warrants accused them of
Speaker 6: little more than trespassing in the woods where the facility
Speaker 6: is scheduled to be built and associating with a group
Speaker 6: called Defend the Atlanta Forest to Cobb County. Warrants claim
Speaker 6: that the Department of Homeland Security classified Defend the Atlanta
Speaker 6: Forest as a domestic violent extremist group. They used that
Speaker 6: supposed classification to justify the charges against the activists. However,
Speaker 6: DHS has claimed that they did not label Defend the
Speaker 6: Atlanta Forests as a violent extremist group. This winter, the
Speaker 6: criminalization of the Atlanta activists took a tragic turn.
Speaker 7: One activist was killed by police in January, and now
Speaker 7: officials are accusing others of being quote domestic terrorists. The
Speaker 7: use of that charge is alarming civil liberties and human
Speaker 7: rights groups across the country.
Speaker 6: Some have argued that framing the forest defenders as terrorists
Speaker 6: laid the groundwark for police to kill the forest defender
Speaker 6: Manuel Paes di Dan, known as Tortugita. An autopsy showed
Speaker 6: they were shot more than fifty d times as part
Speaker 6: of a police raid on the Forest Defenders Camp. These
Speaker 6: sorts of things are not just happening in the US,
Speaker 6: of course.
Speaker 8: We get contacted by climate activists all over the world.
Speaker 6: This is Betsy Apple, a longtime human rights lawyer and
Speaker 6: the executive director of a new nonprofit started solely to
Speaker 6: deal with this whole global backlash against environmental advocacy. It's
Speaker 6: called the Climate Legal Defense Network.
Speaker 8: But right now we're working on providing support legal support
Speaker 8: to people in Uganda and Tanzania, in the DRC, Democratic
Speaker 8: Republic of the Congo, in Liberia, and a little bit Mozambique,
Speaker 8: in Canada, in Brazil, we just hired a new person
Speaker 8: to do this work.
Speaker 14: In the Philippines.
Speaker 8: We've provided some advice in Vietnam, fair amount of work
Speaker 8: in Europe as well, in the UK and France, in Poland,
Speaker 8: a little bit in Germany. And it's an ever expanding list.
Speaker 6: And they're not all people getting arrested at protests applesos.
Speaker 6: Both the tactics being used and the people they're targeting
Speaker 6: are expanding.
Speaker 8: The use of the word activists is perhaps ill advised
Speaker 8: because there are lots of people who are advocating on
Speaker 8: behalf of the climate and in supportive climate justice and
Speaker 8: in supportive just transition to renewable and sustainable energy sources,
Speaker 8: who don't even consider themselves to be activists.
Speaker 14: So these people range from lawyers to journalists, to scientists,
Speaker 14: to moms and dads to kids, to sort of ordinary
Speaker 14: citizens all around the world who are afraid of what
Speaker 14: we've done to our planet and who feel like they
Speaker 14: need to take some sort of action to try to
Speaker 14: address climate change.
Speaker 6: In fact, in some cases, labeling someone as an activist
Speaker 6: is another way to silence or blunt their speech, particularly
Speaker 6: when that label is applied to journalists, academics, or lawyers.
Speaker 8: There's the sort of obvious stuff, the easy stuff for
Speaker 8: people to understand when a protester is out in the streets.
Speaker 8: For example, this past May, there were the Total which
Speaker 8: is a giant French oil company which is involved in
Speaker 8: lots of bad fossil fuel projects which contribute significantly to
Speaker 8: climate change. Totel had its annual general meeting in France
Speaker 8: in May and lots of people went into the streets
Speaker 8: to protest Hotel's actions all over the world, and some
Speaker 8: of those people are likely to be prosecuted for criminal
Speaker 8: activity for protesting illegally. So that's a kind of clear
Speaker 8: and easy example of the ways in which people who
Speaker 8: are taking action to support the climate are the subject
Speaker 8: of legal process. But then there are the less obvious
Speaker 8: experiences that people have of the law. For example, you
Speaker 8: have four, actually now five people who were advocating for
Speaker 8: renewable energy policy in Vietnam and were arrested for tax
Speaker 8: evasion and are in jail and have been criminally convicted
Speaker 8: for tax evasion, which seems like it has nothing to
Speaker 8: do with the climate, but in fact it's a way
Speaker 8: that the Vietnamese government has been able to weaponize the
Speaker 8: law against people who whose activities they don't like in
Speaker 8: the context of the climate. And then I guess a
Speaker 8: third example would be you have a youth activist in
Speaker 8: Western Canada and British Columbia who is a.
Speaker 14: Citizen of a South.
Speaker 8: Asian country, but he's been a student in Western Canada
Speaker 8: and he was a real climate leader in trying to
Speaker 8: stop the destruction of old growth forests and the expansion
Speaker 8: of fossil fuel infrastructure in Canada. He's been arrested multiple times,
Speaker 8: and after his most recent arrest, the Canadian government decided
Speaker 8: that they were going to deport him back to his
Speaker 8: home country, where he indeed may face legal peril there.
Speaker 8: So he's actually experiencing not only criminal process, but he's
Speaker 8: experiencing immigration problems as a result of his climate activism.
Speaker 6: In Central America, human rights defenders have argued that repression
Speaker 6: of land and water defenders can start with defamation within
Speaker 6: a community, often on social media. Sometimes that defamation is
Speaker 6: ceded by outside interests. Once it starts on social media,
Speaker 6: it can escalate to inflated criminal charges that force people
Speaker 6: to go into hiding, and in some case it culminates
Speaker 6: in an assassination made to look like an accident or
Speaker 6: everyday crime. In places where the justice system is plagued
Speaker 6: by corruption and impunity rules, the assassination may be shrugged
Speaker 6: off by the state country by country, case by case.
Speaker 6: We've watched over the past few years as governments influenced
Speaker 6: by extractive industries cracked down on protests against those industries.
Speaker 6: In some places it's been the norm for decades.
Speaker 11: There were threats, you know, constant surveillance following people, and
Speaker 11: in these struggles, many people were assassinated, many people were wounded,
Speaker 11: amongst them my mother, Berta Casseres. She was murdered in
Speaker 11: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 6: Berta Casseres was fighting against dams and mining projects in
Speaker 6: Honduras when she was killed. Although Cassettis's murder in twenty
Speaker 6: sixteen was initially framed as just a robbery gone wrong,
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty two several executives from the company that
Speaker 6: was building the damn Caseis was protesting against were convicted
Speaker 6: of organizing her murder and sentenced to thirty to fifty
Speaker 6: years in prison. As in Barrie's case and many others,
Speaker 6: justice was a long time coming for Cassetis. What happens
Speaker 6: in a lot of environmental defenders cases is that irreparable
Speaker 6: damage is caused long before any kind of justice is served,
Speaker 6: and even when justice does come, damage to the movement
Speaker 6: in general, and the chilling effect that these sorts of
Speaker 6: actions have on protest and criticism and free speech in
Speaker 6: general has set in. In some countries, Fossil fuel and
Speaker 6: mining interests are just such a big part of the
Speaker 6: economy and have been for so long that some politicians
Speaker 6: are more concerned about angering the companies leading those industries
Speaker 6: than whatever backlash they may face for stripping citizens of
Speaker 6: their rights. This is fine faced nominee talking about how
Speaker 6: that plays out in Nigeria.
Speaker 2: When there is a protect against oil company because they
Speaker 2: have the resources they pay to the security operatives to
Speaker 2: go and dislaunch the people that have come to carry
Speaker 2: out protests against them, and as a result of that,
Speaker 2: you have them abusing the rights of the people in
Speaker 2: the process of that.
Speaker 6: And here's former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison showing just
Speaker 6: how in the pocket of industry some politicians can be.
Speaker 15: A new braid of radical activism is on the match
Speaker 15: apocalyptic in Town Brooks and I compromise all or nothing,
Speaker 15: alternative views not permitted. A dogma the pit cities against
Speaker 15: regional Australia, one that cannot resist sneering at wealth creating
Speaker 15: and job creating industries.
Speaker 6: In France, long thought of as a bastion of rebellion,
Speaker 6: a raised fist and solidarity with protest movements everywhere, industrial
Speaker 6: agriculture interests have been leaning on the government to deal
Speaker 6: with water protector protests.
Speaker 16: It was at twelve thirty that we saw the gendame
Speaker 16: coming to face the Blue convoy and they were driving
Speaker 16: quads with motorcycle helmets on it and weapons, and when
Speaker 16: they fully faced, the convoy of the quad's got off
Speaker 16: to face the protestors.
Speaker 6: As you'll hear in an upcoming episode, the centuries old
Speaker 6: standoff between colonizers and indigenous peoples adds another dimension to
Speaker 6: this fight.
Speaker 17: In most countries, there are certain moments that really stand
Speaker 17: out when you see, like there's a sign behind that
Speaker 17: says protected wetland that has an Emberge symbol on it,
Speaker 17: there's a DNR officer standing in front of it, and
Speaker 17: then there's just this like gaping scar that's been placed
Speaker 17: into the earth right next to it, clearly destroying that wetland,
Speaker 17: you know, and there's the DNR right there and telling
Speaker 17: you to step back.
Speaker 6: But while the context and particulars may vary from place
Speaker 6: to place, there are a lot of commonalities too. Suppression
Speaker 6: tactics that just keep popping up almost everywhere that protests
Speaker 6: are happening, and.
Speaker 11: Surveillance, weaponize litigation and legal strategies, security operates, tax evasion
Speaker 11: and being got charged with sedition because it was seen
Speaker 11: as a big conspiracy rico.
Speaker 6: Hovering above all the tactics and strategies and details is
Speaker 6: a global face off. Governments are being asked to choose
Speaker 6: between protecting the public, fighting for the common good, or
Speaker 6: protecting capital, and so far, by and large, they're choosing
Speaker 6: to protect capital and arrest the citizens who threaten it.
Speaker 6: Today we released the first two episodes of this series.
Speaker 6: Go listen to the other one. It's an interview with
Speaker 6: youth climate activist Disha Ravi in Bangalore about her experience
Speaker 6: becoming the face of radical activism in India and being
Speaker 6: charged with conspiring against the government at just twenty two
Speaker 6: years old. One key part of the effort to criminalize
Speaker 6: environmental as activism is to dehumanize the activists themselves, to
Speaker 6: paint them as fringe radicals living on the edge of society,
Speaker 6: threatening us all from the shadows. It's important in that
Speaker 6: context to tell the real stories of the very relatable
Speaker 6: and often quite inspiring humans who are devoting their time
Speaker 6: and energy, and in many cases putting their lives on
Speaker 6: the line to protect the future of the next generation.
Speaker 6: We've got a lot of stories for you in this series.
Speaker 6: Come back next week for more. The Real Free Speech
Speaker 6: Threat is a cross border reporting project from our newly
Speaker 6: expanded drilled global team. Our senior editor for the series
Speaker 6: is Alan Brown. Sarah Entry is our senior producer and editor.
Speaker 6: Martin Saltz Ustwick is our sound designer. He also composed
Speaker 6: original music for this episode. Peter Duff is our audio engineer.
Speaker 6: Jeff Dembicky the Anna Kujual Mazzini, Lindall Rollins, and Marlow
Speaker 6: Starling contributed reporting to this episode. Our fact checker is
Speaker 6: wu dan Yan. Our first Amendment attorney is James Wheaton.
Speaker 6: Matt Fleming created the series artwork. You can check out
Speaker 6: more reporting for this series and corresponding print stories at
Speaker 6: drilled dot Media. If you'd like to support our work,
Speaker 6: please leave us a rating or review. You can also
Speaker 6: sign up for our weekly newsletter and upgrade to a
Speaker 6: paid newsletter or a podcast subscription to fund more reporting
Speaker 6: and get access to ad free and early episodes, as
Speaker 6: well as bonus content. Thanks for listening, and we'll see
Speaker 6: you next week.