WEBVTT - Part Two: The Fight Against the Mountain Valley Pipeline 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:08.600 Cool Zone Media, cool people who did cool stuff as 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:11.600 their new jingle. I hope it's not. I hope I 0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:14.640 never do it again. I'm your rest, Margaret Kiljoy. This 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:17.239 is part two of a two parter about the fight 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:21.360 against the Mountain Valley pipeline. And as you've probably noticed, 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:23.840 this is a different format than usual. Usually I talked 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:27.640 to a guest, and this time I talked just to 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:30.160 you into the microphone. Do you know what I did 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.040 during the break between part one and part two? You 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:36.160 had to wait two days, but I just recorded part 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.880 one and then stopped and went and refilled my water 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:41.319 bottle and looked out the window at my dog that's 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:44.040 sleeping in the yard in the sun. His little chest 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.080 moves up and down. It's very nice, it's very relaxing. 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:52.000 Highly recommend pets good for anxiety. I think there might 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:54.800 be anxiety sponges, though, because I think that our pets 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:59.520 end up very anxious instead of us. But uh, he 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.560 seems to I don't know. I'm telling you this. This 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:05.400 is part two. I already said all that. Our producers, 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.880 well Sophie and Ian, and our audio engineers Rory Hi Rory, 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:14.440 and our theme music was written for by unwoman, and 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:16.840 we're talking about the fight to stop the Mountain Valley pipeline, 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:20.600 which well it lost, but we're going to talk about 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.240 it that and how in some ways it actually accomplished 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.280 an awful lot because I think that it's cool people 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:29.440 who did cool stuff. You probably noticed that. I'm just 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.560 going to go back to my script now. As soon 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:36.720 as the construction started, the pollution started. While people claim 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:40.039 that natural gas is the cleaner alternative to coal, West 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.880 Virginia residents post photos of polluted creeks in their own yards. 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.919 More CITs started popping up, often on private land. Often 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.840 property owners themselves were resisting on their own property. Other 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:56.600 times property owners were just kind of not telling protesters 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:01.600 to leave. Cynical accounts will accuse property owners of nimbiism 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:05.320 or of just fighting for property rights in some individualist way. 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.560 But I suspect that for most of these people it 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.680 went way deeper than that. They were fighting for the 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:15.040 little scraps of forest and stream and mountain that they 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:20.880 were personally caretaking and often had been for generations. Becky 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:24.720 Crabtree a grandmother, a high school teacher, and later a 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.919 twenty twenty two Democratic House of delegates candidate in West 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:32.760 Virginia drove her own seventy one Pinto to block pipeline 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:35.840 trenching on her own property and change herself to her 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:38.720 car in the summer of twenty eighteen, after she'd been 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:41.600 working within the system to fight the pipeline for years. 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.880 This is our home was painted across the car. She 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:50.800 told Vice News quote, I can't just teach my students 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.600 about climate change and have them fill out a sentence 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.480 about fossil fuel energy and its negative impact. I know 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.600 what the impacts are. I have to live this. The 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.200 cop who arrested her she'd taught him in third grade. 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.960 This is a fight that is local, national, and international 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.960 all at once. By the summer of twenty eighteen, people 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:19.280 started locking themselves directly to construction equipment. If you ever 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:22.120 want to get pedantic about something fun, that's what everyone 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:23.840 does for fun. Right, You come up with a new 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.959 topic to obsessively research every week. That's like normal, Right, 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.520 I'm normal. Okay, you can spend your time learning about 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.520 lock boxes. Lock Boxes are basically things that you can 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.680 lock yourself to in order to do nonviolent direct action. 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:44.080 They make yourself harder to move. Usually, lock boxes are 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:46.920 built around a steel pipe with a little length of 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.560 rebar welded inside. You stick your arms into the pipe 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:53.600 and clip yourself into the rebar with a carabiner that 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:57.280 has chained your wrist. These pipes can be embedded into 0:03:57.280 --> 0:04:00.680 all sorts of things. A barrel full of cement is 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:05.040 a classic example. All the different styles of devices have 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.640 their own cute names, like the black Bear, but there's 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:11.160 one name that cops have picked up on and use 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:15.040 as shorthand for every single lock box, probably because it 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:27.480 sounds vaguely menacing, the sleeping dragon. Cops have to know 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.000 that not every lock box is a sleeping dragon. But 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:33.520 I sat in court as cops called every lock box 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:38.360 a sleeping dragon. A sleeping dragon is real cool, though 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:41.440 essentially it's a lock box buried in the ground and 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:45.360 disguised like it's a pipe with rebar embedded into cement 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:49.080 and then buried into the ground. They're cool because they 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:51.760 can be built and set up any time, ready to 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:57.320 deploy almost undetectable. People absolutely use sleeping dragons as part 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.560 of this fight, but not every damn lock pox is 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:05.839 a sleeping dragon. In twenty eighteen, people started locking themselves 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.160 to things Some people even started locking down inside the 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:13.160 boreholes that were waiting for the pipes. Most of these 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.960 lockdowns last in the hours, not in the days, but 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:20.919 they can significantly inflate costs for the pipeline construction company, 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.599 and of course by valuable time while people fight in 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:28.800 the courts. There are also dramatic photo ops which I 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:32.560 actually don't say cynically but earnestly. It's really important that 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.040 people realize that grandmas and young hippies and punks are 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:40.359 locking themselves to equipment. It's perfectly legal to set up 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.000 a tree sit on your own property, of course, and 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:46.720 so many people did as much. The state, though, started 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:51.839 serving injunctions against property owners to come on down from there. Basically, 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:55.719 as far as I can tell, none of the actions 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:59.680 were centrally planned and organized, merely that they were coordinated 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:03.200 by disparate groups and people. I would quickly run out 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:07.160 of space, well time space in my document that I'm 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:11.040 writing the script in, but time and reading whatever. I 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:15.120 would quickly run out of space time if I listed 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.000 every organization that had some hand in the campaign to 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.279 stop the pipeline, and there are a ton of civil 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:25.240 suits against protesters and organizations that are ongoing, so I 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:30.000 probably wouldn't list these organizations anyway. Peter's Mountain saw the 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.359 first flurry of activity, but soon a new site of 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:39.560 resistance popped up further into Virginia Poor Mountain, the Yellowfinch Sits. 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:45.560 On September nineteenth, twenty eighteen, two sits went up fifty 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.720 five and sixty feet in the air, this time still 0:06:48.800 --> 0:06:52.240 on a steep chunk of land. One sit was in 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.080 a chestnut oak. The other wasn't a pine until it 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.479 too was moved to an oak. These sits were on 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:02.400 private property, blocking the way of the pipeline. The owner 0:07:02.440 --> 0:07:05.599 never asked the protesters to leave, nor did the owner 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:09.440 tell them to be there. These sits were supported by 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:13.679 a large, diverse direct action camp on the ground. Most 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.920 anyone who was interested could come out simply by filling 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.600 out an intake form. One of the major advantages of 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.480 nonviolent direct action is that it's a sort of above 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:29.440 ground criminality. One of the disadvantages of nonviolent direct action 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:33.400 is that at least three times in this script, I've 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.680 accidentally written it as nonviolent direction action, where I just 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.920 took the word direct and action and stuck them together. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:42.560 But you didn't need to know that. I didn't need 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:46.800 to tell you that the supporters of the tree set 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:49.400 not of my bad spelling. The supporters of the tree 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.480 st camping on private land weren't committing a crime. But 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:56.320 many of the people involved in the direct action were 0:07:56.360 --> 0:08:00.360 convicted of various offenses throughout the years. Yet, while the 0:08:00.360 --> 0:08:03.360 camps and movements had to maintain some level of security 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:06.760 and develop a security culture, they were still able to 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.040 be open enough to bring new people into the movement. 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:11.400 And that's like something I'll go on about all the time, 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:13.360 is that we need to get better at bringing people 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:18.200 into the movement. And I think that this above ground criminality, 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:21.120 non violent direct action, it's a very effective way of 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.680 doing it. This is one of the biggest advantages of 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:28.440 this style of campaign. It's radical enough to genuinely threaten 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:31.320 the powers that be, yet approachable enough to build a 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:34.320 large movement and help people begin to learn that they 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:39.080 too can challenge power. There's no roster of how many 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:43.000 people supported this movement because there was never any central organization. 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:46.720 All I can say for anything like certain is that 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.440 somewhere around one hundred and twenty five people were arrested 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:54.440 in total, Over the course of the campaign, Soon the state, 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:59.920 getting desperate, started throwing terrorism charges around. The first tear 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.280 charges were against people who locked themselves to an MVP 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:07.400 helicopter while it was on the ground. The helicopter was 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:10.680 being used to buzz and harass the sits, so people 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:15.160 locked themselves to it. After those people caught terrorism charges. 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:18.640 Less than a week later, other supporters locked themselves to 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.280 a welding sled. This is a welding sled as a 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.640 construction device without its own locomotion. It's like dragged around 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:30.120 by another vehicle. People kept getting this bogus joy riding 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:33.720 felony charge for being attached to vehicles. So in this 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:37.000 case because somehow it's like misappropriating the vehicle whatever. Anyway, 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:40.600 it's bullshit. So in this case they attached to a 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:44.439 non vehicle, the welding sled with a banner that read 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:49.560 MVP are the real terrorists. The people who locked themselves 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:55.160 to a welding sled got terrorism charges too. The terrorism 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:59.480 charges didn't stick overall. The state didn't really get too 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:02.240 many heavy charges to stick to anyone in this campaign, 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:07.480 but they didn't expect their charges to stick. As best 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:10.920 as I can tell, they overcharged protesters on purpose for 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:14.560 a bunch of reasons. First, as I talked about in 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:17.760 the court episode on it could Happen here, it seems 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.480 as though MVP's main tactic was to try to drag 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:24.040 out court as long as possible to keep activists tied 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:28.280 up with legal shit so they couldn't return to the woods. Second, 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:33.480 they wanted to intimidate people, and third, by overcharging with 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:38.040 ridiculous felonies like kidnapping and joy riding, it becomes much 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:41.800 easier to get people to plead a lesser charges. Yet, 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.000 no one on the entire campaign, with over one hundred arrests, 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:48.840 was ever found guilty of or pleaded guilty to a 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:53.800 felony charge. It helped that the prosecution was often remarkably 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:58.959 and humorously incompetent. In the summer of twenty nineteen, someone 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.560 locked themselves to a sleeping dragon, an actual sleeping dragon, 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:06.160 a lock box embedded into the ground. So there's a 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:08.520 bunch of charges in Virginia that are really similar to 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:13.920 each other, like obstruction of free passage and then trespass. 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:17.560 The first obstruction of free passage is basically an anti 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:21.080 picketing charge about blockading a business. The latter is for 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:26.040 trespassing on private land. One activist was charged with obstruction 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:29.640 of free passage. The prosecution filed to have it changed 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.560 to trespass, but the judge never ruled on that change. 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.560 So the prosecution spent the entire trial building a case 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.400 for a charge that the defendant wasn't being charged with. 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:44.840 And so the defense just kind of like tried not 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:46.719 to laugh the whole time. They just like tried to 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.200 keep a straight face while they watched this whole case 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.800 be built for the wrong charge. And in the closing arguments, 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:56.600 the defense were like, well, good job proving the charge 0:11:56.600 --> 0:12:01.400 that this wasn't about, and the defendant was acquitted. But 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:05.000 if you want to be acquitted, you should consider one 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:11.160 of our most important sponsors. Hi, Margaret Kiljoy. Here, boy, 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:13.959 the world sure is a mess right now. Huh. Seems 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:15.760 like every day there are more and more reasons to 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.640 get out into the streets and protest. That's why when 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.040 I get arrested, there's only one strategy. I trust, I 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:24.960 shut the fuck up. I say, I would like to 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:27.080 remain silent, I would like to talk to my lawyer, 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:29.960 and then I shut the fuck up. In the United States, 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.439 of America. It's constitutionally protected and recommended by the National 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:39.680 Lawyer's Guild. That's shut thch f u c k up. 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:47.199 Once again, that's shut thch e f uck up. Because 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:49.720 you can't talk yourself out of custody, but you can 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:51.319 talk yourself into a conviction. 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.200 Providing identification to law enforcement required in some states and situations, 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:58.200 giving them an address expedient in most circumstances. Never discuss 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:00.320 the events leading to arrest with anyone except your lawyer, doctor, 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.040 or therapist. Hosting pictures of protests and actions on social 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:05.720 media may lead to complications. If you have already talked 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:08.319 to cops or experienced confusion about talking to cops, call 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:10.520 your attorney immediately, as these may be signs of more 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:13.080 serious legal problems. The concept of not talking to cops 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:14.760 does not provide legal advice in the foregoing statements are 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:17.280 for informational purposes only. If you have specific legal questions, 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:25.840 consult an attorney, and we're back. 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:30.360 In twenty nineteen, as the fight raged in the Woods, 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:34.320 the Fourth District Court issued a stop work order to MVP. 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.000 This court, the United States Court of Appeals for the 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:41.960 Fourth District, is basically the Federal Appeals Court for much 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.280 of the middle of the East Coast from DC down 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:48.520 to North Carolina, including West Virginia and Virginia, so work 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:53.080 was stopped for a while. Throughout twenty twenty, not much 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:57.000 work was done building the pipeline. COVID lockdowns and revoked 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:01.560 permits kept the destruction paused. By March twenty twenty one, 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:04.640 MVP got some of its permits back and tried to build, 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:07.760 but famously they only managed to build eight miles of 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.920 pipeline in all of twenty twenty one. By October they 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.800 stopped for the winter. In twenty twenty one, the pipeline's 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:19.080 water crossing permits were revoked as well, and the pipeline 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:22.200 crosses perhaps thousands of creeks and rivers, so this was 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.320 a pretty big deal. At the end of twenty twenty, 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.200 the Yellowfinch Tree sits were served with an injunction and 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:32.480 told they had to come down. They didn't. In late 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:35.960 March twenty twenty one, the two sitters, Ren an Acre 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:41.640 were evicted by Cranes. One of the sitters, Wren, describing 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:46.080 their experience, said, after months of hanging out with just 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:48.880 Acre and playing guitar and magic the gathering all day, 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:51.600 with occasional visits from cops yelling up at us and 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.560 stapling things on trees, or from pipeline survey crews. I 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:58.560 woke up one morning to about fifty cops in pipeline 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:01.400 security forming a perimeter around the tree sits, mostly on 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:04.880 the road below. They spent the first couple hours yelling 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.120 lies to us on a bullhorn about letting us go 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.960 home that night and reducing our charges, etc. While they 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.320 brought in machinery to widen Yellowfinch Lane so that they 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:17.320 could get a crane down it. They closed off the 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:21.280 area to press, local supporters, etc. Allowing only people with 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:25.920 addresses on the closed off streets through. By about midday, 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:29.120 they had gotten a crane down Yellowfinch Lane, a one 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.720 way dirt road, and started setting up to stabilize it 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:36.680 and get cops on the little basket platform thing. They 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.000 had to bring chainsaws up to clear their way through 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:41.080 the canopy to get to the tree sits from the 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.040 road and their crane. Once they got to me, my tree, 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.560 a chestnut oak, was closer to the road than acres. 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.320 They found me locked to the tree. After trying pain 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:54.800 compliance techniques, they thought I was grabbing something inside the 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:57.880 lock box rather than being clipped in. They had to 0:15:57.920 --> 0:15:59.840 go back down in their crane and get an angle 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.400 grinder and generator to power the ankle grinder with and 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.760 put it in their crane basket thing. I attached myself 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:09.360 to every possible point of safety that I could while 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:11.680 they were away, since they were going to be using 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:14.280 an angle grinder near the ropes that kept me alive. 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:17.160 It took them a while to grind through the lock 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.240 box and unclip me, and then I went limp and 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:23.200 they had to carry me into the crane basket. By 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:25.800 the time I was down on the ground, almost twelve 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.880 hours had passed, and it had also started to drizzle 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:32.200 rain the way it does in Appalachia temperate rainforest. And 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:35.480 all that. They carried me into the jail van by 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:37.600 my wrists and ankles and took me away to the 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.120 county jail. They came back for Acre the next day, 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:43.920 while I was denied bond at my arraignment and carted 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:48.640 off to the regional jail. Ren and Acre, the two 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:51.800 sitters served the longest sentences of the campaign, with a 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.400 judge deciding that in the interest of fairness, the sitters 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:57.720 would serve one day in jail for every day it 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:00.480 could be proven they were in the trees, and they 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:03.440 proved they were in the trees based on social media posts. 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:07.800 One sitter got around three months, the other around four months. 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:13.560 Wren said about their time in the tree, quote, the 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:16.080 part that I loved the most about Yellowfinch was the 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:19.040 ground support camp. It was what I first fell in 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:21.120 love with when I arrived there for the first time, 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:23.760 and that love was what inspired me to stay in 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.560 the tree through the winter. Once the ground Support Camp 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:30.439 was evicted by injunction, of course I got frustrated with 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:32.280 it and with some of the people who lived there 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:35.040 at times. But I loved that place because we got 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.040 to build it to be a better version of the 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:41.000 world we live in now. Not perfect, but better than 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:44.720 what we've got. And most importantly, ours was a rotating 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.480 community of almost entirely queer people. The vibes of the 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:51.680 camp fluctuated as members came and went, but we all 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:53.800 got to do whatever we felt like doing all day, 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.400 and somehow that came together into everything getting done mostly 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:01.160 and us taking care of each other. My favorite part 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:03.600 of the day was always in the evening, when We 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:05.919 would all gather round the fire for dinner and to 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.520 play music and talk about books. We were all passing 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:10.840 around to each other and what we had done that 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.119 day or wanted to do the next day, or political 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:18.800 theory or dreams literal and metaphorical. The other thing I 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.880 loved about that place was the spirit of mutual aid 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:24.800 that ran through it. Local people would bring us food 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:27.200 and other supplies and hang out for a few hours, 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.520 telling us their stories. It was a place for building connections, 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.760 including to the mountains around us, and for taking care 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:38.280 of each other. There was, at various times a garden, 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.760 a trampoline, a shed with all of our books, several 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:45.600 iterations of shudders and compost piles, a drawbridge over the 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:49.080 creek that ran down by the road, a group therapy circle, 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:53.760 and various other hippie projects. We foraged and received gifts, 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:56.159 and the tree sits opened up my mind to the 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:58.919 way the world could be instead of the way the 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:03.639 world is. And then one more quote from one of 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:07.000 the sitters. On May eighth, twenty twenty one, one of 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:12.160 the sitters wrote the following statement from jail, Hi, everyone, 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:15.280 you probably just saw my sentence in the paper. I 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.000 want folks to know, regardless of how I've been charged, 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:22.160 I stand behind my actions. I'll go day for day, 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.280 tree for jail, any day of the week to stop 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:29.440 the damn pipeline. I want people watching who may consider 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:33.280 taking action against injustice to not be dissuaded by the law, 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:36.080 to know the court is only there to protect the 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:39.879 interests of the wealthy corporate elite, that by jailing people 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.800 for protecting the land and water, they show us time 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:45.880 and time again how the judicial system is a right 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.240 hand in colonialism and how it wears the blood of 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:53.520 innocent life left in its wake. Refugees from climate change 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.960 are on the rise, Immigrants remain locked in cages, separated 0:19:57.000 --> 0:19:59.960 from their families, dying at our border, and the jail 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:02.800 are packed with people preyed upon by both the state 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.479 and the prison industry, exploited for labor and cash and 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:11.040 tax cuts. Prison is modern slavery and should be abolished. 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:15.359 To those reading this weighing the efficacy of their actions 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:19.080 planning for the next protest, never forget that you are 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.119 standing for what is right. They may have me in 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:24.919 a concrete box, but the woods and nature is something 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.000 I hold with me always. I can still feel the 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:31.240 coming bird song and blossoms of late spring like a 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.960 steady pulse. I can feel the soil and running water 0:20:35.000 --> 0:20:38.480 in my blood. To believe this world was given to 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:40.720 us to do what we want to it. To build 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:45.320 monuments to our own ego is backwards and dangerous. We 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.040 are only a small part of this place, and our 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:51.480 relationship with the land and air and water is critical. 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.440 It is a fatal error to alienate and place ourselves 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.160 above all the crawling and swimming and flying and growing things. 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:04.159 Earth comes first. Remember, show the world what you believe 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:08.400 in land for its own autonomy, dirt for dirt's sake, 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:18.320 and me, Margaret, I have to say ads for ads sake. No, no, well, 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:29.920 here's ads anyway. And we're back after work, slow into 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:32.720 a crawl. In twenty twenty one, there was no work 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:35.120 done at all on the pipeline. In twenty twenty two, 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.879 it was looking for good reason, like the incredible amount 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.480 of work done by activists was paying off. But the 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.840 thing is, while courts and activists and communities wanted to 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:49.520 stop this pipeline, the federal government and the fossil fuel 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:53.280 industries really wanted it, and they were willing to do 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:58.040 just about anything to make it happen. Before the current administration, 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:01.280 it would be easy to say fossil fuel infrastructure is 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:05.240 not the future of energy, and everybody knows it. A 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:09.199 number of minority shareholders in the project in MVP started 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:12.679 quietly distancing themselves from MVP as the years went on. 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:16.520 To quote the Virginia Mercury in an article from twenty 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:21.080 twenty three, quote, if there ever was a jackpot for MVP, 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:25.679 it is gone by now. Today demand for methane gas 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.280 is cooled in the face of cheap wind and solar, 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:32.199 while MVP's costs have ballooned to six point six billion 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.399 from the initial projection of three point twenty five billion. 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:40.679 Analysts say MVP's competitive advantage is evaporated and its prospects 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:45.199 for profitability look grim. End quote. The demand for the 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:48.919 methane gas the pipeline transports, they say, quote has always 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:53.720 been hypothetical. If there's a direct villain in this story, 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:57.480 it would be former US Senator Joe Manchin, who is 0:22:57.520 --> 0:22:59.879 infamous right now is the guy who called himself a 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.240 Democrat but clearly wasn't a democrat, and like, look, I 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.560 have no particular love for the Democratic Party, but Joe Manchin, 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:11.119 who retired this year, simply wasn't one. Even he finally 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:13.960 acknowledged it formally leaving the party in twenty twenty four. 0:23:15.080 --> 0:23:18.040 He is basically just like a fossil fuels guy, best 0:23:18.080 --> 0:23:20.600 as I can figure. He used his position as a 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:23.960 swing vote by being registered as a Democrat to force 0:23:24.040 --> 0:23:26.880 through legislation that directly prevents life on Earth from being 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:30.239 able to continue into the future. And I hate how 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:34.679 hyperbolic that sounds, but it's true. Climate change is the 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:37.639 single biggest issue in the world right now. Because it 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:41.080 is the issue that sits above every other single issue, 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:44.120 all life on Earth hangs in the balance, and Joe 0:23:44.160 --> 0:23:47.680 Manson works tirelessly to make sure that the United States 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:52.280 works against life on Earth. In twenty twenty two, he 0:23:52.280 --> 0:23:55.800 held climate change legislation hostage until it included large carve 0:23:55.840 --> 0:23:59.800 outs for drilling in fossil fuels. He shot down provisions 0:23:59.840 --> 0:24:03.240 life provide tax credits to people who buy Union made 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:07.360 electric cars, as far as I was told by activists 0:24:07.400 --> 0:24:10.560 on the ground. He also tried unsuccessfully to get the 0:24:10.680 --> 0:24:15.600 MVP written directly into that bill. Then, finally, in twenty 0:24:15.600 --> 0:24:19.720