Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about
Speaker 2: things falling apart and the people trying to put them
Speaker 2: back together again. I am today's guest host, Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 2: Today is one of those episodes about people, well trying
Speaker 2: to put it back together again, or I guess really
Speaker 2: an episode about people trying to stop them from making
Speaker 2: things fall apart, because today I'm going to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about the fight against the Mountain Valley Natural
Speaker 2: Gas pipeline. Last Tuesday, February twenty fifth, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: the last criminal trials from the campaign to stop the
Speaker 2: Mountain Valley pipeline were held in Parisburg, Virginia. As you
Speaker 2: might have guessed based on the fact that you've never
Speaker 2: heard of Parisburg, Virginia, it's a tiny town nestled in
Speaker 2: the Appalachian Mountains. It's also the county seat of Giles County, Virginia,
Speaker 2: and it the town is home to almost three thousand people.
Speaker 2: It's in the southwest of the state, right up against
Speaker 2: West Virginia. Culture and geography, of course, both reject things
Speaker 2: like state lines, though governments are obsessed with them. For
Speaker 2: ten years, the people of Central Appalachia on both sides
Speaker 2: of the imaginary line fought against this destructive pipeline. Their
Speaker 2: campaign tied nonviolent direct action with lawsuits and public pressure campaigns,
Speaker 2: and they very nearly won. It took backdoor dealings at
Speaker 2: the highest level of power to force the pipeline's construction,
Speaker 2: with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin holding twenty twenty three's
Speaker 2: Inflation Reduction Act hostage until President Biden personally guaranteed that
Speaker 2: the pipeline would be constructed, overriding all of the courts, activists,
Speaker 2: and locals who blocked it along the way. Essentially, the
Speaker 2: ostensible Democrat Joe Manchin said, fine, I'll vote for your
Speaker 2: climate bill, but only if you fuck over the state
Speaker 2: that I represent. The pipeline, owned by Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC,
Speaker 2: was supposed to be built in a year. Thanks to
Speaker 2: the campaign against it, it took six and a half
Speaker 2: years to build. It was intended to cost the company
Speaker 2: three billion dollars. It costs them more than twice that,
Speaker 2: which is not bad for a scrappy movement of mountain people, hippies,
Speaker 2: and punks. It's not bad for a bunch of grandma's
Speaker 2: and college kids. I'll be covering the full campaign in
Speaker 2: more details soon on cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: This podcast is instead about the trials. Twelve defendants went
Speaker 2: before the court that day, eleven of them facing felonies
Speaker 2: and serious prison time. In the end, none of them
Speaker 2: were sentenced to time behind bars. I am happy to
Speaker 2: say a friend of mine invited me down to cover
Speaker 2: the trials. Twelve defendants, all in the same day, all
Speaker 2: in the same courtroom, with the same judge. I said, yes,
Speaker 2: West Virginia is a bigger state than its own map
Speaker 2: would indicate because there aren't freeways that run through it,
Speaker 2: so it takes a very long time to get anywhere.
Speaker 2: So I packed up my van and headed down on
Speaker 2: Monday night. That night, sleeping in my van, I had
Speaker 2: a stress dream about court, where I'd forgotten to take
Speaker 2: off my knife before going through the metal detectors and
Speaker 2: spent a very long time talking to various cops about
Speaker 2: who I was and why I was there, before being
Speaker 2: stuck outside the courthouse and a large crowd of protesters
Speaker 2: surrounded by a large crowd of cops. In that dream,
Speaker 2: someone who wasn't on either side stood up to give
Speaker 2: a speech but too near an open flame in his
Speaker 2: clothes caught fire. Us anarchists again, I'm talking about my
Speaker 2: dream here. Aus anarchist rushed to help him while the
Speaker 2: cops stared on with blank Stairs. We beat out the
Speaker 2: flames and held his burned body while the cops stared
Speaker 2: on with blank Stairs. We screamed for someone to call
Speaker 2: an ambulance while the cops stared on with blank Stairs.
Speaker 2: I like when my dreams lend themselves to obvious symbolism
Speaker 2: in this moment, where the apparatus of the state is
Speaker 2: content to let all of us burn, whether in the
Speaker 2: fires of fascism or the fires of climate change. But
Speaker 2: I woke up disturbed nonetheless, with the sun barely over
Speaker 2: the horizon. I ate a quick breakfast, and I drove
Speaker 2: the rest of the way up to the actual courthouse
Speaker 2: and the actual trial. Fortunately, at the actual thing, no
Speaker 2: one caught fire. I parked on a nearby street and
Speaker 2: made my way to the courthouse. It didn't accidentally bring
Speaker 2: a pocket knife, which is easy for me to do
Speaker 2: since I usually have three on me because I am
Speaker 2: a totally normal human. I did, though, bring an audio recorder,
Speaker 2: which was equally forbidden in the courtroom. I went through
Speaker 2: the metal detector and surrendered my little bag with the
Speaker 2: Zoom recorder. Later, press came into the room and I
Speaker 2: tried to get my recorder back, but I was told
Speaker 2: that's real media. Without a press badge, I don't look
Speaker 2: much like someone who works for iHeart. I settled into
Speaker 2: a seat and waited for the proceedings. ECO defendants and
Speaker 2: ECO defenders both poured into the tiny, dingy courtroom. The
Speaker 2: ceiling had holes in it, the drywall was sagging. Appalachia
Speaker 2: isn't extracted from region. A place from which wealth is gathered,
Speaker 2: not a place where wealth goes. We were reminded repeatedly
Speaker 2: that the fire code limited occupancy of the roomed eighty
Speaker 2: nine people, and it sure seemed like they brought in
Speaker 2: as many cops as they could to limit our numbers.
Speaker 2: Many more supporters waited outside. Most of what I did
Speaker 2: that day was weight in the courtroom, because most of
Speaker 2: the courtroom drama was happening behind closed doors as the prosecutor,
Speaker 2: the judge, and the aid or so defense attorneys all
Speaker 2: argued and fought over the details of plea deals. Most
Speaker 2: of these characters judge, prosecutor, and lawyers were quite familiar
Speaker 2: to the people working with the movement. This was the
Speaker 2: last trial of many throughout the ten year campaign, which
Speaker 2: has relied heavily on nonviolent direct action since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: The prosecut in particular, a guy named Bobby Lilly, was
Speaker 2: a well known figure. Usually when people say things like
Speaker 2: the prosecutor was a clown, they're speaking figuratively. But Bobby Lilly,
Speaker 2: the prosecutor is a balloon artist in his free time,
Speaker 2: and his Facebook is full of photos of all of
Speaker 2: his balloon creations. The rumor is that he clowned his
Speaker 2: way through law school, all right. Which, look, if I
Speaker 2: wasn't predisposed to not like this man because he was
Speaker 2: arguing for the imprisonment of people trying to save all
Speaker 2: life on earth, I would kind of think that's cool.
Speaker 2: But it does mean that there was a clown prosecution.
Speaker 2: And some people who were there to support the defendants
Speaker 2: wore balloon animal hats to mock Bobby Lily, though they
Speaker 2: were forced to leave those hats outside as no hats
Speaker 2: of any kind were allowed in the courtroom. Coming in
Speaker 2: that morning, we expected most of the defendants to take
Speaker 2: non cooperating plea deals. They'd already agreed to. Non cooperating
Speaker 2: plea deals are deals in which the defendant refuses to
Speaker 2: cooperate with the state's investigation of other protesters. Basically, this
Speaker 2: means these are non snitching deals a few of the defendants,
Speaker 2: though we're ready to take their cases to trial, I've
Speaker 2: decided to largely not use people's names in this reporting.
Speaker 2: Those names are a matter of public record, of course,
Speaker 2: but we are entering unprecedented times, and I don't see
Speaker 2: any particular advantage in making their names more public than
Speaker 2: they already are. But do you know what I do
Speaker 2: want to make public the sweet sweet deals offered by
Speaker 2: our advertisers. I love making those public. Here they are,
Speaker 2: and we're back. The charges against the defendants seem politically motivated.
Speaker 2: This isn't to say the defendants might not have walked
Speaker 2: onto pipeline work sites and disrupted activity there. There was
Speaker 2: certainly a coordinated campaign to do just that, but the
Speaker 2: charges against them were artificially inflated. I was talking to
Speaker 2: a supporter during one of the many long interludes in
Speaker 2: the proceedings who explained to me that nearly everyone on
Speaker 2: trial that day, and a large percentage of all defendants
Speaker 2: throughout the course of the campaign were charged with felony
Speaker 2: misuse of a motor vehicle aka joy riding. To be clear,
Speaker 2: no one has been accused of hijacking construction equipment and
Speaker 2: riding it around. It's just one of the many charges
Speaker 2: levied at protesters in order to get their bail denied
Speaker 2: or inflated to tie everyone up in legal proceedings for
Speaker 2: longer and intimidate people into pleting guilty to lesser charges.
Speaker 2: These are similar to the kidnapping charges that a lot
Speaker 2: of protesters got as well, despite that, well, no one
Speaker 2: was kidnapped during the course of the campaign, except of course,
Speaker 2: by the state. Another supporter explained to me, inflated charges
Speaker 2: has been part of the Mountain Valley Pipeline's legal strategy
Speaker 2: all along. The same as protesters look to tie the
Speaker 2: pipeline company up in court and delay construction, MVP's strategy
Speaker 2: seems to have been to drag out court cases and
Speaker 2: keep as many individual force defenders caught up in legal
Speaker 2: jeopardy as possible. Of course, they shouldn't actually have the
Speaker 2: means to change people's charges, But if the fight against
Speaker 2: MVP has taught us anything, it's that the state caves
Speaker 2: to business interests every time. Most defendants from the course
Speaker 2: of the campaign have taken pleas that include suspended sentences
Speaker 2: so that they never do jail time as long as
Speaker 2: they promise to never try to save the world from
Speaker 2: fossil fuel infrastructure. It seems like MVP wants each person
Speaker 2: who catches charges to be out of the fight, but
Speaker 2: fortunately Frontline's work is only a portion of the work
Speaker 2: involved in defending the earth. When someone told me that
Speaker 2: this was MVP's strategy to catch everyone up on charges,
Speaker 2: I wasn't really skeptical because it made sense, but I
Speaker 2: still had that confirmed for me in the courtroom. You see,
Speaker 2: a few lawyers or other legal representatives of MVP were
Speaker 2: present in the courtroom that day, standing at the back
Speaker 2: of the room, seemingly eves dropping on the courtroom chatter.
Speaker 2: Word on the street was that part of their goal
Speaker 2: was to gather information for the ongoing civil litigation happening
Speaker 2: against environmentalists. But eves dropping goes both ways, and one
Speaker 2: supporter I talked to overheard them talking to each other
Speaker 2: about how they wish they could drag these cases out
Speaker 2: even longer. Once court began, defendants went up one by
Speaker 2: one before the judge, most entered pleas of not guilty
Speaker 2: with stipulation. This is, in essence, a way to accept
Speaker 2: a plea agreement without actually accepting guilt. So each person
Speaker 2: went up pleaded not guilty with stipulation, and then was
Speaker 2: found guilty by the judge on their lesser charges. The
Speaker 2: process took three to six minutes per defendant attract it.
Speaker 2: The defendants were there for arrests stemming from actions that
Speaker 2: happened between October twenty twenty three and March twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: from three different actions, all on nearby Peters Mountain, a
Speaker 2: mountain which sits on the horizon of Parrisburg, Virginia, and
Speaker 2: which defies the border between Virginia and West Virginia. Most
Speaker 2: of the action from the campaign happened on either Peter's
Speaker 2: Mountain or another mountain in another county, Poor Mountain. One
Speaker 2: action in October twenty twenty three, like I said, court
Speaker 2: has been dragged out for a very long time, was
Speaker 2: an action in which one person locked themselves to an
Speaker 2: excavator while others were there in support. The supporters of
Speaker 2: the action were facing felonies too, some of them A
Speaker 2: while back were re arrested at their own arraignments, given
Speaker 2: additional charges, and put into jail for days. It's not
Speaker 2: hard to imagine why the defendants were nervous in the
Speaker 2: courtroom that day, even though most of them had already
Speaker 2: seen sorted out their plea agreements ahead of time. The
Speaker 2: state is fickle, condescending, and unpredictable. One of the defendants
Speaker 2: that I talked to told me about their own case.
Speaker 2: The evidence supporting the charges against pretty much everyone was weak,
Speaker 2: but the evidence supporting the charges against this particular person
Speaker 2: were particularly weak. The state kept offering this person plea
Speaker 2: deals before anyone else. Will you be offering the same
Speaker 2: deal to my co defendants, the defendant kept asking. The
Speaker 2: state kept saying no, so the defendant kept refusing the deal.
Speaker 2: That defendant came to court fully expecting to stand trial
Speaker 2: rather than take a better deal than what their co
Speaker 2: defendants were getting. The big story of the day actually
Speaker 2: revolves around that particular point. At least one of the
Speaker 2: defendants who came prepared to stand trial last Tuesday wound
Speaker 2: up being offered much more generous plea agreements at the
Speaker 2: last minute because the state knew its case against them
Speaker 2: was flimsy. Those who accepted non cooperating plea deals were
Speaker 2: hit with suspended sentences, community service, and restitution. The details
Speaker 2: differed from case to case, but in general, people were
Speaker 2: given a year in prison hanging over their heads if
Speaker 2: they're caught breaking the law in the next year, and
Speaker 2: have to spend between fifty and one hundred hours doing
Speaker 2: manual labor for Giles County, Virginia. I've been told this
Speaker 2: can range from something benign like painting murals to something
Speaker 2: intentionally humiliating, like cleaning the toilets at the police station.
Speaker 2: The single biggest issue of contention was restitution. The defendants
Speaker 2: are being ordered to pay for the overtime costs associated
Speaker 2: with arresting them. One defendant, who was I believe arrested
Speaker 2: at a mom's against the pipeline's action, a woman who
Speaker 2: simply wants her children to grow up in a world
Speaker 2: with a habitable ecosystem, was in court last Tuesday to
Speaker 2: contest their restitution payments. This is, as I understand it,
Speaker 2: the only issue that was not fully resolved that day.
Speaker 2: The case the defense made was one that I found convincing,
Speaker 2: though of course I bias in that direction. Essentially, The
Speaker 2: defense's case was that people are not legally on the
Speaker 2: hook for the investigation of their own crime, that it
Speaker 2: would set a very dangerous precedent to have people have
Speaker 2: to pay for the cops's time to arrest them. The
Speaker 2: prosecutor's argument was, and I rudely paraphrase here, yeah, but
Speaker 2: fuck these people in particular, that because there was a
Speaker 2: campaign against the MVP, their crimes ought to be treated differently,
Speaker 2: in the same standard of the rule of law should
Speaker 2: not apply to them. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but that really
Speaker 2: was the takeaway that I seem to get. The judge
Speaker 2: said he would need to consider the case law on
Speaker 2: the matter and would not rule on it that day.
Speaker 2: But you know what he would have ruled on if
Speaker 2: he was the judge of this podcast. He would have
Speaker 2: ruled that it is time for advertising and we're back.
Speaker 2: The only case that actually went to trial, as I
Speaker 2: understand it, was for the only misdemeanor case of the day,
Speaker 2: a protester who was accused and convicted later at the
Speaker 2: end of the trial of spending a couple days living
Speaker 2: inside a length of pipe to prevent it from being
Speaker 2: buried in the earth. The full incompetence of the police
Speaker 2: was on display from the state trooper who didn't know
Speaker 2: what the word diameter meant when asked to describe the
Speaker 2: pipeline in question, to the police, who admitted that they
Speaker 2: didn't actually bother watching the entrance to the pipe, so
Speaker 2: they didn't actually see the protester. When they emerged from
Speaker 2: the pipe. In court, the cop said the protester came
Speaker 2: up to them to turn themselves in and said, quote, well,
Speaker 2: you're lucky, I'm honest. A large part of the defense's
Speaker 2: case was that the defendant had been denied the right
Speaker 2: to a speedy trial, which seems true to me. Misdemeanors
Speaker 2: in particular supposed to move through the court system quickly,
Speaker 2: not drag on for a year, because again it seems
Speaker 2: quite likely that MVP has been working and from the
Speaker 2: start to drag on court cases as long as possible.
Speaker 2: All the while the trial went on, supporters outside had
Speaker 2: a table set up in the parking lot with homemade food,
Speaker 2: a staple of this movement. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: the connections between the front lines and their supporters built
Speaker 2: a very strong movement. Indeed, after the trial, an older
Speaker 2: local man gave a heartfelt thank you to everyone who
Speaker 2: had put their bodies on the line to protect the
Speaker 2: mountains he loves, and I went around and talked to people,
Speaker 2: feeling a bit odd to be there as a stranger
Speaker 2: to the movement and as a journalist. Blocking pipeline construction
Speaker 2: through nonviolent direct action is simple and principle, but complicated
Speaker 2: in the details. The core of it is that you
Speaker 2: leverage your own safety in order to prevent construction crews
Speaker 2: from working. Since your own safety is what you're gambling with,
Speaker 2: it's well not safe the ideas you put your own
Speaker 2: body on the line. In nineteen ninety eight, for example,
Speaker 2: an Earth First activist named David died when a lagger
Speaker 2: dropped a tree on him and killed him, and despite
Speaker 2: ample evidence that the lagger in question had been aware
Speaker 2: of the protesters and had been threatening them, no charges
Speaker 2: were pressed against him. In two thousand and three, an
Speaker 2: American anarchist piece worker named Rachel Corey was killed in
Speaker 2: the Gaza Strip when she stood in front of an
Speaker 2: Israeli bulldozer trying to stop the bulldozer from demolishing a
Speaker 2: Palestinian home. Even when you aren't murdered for doing it,
Speaker 2: the work itself is dangerous too. Shortly before I joined
Speaker 2: my first forest defense campaign in the Pacific Northwest, an
Speaker 2: activist named Whorhound had just fallen to her death from
Speaker 2: a tree sit and her absence was a tangible presence
Speaker 2: in every meeting and every forest defense camp for years after.
Speaker 2: So I don't feel like I'm speaking hyperbolically when I
Speaker 2: say that in that courtroom were some of the bravest
Speaker 2: people I've ever met, who risked their lives to stop
Speaker 2: a clear and present threat against it. And again, I
Speaker 2: genuinely believe this is not hyperbolic to say clear and
Speaker 2: present thread against all life on Earth. Climate change could
Speaker 2: very easily destroy every ecosystem on the planet. This fight
Speaker 2: is bigger than Appalachia. These forest defenders at this last
Speaker 2: trial knew that they would likely face felonies where they arrested,
Speaker 2: and they knew that people have died doing this work
Speaker 2: before them. And I don't want to speak to everyone
Speaker 2: involves gender identity, but it seems likely that some of
Speaker 2: them were trans as well, and thus risking spending prison
Speaker 2: time in the wrong prisons, which is a particularly dangerous
Speaker 2: position to be in. I don't say this to try
Speaker 2: to scare people out of joining movements like this. I
Speaker 2: can name people who have died in nonviolent direct action campaigns,
Speaker 2: and occasionally people have served real jail time. But I've
Speaker 2: met thousands and thousands more who have saved wild places,
Speaker 2: who have built lifelong friendships, and who have proven to
Speaker 2: themselves that they are who they hoped they would be.
Speaker 2: I want to end this by reading two statements. One
Speaker 2: was written by one of the defendants and was posted
Speaker 2: onto the Ablachians Against Pipeline's Facebook page on March third.
Speaker 2: You can read the full statement over there if you'd
Speaker 2: like quote. Today we proved that co defendant solidarity works.
Speaker 2: We were able to see how different strategies against a
Speaker 2: stacked system play out. It is in the court's best
Speaker 2: interest for us to take a deal out of fear
Speaker 2: of trial, but today we showed that they are just
Speaker 2: as afraid of an uncertain outcome, and we can use
Speaker 2: that to our advantage when we work together. The people
Speaker 2: who went to trial or pushed it to the brink
Speaker 2: got objectively better outcomes than those who took deals ahead
Speaker 2: of time, and those who took deals often had to
Speaker 2: struggle with changing conditions at trial, but still felt obligated
Speaker 2: to comply. I and another defendant held out, in part
Speaker 2: out of principle for people who had not been offered deals,
Speaker 2: and in part to say fuck you Bobby Lilly, our prosecutor,
Speaker 2: who is a literal clown. My co defendant and I
Speaker 2: went to bat for another who was not offered a
Speaker 2: deal at first. My co defendant was offered a deal,
Speaker 2: rather nice one at that, but my friends said no.
Speaker 2: The clown blinked. My friend basically went to trial. Technically
Speaker 2: they took a deal, but they basically started a trial.
Speaker 2: Prosecution made a motion to amend charges, but abruptly the
Speaker 2: clown and his cop body left. They ran they had
Speaker 2: no evidence. Another deal, which was even better, was offered,
Speaker 2: and this time I got one too. For me, it
Speaker 2: was good and an agreement. We took our deals. The
Speaker 2: one other person was offered an okay deal, but opted
Speaker 2: to go to trial with eyes open at the courts
Speaker 2: in competence and crushed it. Little Bobby Lilly looked even
Speaker 2: more like a clown. Every deal that was offered only
Speaker 2: got better, especially on the day of the trial. You
Speaker 2: don't have to accept the first deal, or the second,
Speaker 2: or the third, or the fourth, and when they try
Speaker 2: to pit us against each other, it is because they
Speaker 2: know we are stronger together. Initially we were charged with conspiracy.
Speaker 2: The real conspiracy is between prosecutors and the judges, between
Speaker 2: the cops and the corporations. It is the conspiracy between
Speaker 2: your landlord and your boss to keep you exhausted and hungry,
Speaker 2: unable to fight back. It is the dictatorship of the
Speaker 2: billionaires to keep us bound to their world where they
Speaker 2: make and break their own rules. This is bigger than
Speaker 2: a forty two inch wide, three hundred and three mile long,
Speaker 2: ticking time bomb running to Appalachia. It is the fact
Speaker 2: that our lives are bought and sold by the large
Speaker 2: land owning class who are able to ram this project
Speaker 2: through under Joe Biden, despite the harm it'll cause, because
Speaker 2: it will make them money as the world burns. Then
Speaker 2: here's another statement from the person who sat inside the pipe,
Speaker 2: and the statement is from last year. Quote. Winning looks
Speaker 2: so much bigger than just stopping this pipeline. It's a
Speaker 2: win through the community folks continue to build. It is
Speaker 2: a win because of the insane amount of skills that
Speaker 2: people have gathered and shared. It's a win because whether
Speaker 2: or not this pipeline ever has gas running through it.
Speaker 2: The legacy of resistance in Appalachia still lives. Extractive industry
Speaker 2: knows that they can't fuck with the communities here without
Speaker 2: going through hell, and we better not let them forget that.
Speaker 2: Many times in my life I have felt consumed by grief.
Speaker 2: Grief for all the places this pipeline has destroyed, for
Speaker 2: communities who continue to be ravaged by the state and industry,
Speaker 2: for the senseless violence committed against people and land every day,
Speaker 2: for friends and strangers forced into cages. But what keeps
Speaker 2: me moving is knowing that I feel such grief only
Speaker 2: because I have such deep hope and love for what
Speaker 2: could be and what we have the power to create.
Speaker 2: Find or facilitate radical community wherever you call home, Think
Speaker 2: about the things you are willing to sacrifice for people
Speaker 2: near and far. Dream of worlds that feel out of reach,
Speaker 2: because I bet they aren't as far away as it
Speaker 2: may seem. That's the end of the quote. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: though the criminal trials are over, the civil legal fight
Speaker 2: rages on. MVP is attempting to wield civil courts to
Speaker 2: silence its opposition. And if you want to help support
Speaker 2: that fight, which continues. You can donate to Appalachian Legal
Speaker 2: Defense Fund, which you can find probably by just searching
Speaker 2: for it, but you can also find it by going
Speaker 2: to bit dot l y slash app Legal Defense all
Speaker 2: one word, no dashes. Anyway, that's it for the episode.
Speaker 2: I'll talk to you soon.
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