00:03:18.180Now, Lauren, back in September of 2019, the Washington Supreme Court set a state precedent
00:03:24.200in recognizing the necessity defense for climate-related direct action with regards
00:03:29.180to Ken Ward's valve-turner trial in Washington.
00:03:32.320Now, just to clarify for listeners who may be unfamiliar, the valve-turners closed the
00:03:36.980valves on five pipelines back in October of 2016, effectively shutting down 15% of U.S. crude oil
00:03:43.860imports for a day. So I'd like to talk about the potential of the necessity defense and what is
00:03:50.440its recognition say about how communities are orienting themselves to climate change?
00:03:54.780Yeah, so we have been trying to use the choice of evils defense, or sometimes it's called the
00:04:03.640necessity defense or the justification defense. Each state kind of has a different name depending
00:04:10.780on the statute. We've been trying to use that defense in the climate context for about a decade.
00:04:18.240And the way that the process works is when someone is arrested and charged with a misdemeanor or
00:04:25.700felony, the defendant has to provide the court with notice that they intend to use this necessity
00:04:33.920defense. So we file a one-page document that says we're going to use the necessity defense.
00:04:40.900And normally what happens next is that the prosecutor will try to ask the court to exclude
00:04:49.100that defense so that we can't talk about it or put on experts and testimony during the trial.
00:04:55.700And so normally what would happen is the prosecution files what's called a motion in limini, which just is Latin for a motion to exclude evidence.
00:05:06.300And in response to that motion, we normally will file a big giant brief that talks about why the defense is justified, what the evidence is, you know, what we intend to put on in terms of witness statements.
00:05:23.480We load them up with everything Dr. Hansen has ever written in his career, and we file it all with the court, and we say, we should be able to put on this defense because we've got enough evidence to substantiate it.
00:05:37.540And more often than not, in the past, the judges have ruled against us, and they have said that we don't get to talk about the necessity of climate action.
00:05:48.780And the number one reason that they have usually given is that they claim that the climate crisis was not imminent enough because, you know, back then scientists were saying, you know, maybe we have 50 years, maybe we have 20 years.
00:06:04.960It was not as concrete as it is today. And then the other defense that they would say is that we can't prove that this person, this defendant, was actually threatened with harm.
00:06:21.220Because even if we believe what you're telling us about climate change, it's going to happen to island nations and places far away, and it's not going to happen in Skagit County, Washington, for instance.
00:06:33.660And so that went on for a while until actually we had another valve turner case filed in Minnesota.
00:06:42.960So as you mentioned, the valve turners were in four different locations.
00:06:47.200They were in Washington, Montana, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
00:06:52.080And so the Minnesota valve turners, we filed the necessity briefing.
00:06:58.560And in that case, the trial court judge said, yeah, they passed the test.
00:07:04.800They should be able to use this defense at trial.
00:07:07.800And that was the first time that we had had a district court judge actually open up the gates and let us in.
00:07:15.840And in that case, the prosecutor, the state of Minnesota, appealed the court's decision to let us use the defense.
00:07:24.180So in that case, it went up to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled in our favor and said, yeah, these activists should be able to put on the defense. And then the state of Minnesota appealed up to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the lower court.
00:07:44.080And so the first state to basically create precedent throughout the entire state was Minnesota to say that climate activists who can pass the test should be able to use the defense.
00:07:59.160And, of course, Minnesota, a super important state with regard to Line 3 and a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure development that is being shoved down the throats of both indigenous communities and other communities.
00:08:15.160And so this was a really important precedent.
00:08:17.080So once the Supreme Court ruled in our favor, we put experts together. We had Dr. James Hansen. We had medical doctors. We had policy analysts. We had experts in the efficacy of nonviolent civil disobedience, all lined up to testify along with our clients.
00:08:37.060Everybody was like waiting in a room to be brought out to testify. And in that trial, the prosecution goes first, they put on their case. And then once the prosecution closes, then the defendants, lawyers will normally do what's called motion for judgment of acquittal, which just basically says, hey, judge, the prosecution didn't meet their burden of proof, and you should throw out all these charges.
00:09:03.900And in Minnesota, the defendants were facing multiple felonies. They were facing like 30 years in prison. And some of the felony charges were these new critical energy infrastructure felonies for messing with pipelines.
00:09:19.200And so we put on an argument that we never expected to win, you know, saying the state didn't prove that these activists actually damaged the pipeline. And so, judge, you should dismiss all of these charges.
00:09:33.940And the next thing that happened is the judge picked up a piece of paper from the bench, something that was written that he had prepared, apparently, and he began to read from this piece of paper.
00:09:49.680And he granted our motion for judgment of acquittal, which on the one hand means that our clients were found not guilty of all of these felonies, including critical energy infrastructure.
00:10:02.600But on the other hand, the judge, by granting that motion, shut down our entire case and we were foreclosed from actually putting on the necessity defense that we had long prepared and dreamed of doing.
00:10:18.560So victory, but not for the necessity defense.
00:10:22.620And so as that case was winding through, Ken Ward's case in Skagit County was also winding its way through the process.
00:10:30.540And in a similar process in Washington, we appealed the court's denial of the necessity defense up to the Washington Court of Appeals. And as you mentioned, the Court of Appeals ended up ruling in our favor in a very strongly worded opinion where the court says climate change is here. It's now. The harms are serious.
00:10:55.400All of the criteria for this defense are met by what the defendants intend to put forward as evidence and testimony.
00:11:04.740So in that case, also, the state appealed up to the Washington Supreme Court and the Washington Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's ruling.
00:11:13.760The reason that it's significant that the state appealed all the way to the Supreme Court is when that happens, the state itself creates precedent that has to be followed across the state.
00:11:28.440If they had not appealed the lower court's ruling, then that ruling only would have applied to the county where the court case was going on.
00:11:40.180But because it went all the way up to the Supreme Court in each of those states, that ruling is now binding on every court in the state.
00:11:49.700And because it went up to the Supreme Court level, now we can use those state Supreme Court decisions to say, hey, North Dakota, hey, Montana, you should rule like these other cases in these other states because the facts are identical or the facts are similar.
00:12:08.800So that's been going on. And then, you know, to be frank, in the meantime, we recently just had a case here in Oregon with Extinction Rebellion activists in Portland, Oregon, that shut down oil trains and shut down a tar sands oil and gas facility called Zenith Energy.
00:12:29.360And in that case, the state decided to take the tactic of not challenging us on the use of the necessity defense. And so at the trial court level, there was no objection by the prosecutor.
00:12:43.900and just a couple weeks ago, we went through a full jury trial of being able to put on the
00:12:51.060necessity defense. We had climate experts, we had policy and law experts, we had an academic that
00:12:57.600testified about the efficacy of direct action, and we were able to present all of that to a jury.
00:13:04.760And at the end of the jury trial, the judge actually was able to provide them with a jury
00:13:10.980instruction and literally said, jurors, you are now allowed to utilize this choice of
00:13:18.420evils necessity defense if you find that the harms of climate change are worse than the
00:13:25.480harms of committing trespass on corporate property, then you can acquit these defendants
00:13:34.940And in that case, five out of six of the jurors voted to find the defendants not guilty as a result of the necessity defense. One juror held out and said that they didn't think that the defense applied. So that resulted in a hung jury.
00:13:53.820When a hung jury happens, then the state basically has to decide whether they want to re-prosecute and go through trial all over again. And just yesterday, the state of Oregon made the decision that they were unable to proceed and that they did not want a new trial.
00:14:12.720And so all of the charges were dismissed against the activists. And I think that that is the first of its kind in the U.S., the first time that all evidence and jury instructions for climate necessity defense have been allowed in a court proceeding.
00:14:30.780Wow, Lauren, thank you so much for taking us through all of those details. And I'm sure there are so many more, but that was a huge educational learning for me. So thank you for sharing that.
00:14:44.440Now, before we delve deeper into topics of activist defense and the law, I'm hoping we can highlight the long-standing connections between private companies, a booming pipeline industry, and the increase in corporate-friendly punitive legislation.
00:15:00.300For example, the American Legislative Exchange Council, that's a mouthful, or ALEC, is responsible for the drafting of anti-protest legislation across the country.
00:15:12.580Similarly, it was recently revealed that members of the federal government have been meeting with lawyers for various oil companies who are being sued by cities in an attempt to hold them accountable for a changing climate.
00:15:25.000So while there is a long history of private lobbyists buying elected officials to further industry's agenda, I'm wondering if you can speak to this grave overreach when it comes to groups like ALEC and the shaping of current and future legislation.
00:15:41.500Sure. The collusion between corporations and industry and our elected legislators is nothing new.
00:15:54.400And to be frank, ALEC got so much bad rep over the last 10 years that a lot of the anti-protest legislation, these critical energy infrastructure laws are actually not overtly being pushed around by ALEC, but by different front groups and industry groups and Koch brother type think tanks and other kind of more nefarious, more ambiguous entities.
00:16:24.400That is unfortunately nothing new. And in fact, in our recent trial, the policy and law expert that we had on the stand basically testified that the fossil fuel industry is spending over $30 billion on media and advocacy campaigns
00:16:47.900to try and sustain its industry and to try to confuse and manipulate the general public
00:16:55.140into thinking that they're the good guys and that climate activists are the bad guys.
00:17:00.280And one of the big things that he talked about was how the fossil fuel industry is subverting
00:17:06.280our democracy, especially at the local level.
00:17:09.680And they're doing that by saying to your state or local representatives, if you push our
00:17:17.240legislation through, we will give you a bunch of money for your campaign. Or if you fight
00:17:24.560against this regulation that will impact our profits, we will give you a bunch of campaign
00:17:30.760contributions. And unfortunately, we are living in such corrupt times that by and large, legislators,
00:17:40.600many of them are taking that bait and taking that money. Then you also have court decisions like
00:17:47.880Citizen United and its prodigy that are basically guaranteeing corporations the constitutional
00:17:55.040rights that belong to individuals. So there's all of these parts that are going on, whether it is
00:18:01.740criminalizing dissent, whether it is undoing regulations. I think the Trump administration
00:18:07.820is also a really classic example of the revolving door between corporations and very high-level
00:18:16.440government officials. For instance, we saw at the EPA, Trump putting in an oil executive
00:18:23.680to the highest cabinet-level position of an agency that used to regulate their corporation,
00:18:30.920And they used to be enemies. Now they literally put the fox in charge of the hen house for some amount of time period. Then that cabinet level government official eventually leaves public service and goes back into the corporate realm with all of the ties, power connections that they accumulated while they were acting as a public official.
00:18:57.460That revolving door of corporations working in government and then leaving government and working for the corporations is another really serious attack at our democratic principles and something that we are going to be having to fight to repair for the next decade or more once the Trump regime is run out of the White House.
00:19:21.040Well, hopefully that happens this year.
00:19:24.360Yes, we can all cross our fingers and toes.
00:19:29.200What I usually tell activists is that type of repression, state repression is nothing new. And activism has continued to grow and thrive in spite of it.
00:19:42.060And a big part of that is because for a lot of activists, when they are engaging in a campaign against a big industry, against a big corporation, they know that they are risking their liberty in doing that.
00:19:57.160They know that they might get arrested. They know they might get prosecuted and convicted, but they're doing it anyway because of the greater good.
00:20:05.060And so regardless of what kind of name a crime is given, like these critical energy infrastructure laws are a classic example.
00:20:14.460They created a new felony when there were already half a dozen felonies that could have applied.
00:20:20.180Somebody that's going to go in and shut down a pipeline already knows that they may go to jail for felonies as a result of doing that act.
00:20:30.080But they have made the decision to do it anyway.
00:20:32.560And so whether they call it felony burglary, felony sabotage, or felony critical energy infrastructure is not going to make or break that person's decision making process on whether they're going to engage in direct action or not.
00:20:48.560The same with like corporate spying and, you know, and all these other things that are going on. For activists, they know that they're up against the state. And when I use the word the state, that means both government and the corporate state, because they are working so closely together against the people.
00:21:08.700So we know exactly where the lines are drawn and we know what side we're on versus what side they're on. And now it's just a matter of building that mass movement of people who actually want clean water and want a livable planet versus those that are hell bent on putting billions of dollars of profits into a few people's bank accounts.
00:21:34.780Those lines are going to become more and more clear as the dire consequences of climate change are in people's face more and more.
00:21:45.960When we start dealing with water shortages and food shortages and flooding and sea level rise and all these different consequences, as that starts to affect people more and more in their daily lives,
00:21:59.560I think that we will see the lines in this battle more clearly drawn and more and more people, I believe, will be joining the climate movement in order to try and preserve some semblance of civilization for future generations.
00:25:12.580Yeah, I mean, in the LNG circumstance that you mentioned, which I'm here in Oregon,
00:25:18.840And we've been fighting off this pipeline for over 15 years.
00:25:24.560So this is a fight that's been going on a long time.
00:25:27.500A new corporation, Pembina, came in and is really trying to railroad and ram the project through.
00:25:34.940And one of the unprecedented things that has occurred is that a fossil fuel corporation has purchased public law enforcement officers to guard and protect their private corporate property.
00:25:52.660We did extensive research around the country trying to figure out whether this had ever happened before.
00:25:59.820And the only other example that we could find of a private corporation literally purchasing public law enforcement was in California with regard to a Google campus, I believe.
00:26:13.820You know, one of these IT tech campuses basically hired public law enforcement officers to specifically patrol their private campus, a large, sprawling campus.
00:26:26.680That is the only other example in the history of the U.S. that we could find where this has happened.
00:26:33.940Now, when we started stirring the pot and making some noise about potentially mounting a legal challenge to the idea that our public tax dollars are going to go to buy cops to guard private property, now it appears that they are withdrawing that plan somewhat.
00:26:57.200But it's unclear whether they are suspending that plan or if they actually are going back to the drawing board with it.
00:27:04.240But, yeah, there are so many problems with the idea that a corporation will be able to have local cops doing their bidding.
00:27:15.960I mean, it's against the basic constitutional rights, civil rights, human rights.
00:27:21.680You know, there's all sorts of incredible problems with it.
00:27:24.840But in some ways, it is appealing in its transparency because we know that this arrangement happens all the time on the sly without there being transparency around it.
00:27:40.680We know that big corporations, fossil fuel industry facilities make arrangements with cops to do their bidding.
00:27:50.320Sometimes, like I remember when I was working down in Texas, when the tar sands blockaders were fighting off Keystone XL, there were like TransCanada representatives on site that when cops were macing and gassing lawful protesters, one of the TransCanada individuals kind of walked up to the cops afterward, thanked them, shook their hands.
00:28:19.440and then basically made some comment about replenishing their pepper spray back at the
00:28:25.300station. We know that this is nothing new, but it certainly is bold that they are so publicly
00:28:33.400and openly saying, we can do this now. And I think that really speaks to sort of the times
00:28:40.120that we are in at the moment, especially with regard to the Trump regime, opening the flood
00:28:46.540gates to these types of fossil fuel projects and profiteering. So we'll see what happens here
00:28:54.340in Oregon. But what we also know is in the run up to this project, when Pembina took over,
00:29:04.220we have seen through Freedom of Information Act requests that both the government and private
00:29:11.520corporations are spying on local activists that are not doing anything illegal. You know,
00:29:18.800they're holding meetings, they're doing public advocacy, you know, everything that is
00:29:23.500constitutionally protected. And so probably this summer, the Civil Liberties Defense Center
00:29:29.780is going to be filing a big, what we're kind of calling COINTELPRO second gen. And what we mean
00:29:36.840by that is during the 60s and 70s, there was a round of litigation where the government was sued
00:29:44.240for violating the constitutional rights of activists in illegally spying on them. And the
00:29:51.680courts ruled that that was a violation of their constitutional rights. And they said, thou shalt
00:29:58.360not do that anymore. And even though the courts ruled that that was illegal and unconstitutional,
00:30:04.880We know that those programs of spying on activists never actually ended. They just sort of were driven underground. And now the modern version of that is the government working with corporations where the corporations are not even bound by the very basic rules that like the FBI are bound to.
00:30:29.940And so what we see is the private spies doing all sorts of illegal things and things that the FBI would not be able to do. And then the private spies are turning over these investigative materials to the FBI. And then the FBI is utilizing the benefits of those ill-gotten goods, illegally obtained surveillance information.
00:30:55.480And so we're going to basically sue both private spy agencies and the government for this collusion and say, you know, this is still illegal. It's still unconstitutional. And just because you've made this arrangement with these private spies to do the dirty work doesn't mean that it's any less illegal.
00:31:17.460And we will basically be asking the federal courts to draw the line again and to basically tell the government that they can't be sharing information with illegal private spies as they are monitoring and conducting surveillance on lawful advocacy.
00:31:37.460And the importance of this is if we don't have separation between the state and public activism, we are not allowed to effectively advocate against the state.
00:31:51.920If Big Brother is literally always watching and learning what you are going to do in the future and why, it gives them so much power to be able to shut down that advocacy, either by jailing the leaders of the movement or shutting down the road before the rally gets there.
00:32:14.180There's all different ways that the state can use that power to basically shut down all of the constitutional rights that we have to advocate against the state and its power structures.
00:32:27.340You can look around the world and see where those protections don't exist. You see leaders, lawyers, activists being jailed and imprisoned or even murdered for their advocacy against Chevron and all sorts of other things.
00:32:43.760So, you know, I think it becomes a very important issue of where do we really stand in the United States with regard to these freedoms. And I think that the state has been really effective, especially with the advent of social media, where there is a younger generation that has grown up without really knowing or understanding why the right to privacy is so essential in a democracy.
00:33:11.680When you have students that have walked through metal detectors since kindergarten and who have basically given up all of their private information to Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram, they no longer really have a lot of understanding about why there really needs to be this separation
00:33:33.340between the state and citizenry with regard to privacy and the Fourth Amendment and your
00:33:41.960First Amendment rights. So they've kind of really raised a generation of people who are
00:33:49.580much less concerned about these privacy rights. They've basically grown themselves a generation
00:33:56.720of sheep that don't have as much awareness as maybe past generations have had with regard to
00:34:02.680that separation. Well, Lauren, in continuing with the theme of gray areas, in response to 9-11,
00:34:10.340George W. Bush signed the 9-11 Commission Act, which allocated hundreds of millions of dollars
00:34:16.500to the creation of fusion centers. Currently, there are over 70 of these centers across the
00:34:22.260country. So I'm wondering if you could speak to the designated purpose of these centers,
00:34:27.400the frequency in which they're being used, and what kind of actions are they actually monitoring?
00:34:32.680Sure. I will premise my remarks in saying that, you know, fusion centers and calling them fusion centers is sort of another propagandist tactic of the state to make people afraid to be advocates and activists.
00:34:51.280And so, you know, again, I would premise it by saying, like, this is really nothing new in terms of the war on dissent and activism and should not be viewed as something scary to make you stop hitting the streets or campaigning for a cause.
00:35:09.940But basically, what they do is, A, funnel a ton of our taxpayer dollars to law enforcement, even more money going to law enforcement than currently exists, and for them to be able to have distinct streams of money being funneled away from social services and into law enforcement.
00:35:35.260And fusion centers, what their intention was, was to allow state and local law enforcement to work more closely with federal law enforcement in order to prevent terrorism.
00:35:48.780That was like the stated intent of them back during the George Bush era.
00:35:53.640Now, there is no definition of terrorism in the federal and state laws, generally speaking.
00:35:59.680There's thousands of different definitions.
00:36:02.720Generally speaking, the government tends to define terrorism as anybody that they don't
00:36:08.460like, but it has consistently included anti-capitalists, which often include climate
00:36:14.560activists, environmental activists, animal rights activists, indigenous activists.
00:36:19.720They are almost all able to be categorized as anti-capitalist, and that category has
00:36:26.060consistently been on the dartboard of these fusion centers.
00:36:29.780So how they practically relate is they will utilize state and local law enforcement intelligence, whether that is infiltrators or overtly uniformed law enforcement, to try and burrow themselves into local activist scenes, campaigns, etc., etc., organizations.
00:36:55.080And then they funnel that intelligence back to these fusion centers, which are then shared around the country through mostly computer networks, databases.
00:37:07.800So individual organizers, campaign leaders, people who are arrested are often included in these databases.
00:37:17.180So if there is a particularly effective indigenous campaigner in northern Washington who then ends up in Texas and then maybe ends up in Minnesota, these types of databases will provide local law enforcement with that person's photo, name, background information, arrests, et cetera, et cetera, which then allows local law enforcement to target that person.
00:37:47.180person when they, you know, end up in Minnesota, for instance. So, you know, in a lot of ways,
00:37:53.000we all assume that the state is monitoring us and, you know, and is sharing it. So I don't
00:38:01.540necessarily think that this is anything new or anything that people need to be particularly
00:38:07.640concerned about. As activists, obviously, from a democratic standpoint, as a taxpayer, you know,
00:38:15.100for all other reasons, this is like a complete waste of time and resources and really sort of
00:38:21.780demonstrates the unfair disparities of the sides. You know, when the state is able to
00:38:30.320have that much power and infrastructure to literally be able to monitor frontline community
00:38:37.980organizers in every nook and cranny in the U.S., that is certainly a lot of surveillance power.
00:38:47.200But with that power, their weakness, this behemoth's weakness, is that we the people
00:38:55.940are nimble and many, and that giant state fusion center is never going to be able to
00:39:05.700fully understand and control the way that grassroots activism as a non-hierarchical
00:39:13.580movement is going to work and adapt and change and build power for itself.0.99
00:39:20.560So on the one hand, it's horrible, it sucks, it's ridiculous. And on the other hand,0.99
00:39:27.020it really goes to show how little the federal government and these big corporations
00:45:04.820Yeah. And gosh, yeah, there's so much there. But I do want to talk a little bit more about
00:45:10.920social media, it was something I was going to ask you about. And I think for many, the belief still
00:45:15.960holds that visibility is unwanted in environmental activism. But I guess I'm wondering if this is
00:45:22.520changing as a threat of climate change because climate change is becoming more obvious to so
00:45:27.800many other people at this point. If perhaps we're entering into a time where there's actually a
00:45:33.300tremendous amount of public support and thus safety to be found in taking actions that are
00:45:37.960highly visible and demonstrate the power of our First Amendment rights.
00:45:42.580Yeah. I mean, I think that Extinction Rebellion Portland case that I mentioned at the beginning
00:45:47.500is a pretty classic example of, I think, what you're talking about. Two of the women
00:45:54.400who were defendants in that case, one was a public school teacher for 30 years,1.00
00:46:00.740and the other worked as a labor organizer for 40 years. They were both retired children,
00:46:07.960grandchildren, and they were not what you would normally think of as people who were willing to
00:46:18.540risk arrest for activism. But their testimonies on the stand was that after they had tried every
00:46:27.880legal alternative that they could think of to try and protect their communities, their children and
00:46:35.300grandchildren, the planet from exacerbation of carbon emissions and climate change.
00:46:43.660They realized that all of those efforts were futile. And the only thing left was to use their
00:46:52.640body to disrupt the economics of the fossil fuel industry. And so they sat down on train tracks
00:47:02.820and got arrested and ultimately luckily we won that case but their testimony basically was like
00:47:10.460it's coming to a point where we won't have much more to lose and when you are thinking about
00:47:18.800your legacy and how you want to be able to communicate to your children and grandchildren
00:47:25.460you want to be able to look them in the eye and say, I tried. And for a lot of ethical people
00:47:33.620in the world that are paying attention, those days are drawing near where more and more people
00:47:41.980are going to have nothing left to lose than to risk arrest in basically putting their bodies
00:47:52.080between the machines and their communities in order to try and stop the insanity of expanding
00:48:01.280fossil fuel infrastructure, or even in the continuation of the fossil fuel industry,
00:48:07.920especially with regard to tar sands and coal. It's just insanity that we would be continuing
00:48:13.980to build new pipelines and new facilities to increase that kind of production right now
00:48:21.600in the world. And the only reason that that is even viable is because of the billionaires
00:48:29.220that are pulling the puppet strings and putting that money into their bank accounts and then
00:48:35.380using that money and power to basically immunize themselves and their industry from what would0.98
00:48:43.140normally be the checks and balances of democratic accountability.
00:48:48.300Gosh, there's so much there, Lauren. But just to clarify around the social media part, because I feel like a lot of folks will be questioning this. So in a way, we don't want to be using social media, Facebook to make things easier for the state.
00:49:04.220But at the same time, do you not think that there is any type of safety in being more visible so that the public and the public supporters are more aware of people who may go missing or who may go into prison?
00:49:20.560But I guess what I'm thinking is if more and more people know through social media what's going on and what activists are the leaders, will they not realize when those leaders are under threat because of social media, because of the decentralization of that form of media?
00:49:39.400Well, I mean, I think if you look back at history, some of the strongest, tightest affinity groups and organizing structures were those that were bound together face to face and voice to voice.
00:49:56.160The more that network expands farther distances, more individuals, the harder it is to hold tightly to the level of trust and accountability that those smaller structures have.
00:50:14.680The labor movement, for instance, has never stopped going door to door and meeting members face to face because just those brief interactions instill loyalty and shared purpose.
00:50:30.440And that is protection, especially somebody in New York knowing what I look like is not going to stop Nazis here in Oregon from trying to take me out.
00:50:41.180But having a group of 50 people in my community that know me, love me, care about me are going to make sure that I stay safe in a different way.
00:50:53.260And there's, of course, different scales to it.
00:50:56.580But I think if you look historically at grassroots movement building, you are not necessarily thinking about what is the biggest, flashiest, most.
00:51:07.300you're thinking about how can I build power and accountability and respect in a community that
00:51:17.920may be asked more and more to engage in more militant action. I jokingly tell youth that we
00:51:25.760train, if you would make a flyer and put it up on a light post, it's probably going to be okay for
00:51:33.280face crack too. You know, if it's something that is not going to potentially harm someone,
00:51:39.580have at it. It's too bad that we've become so reliant on social media that some people
00:51:44.740even consider it their activism, but have at it. Where it crosses the line is when
00:51:50.100you're using people's names, you're using photos, images that not everyone is consenting
00:51:56.960to disclose to the state. Because I think the bottom line is, you know, when you're posting
00:52:01.480something on Facecrack or Instagram, you should basically assume that it is going into an FBI
00:52:07.020database. It may not be harmful to you, but can it be used by the government to psychologically
00:52:14.140profile a movement? Can it be used for them to figure out how you pick targets, et cetera, et
00:52:20.520cetera. So there's just a lot of factors that should be considered when utilizing that technology.
00:53:29.680Now, as we come to a close, I'd like to end on a question on the future of climate activism in recognition of the booming oil and gas pipeline business. Although right now that seems to be going the other direction because of coronavirus, but we all know that activism can take a plethora of forms.
00:53:47.140but we must be honest and realistic in what we can contribute, where our strengths,
00:53:53.100vulnerabilities, and capacities lie. That being said, it appears that illegal actions are becoming
00:53:58.820our last hope for real change, whether it's in raising awareness or setting precedent through
00:54:04.040the legal system. I also think if more people were physically putting themselves on the line,
00:54:09.060then it would overflow the systems, the courts, the jails, etc. So there is indeed power in
00:54:14.480numbers when it comes to direct action. So as somebody who has defended thousands of activists,
00:54:19.660I'm wondering if you could speak to when and where you think it is appropriate for people to get
00:54:23.780involved and how we can assess our capabilities realistically. Well, so the first thing that I
00:54:30.380would say is people should not be thinking about this as a dichotomy between I'm either going to
00:54:38.400engage in direct action and risk arrest, or I'm going to do something else. Because for the climate
00:54:45.680necessity defense, part of the defense is that you need to be able to testify that you are either
00:54:52.680utilizing now or have attempted all reasonable lawful alternatives. And what we hear from a
00:55:01.240number of our activist clients that have successfully used the defense, what they say is
00:55:08.360we still engage in petition gathering, going to city council meetings, doing all these lawful
00:55:16.460means. We think that those are important, but they are just not going to win the day
00:55:22.100on their own. Combined with economic disruption or direct action or nonviolent civil disobedience,
00:55:30.020whatever term you want to use, when those tactics are combined with all of those other lawful
00:55:36.260tactics. That is how the movement pushes forward, I believe. And in those circumstances, when an
00:55:43.800activist can say that, can testify to that, then you've got a real possibility that even in the
00:55:51.360legal system, a jury of your peers is told to balance the harms. And if you've picked the
00:55:59.080appropriate tactic and you've done the organizing work that you should be doing anyway, it's likely
00:56:06.580that in the community where, you know, the jurors are picked, that they are going to hear your
00:56:13.320testimony, hear the testimony of your experts. And more often than not, the majority of those
00:56:20.640jurors are going to rule in your favor. And that is because jurors are supposed to be the
00:56:26.720conscience of your community. And so if you are engaging in a direct action on a pipeline,
00:56:32.200your community lives with that pipeline. And if you're saying, I did this action because
00:56:38.440I care about my community. I was trying to keep it safer. I care about the future of the planet
00:56:43.500and everything about this project goes against all of those things. People of normal intelligence
00:56:50.020are going to listen to that. They're going to look you in the eye. They're going to trust you
00:56:54.640over some out-of-state or international corporation that on the stand will say,
00:57:02.000legally, our number one goal is to make as much profit as possible. That is our legal requirement
00:57:08.840is to make as much profit as possible. When those distinctions are made really evident
00:57:15.180in a small courtroom, it is my belief that if we are allowed to utilize this defense and if
00:57:22.040activists have ensured that they have lined up the defense properly, we will more and more see
00:57:28.780acquittals by jurors for climate activists engaged in that way. It's important that they maintain
00:57:37.200good, nonviolent discipline. The jurors, in that case I mentioned, one of the things that they
00:57:44.200said was really important in finding the clients not guilty was that they were polite to the
00:57:49.840workers and polite to the cops. That was a thing for them, that they really stuck with a pretty
00:57:56.080strict nonviolence code, even though they were engaging in economic disruption and resistance.
00:58:03.160Thank you, Lauren. Now, maybe this could be the last question. This feels relevant,
00:58:08.800especially with what's going on right now with this global pandemic, disaster recovery. Now,
00:58:16.440Now, TigerSwan, which is the private security company notorious for their violent actions and attempted suppression of the No-Daple movement, are positioning themselves to meddle in areas affected by natural disasters.
00:58:29.000In the past couple of years, TigerSwan has responded in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Maria, and Matthew.
00:58:34.340So as someone who is familiar with TigerSwan and the way they operate, I'm wondering if you could speak to the potential threats if security companies that operate on behalf of industry start intervening in disaster recovery, what agenda will they further? And I do feel like, yeah, this is a potentially very relevant question for what we're dealing with right now.
00:58:54.080Yeah. When private spy agencies like TigerSwan are profiting off of disasters, it is a serious
00:59:04.280problem. That type of disaster assistance should never be privatized. That is the duty of our
00:59:12.900government. That is what our tax dollars are supposed to go toward. The idea of outsourcing
00:59:18.940that to private corporations whose number one goal, like I just mentioned, by law is to maximize
00:59:28.300profits that should never, ever, ever be paired with something like disaster relief or enforcement.
00:59:36.980And TigerSwan in particular, the founders of TigerSwan are all ex-military intelligence
00:59:43.780people from Middle East theaters. And we have a law in the U.S. called the Posse Comitatus,
00:59:51.600which basically says the military shall not police civilian populations. Tiger Swan is an
00:59:59.000example of basically a military front group. The U.S. knows that they can't put people in U.S.
01:00:05.360military uniforms and have them using attack dogs on Native American water protectors.
01:00:13.420That would never hold water. That would never stand up to the laws. But they think by taking
01:00:20.180those same soldiers and putting them in different uniforms and putting them on a private corporate
01:00:27.440payroll to do those exact things is somehow legitimate or justified, I think is an incredibly
01:00:35.260grave, slippery slope. And whether it is prisons or family detention centers or disaster relief,
01:00:44.860the idea that a corporation would profit off of that kind of suffering, harm, misery is
01:00:54.000unethical and extremely problematic. Absolutely. Well, Lauren, this information that you shared
01:01:02.100with us today and also all of the trainings that you do, I feel like are just extremely necessary
01:01:09.640and so needed right now. I'm so grateful to your knowledge and your passion and your devotion to
01:01:18.480this work. It's just huge. And I feel like so many of us don't think about this kind of stuff until
01:01:24.840it's potentially too late or we're already in trouble. And I think about how corporations
01:01:31.860really, you know, they have enough disposable income to essentially bankrupt individuals once
01:01:36.940they get in trouble with the law for activist issues. Like I'm thinking about some of the GMO
01:01:42.460Monsanto cases where they'll just bankrupt farmers. And so I think that we really need to be aware.
01:01:49.080We need to be aware of these things. We need to understand how to keep ourselves safe
01:01:52.520as much as possible while also standing up for justice, for climate justice, environmental
01:01:58.500justice, social justice. We all need a livable planet in order to survive as humans. So this
01:02:04.900activism is, I think, extremely necessary, but also understanding the ways in which we could
01:02:11.000potentially be harmed is also necessary. We have to be smarter. We have to really understand the
01:02:16.840other side because, yeah, we could be bankrupt. We could go to jail. We could, who knows? I mean,
01:02:22.620there's so many things, but those types of fear tactics that the state uses shouldn't stop us
01:02:28.600because what's the alternative? Do nothing and then be completely destroyed by climate change?
01:02:34.460Like there's, it's, I don't think the alternative is to do nothing, but it's very complex.
01:02:39.560I mean, I think the goal of the CLDC is like the idea that knowledge is power. You know,
01:02:45.640we want to build a stronger, more effective movement, but we also want people to know what
01:02:52.980they're getting into before they get into it. For instance, with the issue you raised about
01:02:58.040bankruptcy, one of the things that we talk about in our Know Your Rights training is if you're
01:03:03.020going up against a litigious industry, talk with a financial consultant and see what you can do
01:03:09.560to armor any assets that you have before you engage in anything. Because you can't move
01:03:17.000assets once you're under threat of litigation. But there are lots of things that rich people do
01:03:23.440all the time to make their money impenetrable. And it only takes a couple hundred bucks
01:03:29.600to walk into an office and learn what it is that you can do to make it a little harder.
01:03:35.600And that peace of mind will empower and embolden you to be able to take braver, maybe more tactically effective actions. So I would definitely say we do Know Your Rights for Climate Activists as webinars, as well as in person. I really strongly encourage people to make sure that they've got up-to-date information.
01:03:56.820Part of that training is also teaching activists how the state and corporations spy on you, what they're looking for, what the goods are that they're trying to get on you so that you could at least try to protect those things.
01:04:12.200And then the other thing is we are currently hiring more lawyers because we really believe that the movement needs access to free legal support. And that's what we've defended over 4,500 activists for free around the country.
01:04:29.240And there's not very many of us here at the CLDC. So we're trying to find like-minded activist lawyers that are willing to come kind of join us on the front lines and to be able to plant those people in South Dakota, in Minnesota, in the front lines communities that really need that kind of legal support right now.
01:04:52.000Well, I hope the lawyers in the audience hear that call out or the folks who are studying to be lawyers hear that call out because, yeah, we need you. We need you at the CLDC. Gosh, Lauren, I really could and could have spoken to you all day about these issues.
01:05:08.400you're so knowledgeable and clear with your analysis. And this is fascinating at one hand,
01:05:15.380and also it just feels like mandatory information. And you have just done so much work. It's
01:05:21.920incredible to hear your responses and the depth of your knowledge. So thank you for coming on today.
01:05:27.700I know you're very busy and it just, we're very grateful that you've shared this time and space
01:05:32.400with us. Well, thanks so much for having me and, you know, down the road, if you want to
01:05:37.120pick a particular topic, I would be happy to come back on for some more in-depth.
01:05:42.560Okay. Well, now you really got my head turning.