Tim DeChristopher, a University of Utah disobedient civilian, was interviewed on Democracy Now! today. Amy Goodman asked him what relevance Edward Abbey had to his move to disrupt the bidding process for oil and gas leases in Utah’s red rock country.
His answer:
I think that the most powerful relevance of Edward Abbey to what I did was his statement and really his expression of the idea that sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul, because I think that’s what I had seen throughout my work as an environmentalist previous to this, where I had seen this massive crisis and massive challenge that we were facing in climate change, and I saw that my efforts of writing the letter here and there and riding my bike and things like that weren’t really aligning. My actions weren’t aligning with my sentiment of how serious this threat was, and I knew that. And so, I felt that kind of conflict within myself.
And when I stepped it up at this auction and was putting myself out there and winning all these parcels was really the first time I felt like my sentiment—or I felt like my actions were aligning with my sentiment. And I felt this tremendous sense of calm when I started doing that, because for the first time that conflict within me was gone, and I knew that when I was, you know, standing up and risking going to prison, my actions really were aligning with how big of a crisis this is.
A grand jury indicted Tim DeChristopher Wednesday afternoon with two felony counts of violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Act. If convicted, Tim could face up to 10 years in the slammer. This, despite the fact that Ken Salazar cancelled the contested leases because the government failed to follow its own procedures, but more on that later!
For now, tune in to KRCC at 7 to hear Tim (and then Noam Chomsky) on Democracy Now! tonight.
No cash, but he still bid away http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/18/nation/na-lease-activist18 Bad boy!
So what’s this prosecution all about? The financial crooks still running the nation’s economy and government want to label Tim out tot he general public as a big time financial felony criminal to take eyes off themselves where the real financial crimes are going on so brazenly. It’s also just like with Ward Churchill’s trial, too, where the Big Liars and Cons running foreign policy wanted to have the public focus itself on the supposed lies of Ward Churchill instead of anybody questioning themselves.
We simply live in a country where the biggest criminals run the ‘law’ and policing pretty much always against the Little People, just like any group of Mafioso rateros would run any neighborhood under their control and would squash anybody out of line with their own criminal activities.