26 Arrested in Blockades Outside of DeChristopher Trial

26 July 2011

Today, Tim DeChristo­pher was sen­tenced to 2 years in prison and tak­en away from the cour­t­house with­out good­byes or the option to self-report. In court, Tim said “You can put me in prison but it will not deter my future of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and it won’t deter oth­ers who are will­ing to fight to defend a liv­able future.”

Out­side the Cour­t­house, hun­dreds of sup­port­ers had gath­ered from the Salt Lake City com­mu­ni­ty, singing, chant­i­ng, and speak­ing out as they bore wit­ness to the sen­tenc­ing. Imme­di­ate­ly after the bang of the gav­el Ashe­ly Ander­son and Ash­ley Sanders were hauled out of the court­room for loud­ly ral­ly­ing peo­ple inside say­ing, “this court has proven itself inca­pable of jus­tice. So the peo­ple will take it back – it is now our court!” fore­shad­ow­ing the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to come out­side. As Henia Belalia left the Cour­t­house, she made an offi­cial state­ment declar­ing, “If there was ever a day in his­to­ry to take action, this is it.” And peo­ple took action. Peace­ful Upris­ing activists did a sit-in to block­ade the 2 front entrances of the Fed­er­al Cour­t­house, to tell the world “its ours” and empha­size that if Tim was going to jail, they were too, giv­ing mean­ing to the slo­gan “we are all Bid­der 70.” Tak­ing their lead, mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty began to join the block­ade to show their love and out­rage. 26 peo­ple were arrest­ed.

A moth­er who joined the block­ade was with her three chil­dren dur­ing the time of arrest, and said in tears “I need you to see this, its for your future.” Those par­tic­i­pat­ing in the sit-in chose to empha­size their point that busi­ness as usu­al is unac­cept­able by mov­ing to block­ade a major inter­sec­tion in front of the cour­t­house dur­ing rush hour. As sup­port­ers con­tin­ued to sing and sup­port those who locked down, Tim DeChristo­pher was quick­ly rushed out the side door in chains and loaded into a police van. We can only hope he felt our sup­port, and that that sup­port is car­ried to all peo­ple of con­science who do what is right for peo­ple and the plan­et.

Today a true crime was com­mit­ted in every fed­er­al cour­t­house in the Unit­ed States. Why is Tim now in prison for pro­tect­ing our future, while cor­po­rate CEOs walk free with mil­lions of dol­lars for destroy­ing it? We rec­og­nized today that our jus­tice sys­tem has failed us. It, like our econ­o­my and oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment, are con­trolled by the fos­sil fuel indus­try. And today we affirm that we stand with mil­lions active­ly tak­ing it back. Please see our offi­cial response to the sen­tenc­ing for action oppor­tu­ni­ties and links to all of the remark­able actions that are being tak­en around the coun­try.

Act! The move­ment is with you.