RICO racketeering

920 disambig generic term, but note offense/perverse<div>
</div><div>YIKES SEE AS ACTIV SUPPRESSION, LEGAL SUPPRESSION //SLAPP = evil jiu jitsu crypto</div><div>see donziger</div><div>=<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small;">4 23 email drilledon Monday this week the Supreme Court finally weighed in on whether it would take up the jurisdictional argument that oil companies are making in multiple climate liability suits. The companies have been arguing for the past five years that these cases, brought on behalf of municipalities and states, are asking state courts for judgements that would impact federal policy and thus belong in state court. Attorneys representing state and local arguments have argued that their cases—which claim that oil companies' delay tactics on climate increased the cost of adaptation and thus the companies are liable for a portion of those costs—were appropriately filed in state court. Every circuit court has agreed, as has the Department of Justice, and now the Supreme Court as well.<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 2em 0px; padding: 0px 25px; border-left: 2px solid rgb(1, 0, 0); line-height: 1.6em; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">"The companies' history of climate, deception, and misinformation, coupled with their unchecked fossil fuel production promotion, and so on, it makes them liable for at least some of the costs that these communities face, so that these costs don't fall entirely on the taxpayers." — Marco Simons, EarthRights International, attorney representing Boulder and other Colorado municipalities against oil companies.</blockquote><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; margin: 0px auto 1.5em; border: 1px solid rgb(229, 239, 245); border-collapse: collapse; width: 560px; border-radius: 3px;"><tbody><tr style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px;"><td valign="top" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; width: 558.4px;"><tbody><tr style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px;"><td width="60" valign="top" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: top;">[audio]</td><td valign="center" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px;"><a href="https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m=bf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m%3Dbf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de&source=gmail&ust=1682873162973000&usg=AOvVaw1uRgXPsH1qpkPsSdF2cYKM" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; display: block;" /><a href="https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m=bf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m%3Dbf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de&source=gmail&ust=1682873162973000&usg=AOvVaw1uRgXPsH1qpkPsSdF2cYKM" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; display: block;" /><a href="https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m=bf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m%3Dbf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de&source=gmail&ust=1682873162973000&usg=AOvVaw1uRgXPsH1qpkPsSdF2cYKM" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; display: block;" /><a href="https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m=bf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m%3Dbf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de&source=gmail&ust=1682873162973000&usg=AOvVaw1uRgXPsH1qpkPsSdF2cYKM" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; display: block;" /><a href="https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m=bf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.drilledpodcast.com/r/f275a8ce?m%3Dbf6fa0ec-1090-4b3f-b920-7e98d9adb3de&source=gmail&ust=1682873162973000&usg=AOvVaw1uRgXPsH1qpkPsSdF2cYKM" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; display: block;" /><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="100%" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; width: 478.4px;"><tbody /></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center; padding-top: 5px; line-height: 1.5em;">Suncor, a Canadian company whose U.S. subsidiary is headquartered in Colorado, is a defendant in the Boulder climate case. </div></div>It's big news, but what will it mean for these cases? Some of them, including Boulder, which was the case invoked in the initial petition to the Supreme Court, will go back to arguing against other motion-to-dismiss arguments in state court. But others, starting with Hawaii, will move towards trial and that's a really big deal because it means some of these cases will get into the phase of litigation oil companies have been trying their hardest to avoid: discovery. In civil cases, the discovery phase is when companies will be asked to hand over documents and make their executives available for depositions. The evidence gathered during discovery in these cases could spell trouble for the oil company defendants in multiple other cases, including ongoing fraud suits in Massachusetts and Minnesota, a RICO, or racketeering, case filed on behalf of Puerto Rican municipalities, and even international cases given that the majority of these companies operate globally.<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 2em 0px; padding: 0px 25px; border-left: 2px solid rgb(1, 0, 0); line-height: 1.6em; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">"At this point, we're optimistic about moving forward and securing justice for our clients, who have been facing significant harms and costs due to the climate crisis while the oil companies, of course, continue to profit from their deception and misinformation." —Marco Simons, EarthRights International</blockquote>[audio]
But of course, oil majors have not put all their eggs in the jurisdictional basket. As I've been writing about for years now, one of the key arguments they're making in these cases is a First Amendment argument. In broad strokes, the argument goes like this: anything they've ever said about climate was in the interest of shaping policy, which makes it political speech (or "petitioning speech" in legalese), and therefore protected. It was clear this was going to be the driving force of these cases when the oil company defendants appointed Chevron's attorney, Ted Boutrous with Gibson Dunn, as their spokesperson across the board. Boutrous is a renowned First Amendment attorney, and Gibson Dunn is the firm that brought and won the most famous corporate free speech in the country's history: Citizens United. And now, even as the broader jurisdictional argument seems to be dead in the water, oil companies have formulated another one: the First Amendment question in these cases is foundational, and is not something that state courts should be weighing in on.That argument has already been briefed in multiple cases, and it's only a matter of time before it makes its way to the most pro-corporate Supreme Court this country has had in decades...maybe ever. In the meantime, cases will move forward, and it's possible that so many cases moving into discovery will prompt discussion of a tobacco-style settlement. But I wouldn't go counting those chickens just yet.</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/07/slapp-lawsuits-exxon-chemrisk-dapl-climate-change-raskin/">
</a></div><div><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/07/slapp-lawsuits-exxon-chemrisk-dapl-climate-change-raskin/">https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/07/slapp-lawsuits-exxon-chemrisk-dapl-climate-change-raskin/</a></div><div>
</div><div> Emily SandersIn 2018, Krystal Two Bulls received notice that she was being sued for criminal conspiracy.Two Bulls, who is Oglala Lakota and North Cheyenne, has been organizing for environmental justice for much of her life. She was raised on the North Cheyenne Indian Reservation of Lame Deer, Montana, part of a community that had resisted coal developments for nearly 40 years. In 2016, she helped defeat Arch Coal’s plans to build a massive strip mining operation on the reservation’s border. The project would’ve been one of the largest coal mines in the United States. Later that same year, Two Bulls received an urgent call for assistance from land and water protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota, who were working to oppose the construction of the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/energy-transfer-partners-bakken-oil-pipeline-through-iowa/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Dakota Access pipeline</a>, which transports crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois.When Two Bulls arrived, the conflict between protestors and local police was escalating. Her auntie, Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, had <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/18/standing_rock_sioux_pediatrician_threat_from" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">recently been arrested</a> after standing in the path of a bulldozer set to dig up human remains at an ancestral burial site. Two Bulls spent three-and-a-half months supporting and sustaining the camp — handling basic logistics like providing protestors with food, warm clothing, and other necessities — all in the face of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/29/standing-rock-protest-north-dakota-shutdown-evacuation" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">violence</a> by state police. She then helped to launch the <a href="https://nodaplsolidarity.org/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">No DAPL Solidarity Campaign</a>, a global movement to back the Indigenous opposition to the pipeline. It wasn’t until a year after camp was shut down that Two Bulls, who came to North Dakota on her own dime and left in debt, found out she was being sued for millions of dollars by the pipeline developer, Energy Transfer Partners. The charges were brought under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Practices (RICO) Act, a law originally designed to prosecute the mafia. The company claimed that through her “calls to action,” including a statement on Greenpeace’s website asking “all people from around the world to take action” and “come stand with us” against the Dakota Access pipeline, Two Bulls and others had conspired to interfere with Energy Transfer’s business operations and engaged in organized crime. The individuals and groups’ opposition, the company claimed, was defamatory and cost key investments in its pipeline.In 2017, The Intercept reported on documents leaked from former personnel at an international security firm, TigerSwan, revealing that Energy Transfer had <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/11/15/dakota-access-pipeline-dapl-tigerswan-energy-transfer-partners-rico-lawsuit/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">paid the firm</a> to use military-style surveillance and infiltration tactics to gather information that could be deployed in a RICO lawsuit against the anti-pipeline activists. Two Bulls is just one of many victims of the fossil fuel industry’s use of SLAPPs — strategic lawsuits against public participation — to silence and intimidate its critics. <a href="https://earthrights.org/publication/the-fossil-fuel-industrys-use-of-slapps-and-judicial-harassment-in-the-united-states/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">A report</a> released last month by legal advocacy nonprofit EarthRights International identified 152 instances of <a href="https://exxonknews.substack.com/p/steven-donziger-on-freedom-under" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">legal and judicial harassment</a> by fossil fuel corporations to suppress dissent in the United States over the past 10 years, including 93 SLAPP lawsuits. Just this week, a California oil industry trade association <a href="https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/california-oil-group-pays-fees-to-advocacy-groups-it-harassed-but-dodges-multimillion-dollar-judgment-2022-10-03/#.YzyAqGbeG24.twitter" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">paid nearly $650,000 in fees</a> to the city of Los Angeles and several environmental advocacy groups the company <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/04/03/youth-color-lawsuit-los-angeles-drilling-discrimination-oil-industry/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">had targeted in court for years</a> following the city’s implementation of new environmental safety requirements for drilling applicants. After declaring bankruptcy, the California Independent Petroleum Association was allowed to pay only a fraction of a judgment initially awarded to the city and groups by a trial court that ruled the lawsuit was a SLAPP.“With the strengthening of our movements, the revelation of how long the fossil fuel industry has been aware of how their practices impact and contribute to climate change, and the rise of legal cases against oil and gas corporations, these companies are becoming more desperate to silence the voices of their critics,” said Deepa Padmanabha, deputy general counsel at Greenpeace USA.  A wide range of concerned groups, from community organizers to members of Congress, are taking up the fight against SLAPPs. Last month, the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/free-speech-under-attack-part-iii-the-legal-assault-on-environmental-activists" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">held a hearing</a> to expose the fossil fuel industry’s use of SLAPPs and its backing of <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/12/11/alec-model-bill-pipeline-protesters/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">bills to criminalize protest</a>. The committee’s witnesses, including Padmanabha and others, explained that corporations were using these tactics to suppress activists’ ability to freely voice dissent.The day after the hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the subcommittee chairman, introduced the <a href="https://raskin.house.gov/cache/files/f/b/fbb6b8d1-fa69-4c17-adbb-6445ff63b8a0/291D1533375A72AC20E4EB67F9244109.bill-text---slapp-protection-act.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">SLAPP Protection Act of 2022</a> — the first federal legislation that would “establish a procedure to dismiss, punish, and deter strategic lawsuits against public participation.” Advocates say the bill could create a sorely needed protection for individuals and community groups who speak out against fossil fuel infrastructure, and an important safeguard for free speech at large.According to EarthRights International, the proposed legislation <a href="https://earthrights.org/an-in-depth-look-at-raskin-federal-anti-slapp-legislation/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">would provide</a> a federal mechanism for SLAPP suits to be quickly identified and dismissed while balancing the rights of plaintiffs and defendants. The bill would also force those bringing SLAPP suits to pay their opponents’ legal fees if the lawsuit is proven to have abusive intent. Advocacy organizations are also tackling the issue. EarthRights is a member of the <a href="https://protecttheprotest.org/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Protect the Protest</a> coalition, an initiative created in response to the rise of SLAPP suits. “If a corporation can sue a nonprofit organization out of business for criticizing its activities, then that’s extremely dangerous,” Kirk Herbertson, senior policy advisor at EarthRights International, said. About a year after Energy Transfer filed its lawsuit against Two Bulls and others, a district court judge in North Dakota <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2019/02/14/energy-transfer-racketeering-claims-greenpeace-dakota-access-pipeline-dismissed/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">dismissed the case</a>, denying the RICO claims with prejudice — meaning the company could not refile those claims. RICO claims, which can triple the amount of damages sought in a SLAPP suit, can be financially devastating — even for a larger, well-resourced organization like Greenpeace USA, which was named in the original suit. While Energy Transfer’s RICO claims against the organization have been dismissed, the pipeline company filed a second lawsuit in North Dakota state court, which is scheduled for trial in June 2023. In its current case, which also names Two Bulls as a defendant, Energy Transfer argues that Greenpeace USA conspired with others to defame, trespass, and interfere with business relationships, among many other charges. Energy Transfer did not respond to a request for comment. “Companies are becoming more desperate to silence the voices of their critics”– Deepa PadmanabhaFighting these lawsuits not only takes vast amounts of money, but also time and energy. Padmanabha said that since mid-2016, her career has been almost entirely dedicated to advocating against corporate lawfare — corporations’ use of the legal system to attack opponents — preventing her from engaging more in the dire work needed to prevent climate catastrophe. “The next decade is so critical in our fight against climate change. And if we didn’t have to deal with these lawsuits, we would really be putting every penny and every minute we have into fighting the existential threat of climate change,” Padmanabha said, adding that they are also intended to intimidate and deter individuals and lesser-resourced, smaller groups from speaking out.Karen Savage was working in Massachusetts as a middle-school math teacher when she got hit with a SLAPP suit. In 2013, she and another environmental activist, Cherri Foytlin, wrote an <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chemrisk-bp-and-purple-st_b_4095131" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">unpaid article</a> for the Huffington Post about a so-called independent study from scientific consulting firm ChemRisk. The study had claimed that there was no connection between chemicals released during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the serious health problems reported by cleanup workers and coastal residents in its aftermath. As their reporting revealed, ChemRisk — a company with a long history of working with polluters, including defendant PG&E in the infamous Erin Brockovich case — produced “science” on behalf of BP that the oil major could use to defend itself from liability in court.After the article was published, the Huffington Post <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/business/energy-environment/years-after-criticism-of-its-practices-science-consultant-pushes-back.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">received</a> an immediate request from the company to retract it, which they forwarded on to Cherri Foytlin. (In a note on her Facebook page, Foytlin told ChemRisk to “kiss my derriere.”)Foytlin’s Facebook post, along with many other social media posts from the two writers, appeared in a defamation suit filed against them by ChemRisk in New York state. The company claimed their article contained falsehoods — though, according to Savage, ChemRisk couldn’t explain what those falsehoods were — and that as long as it was kept online, the article would “continue to do substantial harm to ChemRisk’s reputation.” “Basically what they wanted to do was shut us up,” Savage told me. “It was an intimidation tactic.” With pro-bono representation, Savage and Foytlin were able to get the suit dismissed in New York. Within two weeks, the company refiled in Massachusetts, where Savage lived. At one point, she said, the company’s lawyers even attempted to serve her in her classroom while she was teaching.Cardno ChemRisk, the parent company of ChemRisk, did not respond to a request for comment.The case was eventually dismissed under the state’s anti-SLAPP laws, and ChemRisk was forced to pay Savage and Foytlin’s attorney’s fees. Savage said she believes that ChemRisk never sued them in Louisiana, where Foytlin lived, because of the three states, Louisiana’s anti-SLAPP laws were the strongest, and the suit would’ve been dismissed faster and with greater consequences for the company. That tactic of searching for the most favorable court, called forum shopping, is something Raskin’s anti-SLAPP statute would address by creating a standard applicable across the United States. At present, <a href="https://anti-slapp.org/your-states-free-speech-protection" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">32 states</a> and the District of Columbia have anti-SLAPP laws, yet they have varying degrees of efficacy. And while the fate of a federal bill could depend on the outcome of midterm elections, most state anti-SLAPP laws have passed with bipartisan support.Savage — who has since become a journalist and has<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/10/12/karen-savage-journalist-louisiana-trespassing-bayou-bridge/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> written for DeSmog</a> about being arrested by pipeline security while reporting — said she hopes Raskin’s bill would help put an end to this tactic. “If you know the truth, and you’ve got factual backup, and someone comes at you, you can’t back down on that,” Savage said. “The whole reason they’re coming at you is because they also know that you have the truth.”While the fossil fuel industry works to stamp out the speech of environmental advocates on the one hand, it is now arguing that its climate denial is protected speech on the other. At the same time that Raskin held his hearing into the fossil fuel industry’s assault on the First Amendment, the House Natural Resources Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a separate hearing to examine how public relations firms market climate disinformation and delay action on behalf of Big Oil. In that hearing, chaired by Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), Republicans and their witness argued that the committee was attacking the corporations’ right to free speech. “Taken together, the two [hearings] are a perfect illustration of the industry’s First Amendment strategy: expand free speech for corporations, curb it for citizens,” Amy Westervelt recently <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/09/16/fossil-fuel-industry-climate-free-speech/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">wrote</a> in The Intercept. The fossil fuel industry, she explained, has been developing the argument that its public statements on climate policy are protected speech since the late 1960s, all while working to expand the right of corporations to buy influence over politics behind the scenes.In a paradoxical twist, fossil fuel companies are even attempting to wield existing anti-SLAPP laws to shield themselves from legal accountability. After a Massachusetts court ruled that Attorney General Maura Healey’s climate fraud lawsuit against Exxon could proceed in state court, the oil giant told the state’s supreme court that the case was actually a conspiracy to silence Exxon’s views on climate policy in violation of the state’s anti-SLAPP statute. But so far, the idea that Exxon’s fraud is protected free speech <a href="https://exxonknews.substack.com/p/exxons-free-speech-defense-just-got?s=w" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">has not gone over well with judges</a>. “We have seen that the industry is trying to build up this argument around a conspiracy against them, and it’s coming up in things like anti-SLAPP motions in courts. But they have continued to fail in that effort so far,” Herbertson of EarthRights International said. Raskin’s newly proposed federal legislation, he said, is clearly and explicitly designed to be used by real people and organizations that have been victim to SLAPP suits, and will be harder for corporations to use in their own defense.But if you ask Padmanabha of Greenpeace, the industry’s tactics are on thin ice. “There is this recognition and an increasing awareness that speech should not be bought,” she said. “And I think that the [Oversight Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] hearing and the bill that followed it are really just emblematic examples of how these attempts to control the narrative are crumbling.”Emily Sanders writes <a href="http://exxonknews.org/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">ExxonKnews</a>, a newsletter covering climate accountability and the oil and gas industry. She is editorial lead at the Center for Climate Integrity, and is based in New York City. This piece was co-published by <a href="https://www.desmog.com/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">DeSmog</a> and <a href="http://exxonknews.org/" target="blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">ExxonKnews</a>, a project of the <a href="https://climateintegrity.org/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Center for Climate Integrity</a>.</div><div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/capital/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/capital/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Judge Loretta Preska, an advisor to the conservative Federalist Society, to which Chevron is a major donor, sentenced human rights attorney and Chevron nemesis Steven Donziger to six months in prison Friday for misdemeanor contempt of court after he had already spent 787 days under house arrest in New York.<a href="https://scheerpost.com/2021/10/06/the-anonymous-executioners-of-the-corporate-state/" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">This article originally appeared on ScheerPost.</a>]
Preska's caustic outbursts — she said at the sentencing, "It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law" — capped a judicial farce worthy of the antics of Vasiliy Vasilievich, the presiding judge at the major show trials of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union, and the Nazi judge Roland Freisler who once shouted at a defendant,"You really are a lousy piece of trash!"Donziger, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has been fighting against polluting American oil companies for nearly three decades on behalf of indigenous communities and peasant farmers in Ecuador. His only "crime" was winning a $9.5 billion judgment in 2011 against Chevron for thousands of plaintiffs. The oil giant had bought Texaco oil company holdings in Ecuador, inheriting a lawsuit alleging it deliberately discharged 16 billion gallons of toxic waste from its oil sites into rivers, groundwater, and farmland. Since the verdict, Chevron has come after him, weaponizing litigation to destroy him economically, professionally, and personally.The sentencing came a day after Donziger petitioned the court to consider an <a href="https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/klvykgralvg/show_temp%2520(17).pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">opinion</a> by the United Nations human rights council that found his house arrest a violation of international human rights law. The U.N human rights council said his house arrest counted as detention under international law and it was therefore illegal for Judge Preska to demand an additional six months in jail. Amnesty International also called for Donziger's immediate release.Donziger and his lawyers have two weeks to appeal the judge's order that Donziger be sent immediately to jail. Preska denied Donziger bail claiming he is a flight risk. If the Federal Court of Appeals turns down Donziger's appeal he will go to jail for six months. The irony, not lost on Donziger and his lawyers, is that the higher court may overturn Preska's ruling against him, but by the time that decision is made he will potentially have already spent six months in jail."What Judge Preska is trying to do is force me to serve the entirety of my sentence before the appellate court can rule," Donziger told me by phone on Monday. "If the appellate court rules in my favor, I will still have served my sentence, although I am innocent in the eyes of the law."Donziger, his lawyers have pointed out, is the first person under U.S. law charged with a "B" misdemeanor to be placed on home confinement, prior to trial, with an ankle monitor. He is the first person charged with any misdemeanor to be held under home confinement for over two years. He is the first attorney ever to be charged with criminal contempt over a discovery dispute in a civil case where the attorney went into voluntary contempt to pursue an appeal. He is the first person to be prosecuted under Rule 42 (criminal contempt) by a private prosecutor with financial ties to the entity and industry that was a litigant in the underlying civil dispute that gave rise to the orders. He is the first person tried by a private prosecutor who had ex parte communications with the charging judge while that judge remained (and remains) unrecused on the criminal case."No lawyer in New York for my level of offense ever has served more than 90 days and that was in home confinement," Donziger told the court. "I have now been in home confinement eight times that period of time. I have been disbarred without a hearing where I have been unable to present factual evidence; thus, I am unable to earn an income in my profession. I have no passport. I can't travel; can't do human rights work the normal way which I believe I am reasonably good at; can't see my clients in Ecuador; can't visit the affected communities to hear the latest news of cancer deaths or struggles to maintain life in face of constant exposure to oil pollution. In addition, and this is little known, Judge [Lewis A.] Kaplan has imposed millions and millions of dollars of fines and courts costs on me. [Kaplan is the judge for Chevron's lawsuit against Donziger; Preska is his handpicked judge for the contempt charges.] He has ordered me to pay millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life's savings because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in legal fees. That's where things stand today. I ask you humbly: might that be enough punishment already for a Class B misdemeanor?"Judge Preska was unmoved."Mr. Donziger has spent the last seven years thumbing his nose at the U.S. judicial system," Preska said at his sentencing hearing. "Now it's time to pay the piper."The six-month sentence was the maximum the judge was allowed to impose; she ruled that his house arrest cannot be counted as part of his detention. From start to finish, this has been a burlesque. It is emblematic of a court system that has been turned over to lackies of corporate power, who use the veneer of jurisprudence, decorum, and civility to make a mockery of the rule of law.When the law is neutered, judges become the enforcers of injustice. These corporate judges, who epitomize what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil, now routinely make war on workers, civil liberties, unions, and environmental regulations.Preska sent Jeremy Hammond to prison for a decade for hacking into the computers of a private security firm that works on behalf of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, and corporations such as Dow Chemical. In 2011, Hammond released to the website WikiLeaks and Rolling Stone and other publications some three million emails from the Texas-based company Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor. The sentence was one of the longest in U.S. history for hacking and the maximum Preska could impose under a plea agreement in the case. I sat through the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joRl9r_cC2U" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Hammond trial</a>. I watched Preska spew her bile and contempt at <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/feeding-the-flame-of-revolt/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Hammond</a> from the bench with the same vitriol she used to attack Donziger.Preska is also infamous for her long judicial crusade to force New York public schools to provide tax-subsidized free space for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/06/loretta-preska-judicial-crusade-establish-churches-schools" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">evangelical churches</a> based on blatantly illogical readings of the Constitution.The persecution of Donziger fits a pattern familiar to millions of poor Americans who are coerced into accepting plea deals, many for crimes they did not commit, and sent to prison for decades. It fits the pattern of the judicial lynching and prolonged psychological torture of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. It fits the pattern of those denied habeas corpus and due process at Guantánamo Bay or in CIA black sites. It fits the pattern of those charged under terrorism laws, many held at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan, who cannot see the evidence used to indict them. It fits the pattern of the widespread use of Special Administrative Measures, known as SAMs, imposed to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media, and people outside the jail. It fits the pattern of the extreme sensory deprivation and prolonged isolation used on those in our black sites and prisons, a form of psychological torture, the refinement of torture as science. By the time a "terrorist" is dragged into our secretive courts the bewildered suspect no longer has the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves. If they can do this legally to the demonized they can, and one day will, do it to the rest of us. The Donziger case is an ominous warning that the American legal system is broken.Ralph Nader, who graduated from Harvard Law School, has long decried the capture of the courts and law schools by corporate power, calling the nation's attorneys and judges "lucrative cogs in the corporate wheel." He notes that law school curriculums are "built around corporate law, and corporate power, and corporate perpetration, and corporate defense."Victor Klemperer, who was dismissed from his post as a professor of Romance languages at the University of Dresden in 1935 because of his Jewish ancestry, astutely noted how at first the Nazis "changed the values, the frequency of words, [and] made them into common property, words that had previously been used by individuals or tiny troupes. They confiscated words for the party, saturated words and phrases and sentence forms with their poison. They made language serve their terrible system. They conquered words and made them into their strongest advertising tools [Werebemittle], at once the most public and most secret." And, Klemperer noted, as the redefinition of old concepts took place the public was oblivious.This redefinition of words and concepts has, as Klemperer witnessed during the rise of fascism, allowed the courts to twist the law into an instrument of injustice, revoking our rights by judicial fiat. It has seen the courts permit unlimited dark money into political campaigns under <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/a-decade-under-citizens-united" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Citizens United</a>, defending our money-saturated elections as the right to petition the government and a form of free speech. The courts have revoked our right to privacy and legalized wholesale government surveillance in the name of national security. The courts grant corporations the rights of individuals, while rarely holding the individuals who run the corporations accountable for corporate crimes.Very few of the legal rulings that benefit corporate power have popular support. The corporate disemboweling of the country, therefore, is increasingly given cover by Christian fascists, who energize their base around abortion, prayer in schools, guns and breaking down the separation of church and state. These issues are rarely addressed in cases before federal courts. But they distract the base from the slew of pro-corporate rulings that dominate most court dockets.Corporations such as Tyson Foods, Purdue, Walmart, and Sam's Warehouse have poured millions into institutions that indoctrinate  [incubators] these Christian fascists, including Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School. They fund the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which campaigned for Amy Coney Barrett's appointment to the Supreme Court. Barrett opposes abortion and belongs to People of Praise, a far-right Catholic cult that practices "speaking in tongues." She and the other far-right ideologues are hostile to LGBTQ rights. But this is not why she is so beloved by corporations, who are not interested in abortion, LGBTQ equality or gun rights.Barrett and the Christian fascists embrace an ideology that believes that God will take care of the righteous. Those who are poor, those who are sick, those who go to prison, those who are unemployed, those who cannot succeed in society do so because they have failed to please God. In this worldview there is no need for unions, universal health care, a social safety net or prison reform. Barrett <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/09/supreme-court-pick-trump-amy-coney-barrett-gig-economy-workers" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">has ruled consistently in favor of corporations</a> to cheat gig workers out of overtime, green-light fossil fuel extraction and pollution and strip consumers of protection from corporate fraud. The watchdog group <a href="https://www.accountable.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2020-09-28-Amy-Coney-Barrett-Sides-With-Corporations-76-of-the-Time.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Accountable.US</a> found that as a circuit court judge, Barrett "faced at least 55 cases in which citizens took on corporate entities in front of her court and 76% of the time she sided with the corporations."The Christian fascists, allied with organizations such as the Federalist Society, under the Trump administration gave lifetime appointments to nearly 200 judges, roughly 23 percent of all federal judgeships. That included 53 to the nation's appellate courts, the court immediately under the Supreme Court. The American Bar Association, the country's largest nonpartisan coalition of lawyers, has rated many of these appointments as unqualified. There are currently six Federalist Society Supreme Court justices, including Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, who Nader calls "a corporation masquerading as a human being." Two Federalist Society Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, who was an original faculty advisor to the organization founded by conservative law students in 1982, were supported in the nomination process by Joe Biden.The stacking of the courts with corporate puppets, however, began long before Trump. It was carried out by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Preska was appointed by Republican President G.W. Bush. However, the judge who preceded Preska in the Donziger case, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a former lawyer for the tobacco industry who had undisclosed investments in funds with <a href="https://amazonwatch.org/news/2014/1029-judge-kaplan-held-investments-in-chevron-when-he-ruled-for-company" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Chevron holdings</a>, according to his public financial disclosure statement, was appointed by Democratic President Clinton.The targeting of the courts was one of the key goals of <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-memo-a-corporate-blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Lewis Powell</a>, a corporate lawyer later elevated to the Supreme Court by President Nixon. In Powell's 1971 memo to the Chamber of Commerce, a blueprint for the slow-motion corporate coup that has taken place, he called on business interests to pack the judiciary with corporate-friendly judges.The courts in all tyrannies are dominated by mediocrities and buffoons. They make up for their intellectual and moral vacuity with a zealous subservience to power. They turn courtroom trials into opera buffa, at least until the victim is shackled and pushed out the door to a prison cell. They fulminate in caustic tirades at the condemned, whose sentence is never in doubt and whose guilt is never in question."It started when Texaco went into Ecuador in the Amazon in the 1960s and cut a sweetheart deal with the military government then ruling Ecuador," Donziger told me for <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2020/08/25/how-corporate-tyranny-works/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a column</a> I wrote about his case a year ago. "Over the next 25 years, Texaco was the exclusive operator of a very large area of the Amazon that had several oil fields within this area, 1500 square miles. They drilled hundreds of wells. They created thousands of open-air, unlined toxic waste pits where they dumped the heavy metals and toxins that came up from the ground when they drilled. They ran pipes from the pits into rivers and streams that local people relied on for their drinking water, their fishing, and their sustenance. They poisoned this pristine ecosystem, in which lived five indigenous peoples, as well as a lot of other nonindigenous rural communities. There was a mass industrial poisoning.""The verdict came down, about $18 billion in favor of the affected communities, which is what it would take at a minimum to clean up the actual damage and compensate the people for some of their injuries," Donziger told me. "That eventually got reduced on appeal in Ecuador to $9.5 billion, but it was affirmed by three appellate courts, including the highest court of Ecuador. It was <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/ecuadorians-can-sue-chevron-in-canada-supreme-court-rules/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">affirmed by the Canadian Supreme Court</a>, where the Ecuadorians went to enforce their judgment in a unanimous opinion in 2015."Chevron promptly sold its assets and left Ecuador. It refused to pay the fees to clean up its environmental damage. It invested an estimated $2 million to destroy Danziger. Chevron sued him, using a civil courts portion of the federal law famous for breaking the New York Mafia in the 1970s, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO Act. Chevron, which has more than $260 billion in assets, hired an estimated 2,000 lawyers from 60 law firms to carry out its campaign, according to court documents. But the oil giant, which did not want a jury to hear the case, dropped its demand for financial damages, which would have allowed Donziger to request a jury trial. This allowed Judge Kaplan to decide the RICO case against Donziger alone. He found credible a witness named Alberto Guerra, an Ecuadorian judge, relocated to the US by Chevron at a cost of some $2 million, who claimed the verdict in Ecuador was the product of a bribe. Kaplan used Guerra's testimony as primary evidence for the racketeering charge, although Guerra, a former judge, later admitted to an international tribunal that he had <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neye7z/chevrons-star-witness-admits-to-lying-in-the-amazon-pollution-case" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">falsified his testimony</a>.John Keker of San Francisco, one of Donziger's lawyers on that case, said he was up against <a href="https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/lawyer-blasted-by-judge-for-conduct-in-chevron-case-should-get-his-law-license-back-ethics-referee-says" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">160 lawyers for Chevron</a> and during the trial he felt "like a goat tethered to a stake." He called the court proceedings under Kaplan "a Dickensian farce" and a "show trial."In the end, Kaplan ruled that the judgment in the Ecuadorean court against Chevron was the result of fraud. He also ordered Donziger to turn over decades of all client communication to Chevron, in effect eradicating attorney-client privilege, a backbone of the Anglo-American legal system with roots dating to ancient Rome. Donziger appealed what was, according to legal experts following the case, an unprecedented and illegal order. While Donziger's appeal was pending, Kaplan charged him with misdemeanor criminal contempt for this principled stance — carrying a maximum sentence of six months — as well as his refusal to turn over his passport, his personal electronics and to refrain from seeking the collection of the original award against Chevron. When the U.S. attorney's office declined for five years to prosecute his criminal contempt charges against the environmental lawyer, Kaplan, using an exceedingly rare judicial maneuver, <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/when-feds-demur-judge-charges-ecuador-crusader-himself/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">appointed the private law firm of Seward & Kissel</a>, to act in the name of the government to prosecute Donziger. Neither the judge nor the law firm disclosed <a href="https://prospect.org/power/chevron-big-oil-power-prosecute-its-biggest-critic/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">that Chevron has been a client of Seward & Kissel</a>.Kaplan also violated the established random case assignment protocol to personally assign Preska, who had served on an advisory board of the Federalist Society, a group to which Chevron has been a lavish <a href="https://www.commoncause.org/democracy-wire/justice-thomas-crosses-the-line-again/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">donor</a>, to hear the case. Kaplan had Preska demand Donziger post an $800,000 bond on the misdemeanor charge. Preska placed him under house arrest and confiscated his passport, which he has used to meet with attorneys around the world attempting to enforce the judgment against Chevron. Kaplan managed to have Donziger disbarred. He allowed Chevron to freeze Donziger's bank accounts, slapped Donziger with millions in fines without allowing him a jury, forced him to wear an ankle monitor 24 hours a day and effectively shut down his ability to earn a living. Kaplan allowed Chevron to impose a lien on Donziger's apartment in Manhattan where he lives with his wife and teenage son.None of this would surprise those targeted by the tyrannies of the past. What would be surprising, perhaps, to many Americans is how advanced our own corporate tyranny has become. Donziger never stood a chance. Neither does Julian Assange. These judges are not, in the end, focused on Donziger or Assange, but on us. The show trials they preside over are meant to be transparently biased. They are designed to send a message. All who defy corporate power and the national security state will be lynched. There will be no reprieve because there is no justice.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div>=<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Connor Gibson:<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"> It…the plot thickens, Amy, because in the bill that’s currently being considered in Kansas and it has already passed the Senate in Kansas, it actually has a hearing in the House tomorrow, which is March 17th. That bill includes a RICO provision and what I believe is the first overlap between corporations using racketeering, anti mafia laws to go after their critics or attorneys representing plaintiffs that inconvenience them or whatever it might be, an anti protest, the fossil fuel anti protest laws specifically, I believe RICO is also starting to creep into the broader trend of riot redefinition and protesting laws where you find the lowest common the common denominator way to accuse somebody of rioting and then you get to charge them with very, very serious felonies. And if some of these states succeed, potentially racketeering implication, as well as if civil disobedience is organized crime.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Amy Westervelt: In very simple terms, that is the attempt that’s underway: it’s to redefine civil disobedience as organized crime. And people should know that the RICO laws were created to to deal with the mob.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Connor Gibson: Yeah, I’m sorry. Just like the more extreme. And I don’t even want to use that word because there’s no explosions or violence or threats involved. But like an activist cutting a fence or throwing a carpet over the razor wire and trespassing or even shutting off a pipeline valve, I’m sorry. That’s not like walking into somebody’s store and breaking their kneecaps for not paying their dues that month or even nearly as threatening about that.<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Amy Westervelt: Do you have a count of how many states have enacted these laws and then how many are sort of in play right now?<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.1em; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.4em; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Connor Gibson: I do. OK, there are a total of 14 states that have so far passed the fossil fuel infrastructure, anti protest bills since twenty seventeen. The most recent one was in two thousand twenty one. But the the fight actually started years previous, and that’s Ohio. They just passed a law in January. That bill carried over from the previous year. After that, we’ve seen bills pop up in Minnesota for a grand total of six bills. I don’t know, they’re just really disorganized or what. Some of them are concurrent. So it’s really it’s basically four legislative packages in Minnesota in the form of six bills.=to get back in djt good graces?<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/florida-gov-desantis-just-proposed-a-dangerous-bill-to-imperil-and-silence-protesters/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/florida-gov-desantis-just-proposed-a-dangerous-bill-to-imperil-and-silence-protesters/</a>no lnx twt docs
florida Gov. DeSantis just proposed a dangerous bill to imperil and silence protestersWritten by Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams September 21, 2020The American Civil Liberties Union joined Florida Democrats on Monday in condemning a proposed bill by Gov. Ron DeSantis that would newly classify certain forms of protest as felonies and impose harsh penalties on some protesters.Flanked by Republican lawmakers and law enforcement officials at an afternoon press conference in Winter Haven, DeSantis referred to Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon as he announced the proposed legislation.“I look at what goes on in Portland. They’ll have people, they’ll arrest them,” DeSantis said. “They’re all scraggly-looking Antifa-types. They get their mugshot taken, then they get released. It’s like a carousel; on and on it goes.”“That’s not going to happen in here in Florida,” the governor vowed.The “Combatting Violence, Disorder, and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act” would make it a felony to “obstruct traffic during an unpermitted protest,” while absolving motorists of liability for “injury or death caused if fleeing for safety from a mob.” It would also make it a felony for anyone gathered in a group of seven or more people “to cause damage to property or injury to other persons,” or to “destroy public property” or topple monuments. Jailed protesters will not be granted bail until at least their first court appearance.The proposed bill levies mandatory minimum prison sentences for striking law enforcement officers, including with projectiles, and contains an enhancement for throwing objects that strike officers or civilians, and for out-of-state protesters who even participate in a demonstration that turns violent.Furthermore, the measure attaches Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) liability to “anyone who organizes or funds a violent or disorderly assembly.” It also contains provisions barring state grants to municipalities that defund police, and terminates state benefits to anyone “convicted of participating in a violent or disorderly assembly.”State Democratic leaders decried the governor’s proposed bill. “The governor is attaching himself to [President] Donald Trump’s propaganda and manufacturing a non-existent law and order crisis in Florida,” said state Senate Democratic Leader Audrey Gibson. “It’s political fear-mongering to bolster a president’s re-election bid.”“Non-violent protest has been a critical and basic principle of this nation, and has repeatedly changed the course of history for the better,” said state Sen. Bobby Powell. “The governor’s proposal has nothing to do with safeguarding that right. This crackdown is just that—a government sledgehammer to permanently silence opposing voices.”“The governor could not name a single city, a single town, or a single community in Florida that was the victim of violent protests, because there has been none,” said state Sen. Perry Thurston. “The governor is attempting to link calls for justice to calls for anarchy, without any evidence to support such a claim.”“This is using a problem from somewhere else to strip the liberty of people in this state to voice their constitutional right to peacefully dissent,” added Thurston. “And it’s the latest in a long line of efforts to quash the people’s ability to demand change when the government refuses to listen.”The ACLU of Florida also condemned the proposed legislation.“Gov. DeSantis’ proposal is undemocratic and hostile to Americans’ shared values,” said Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. “This effort has one goal: silence, criminalize, and penalize Floridians who want to see justice for Black lives lost to racialized violence and brutality at the hands of law enforcement.”According to the U.S. Crisis Monitor—a joint project between the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) and the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University—over 93% of this year’s racial justice protests have been peaceful.DeSantis’ proposed bill came on the same day that the U.S. Department of Justice designated New York City, Seattle, and Portland—where anti-racism demonstrations continued 119 days after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd—as “anarchist jurisdictions.”</div>