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August
5, 2003
Going
to Jail for the Cause (Part One)
It's
Not Easy Confronting King Coal
By
STEVEN HIGGS
Joshua Martin speaks about civil disobedience
and going to jail with the insight of one who's been there and
done that. So does Charity Ryerson. Ditto Jeremy John. They have
been there. They have done that. And they say they've only just
begun.
Martin was arrested for civil disobedience
last month while protesting mountaintop removal coal mining in
Appalachia. He spent a couple hours in a county jail holding
cell in Lexington, Ky.
Ryerson and John were arrested for civil
disobedience last November at a U.S. Army base in Georgia, while
protesting a federal government torture academy called the School
of the Americas. They will begin serving six-month prison terms
in federal penitentiaries on Tuesday.
This trio of Bloomington-area activists
are among a growing number of American citizens willing to risk
their freedom to confront the forces of greed, corruption, and
environmental destruction that dominate the political landscape
at the state, national, and international levels. Two others--Liam
Mullholland and Collette Eno--were arrested for civil disobedience
during an I-69 protest in Bloomington last May.
In the coming weeks and months, we will
publish the stories of these and other activists who decide that
the crisis in American democracy is so severe that they will
go to jail, if that's what it takes, to turn things around. Josh's
story follows. Charity and Jeremy's is up next.
***
Josh Martin didn't plan on getting arrested
when he went to Lexington on June 23 to participate in a direct
action protest against mountaintop removal. He went there to
lend his talents as an environmental activist to a series of
multi-state protests against the horrifically destructive mining
practice.
Mountaintop removal is a process through
which coal companies literally blast the tops off of mountains
to expose slim veins of coal contained within their rock. Shattered
mountaintops are bulldozed into mountain stream valleys below.
Communities and jobs literally disappear in the process.
"I could be brought to tears thinking
about the mountains that are destroyed during this process, the
forests and the streams," Martin says. "But people's
homes have been destroyed, people have lost their lives. These
are super, super poor communities, and they've had most of their
jobs taken away because of these modern methods of mining coal.
Blasting the mountain is good for the company, but it costs a
lot of jobs."
Martin got involved in the mountaintop
removal struggle through his involvement in a collective of activists
called the Eastern Forest Justice League, which trains activists
in the arts of civil disobedience, nonviolence, and media relations.
The convergence of environmental, social and economic justice
elements in mountaintop removal provided common ground among
the forest protection and coal activist communities.
"We had been communicating with
the coal people, so I know all of the people collectively through
that informal network," he says.
In a coordinated effort to raise awareness
about mountaintop removal, three veteran groups of the campaign--Kentuckians
for the Commonwealth, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition,
and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy--organized simultaneous
protests for June 23 in Lexington, Pittsburgh, and Charleston,
W. Va. Martin, along with two activists from Asheville, N.C.,
and another from Lexington, planned an attention-grabbing direct
action to coincide with the Lexington rally.
"We knew there was a risk associated
with it," he says. "We didn't want to go to jail, but
we were prepared to accept the consequences. We were totally
prepared to accept the consequences."
***
Civil disobedience, up to and including
going to jail, is not an act of political expression that activists
should deploy frivolously, Martin says. To the contrary.
"I think that it is one tool in
a much larger toolbox and is something that should be used very
strategically and appropriately and thoughtfully," he says.
The goal is to raise public awareness in a way that increases
public affinity for the issue without casting activists involved
in it as radical or extreme. Acts of civil disobedience must
be bold, creative, peaceful, and nonviolent.
While some see civil disobedience as
an act of last resort, when it's down to the "bulldozer,
the trees, and you," Martin says it can be appropriate at
any time during a campaign--because the issue is so important,
because the public is "asleep at the wheel," or when
the odds are stacked completely against you.
Those conditions were satisfied for Martin
with mountaintop removal. "For this particular issue, the
devastation is so severe, and the public awareness is pretty
minimal, so the dynamics around that disparity created a situation
where civil disobedience was really appropriate," he says.
As the rally progressed in downtown Lexington,
local activist Corrie DeJong scaled a Plexiglas "pedway"
that connects two buildings above a Lexington arterial road called
Broadway. He carried with him a banner that, when unfurled, told
rush-hour motorists 50 feet below "Stop Mountaintop Removal"
on one side and "King Coal is Killing Kentucky" on
the other.
Activists cheered, while the media interviewed
rally participants and snapped pictures and shot footage. Traffic,
Martin says, flowed smoothly, until someone from one of the pedway
buildings called the police. "The cops showed up, and traffic
got all backed up," he says.
As the two Asheville activists--William
Gorz and Kent Mettle--helped steady DeJong with counterbalancing
ropes on the ground, Martin served on the street as "a safety
patrol sort of person, a police liaison." When the police
did arrive, he told them his name, stressed that the protest
was peaceful, and advised them of the dangers to the climber
if they intervened before the action was complete.
Because of the size of the sign, which
Martin described as a "double banner, sort of like a saddle,"
the action took a while.
"I guess they felt like they had
to do something, because they were all standing there watching
him up there," he says. "I was standing there talking
to a reporter, minding my business, and they all of a sudden
came up behind and grabbed me and arrested me and put me in handcuffs.
I was standing in front of a reporter from the Lexington paper,
and I told him my name and that mountaintop removal is killing
the environment and communities in eastern Kentucky."
The quote ran in the Lexington Herald-Leader
the next day.
***
A Connecticut native from a suburban
background who recently received a master's degree from the IU
School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Joshua Martin had
never been inside a jail before the early evening hours of June
23. His first taste of incarceration was the inside of a paddy
wagon.
"It was extremely hot, like 90 degrees,"
he says. "I couldn't breathe in there, and I had no water.
That was a little uncomfortable."
The mobile jail cell did have a window,
through which Martin could see the banner and watch the action
transpire. When DeJong came down, police arrested him, Gorz and
Mettle. All four were transported to the Lexington Fayette County
Jail.
"We were charged with disorderly
conduct, which I think is ironic because we were extremely orderly
and extremely professional," Martin says with a chuckle.
"I didn't think there was anything disorderly about it."
The jail mirrored the region's architecture,
he says, resembling a horse barn from the outside. But it's pure,
high-tech prison on the inside. "I felt like we were cruising
into the Death Star in Star Wars or something," he says.
At the protest scene, with the exception
of his actual arrest, the police had been almost cordial, Martin
says. "One of them, as he shut the paddy wagon door, said
he respected our positions and he appreciated what we did."
The attitude at the jail, however, was
the polar opposite. Workers were matter-of-fact about their tasks
and were not amenable to conversation about mountaintop removal.
But the activists hadn't planned on spending much time there,
anyway.
"Some people were going to bond
us out," Martin says. "But then we were taken to the
back room where we were asked to sit in front of this machine.
We thought we were going to have our fingerprints taken. Then
this woman says, 'Now we're going to scan your retina.'"
That chilling phrase gave the activists
pause. "We had never heard of this being normal procedure,"
Martin says. "And we mistrusted the handlers of the information
enough to be concerned about it. We felt like we needed some
sort of representation on the issue."
The jailers said that was not an option.
Two of the four flatly refused the scan and were put in holding
cells. Martin and the other pressed the case for their rights:
"I told one guy about my concerns, and he told me my theories
are far out, X- files kind of stuff and that the reason is for
my own protection, which really sent a chill up my spine. It
was so bizarre."
Martin ultimately was placed in a holding
cell "to think about my attitude," even though he had
allowed his retina to be scanned. "I wasn't prepared to
be a martyr, to go to that length on that particular political
issue at that moment," he says. "I didn't want to take
away from the attention that was supposed to be on the mountaintop
removal and the issues surrounding that."
He bonded out of jail and was greeted
outside by "a big crowd of people with beer and burritos."
Upon learning that any inmate who refuses to submit to a retina
scan stays in jail on a judge's order until they do, the other
activists succumbed to the pressure and were released the next
day.
By just about any measure the action
had been a success, but the Big-Brother confrontation had taken
a toll.
"We were feeling a little bit charged
up with all the adrenaline and feeling like we were really proud
of ourselves," Martin says. "We were drawing attention
to this thing and doing what we said we wanted to do for these
communities and these mountains. But as soon as we had to do
the retina scan, it just took the wind totally out of our sails."
***
Five days before his first scheduled
court hearing on July 16, Josh Martin contemplated his act of
civil disobedience in downtown Lexington within the bigger picture.
"This particular case just seemed
appropriate for civil disobedience with dramatic direct action
or something that would draw attention to the issue," he
says, "to shine a light on the issue, to hopefully allow
people to see the truth, to draw their attention to it with a
dramatic human story."
On that count, the action was a success.
"We got on the front page of the Lexington paper's region
section, with a big picture," Martin says. "It was
on all the local news banners, on every broadcast throughout
the night. And a bunch of local papers ran it."
Even though some media slanted their
coverage in favor of a counter demonstration put on at the Kentucky
Coal Association's offices a few blocks away, the action did
get the issue of mountaintop removal mining before the public.
As activists spread word of the action
and the arrests over the Internet, a huge amount of awareness
was raised within the national environmental activist community.
And Martin was able to speak directly
to the issue of Big Brotherism in America when the Bloomington
City Council debated--and passed--a resolution opposing the USA
Patriot Act right after his arrest. "In the three-minute
version, I was able to say why this is a reality that we're dealing
with, that I hope we never see retina scanning here in the Monroe
County Jail."
He also considered the motivations for
civil disobedience and some of its potential consequences.
"To me, it's not like an expression
of anger or frustration or last resort necessarily, or just a
going-out-in-flames sort of situation like some direct action
may be," he says of civil disobedience. "It was more
of a strategic, high-profile stunt that could complement what
I'm doing with other campaigns and draw attention to it. As far
as I know, I think we were the first people to be arrested or
to do an act of civil disobedience on this particular issue."
But, he repeatedly emphasized, civil
disobedience is but one tool of many in that must be employed.
"I never plan to do anything intentionally to get arrested,"
he says. "I'm continuing to work lots of ways, lobbying,
organizing, lots of organizing, using the media, going to court
being the plaintiff."
And, he says, there are an abundance
of issues in Indiana worth going to jail for. "I think Hoosiers
need to rise up for sure," he says. "We've sat and
sat and been complacent. There's been a lot of good work, but
there's also been a lot of destruction of land, and we've been
beaten down, and our water is polluted, and our air is polluted,
and highways are everywhere.
"I think highways are a really good
place to make a stand on it because they're sort of like the
veins that carry the poison blood everywhere else. So, road issues
are an appropriate place where we can finally make a stand for
air and water and the land and all of it together."
With his pretrial hearing in Lexington
just five days away, Martin also ruminated over the worst-case
scenario.
"I don't want to, but I'm prepared
to spend time in jail," he says. "I think that the
issue is that severe and outrageous and disastrous that I think
I'm willing to do that. We're prepared to fight for our rights,
and if they want to make it a public spectacle, then that's fine
with us."
On July 16, Martin sent the following
e-mail: "Just had my pre-trial and we ended up getting dismissed
and our files expunged in 60 days. It's good news. It keeps my
energy focused on things."
Steven Higgs
is editor of The
Bloomington Alternative where this article originally
appeared. He can be reached at: editor@bloomingtonalternative.com
Weekend Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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