The group Climate Rights International (CRI) reports that "some democratic countries are even taking measures designed to stop peaceful climate protests before they start." In June 2023, for instance, German police detained an activist before he could even leave his home to join a climate protest. Five months earlier, a Dutch activist was held in custody for two days to keep him from an action by Extinction Rebellion. He ended up being convicted of sedition (yes, sedition!) for encouraging others to attend the protest. None of that sounds like something "democratic countries," as CRI called them, should be doing.
Protest as Necessity
People charged with nonviolent protest often invoke the "necessity defense," declaring that they committed a minor law violation to stop a far greater crime. Unfortunately, that defense almost never succeeds and judges often forbid defendants from even explaining their motives during a trial.
That's what happened to members of the group Insulate Britain who stood trial this year for a climate protest that disrupted traffic by nonviolently occupying streets and climbing onto overpasses along a major London ring road in 2022. The judge presiding over their trials ordered the defendants not to mention climate change in court. Several of the activists defied that order, citing the climate emergency as their motivation, so the judge promptly held them in contempt of court and sent two of them to jail for seven weeks.
One of the protesters cited for contempt, Nick Till, told CRI that, while trying to bar him and the others from explaining the purpose of their actions, the judge allowed the prosecutors to depict the defendants as threats to society. "There's an attempt to insinuate we're a 'cell,'" Till said, "which is language that implies some kind of revolutionary group. They had an expert in counterterrorism testify. They tried to portray us as dangerous extremists."
In July, four people who planned the London protests were convicted and sentenced to a draconian four years in prison. A fifth defendant, Roger Hallam, one of the most prominent British climate activists, was sentenced to five years even though, bizarrely enough, he was neither a planner of the protest nor a participant. He was charged instead for a speech he gave regarding civil disobedience as an effective form of climate action in a Zoom call with that protest's planners.
In their trial, the five defendants represented themselves. Over the course of four days, with the judge repeatedly trying and failing to silence them, they presented what could be the most extensive and compelling version of the necessity defense ever heard in a courtroom. (Later, in his prison cell, Hallam wrote up an account of the trial. It's well worth reading.)
On both sides of the Atlantic, volleys of laws threatening long-term imprisonment for nonviolent dissent are being put on the books to cow the climate movement into silence. So far, European protesters who dare to resist are getting hit hardest with convictions and sentences. Though also being threatened with increasing penalties under state laws, Americans have somewhat stronger protections under the First Amendment. But how long will dissent continue to enjoy such protections in this country? That largely depends on how we all vote between now and November 5th.
Copyright 2024 Stan Cox
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