On Friday December 13, four environmental activists with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance were arrested at the headquarters of Devon Energy, a company engaged in fracking and tar-sands extraction of which the Keystone XL pipeline is a major example. Two of them chained themselves to the building’s entrance and two of them unfurled a Hunger Games-inspired banner from an upper balcony (pictured above).
When the banner was unfurled, some of its glitter fell to the floor. On the grounds that it could have been perceived to be a hazardous substance, the two activists with the poster, Moriah Stephenson and Stefan Warner, have been charged with perpetrating a “terrorism hoax” and, if convicted, face ten years in jail.
Weaponised glitter? It sounds fabulous – it would make many of us feeler safer on some of those dodgy late-night walks home – but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.
The police apparently allege that the glitter “caused a panic” while GPTSR say they have video of the whole event showing no such thing. It seems dubious, to say the least, that Stephenson and Warner’s actions constituted the willing intent to simulate a terrorist attack on which the hoax law is predicated.
This is apparently the first time anti-terror laws have been used to arrest anti-Keystone protesters and seems to tie in with an increasing willingness of authorities, at least in the US, to trump up charges for violent offences as a way of trying to shut down peaceful and creative protest. The arrest of Rev Billy in New York is another prominent recent example, which led to charges of violent crimes including riot.
According to the reports linked to above, energy companies have been actively working with police to identify legal loopholes that could be exploited to bring terror charges, an escalation with potentially grave consequences for activists given the potential for higher sentences, lower judicial oversight and general your-life-is-fuckedness that come with the T word.
The communication of ideas through performance and visual art is not violence, much less terrorism. (Such communication could conceivably be used to incite those things, but that’s a different question and evidently not the case here.) To shut down creative expressions of disagreement with commercial or political activity does a disservice to civil society and risks pushing dissenters towards less constructive means of pursuing their agendas to the detriment of all parties.
After a fair bit of outcry, the charges of violent crime against Rev Billy have been dropped. With luck those against Warner and Stephenson will be too. But it seems unlikely that attempts to depict peaceful, creative protesters as agents of violence and terror will end. In fact, such attempts should probably be seen as signs of success. Attorney Doug Parr, who has been practising law since the 70s and says he witnessed police at Devon Energy “communicating with someone off site attempting to find some statute in the Oklahoma anti-terrorism statutes”, told Will Potter at Vice that he’s “been expecting this”.
“Based upon the historical work I’ve been involved in, I know that when popular movements that confront the power structure start gaining traction, the government ups the tactics they employ in order to disrupt and take down those movements.”
