While many folks have been taking a break during this holiday season, our Marla Marcum has not been one of them. Over the last week Marla has been jumping between lawyers and dozens of defendants who are before multiple courts defending their acts of conscience and moral imagination. 

Will you support Marla’s incredible court-support work with a donation?

The Climate Disobedience Center arose out of a need to deal with court cases after someone has taken action. I’m sure many of you know how we’ve spearheaded efforts to bring the climate necessity defense into courtrooms across the country. But legal strategy isn’t the only thing that happens when activists enter a courtroom; it can be a place to build community, build the disobedience muscles of those around us, and build power we can use in the next phase of action.

Defendants from the 2019 mass action to remove coal in Bow, New Hampshire fill the room in Concord District Court February 14th, 2020.

I’m writing today to make sure you’ve heard the news about a necessity defense climate trial in Cortlandt, New York where six defendants have been granted a necessity defense by Judge Kimberly Ragazzo. Although the Westchester District Attorney’s office reduced charges to a level that denies these pipeline fighters a jury trial, their case is moving forward in a bench trial (in which the judge makes the ruling on guilt or innocence).

I spent spent the last two and a half days in preparation and in court with the defendants and their supporters, and this necessity defense trial is unfolding in some fascinating and promising ways.

For the last two years, I have worked to lead a sustained resistance campaign to a fracked gas pipeline in West Roxbury, Massachusetts through more than a dozen civil disobedience actions and an extended legal process. Now those activists are finally going to trial on March 27th.

Support the West Roxbury #ClimateTrial TODAY

The judge has been supportive of the activists intent to use the necessity defense, so we are confident we will be able to make a full argument about why civil disobedience is necessary to avert the catastrophic harms of continued fossil fuel expansion. This case is a near-perfect opportunity for the strategy the Climate Disobedience Center has been pursuing for years. Every elected official representing West Roxbury opposed this pipeline, and the city of Boston even sued to try to stop it, so our argument that civil disobedience is necessary when our government is so rigged in favor of exploitative corporations is more compelling than any other #ClimateTrial necessity case yet.

Also, with fifteen activists from five different days of protests combined in one trial, we have the unique opportunity to argue the effectiveness of a campaign of sustained resistance. Civil disobedience doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but prosecutors sometimes try to act that way in order to make it seem like we couldn’t reasonably expect our actions to make a difference. In this trial, for the first time, we get to make the case for why a growing, escalating campaign can be so powerful at standing up to the most powerful industry in the world.

To make the most of this opportunity, we need the resources to bring in expert witnesses, pay court expenses, and dedicate our own staff time to this effort. We need to raise $5000 to make this happen. Please donate today, and join us in Boston on March 27th-30th for this groundbreaking case.

Thanks to Climate Disobedience Center Fellow, Nicky Bradford, for this great overview of Day 1 of Ken Ward's re-trial in Skagit County, Washington.

You'll find the post and links to social media updates here (on the front page of ShutItDown.Today).