Say No to the Tar Sands/Ottawa Action today

                           
                   Canadians are planning to risk arrest today on Parliament Hill

Tony Clarke in the Toronto Star, excerpted :

"On Monday I will be joining hundreds of fellow Canadians on Parliament Hill to demonstrate growing public opposition to the relentless expansion of the tarsands megaproject in northern Alberta.  

... the Ottawa action will be carried out in solidarity with the more than 1,200 U.S. citizens who were arrested during a two-week protest outside the White House in Washington in late August. 

Canada has no national energy policy and strategy. Although the Harper regime frequently promotes Canada as the “next energy superpower,” it has no plan in place for making the critical transition urgently needed over the next decade, moving from our societal dependence on dirty fossil fuels to clean, sustainable and renewable sources of energy.

Instead, we are well on our way to becoming a petro-state

All the great social movements of the last century — workers’ rights, women’s suffrage, civil rights, First Nations, anti-poverty, environmental rights, anti-apartheid — were marked by key moments of direct action and civil disobedience. Indeed, this is a defining moment for all who are concerned about environmental and social justice in our times."

#ottawaaction .... #NoTarSands .... 
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Perpetual prison for protesters

Update : Betty's response below

An editorial in the National Post two days ago compared the peaceful civil disobedience and incarceration of 82 year old environmental activist Betty Krawczyk with that of 62 year old anti-abortion protester Linda Gibbons :

Two court injunctions; two women who violated them in a way that significantly harmed no one; prison time for both that would come as a shock to some violent offenders.

In it Chris Selley suggests that the "outraged supporters on both sides" should "consider joining forces" to look "the ferocious power of the state straight in the eyes" because "true civil libertarians must stand up for people they don’t like for the greater good".

In quoting from my blogpost on Betty K's Sept 22 hearing, Mr. Selley says he suspects that I would "decline the opportunity" to similarly defend Ms. Gibbons. I'm not convinced she requires further defence from me, given she has already recently received two stirring ones in The Sun and NaPo, further linked to by Selley in his weekly roundup, while the MSM has entirely ignored Betty this time round.

Selley on both protesters : "Not caring is pretty much where I’m at, incidentally."

Let me see if I can awaken those libertarian sensibilities of yours, Mr. Selley, in the one case here with which I am more familiar.

You wrote : "I happen to think court orders should be obeyed, and that those who defy court orders should be punished."

You probably already know Betty strongly agrees with you on both those points, but what has driven an otherwise law-abiding citizen to resort to defying that sensibility?

The government hires a corporation to clear publicly owned land. Members of the public protest. The corporation, on behalf of the government, gets a court order to prevent the public from making further protests and then the government arrests those who disobey it. The public's beef is actually with the government defiling public lands and not with the hired corporation, but the courts collude with the government in a SLAPP suit that leaves the public no legal recourse against the government. It's a built-in fail.


Are you quite sure you don't care about this, Mr. Selley?


In forwarding Selley's NaPo piece to me, Cliff at Rusty Idols said : "The point that all Canadians right, left and center have much to fear from the precedent of perpetual imprisonment for protesting is essentially true."

Yes it is.

Update : This blogpost was cross-posted at Back of the Book, where Betty left the following response :

Very good article. I am often compared to, or lumped in with, the anti-choice people but I am decidedly pro-choice. They are free to protest as they please, just as I am, but I am fundamentally opposed to their philosophy.
This attitude that women shouldn’t have control over anything, even their own bodies, is one reason, a big reason, in my opinion, that the world is in such a mess.

And of course it is about religious dogma that underlies the anti-choice people’s fervor that makes them so concerned about a fertilized egg and so uncaring of women. And this uncaring attitude about women slops over into being uncaring about the environment, because after all, they don’t really regard this earth as their home.
Thanks for caring.

Betty Krawczyk.

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Flash mob in the House for Bill C-311

" I say '311', you say 'Sign it, sign it' " ...repeat...

A flash mob of 200 young environmental protesters disrupted question period in the House for a whole four minutes yesterday by standing up one by one in the public gallery and chanting slogans in support of Bill 311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, before being dragged off by security.

A whole four minutes.
Naturally, many commenters under the various news stories covering the demonstration call for these "hooligans" to be tasered or used for target practice by the army or sent to Iran - presumably for defiling the model of decorum and respectful civility that is the hallmark of QP, but mostly for refusing to ask permission to stand outside in the rain holding placards that are completely ignored by the press. Certainly Bill C-311 was.
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Good on the protesters.
For genuinely bad behavior on C-311, see here.
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