 Thank you all for joining us today. I am Trista Kendall. I am from Stand.Earth, and I'm joining you from Seattle, traditional lands of the Duwamish people. Welcome to this Stand.Earth webcast, crackdown on dissent when protest becomes a crime. I'll now hand things over to my colleague and comrade Christina Flores, our moderator and emcee for the next hour. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us again. I'm Christina Flores. I'm a campaigner at Stand.Earth and also a community activist here in Sacramento, California. I'm coming to you from the traditional lands of the Nissanan people. We've got a lot to cover today and our time together and I wanted to take the time to say thank you so much for joining us. Before we start, I want to call into the room the people around the world who are engaged in protest in its many forms at this very moment. From people here in Sacramento, demanding justice for step on Clark at the DA's office today, to Indigenous leaders opposing the Kinder Morgan pipeline this morning outside Vancouver, and those protesting American colonialism in Puerto Rico. This conversation is especially important to me because I have engaged in a variety of tactics to push back on the state and its violence. These new protest laws directly impact my ability to challenge systems of white supremacy and the mass criminalization of black people in the U.S. And for those reasons and so many more, I'm pleased to introduce our speakers today. We have Rod Chapel, president of the Missouri NAACP State Conference. We have Irina Siric, member of the Terminal City Legal Collective. Maggie Elinger Locke, state, excuse me, staff attorney at Greenpeace USA. And Kenny Mossett, native energy and climate campaigner director at the Indigenous Environment Network. So from there, I'm going to go ahead and pass it off to Candy and Rod to talk about the state of protest today. Candy, you can go ahead and get us started. All right, make sure you can hear me. I can hear you. You did. Just introduce myself, Doshia, Margot, Marashima, Aishwarya, Hetz. And so in my Hedadza language, I said hello relatives. My name is Eagle Woman. My English name is Candy Mossett, and I am from North Dakota, born and raised. I'm Amanda and Hedadza Rikara woman who now currently resides right next door in Montana, still fighting fracking that's happening in our communities. And as such, I wanted to just talk a little bit and give you some updates about the standing rock. I don't even know what to call it movement. And let people know that just because it's not in the mainstream media anymore there doesn't mean we just went away. There are several things that are still happening as a result of standing rock, which was the Dakota access pipeline, which we are still currently fighting against there's still current litigation from the standing rocks to tribe. And so the tribe now has some legislation coming up on, I believe it's the 23rd or 24th, specifically against standing rock and so you can check out more on our Facebook pages to learn about how to get involved with that, which is Indigenous Rising Media and Indigenous Environmental Network. A lot of people don't know what's happening as a result of standing rock but there were approximately 832 arrests that were made during that time that we were there. There are currently seven federal cases, three of which are on plea deals, and the prosecution is recommending three years of prison time for those seven federal cases. There are 147 of those are proceeding to trial of the original 832 147 are proceeding to trial. 102 of those are an active warrant status. And 316 have been dismissed. 20 have been acquitted at trial. 82 have been resolved with pre trial diversions. There have been 120 plea deals with four of those on appeal right now, but there have been 13 actually convicted. At trial and waiting to be sentenced for protecting water. And so it gets me emotional. It was there for seven months and the thing is, is that the extraction is still happening in the buck information in North Dakota, which is where this oil for this pipeline is coming from. It's still at home fighting all of the activity that's been happening, but since standing rock there have been 56 anti protest bills that have been introduced into legislation. Several of those were in North Dakota alone. We have six bills in North Dakota that were introduced for of them were passed. And so they these laws basically criminalize us for wearing masks or masking up which a lot of people were like what are we supposed to do around Halloween time with this crazy law. There was a law that increased penalties for riot offenses making it instead of a class a felony it's no class C felony, which carries with it much more time in jail and much more time in penalties. So there is, I should tell you what these are House bill future new for is the one where you can't wear the masks House bill 1426 is the one that increased penalties for riot offenses. Senate bill 2302 allows our Attorney General in North Dakota to respond to a large out of protest by bringing in out of state officers as ad hoc special agents. It's a four year old daughter that might be in the background sometimes with her she's with me all the time. And then House bill 1293 passed which means that if you're on private property, and there's no signs, you can still be punished and penalized, as long as the circumstances dictate that you shouldn't have been there. So, all around the country these things happen 56 or 58 I don't know the exact numbers but just sit standing rock so I wanted to just share with you some of those statistics and also talk about you know, in Kinder Morgan there have been hundreds of arrests already in British Columbia in Canada, we have people like sure me point line who's been fighting the bayou bridge pipeline, who has been having a lot of harassment happening but I'll have some updates for you later on on that. And basically just talk about indigenous peoples worldwide we make up about 5% of the population worldwide, about 1% or less in the United States, but we make up 80% of the world's cultural and linguistic diversity. 80%. It's just so important that people understand this fight this struggle has been happening since the doctrine of discovery that Papal bull some people might know about it if you don't please look it up. 1493 is when this doctrine of discovery said that some other colonizers had access to all of our lands. So the fight continues and the struggle is real, but we're still here, and we're not going anywhere. And with these updates, please feel free to email me and I'll send you the exact links and statistics that I got from my good friend Michelle cook, who did a lot of legal work while we were out there. And we'll hand it over to rod because I only had five minutes in the beginning but I'll come back at the end to give you some more about what it is we're doing pertaining to the keystone Excel pipeline as far as the indigenous environmental network, and the fight that we're doing in the struggle that is very real but is also very much. I believe in our favor just because of our strength and our diversity. Thank you so much candy. We'll pass it to run and also power to you being a mama and doing all this at the same time. Thank you. Well, absolutely. Thanks for that. That's a wonderful, wonderful presentation is going to be hard to follow but I can tell you what's happening in Missouri. You know, Missouri has been a hotbed for protest of a very nature, whether it's students at the University of Missouri campus, whether it's the public outraged at atrocities such as the death of Mike Brown, or the stockly verdict in St. Louis, or even less militant protest but nonetheless, all the same viable of the folks who did the journey for justice with the NAACP when the longest marches that we've done from St. Louis to Jefferson City to stay capital, about a two and a half hour drive, much longer march. Missouri has been racked by issues of social injustice. Some of those, you know, I've already referenced in terms of Mike Brown being murdered, whether the Stokely verdict, which is a little bit less known than Michael Brown's murder. There was an individual who was thought to have been a drug dealer that was being chased by police. In the court opinion acquitted the officer that killed him just moments after saying that he was going to kill him. So the public was, as you can imagine, just just outraged. In Missouri, we have been witness to sustained protests. Mike Brown and went on over for months with the Stokely, in response to the Stokely verdict that went for a little more than 30 days. But even at the state capital, there were 23 clergy who were persecuted, in my view, prosecuted by the local prosecutor, Mark Richardson, in an effort to send a message that protest wasn't going to be allowed. It was simply whether it was from the argument and closing of the trial that happened about three years after they were charged with get this singing, praying and reciting Bible verses and the Senate rotunda or the Senate gallery. They were chastised for being those people coming to town to Jefferson City from Kansas City and St. Louis as people of color, and that they might be some threat to children, that the children shouldn't be exposed to this, that we can't have this in our community. We've challenged the prosecutor on those issues and at the same time sought for reforms in the way that we have these dialogues about who gets to protest and where and what it is that they can do. And I can tell you that many members of our state legislature took great umbrage at the students that concerns student 1950 who were really left with no other alternative but to ask why is it that when we complain that we're being treated inappropriately, called names, mistreated by police or other folks on campus, nothing's being done. So they did what was reasonable. They brought the issue to the public, and they did that on university grounds by taking the quad or a portion of campus where they set up tents and engaged in a protest there. Many saying that they felt safer there than they felt other places on campus because in social media there have been death threats simply against people of color on campus. That's what's happening here in Missouri. You know, whether it's folks who are currently being prosecuted have been prosecuted. And of course we have joined the long list of other states where there are pieces of legislation that are attempting to be passed here. And it is far thus far they're simply pending they have not they have not passed but some of those include mandatory sanctions for campus protesters at House bill 2423 expanded definition of unlawful assembly and new penalties for protesters who block traffic. That's House bill 2145 and Senate bill 813 heightening penalties for protesters who block highways. And then there's of course House bill 1259 with the same title, and then House bill 179 for new penalties for protesters who conceal their identities. So those are all bills that have just been introduced this year. I'm really unfortunate and most of the times if you go to the committee hearings they're talking about these in terms of safety, right we have to be able to guarantee the people safety on on the roadway, as opposed to what they really are just the over criminalization of of speech, and our need to seek redress and do so in a way that gets attention and brings some change. And I'd be happy to share more about that. But that's what we have here in Missouri right now. Thank you so much for all of that. Unexciting and unfortunate news, but so very common in many places where people are protesting. I'm going to now switch gears to hand it off to Maggie to talk a little bit more about what we're facing. We're going to talk a little bit more about what we're facing here in the US. I'll kick it off to Maggie, she's going to take about 10 minutes to have a good discussion with us. Sure. All right, thank you. I'm thrilled to join you today. My name is Maggie Elindra Locke my pronouns are she and her. I'm a staff attorney at Greenpeace USA based in our Washington DC office, and I'm also executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and have been lending legal support to social justice movement movements for years. Both as an attorney and as an activist, I'm extremely concerned about the rash of anti protest legislation we've seen filed, and in some cases enacted in state assemblies across the nation, since the 2016 general election. Here, anti protest laws are not new and have been used to target social justice movements for decades, but since the election of Donald Trump, there has been an increase on the part of legislators to pursue these sorts of laws. So there are several broad categories of legislation that most of these bills fall into and I'm going to briefly talk about each in turn. First we have highway blocking, which is of course already a crime in every jurisdiction in the country, generally a misdemeanor. Famously Black Lives Matter has used the tactic of non violently blocking highway traffic to call attention to the injustice of police murders. Several states have introduced legislation that would enhance penalties for this type of protest activity. And even more troubling, there have been bills introduced that would ease liability for drivers who strike protesters with their car. So we've seen highway blocking bills enacted in South Dakota and Tennessee. And there have been several bills pending, including one in Missouri. And currently bills are pending in Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin. Bill bills fail in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Texas. That's 24 bills in total by far the biggest category. These sorts of bills carry the potential to chill speech, discouraging activists from engaging in constitutionally protected conduct. The next broad category of bills concerns campus protests. The next category of bills claims to promote free speech on campus, but in reality, creates incentives for schools to target students for protesting far right speakers, people calling for genocide and deportation of the students themselves. And some of these bills go so far as to require schools to punish students. We've seen these bills found in Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin, but luckily thus far none have been enacted. The broad category of bills concerns unlawful protest activity, seeking to widen the definition of riot and extend collective liability so that anyone present at a protest could be car charged with the criminal acts of others. So while not through legislation, perhaps the most striking example of this is taking place here in DC, concerning the ongoing prosecutions of activists arrested during the inauguration of Donald Trump, the J20 protesters. And hopefully thus far, juries have been loath to adopt the prosecutor's argument, but lawmakers are seeking to enshrine this sort of approach to the First Amendment. We've seen this in Arizona, New Jersey, Virginia, and where those bills were defeated. Another bill is still pending in Wisconsin, and we saw one enacted last year in North Dakota, painting penalties for so called riots. The broad category is the criminalization of wearing face masks. Note several jurisdictions already have such laws on the books, often in direct response to the hoods of the Klu Klux Klan. But we know that such laws are rarely enforced against the Klan and are usually used to target leftists. For example, we saw this in Charlottesville last summer during the July 8th Klan rally, a month before the deadly Unite the Right rally that left three people dead. Another bill was passed last year in North Dakota, and we've seen this introduced in half a dozen states. There have also been several bills outside of these categories. Bill seeking to charge protesters for law enforcement costs associated with protests. Bill seeking to explicitly harm the boycott divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid. And bill seeking to avoid the Fourth Amendment by spying on protesters with drones, as we saw introduced just last week in Illinois and more. What is important to remember is that these bills have not emerged from a vacuum. They are a direct response to social justice movements and are in fact aimed at silencing those particular movements. They're not explicitly labeled as such, but their motivations are clear to anyone paying attention. And of course, this is nothing new. People of color led movements resisting the legacy of racism and white supremacy in the US have long been the target of oppression from the FBI's monitoring of the civil rights movement to anti-picketing laws designed to target labor unions and so forth. The last broad category bill concerns so called critical infrastructure by which I mean pipelines. The Greenpeace has been engaged in pipeline protests for a long time. And where we're seeing this legislative attack, this is new. This is a direct response to indigenous life protests at Sandy Rock and elsewhere. Pipelines carry natural gas and oil, crude oil, which gets refined into petroleum products, often for consumption overseas and not domestically. And where we've seen these bills gain the most traction is in states key to oil and gas interest. So last year in 2017, we saw critical infrastructure bills filed but not passed in three states. Oklahoma enacted bills creating new penalties for trespass onto critical infrastructure property, as well as for defacing or impeding the operations of such a facility. Such activity could include simple civil disobedience of the highly nonviolent variety, the type that includes zero chance of intentional property destruction. The penalty range includes up to 10 years of incarceration and $10,000 fine. Notably, the Oklahoma law also specifically includes a provision whereby if organizations which can be prosecuted criminally are found to have been a conspirator to any of these new crimes, the orgs themselves could be subjected to a fine 10 times the amount of the fine as that prescribed by law for individuals. Note when voting on these laws, Oklahoma lawmakers made clear that these bills were a direct response to pipeline protests. Then in December 2017, Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council introduced and then later adopted model legislation called the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. So, briefly Alec, is a raping organization that designs model legislation on a variety of conservative issues, including Stand Your Ground, the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, the anti-immigration law SB 1070 in Arizona, and more. They have a tremendous amount of outsized influence and power in state assemblies across the country. And when Alec gets behind something, it very often gets passed. And quick side note, another big entity that does this kind of work is the Goldwater Institute, which is offered several of the bills I referenced earlier. So this session Alec adopts its model Critical Infrastructure legislation, which explicitly says it was inspired by the Oklahoma law. Alec adopts that in January, which employs a broad definition of the term Critical Infrastructure and creates new tough criminal penalties for conduct that is already illegal, or in some cases is protected by the First Amendment, and sometimes both illegal and protected by the First Amendment. So this year we've seen several bills introduced, mostly based off of Alec's model legislation, and they have several elements in common. Quickly, they won broadly defined Critical Infrastructure to create severe. We've lost you a sound. You've lost my sound. Ah, now you're back. Oh no. Okay, sorry for that. And this will be a perfect time to offer you a time check as well. Okay, moving along. I'm going to talk quickly. Okay, so these bills primarily do four things. They broadly define a critical infrastructure, create severe criminal penalties for otherwise already illegal conduct, provide provisions for civil damages and pursue organizations. Such bills are pending in Minnesota and Ohio, and the Ohio bill uniquely provides that operating drones over land that contains critical infrastructure is a new misdemeanor, and that organizations that engage in this activity or provide support to those who do could be fine sometimes the amount as could be imposed on an individual. And drones I know were used at Standing Rock and media activists in particular have been great use of drones worldwide. Wyoming's legislature sent a bill to the governor that would have made purely for a significant conduct, a protected conduct, a felony, but in a surprise move the Republican governor there vetoed the bill. For the veto legislators made clear that that bill was in response to protests. And just last month, Iowa enacted a bill creating a new class B felony crime, critical infrastructure sabotage, where activists could face up to 25 years and $100,000 fine. In Iowa, some House Democrats offered amendments to the bill that would have provided an exception for protests, but those were defeated. In Louisiana, where protests are ongoing against the Bayou Bridge pipeline, a similar bill HB727 was introduced and activists were successful in getting a Senate committee to attach amendments like the ones offered in Iowa, substantially improving the bill. That bill with amendments was adopted just yesterday by the full Senate and now returns to the House for reconciliation, proof that citizen lobbying can work. Now briefly what we're seeing in many of these bills is that they are course being pushed for by oil and gas interests. Some states such as Iowa require lobbyist disclosures. And because of this, we know that the Iowa bill now law was pushed by Jeff Boydink, a founding member of Alec and a lobbyist for energy transfer partners, or ETP. ETP is the company currently building the Bayou Bridge down in Louisiana, and also of course built Dakota Access Pipeline. So that pipeline, which became operational in June of last year, runs from North Dakota and South Dakota through Iowa and state. There the oil is refined and transported through other ETP pipelines into Texas, where it is sold, potentially out of the US for consumption overseas. Thus I note, this so called critical infrastructure is only critical to the corporate international corporations, and it is in no way critical to the people of North Dakota, Louisiana, Iowa, or elsewhere. What is also notable about ETP is that last summer, they sued my organization Greenpeace to the tune of $900 million. So we are now in the middle of defending this salaf suit, that is a strategic lawsuit against public participation, a suit designed to silence us by burying us in paperwork. And that lawsuit has been brought by the firm, Kazawit Vincent-Turris, which is one of President Trump's go-to firms. The RICO suit attempts to rewrite history by putting indigenous communities impacted by the pipeline on the sidelines with lies about a criminal conspiracy. It is a baseless attempt to mislabel legal advocacy as criminal conduct through the use of racketeering laws and present constitutionally protected free speech as defamatory, almost done, speaking of action on the federal level. Last October, a bipartisan group of members of the US House of Representatives, 84 in total, sent a letter to AG sessions urging the DOJ to prosecute pipeline protesters as terrorists. A move that is also being lobbied for on the federal level by the American Petroleum Institute. Of course, there's a long history of the use of the word terrorism to target specific groups of people, and those tactics have not lost steam in the world of Alec, which is controlled by the Koch brothers, as well as other far extreme right groups. So I know I'm way over time, but thank you for giving the chance to be here today. I will say that you were not way over you brought us you brought us right to our moment. We had a little extra time for you so thank you so much for all of that. I'll now pass it to Irina in Canada to add some more. Great. Thank you so much. I'm really grateful to the organizers of this discussion and I'm really, I'm really happy to be able to present today on behalf of the terminal city legal collective. My talk today has three parts. I'm going to start with just a few words about the general Canadian context in terms of the criminalization of the Senate. And then I'll spend a bit of time talking about how injunctions and contempt of court in particular have been and are used to criminalize activism and organizing using the current struggle against the kind of Morgan trans mountain pipeline expansion project which is already been mentioned. And then I'm going to conclude with just a few words about the politics of those legal tools. So I'll start with some general comments about the Canadian context but I can't do that without doing what other folks have done as well which is acknowledging that I'm presenting today in Vancouver as a guest on unceded Coast Salish territories. In Columbia, the province is in fact mostly unceded. The majority of this province was never surrendered via treaties or by other by their means and meaning that the indigenous laws and protocols that traditionally govern these territories remain in place. Today, however, I'm talking about colonial Canadian state law, and I'm using the colonial names for these territories. As I mentioned, my focus today is not on criminal law, but on injunctions and contempt of court and I'll explain what those are in a minute and how they're used to criminalize movements for indigenous and environmental justice and particularly opposition to resource extraction so I'll be talking mostly about BC because BC has a long and somewhat unique history of using injunctions against social movements and first nations, including of course the infamous clack with sound mass arrests and trials back in 1993. There's some exceptions in other parts of the country and most of those are also struggles by indigenous peoples around development on their traditional territories. So for several years now, for example, there's been protests in Labrador over the Muscat Falls hydroelectric dam project and injunctions have been used there as well. So what are these injunctions? What's contempt of court? What's happening right now? Well, an injunction is an order issued by a judge after an application is filed by a party to a lawsuit and they're called the applicant. And it's meant to protect the interests of this applicant, whether they're a corporation or the government or an individual, while their lawsuit is pending, usually by requiring certain people. So in this case, land defenders, water protectors, protesters to not do certain things. So in this case, say block a particular road or prevent access to a particular site. So this court order, this injunction requires an underlying lawsuit. But what we've seen in a pattern of in BC is that these lawsuits are really just a means to the injunction. They're not intended to be successful lawsuits and likely they'll never even be completed. Nonetheless, the applicant for an injunction will go to the court and say this lawsuit is super serious, our interests are serious, they're being harmed by these protesters and you judge you need to issue a court order that will prevent them from interfering with our business. So this is actually a very low bar legally speaking and it's very rare for a court to deny an injunction in a protest related case in BC. Although last year actually a judge did reject the city of Vancouver's request for an injunction to allow eviction of a tent city. But that case really is very much the exception. Generally, the BC courts are quick to issue injunctions in battles over resource extraction. And this pattern or practice includes injunctions not just against the named defendants in the underlying lawsuit however tenuous that lawsuit is, but also quote John and Jane Doe and persons unknown meaning basically me you anyone everyone. Once the injunction is issued, it will generally include an enforcement order, meaning that the police in that jurisdiction are then empowered to enforce the injunction to arrest people who violate it and to charge them with contempt of court. Condemnment court is weird. It's a it's a common law judge made offense. It's not in the regular criminal law in Canada's criminal code. And this has repercussions that I'll get to in a minute. But first I just want to quickly illustrate this process using the example of the very, very current Kendra Morgan trans mountain pipeline expansion project. I'm assuming that most of you know this is an attempt to expand an existing pipeline that goes from Alberta to Burnaby, which is just outside of Vancouver. And it's expect they want to expand it. So the pipeline can carry diluted bitumen from the Alberta tar sands. It's a tar sands pipeline. So in March of this year, trans mountain and it's in its parent company Kendra Morgan sued a number of grassroots activists who have been pro protesting at one of Kendra Morgan sites in Burnaby's it's around November. So this lawsuit is for nuisance and unlawful interference of economic relations, and they're seeking monetary damages. And of course an injunction. So the injunction was issued after after court hearing on March 16 right in the middle of a plan civil disobedience campaign, organized by some of the groups involved today by standing three piece and others against this pipeline expansion. So this injunction prohibits quote physically obstructing impeding or otherwise preventing access to several Kendra Morgan sites in Burnaby. And I should say that this is not Kendra Morgan's first injunction against protests in Burnaby there was a also about 112 people arrested in 2014 under a different injunction. So since March there have been about just under 200 arrests at Kendra Morgan's tank farm, mostly for contempt of court. People indigenous activists are facing criminal charges and there's a there's a very real concern that the arrests of those activists some of whom are part of a longer standing protest camp at that site. We're really disproportionately harsh that they're being dealt with differently. So those 200 people or so are counting their there's a kayak action happening right now so we might be adding to that count are now before the courts and this is where this really sort of the crackdown on dissent gets a little bit unusual and I'll mention three aspects. So, originally, the content of court charges were being prosecuted by Kendra Morgan's own lawyers. But at the sort of insistent request of the judge hearing these cases, the ordinary criminal prosecutors from the province have stepped into take over these cases on behalf of Kendra Morgan. This is a situation where BC's public prosecutors are now prosecuting charges arising out of Kendra Morgan's private lawsuit and I'll see a bit more about that in a second. Second, the protesters were originally charged with civil contempt of court. But the judge has since ordered that the charges themselves would shift from civil contempt to criminal contempt of court. And this is because of those the sort of public nature of their alleged contempt this idea that protesters are publicly and openly defined court order that they're thumbing their nose is at the court's authority. The punishments and consequences for civil and criminal content are not actually that different. And this process of shifting the charges is not uncommon, but the activists facing these charges have of course raised a lot of objections to this process, and it's unfair. And because contempt is not a regular or statutory criminal offense, the trials take place under a summary procedure that doesn't give defendants all of the constitutional protections they would otherwise have, at least in theory. So for example, evidence might be presented by affidavit rather than via a witness and there's a currently motion about that. Another example is that a defendant, one defendant has brought a motion for his right to be tried by jury, which is generally not how contempt cases are tried. And there's been a few guilty pleas so far, but the majority of these defendants want to go to trial. And that's going to be I think some interesting defenses brought by unrepresented defendants, for example, climate change necessity arguments. The judge has said over and over again that he's not going to allow any so called collateral attacks on the project itself. The idea here is that the pipeline's been approved, never mind the legitimacy of that process. So there's a valid injunction in place. And the judges I the question before the court is not is this pipeline a good idea or not. But we've seen and will continue to see pushback against this by defendants and we the the terminal city legal collective we've been working really hard to help themselves organize and support one another to make these sorts of arguments and for updates you can you can check our Facebook page and I think we'll post the link. So we have these procedural issues that I've just discussed where the legal consequences of this specific form of the criminalization of dissent are different than in cases where activists face ordinary criminal charges, which of course I'm not making an argument for charging people criminally instead. But I do want to conclude with just a few comments with the broader politics of this legal framework. So as I mentioned using injunctions brought by private corporations as the basis for content of court charges sets up this really strange process where the police and in this case the prosecutors end up enforcing what is essentially a private court order. So a corporation like Kendra Morgan can initiate a lawsuit, get an injunction to protect its property interests, and the police will be ordered to enforce that injunction to infect create this sort of perverse public private partnership for the criminalization of dissent. You may know that the current BC government the the NDP and Green Party government is opposed to this to this project but I think that this is still an example of an alignment of corporate and state interests where you have the judiciary as one branch of you know what sometimes gets called the Canadian Petro State really facilitating a corporate led and directed law enforcement process. And of course the fact that this is all happening on unseated indigenous territories is of course part of a broader industry and state led effort to paint legitimate claims by indigenous nations as extremists and I think Maggie just mentioned that as well. But of course and I'll conclude here this this also sets up the justice system at the site of resistance by indigenous land and water defenders by environmental justice activists. And I think that these cases are and will continue to be a very visible and powerful challenge to the Canadian states professed commitment to reconciliation. I'll stop there and I look forward to some questions. Thank you so much. I'm just going to swiftly go ahead and pass it on to candy so we can talk a little bit about counteracting this kind of criminalization. Yeah. So, again, can you hear me make sure. Okay. So, I was talking a bit about North Dakota laws. And I think that it's really important that we kind of get on the docket and first of all understand what these even are it's really difficult thing to keep track of all of these different bills. There are places you can go I use the ACLU for example to go there and look for some information around bills that have been passed, or that are going to be, and you can actually affect that by going there and being there and writing your dissent against these things. You know, there are four bills that were passed in North Dakota, but there were two bills that did die in North Dakota. The House bill 1203 bill died, which was the hit and kill bill, which would have allowed drivers to run over people that were obstructing highways as long as they believe that they did it accidentally. And it was a huge outcry. And we went there and spoke out against it and it didn't, it didn't pass and then House bill 1193 also failed, which would have punished protectors at private facilities and created penalties for those directly or indirectly, causing more than $1,000 in economic harm to the government, or an individual and that would have carried with it, five years in prison. And so that one died as well so those are two key bills that I think, you know it's good to know our, our like victories as well. I do know that as a person that I was just, you know, an everyday kind of mom I work with the indigenous environmental network on things but I just feel like of myself as just an everyday person that has concerns. It's hard to keep up with all this stuff. And so we'll send the links for all these things that are happening but the way we fight back you know it's kind of like fight fire with fire. You know, these laws are supposed to be in place to for protections of people and we are people and we deserve these protections as well too so we're fighting, you know in the bank system. There is something that has called the equator principles, for example, and those are guidelines that were signed by 91 banks, and each bank had promised to avoid negative impacts on the ecosystems, communities, climate and wherever when financing their projects. So we're kind of going to like the root cause of these big capitalist colonialist systems and the root cause of a lot of this is money and money flows through banks. And so these equator principles were put into place to not finance disaster projects such as all of these that we've been talking about here today. But, but they're happening. So we did an action called equator banks at.org. So you can go to the website the petition is no longer live but if you learn more about that the equator principles and continue to push back on these banks that is extremely helpful we've also found that it's been wildly successful doing our divestment work. And if you haven't done it yet or want to learn more about it if you're watching this. What can I do, you know, as an individual this is so overwhelming this is so many numbers and house bills. The way we found it successful again is to follow the money and so you can go to bank on good.com and bank on good.com is part of a Mazaska talks and I know I'm saying was asking wrong but Maza Mazaska it's money and and so we talk about money talks. And if you can start moving your money we can be even more successful in our divestment approach and then of course our reinvestment into our communities through our just transition work that we're doing both in the indigenous environment but in our how larger it takes roots alliance that is a part of and those kinds of sort of protests or, you know, online protests that we do have been wildly successful as a result of standing rock. You know energy transfer partners is this huge evil corporation, but I don't did we talk about the recent victory on Monday against the bayou bridge per permit the Louisiana judge ruled that energy transfer partners violated guidelines on their coastal use permit for this 18 mile strike of stretch of this pipeline that would have run through St. James Parish which I met a lot of wonderful beautiful amazing human beings living in an area where dozens of refineries and industrial facilities already exists and are making people sick. And the judge ruled in favor of the people who that energy transfer partners cannot have this permit because it didn't take into consideration the impacts of the project would have on the town and so that just happened on Monday. And we're really excited that this permit is going to make make this stop for a little while. And we are also at the indigenous environmental network is also in a lawsuit, a federal lawsuit with against the Keystone XL pipeline. And I, we're really excited about this right now because it's coming up on the 24th of this month. And it's going to be when we're going to find out what what motion for the summary judgment is going to happen the summary judgment hearing is on May 24 so people can join anybody in Montana. Great, great falls Montana we're going to be doing sort of a little rally on the 23rd prior to the hearing and there's going to be other stuff that's going to be happening around the 24th hearing as well. All this information will be sent out to folks we can send you the links and information so that you can find out how you can stay connected either by being there or from afar as well. And I also want to put another shout out. If people want to help for red fun, for example, you just can go to her Facebook page for you read on. There's a lot of information there for her she's like I said still currently incarcerated, and it's going to be sentenced May 31. And people can send letters of support to the judge he will read these letters and he will take them into consideration. So we can send that link as well if you want to help with some of the water protectors that basically put their freedom on the line and are, you know, now currently incarcerated are facing incarceration. And it's really important that we remember all of those that have gone before us and remember that we're still fighting fire with fire and here at you know the indigenous environments and that work all the work I do at home has basically to do with the right to not only survive, but to also survive as individuals and as indigenous peoples of communities were often the first and worst impacted by again colonization and capitalism which has continued growth without ever stopping which never was sustainable. And for us simply speaking out and saying that we do all, you know, matter on the planet as humanity. I understand that these connections that we have are with each other and with those that are against us. They might not know why they're against us they might not know why they're introducing these bills they think that we're some kind of a threat. My message to them because I know they're listening would be that we are in this together as humanity doesn't matter our age race color religious background as humanity we are fighting to protect the very thing that protects us. This planet. We cannot live without clean air we cannot live without clean water and we cannot live without clean soil. Those are the three most important natural resources of all that we should be planning on protecting. And that is why all of this descent has come about because we care about our babies and our future generations. And we care about your babies and your future generations. It's pretty plain and simple, very much common sense. There are a lot of other ways that we could be living upon this planet and the way we're doing it right now with capitalism is not one of those ways that is going to be sustainable for any of our futures. Again, thank you. Thank you so much. Before we switch to questions. I'm going to kick it to Rod. We're a little bit over time. So, let's be mindful. So we can get to all the questions that our viewers have for us. Right. Absolutely. Hey, first, thanks and I'd be remiss if I didn't say how much I appreciate everybody who was on this panel as well as the work putting it together. This is huge. It's really interesting to hear about other struggles around the United States being a part of the social justice movement here in Missouri. Usually has its roots in folks being of a darker hue or being disadvantaged in one way or another, set out from society, but I love that the work that's going on. Let me say that what we're doing here in Missouri is one calling attention to the issues that we've highlighted to ensure that the legislation just doesn't pass like so many other things have. Last year, Missouri passed Senate bill 43, which literally legalized individual discrimination against everybody in a protected category. That's people of color, that's women, those folks who are of faith, international people, people with disabilities we'll have perceived or over the age of 40. We'll have to follow that up with ensuring that those folks, not only that they can't go to the courthouse, which is what that bill did it prevents people from protecting their civil rights, but also to prevent folks from being able to voice any kind of this descent. Today, we had a reunion of the medical people of faith, whether they're preachers, pastors, bishops, reverends, who came together to remember what it was like to be persecuted, the impact on the chilling prosecutor here takes advantage of its own citizenry. So, I think that there are a couple links and I'll share those in just a second to those stories just to see what could be done locally. Another thing that we're doing is joining together with other individuals and groups who are protesting throughout the state that is the NAACP is doing this to ensure that their voices are heard, and that the media is there when it's time for them to be there. Just as importantly, we're recording the stories of protesters so that we can share those in a variety of formats. Now, I'm not sure that the legislation that's in Missouri right now is going to pass. And let me say that more hopefully than I have just now. I don't want any of it to pass and I don't think that if things stay the same, we're going to have to face the legislation now. I'm happy to report that and I hope that that stays the status. But I know that these efforts are huge and that they're nationally coordinated as we have already mentioned, and that we're going to be able to have a repository of information to share with the public. These are folks that march with Dr. King. They march with President Brooks from the NAACP when he came. These are folks that block highways, that block streets in our cities and municipalities, trying to get the word out about injustices, that working families, that people in America, that people are suffering. So those are the things that we're doing and I'd be happy to expound on any of that during the Q&A. Perfect. Thank you so much. I'm going to transition us now to some questions that we have. So far we have, I will start with a question from Carolyn. I'm going to direct this one to you, Maggie, as came up while you were talking. Can our collective organizations pursue Alec and Goldwater and others involved in creation of anti-protest model legislation? Coming up with a creative civil suit to file against them. I'm not sure what the cause of action would be, but I love your thinking. I mean, certainly, yeah, I think that's smart to go to the root of the issue. And what can we do to stop that? But a little more broadly, we need to defeat these bills after being introduced. And after they've been enacted, where they've been enacted, they need to fight that, whether that brings bringing legal challenges on their face or as applied, or in any other ways that we can, you know, extra do additionally, you know, protest in the streets. Of course, what we know, for example, Alec, it's composed of lawmakers and lobbyists. So if you vote in different lawmakers, you know, those particular lawmakers won't be, will no longer be part of Alec, potentially. I'm going to share my screen real quick. Oh, it was disabled. Can I, can I quickly just share that ICNL protest tracker? Is that working? Can you all, can you all see it? I can. Right here. Yes. No. No. Okay. Well, I'm trying to, so if you go to the International Center for Non-for-profit law is tracking all of these bills, and I highly recommend it as a great resource that I've been using it myself. You can also of course, you know, contact the actual state assembly and find out where the law is. Welcome to try now if you'd like. Oh, okay. Great. Can you let me. If that doesn't work, I recommend dropping the link in the chat. So I did that already. But I just want to make sure. Okay. Okay. So this is the International Center for Non-for-profit laws protest launch tracker. And you can see the status of various, you can click on, for example, specific issues if you're concerned about campus speech by the filter. In Georgia, there is a campus speech bill still pending and so forth. So I highly recommend you go here and learn about what's happening in your state. And then you can contact your lawmakers, you can attend hearings, you can get involved in civic, you know, kind of actions that way. Of course, not, you know, please hit the streets too. Definitely answer. Stop share. Okay. Christine, I don't think we can hear you. Okay. I just realized I was like, I wonder if anyone can actually hear me. You saw my mouth moving. Our next question is from Lupe in Oregon. Does, and Candy, this came up while you were talking. So I believe this one's for you. Does anyone have experience with fossil fuel industries personally funding a law enforcement division? If so, how was it addressed? And this is probably open to everyone, but I just wanted to poke you first, Candy. Yeah. Did the same thing. Yeah. So it got brought up again during signing Rock to and there was a court case recently about Tiger small and operating in the state of North Dakota, and who was actually paying them and were they doing it illegally. So while there isn't any actual that I'm aware of specific ties to them being paid by law enforcement. I mean, it's clear. It's very clear that law enforcement was getting paid with taxpayers dollars to step in between us and the pipeline to protect the pipeline interests over those of the people who are trying to protect the water and a judge recently ruled that it's not illegal for Tiger spawn and it wasn't illegal for Tiger spawn to operate in North Dakota. So it, it's one of those things where I can say that it's clear that people get paid off and people are in the pockets of the industry but I didn't necessarily have the smoking gun. Because they go really, they do a lot to cover their tracks, but others might have more specific you might have that smoking gun that shows that, you know, people are being paid and a lot of times I think with the law enforcement to they might be put into a situation that they don't they don't even know the full story around I felt like there was a lot of officers that I was looking at that were like hey I'm just here doing my job you know I'm just doing what I'm told. And you guys are the bad people and what happened if you read the intercept on all of those different stories. There are people that were paid to make us look like the ones that were bad there are people that were paid to were oil on the Capitol building in Bismarck while the Standing Rock thing was happening. There were people that were killing Buffalo and these were like these are the criminals and the companies themselves are the criminals because they didn't even follow the law. So had energy transfer partners followed the law and did an environmental impact statement and did what they were supposed to do in the first place. None of that would have happened. So they're the ones actually breaking the law and legally getting away with it. Thank you for your response. I'm going to move us on to the next question. This one is for Rod. This is from Bell. We've been talking a lot about environmental protest. What other movements do you think have overlapped on these issues. Oh well I mean certainly our social justice work that is going on here in Missouri and throughout the United States. Interestingly I think the NAACP has gained a stronger footing in some of the environmental work that we've been talking about. If there's a well there are a couple of different areas here in Missouri where there are some big issues whether it's in banister that there was a waste that's causing cancer or literally in St. There is a site at the dump where parts of the Manhattan Project are buried. It's actually on fire. There's been work over there. I think that right now we're at a place in Missouri for sure in the Midwest and I think across the country where there's a growing intolerance for some of the conduct that we've seen. You know right there in Sacramento for example. I understand that there's been great protests there and I say great people bringing a voice to the injustice that's been experienced there. And we know that that's taken place with murders that have occurred throughout the United States and other places. And in part even recognition through the lynching museum in Montgomery, Alabama. I think that's important too because this is just another link in a long saga of some lives being valued a hell of a lot more than others. And what people are going to do in order to keep injustice from continuing to occur. Thank you for your response. Our next question back to you candy. Can you repeat the name of the bank tracking group that you recommended people access and get involved with. If you go to bank on good.org, it'll take you to the link for Mazaska talks. They're good at, I'm going to get teased they always say that the word wrong, but it's not a head on the word that's why it's Mazaska, the way you're supposed to pronounce it. So, go there. And just to follow up to that last one it's not just environmental issues there's also cultural sites and cultural issues that are being totally impacted that people feel that they have to protest which I don't say protest I say protect. So I want to put a shout out either for bears ears national monument for example, which was in this administration was unprecedented move to take that away and that's a cultural cultural site, and then monopea in Hawaii, which is also a cultural site which is under attack so it's also about our culture as well. Great, thank you. I just had some things pop up on my screen. One last question for everyone so this will wrap us. We had a question from an anonymous person asking each of the panelists to recommend one clear thing that individuals can do to fight criminalization of protest. If you have that one clear thing. And Irina would you like to start us. No, I'm going to make a meta suggestion because this is I think this is this is a meta question. One thing I'll say is let's not let our movements be divided. When you hear about people taking action for environmental or racial justice or economic justice or whatever don't, don't fall into the good bad protester divide because that just ends up harping all of us. Thank you. Candy. I mean knowledge is power. And so I really liked the link that Maggie shared about tracking the bills in a different states, and then if it's in your state or if you can help in that way I would probably do as far as this specific topic around protectors being legally looked at. Let's not pass these let these bills pass that are really, really bad bills. We were successful in North Dakota of all places of killing two bills. If we can do it there you can do it and other places as well but also divestment. I already said it but I'm going to put a plug in again. Watch where you're using and spending and how the banks are using and spending your money. Thank you, Maggie. Sure. Um, no matter what you're passionate about and where you live, someone's already working on the issue. Find out who they are what they're doing, get involved and support them. Perfect. And last but not least, Rod, please. So I issue a challenge. Send a video a link, you know to to I'm going to post an email here just at Nimrod chapel junior at gmail.com of what it means to protest what it means to you to protest why you're doing it who you're protecting. I think that that'll say in those minutes, maybe one or two or three, what 100 letters could we're collecting that information we hope to make that available to everybody online. And it's something that I think to be used as a bank nationally to share with legislators who may not share our same concerns. Perfect way to end this. So from there, we're going to go ahead and rub up our time together today. I want to thank all of you for your questions for your comments. And most of all, thank you to the experts who joined us today. We'll make this recording available. This webcast available within the next few days. So if you learned something today, I encourage you to share with others. That's our one thing that you can do. And on behalf of the entire standard team. Thank you so much for joining us and have a powerful afternoon. Thank you. Thank you.