First arrests done

The first day of arrests has happened, with a few dozen people now in police custody. It was all very orderly, with protestors sitting or standing in rows while they were arrested one or two at a time.

There is a training session for tomorrow’s participants happening in three hours.

11 thoughts on “First arrests done

  1. oleh

    Thank you for sharing this history and your experience. Your photos provide an eye into what is happening.

    These protests are effective in providing support to those within government who have the power or at least the influence to help minimize damage to the environment.

  2. Milan Post author

    I saw the people who got arrested on the 20th get released today. They were all in excellent spirits, despite a weekend in crowded cells.

  3. Milan Post author

    Arrests so far:

    Day 1 – August 20 – 65 arrests
    Day 2 – August 21 – 45 arrests
    Day 3 – August 22 – 51 arrests

  4. .

    Washington’s burly SWAT team, with every imaginable crime fighting gizmo dripping from their 35 pound belts, are an odd deployment of force, when you think about it, to send in to arrest the likes of us.

    On my right, as we stood in suits and ties, in front of the White House refusing to move on that hot sunny day in August, was Gus Speth. Gus, now in his seventies, had headed up the President’s Council on Environmental Quality under Carter, and from there ran the UN’s Development Agency and later Yale’s School of Forestry and the Environment. On my left was Rev. Jim Anthol, who is the equivalent to a bishop in the United Church of Christ.

    Myself, and the 65 others who stood with them that first day, came in answer to Bill McKibben’s call a month earlier. With lobbying on Capitol Hill hitting a brick wall, Bill’s thrust was to open a new front in the form of civil disobedience against the proposed 1,700 mile Keystone pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the refineries at Port Arthur, Texas. A pipeline that would result in massive increases of carbon into the atmosphere, crippling any chance to stabilize the planet’s climate.

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