Protesters dragged from BP annual meeting

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Independent

Protesters dragged from BP annual meeting
PA
Thursday, 14 April 2011

Oil giant BP faced the anger of protesters inside and outside its annual general meeting today, which came just days before the first anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

Activists wearing t-shirts which spelt out "No Tar Sands" in protest against BP's extraction of oil in Canada were dragged out as they tried to stage a demonstration during the meeting.

And a group of fishermen and women from the Gulf coast who say their livelihoods have been destroyed by the oil spill that followed the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last April, were denied entry to the meeting.

Louisiana fisherwoman Diane Wilson was arrested for breach of the peace after a demonstration in which she smeared herself in an oil-like substance as she tried to gain access to the AGM.



Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/protesters-dragged-from-bp-annual-meeting-2267714.html

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. BP's actions do not surprise me.

They are terrorists.

[RKP5637]

2. +1, n/t

[SpiralHawk]

3. RepubliThuggery. BP style.

"Please don't disturb the billionaires counting up the loot they have plundered from your planet."

- BP (R)

[HughBeaumont]

4. How many would they be able to arrest if it were thousands?

Would they call in the military to protect the precious, untouched, unsullied, pampered wealthy?

If the rich declared war on the poor (like they haven't already), which side would the "Guns" jump to?

It'd be interesting to find out.

[plumbob]

5. Okay, so Fred Phelps is free to picket dead strangers at their funerals

with God hates fags and worse, but criticizing BP is verboten?

Got it........

[Judi Lynn]

7. Thanks for making that point. Wildly bizarre, isn't it? n/t

[No Elephants]

8. Public property versus private property.

IMO, the Phelps cult should not be allowed to harass mourners, even on public property, but there is a difference between protesting on public streets and sidewalks and protesting inside a private meeting on private property.

From the OP article, it does not seem anyone outside the building was arrested, only those inside the shareholders' meeting. And, to be fair, it also seems even protestors inside the shareholders' meeting were allowed to speak to some degree.

[intheflow]

6. K&R

Seems to me they dragged out the wrong people from the meeting. The BP execs are the ones who should be facing charges.

[Agony]

9. More of us need to be "unreasonable" The story of Diane Wilson is worth reading

Gut wrenching activism in her book (2005), in an act of desperation she _tries_ to scuttle her own shrimp boat over the Formosa chemical plant outflow (vinyl chloride) pipe. Realizing that her boat engine will leak pollutants into the estuary she pulls the engine out and then has to agree to pay a "fellow" shrimper to tow her boat to the spot to sink it. ... because no one will just help her.
An Unreasonable Woman
A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas
by Diane Wilson

http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/unreasonablewoman

Portrait by Robert Shetterly, from his portrait series Americans Who Tell the Truth.

When Diane Wilson, fourth-generation shrimp-boat captain and mother of five, learns that she lives in the most polluted county in the United States, she decides to fight back. She launches a campaign against a multibillion-dollar corporation that has been covering up spills, silencing workers, flouting the EPA, and dumping lethal ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride into the bays along her beloved Texas Gulf Coast.

In an epic tale of bravery, Wilson takes her fight to the courts, to the gates of the chemical plant, and to the halls of power in Austin. Along the way she meets with scorn, bribery, character assassination, and death threats. Finally Wilson realizes that she must break the law to win justice: She resorts to nonviolent disobedience, direct action, and hunger strikes.

...

maybe it is that more of us need to be _more_ unreasonable.

[lonestarnot]

10. K & R!