Profound Courage in the Face of Injustice: Tim DeChristopher gets two years in prison...

[Luminous Animal]

From "The Dissenter" at FDL
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/07/26/tim-dechristopher-gets-two-years-for-showing-profound-courage-in-the-face-of-injustice/

A man with profound courage and great character, climate activist Tim DeChristopher, went to jail today for bidding on oil and gas leases on federal land when he didn’t have the money to pay for the bids he placed. Sentenced to two years and fined ten thousand dollars, DeChristopher was taken into custody immediately following his conviction on two felony counts of interfering with and making false representations at a government auction.

According to the Associated Press, DeChristopher is “the first person to be prosecuted for failing to make good on bids at a lease auction of Utah public lands.” DeChristopher was also given three years probation in addition to a two-year sentence in jail.

...
DeChristopher had no interest in admitting that he was wrong to take on the oil and gas companies along with the federal government. And, why should he have confessed to a crime? The Obama Administration overturned the land auction he placed bids in, not because of his actions but because the Bureau of Land Management auction violated its own rules. Clearly, DeChristopher was putting his body on the line to prevent injustice and indeed he did.

...

As Peter Yarrow of the folk music trio Peter, Paul and Mary wrote in an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times, “There is a massive complicity in America today between the corporations that fund elections and the officeholders they elect. Actions like Tim’s are aimed at disrupting that complicity. For our children, for our country and for the world, we should honor his courage and self-sacrifice and pledge to follow in his footsteps, each in our own way.”

[burrowowl]

1. He is a HERO!

[Luminous Animal]

2. Yes, he is! And he gives this worn out activist hope that youth will continue to shoulder the

responsibility of fight for justice.

[roody]

3. People came up with the money after the fact.

This is persecution.

[Luminous Animal]

5. I hadn't heard that before. Do you have a source for that?

[roody]

8. I thought he had said that on Democracy Now.

Here he alludes to it.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/22/posing_as_a_bidder_utah_student

[Luminous Animal]

4. "you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, "

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all." Mario Savio Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964<6>

[sabrina 1]

7. Thank you for that.

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part.

That man is a hero. I hope some kind of website or org. will be set up to support him while he is in prison.

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. k&r