Dear Friends,

First, a plug: Click here to buy your ticket(s) to the award-winning film, The Race to Save the World. Climate March gets $4 of every sale, and you get to watch a truly inspiring, hope-filled documentary.

Start of the Great March for Climate Action, Wilmington, CA, March 1, 2014, featured in The Race to Save the World.

Ok, one more plug: Kathy’s and my non-profit — Birds & Bees Urban Farm — is selling heirloom tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, eggplant, and kale to support our educational programs. If you’re in central Iowa, we’d love you to adopt some. Click here for details.

Now, to this week’s program, which you can listen to here. We discuss nonviolent action, shiitake mushrooms, the name “Karen,” cars vs creatures, and May gardening tips.

Two years ago, Extinction Rebellion (ER) protesters brought their climate emergency message to the London headquarters of Shell Oil in a big way. They poured fake oil on the building, glued themselves to the windows and doors, broke glass, and climbed onto the roof where they sprayed graffiti.

Maybe those actions crossed the line for how some of us define “nonviolent.” But ER activists argue that such a response is needed in the face of the existential threat of climate change.

Extinction Rebellion demonstrators glue themselves together at a protest in London, England. Credit: Vladimir Morozov/akxmedia

Some protesters were arrested at the Shell action. Six had their day in court last week, where they raised the “necessity defense.”

One defendant, Senan Clifford, said: “I believe if I don’t do whatever I can to protect our Earth, to protect life on this Earth, to stop the death and injury that is and will be happening, I’m committing a crime, a really serious crime, and I’m willing to break a window, to paint a message on a wall, I’m willing to break the glass on that emergency button, even if some say that’s a crime.”

The judge instructed jurors that, even if they thought the protesters were “morally justified,” there was no provision in British law that allowed them to commit such criminal damage. And the jury listened, right?

Nope. After more than seven hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted the defendants of all charges.

The necessity defense hasn’t been as well-received in US courtrooms. There is the 2018 case of the Minnesota Supreme Court affirming protesters’ right to use that defense to turn off valves shutting down oil flowing into the US from Canada. But that’s the exception, unfortunately. If anything, the recent splash of anti-protest bills — both this year’s round against BLM actions and bills passed two years ago in response to pipeline protests — might make the necessity defense even more difficult.

That’s not to say activists shouldn’t keep trying, keep pushing, keep agitating. Indeed, history shows that civil disobedience is an essential component of prominent movements for societal change. Direct action pushes the envelope — both in courts of law and in the court of public opinion. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 never would have happened without the vast wave of protest that publicly exposed the evils of racial injustice.

The same holds true of the climate emergency. The Race to Save the World challenges us to get involved with our whole person — our bodies and our minds — through creative actions, risking arrest, crazy-long marches, and disrupting business-as-usual for oil companies, banks, and lackluster politicians.

Ultimately, ending the climate crisis will involve major legislative initiatives. Perhaps we’re seeing the front edge of that with the Biden administration’s climate-action proposals. Even so, it’s time for a global mobilization on an unprecedented scale. Perhaps The Race to Save the World can inspire such a mobilization.

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HERE’S THIS WEEK’S PODCAST:

Watch the conversation with Kathy Byrnes on our YouTube channel.

Please support the local businesses and non-profits who make this program possible. Click on their logos elsewhere and visit Story County Veterinary Clinic, Bold Iowa, and Birds & Bees Urban Farm.

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Thanks for supporting the progressive alternative to right-wing shock jocks!

Ed Fallon