Photo by Stephen Melkisethian
-Stephen Melkisethian on Flickr-
XL Dissent! Washington DC, Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, Sunday March 2, 2014. An unexpectedly large gathering of around 2,500 climate justice activists marched from Georgetown to the front of the White House to oppose US government approval of further extension of the Keystone XL pipeline and to protest the Obama administration’s ongoing capitulation to the climate wrecking fossil fuel industry.
Nearly 400 of the mostly college age activists locked their hands to the White House fence with plastic cable ties. They were later arrested for this act of peaceful civil disobedience. Has our formerly ‘sort of democratic for maybe some folks some of the time’ system of government devolved into a totalitarian police state? Refusing to leave any area marked off with flimsy yellow tape that a bigshot like Obama and his cops deem ‘off limits’ to First Amendment protected protest is a Federal crime.