In 2011, we saw two clear, sweeping trends regarding protest movements, and the corporate backlash against them. Before we get to that, though, take a look at the 10 most popular stories of 2011:

10) Tim DeChristopher Sentenced — What’s Next for the Environmental Movement?

9) New Lawsuit Challenges the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act as Unconstitutional

8) Supreme Court Will Not Hear SHAC 7 Case

7) 5 Reasons Why Environmentalists and Animal Activists Should Occupy Wall Street

6) If Sarah Palin Were an Animal Rights Activist, She’d Have Already Been Convicted of “Terrorism”

5) Breaking: 12 Activists Arrested in Spain, Being Charged With “Eco-Terrorism”

4) Minnesota Bill Targets Anyone Who Exposes an “Image or Sound” of Animal Suffering at Factory Farms, Puppy Mills

3) Richmond Cops Mistakenly Hand Over Anti-Protest Guides to Anarchist

2) Senate Approves NDAA Bill that Allows Military to Imprison U.S. Citizens, Without Charge, As “Terrorists”

1) FBI Says Activists Who Investigate Factory Farms Can Be Prosecuted as Terrorist

I created this list according to the number of views each article on this website received. I think some of the stories are more significant than others, but the order really isn’t important.

More important are the trends they reflect.

The first trend is an increasingly aggressive campaign led by corporations against those who effectively threaten profits. I have been writing this blog since 2006, when the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was being debated. If you had told me then that there would be a campaign in multiple states to criminalize undercover investigations, or that environmentalist Tim DeChristopher would receive two years in prison for civil disobedience, I wouldn’t have believed you. On top of that, the hubris of corporations and politicians is also being codified into law in new ways, such as the National Defense Authorization Act, and these tactics are spreading to other countries.

When you stack things up that way, it’s pretty grim.

But that’s only half of the story.

As Tim DeChristopher was being sentenced to prison for non-violent civil disobedience, activists around the country didn’t cower in fear. Thousands protested the creation of the Keystone XL pipeline, and hundreds were arrested saying, “now it’s our turn.” And as new FBI documents reveal that the government has considered terrorism prosecutions against non-violent undercover investigators, activists have hit back with a lawsuit calling the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act unconstitutional.

In other words, the second trend is that resistance is growing.

What’s in store for 2012? The Occupy Wall Street movement has gone from a few dozen tents to a national movement in about 100 days. As more and more people recognize that they are part of the “99 percent,” and act accordingly, Occupy will undoubtedly attract a proportionate backlash from same “one percent” who have targeted animal rights and environmental activists for decades.

There are significant challenges ahead for all of us. It’s hard to know what is the best way to take action, or how we should proceed. But I think Woody Guthrie was on to something with his New Year’s resolution list from 1942.

Two of the items on his list for the new year: “Make up your mind… Wake up and fight.”

Did you miss some of these stories this year? Be sure to sign up for the free email newsletter. You can also follow Green Is the New Red on Facebook and Twitter.

City by city, it’s growing. If you have been watching the rise of Occupy Wall Street from the sidelines, maybe it’s because you’re not sure if you’re part of the “99 percent” or maybe it’s because you just have other things to do. Here’s the thing: This is bigger than one person, one issue, or one movement.

Here are five reasons why environmental activists and animal rights activists should Occupy Wall Street:

1) Corporations are destroying the planet. And, as Bill McKibben wrote, “For too long, Wall Street has been occupying the offices of our government, and the cloakrooms of our legislatures.” The first official Declaration of the Occupation of New York City articulated some of the many facets of this movement, including environmental and animal rights concerns. Here are a few highlights:

“As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies..

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices…

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil…

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit…”

2) Corporations are attacking you. Since the 1980s, corporations have campaigned to label activists as “eco-terrorists.” They have pushed for outrageous prison sentences of activists like Tim DeChristopher. They have lobbied for federal legislation like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and state legislation to label civil disobedience as “eco-terrorism.” They are doing everything in their power to marginalize and disrupt the environmental and animal rights movements. (In other words, as this clever Greenpeace video depicts, they’re afraid of you.) Rather than protesting bill by bill, arrest by arrest, this is an opportunity to challenge the true problem: unchecked corporate power.

3) You have experiences to share about tactics. Occupy Wall Street has locked arms to blockade the banks, and marched to the mansions of millionaires. Sound familiar? More than 800 1,200 environmentalists were arrested in a massive civil disobedience against the XL Pipeline. And the SHAC campaign brought a multinational corporation near bankruptcy through a diversity of tactics including home demonstrations. This obviously isn’t to say that environmentalists and animal rights activists created tactics like civil disobedience or home demonstrations, but they have, more than any other contemporary social movement, put them to unique and effective use targeting corporations. There are lessons to be shared– good, bad, and ugly– that will benefit everyone.

4) You have experiences to share about dealing with corporate and government repression. Occupy Wall Street has already seen some of the overt tactics used to target social movements, such as the police beating and pepper-spraying activists. As this movement grows, however, so will the proportionate backlash. You have experiences with informants, infiltrators, and corporate espionage. You have resisted grand jury witch hunts and fought back against restraining orders and injunctions. You have defeated draconian state legislation and organized effective prisoner support campaigns. To be clear, ya’ll aren’t alone! Other social movements have dealt with, are dealing with, this as well. But the backlash against the animal rights and environmental movements, the “Green Scare,” is a case study in all the post 9/11 tools available to corporations and those who represent them. I’ve sounded like a broken record on this website, but I’ll say it again. There’s nothing inevitable about any of this. By coming together and sharing experiences, we can coordinate and fight back.

5) This is bigger than all of us. By “this” I don’t mean Occupy Wall Street (although that’s part of it). I mean the task at hand. We all, out of necessity, focus on the issues that are most dear to us. We have limited time, limited money, limited resources. That’s why, for instance, I have carved out the field of work that I have. But listen: there are times for carving out our niches, and times for doing the hard work, the messy and uncomfortable and frustrating work, of trying to connect all of the pieces. Animal rights activists and environmentalists are often pegged by the broader, capital-L “Left” as “single issue,” but I have never found that to be true. This is an opportunity for all of us to share, as the Zapatista saying goes, “One no, many yeses.”

Slavoj Zizek captured this sentiment beautifully in an address to Occupy Wall Street:

In an old joke from the defunct German Democratic Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware of how all mail will be read by censors, he tells his friends: “Let’s establish a code: if a letter you will get from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it is true; if it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter written in blue ink: “Everything is wonderful here: stores are full, food is abundant, apartments are large and properly heated, movie theatres show films from the West, there are many beautiful girls ready for an affair—the only thing unavailable is red ink.” And is this not our situation till now? We have all the freedoms one wants—the only thing missing is the red ink: we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. What this lack of red ink means is that, today, all the main terms we use to designate the present conflict—’war on terror,’ “democracy and freedom,’ ‘human rights,’ etc—are FALSE terms, mystifying our perception of the situation instead of allowing us to think it.

You, here, you are giving to all of us red ink.

Want to take action? Start at the Occupy Wall Street main website. What are you planning in your city?

I wrote an article for Truthout about how, before the dust had even settled at ground zero, corporations and politicians were trying to use the tragedy of September 11th to label environmentalists as “eco-terrorists.” Here’s an excerpt:

On September 12, 2001, as emergency crews searched for survivors, Rep. Greg Walden warned Congress that “eco-terrorists” posed a threat “no less heinous than what we saw occur yesterday here in Washington and in New York.” He was not alone: Rep. Don Young publicly speculated that the attack might have actually been the work of environmentalists. A month later, The Washington Times called for war against the “eco-al-Qaeda.”

Comments like this were not gaffes. They were part of a carefully coordinated campaign that had been in the works long before 9/11. When planes hit the Twin Towers nearly ten years ago, most Americans saw an unprecedented tragedy. For some corporations and politicians, it was an unprecedented opportunity.

Read the full article: The “Eco-al-Qaeda”? September 11 Ushered in War on “Eco-Terrorism” and Civil Liberties

Tim DeChristopher has been transferred to the prison where he is expected to do his time. How about writing him a letter of support?

Tim DeChristopher
#16156-081
FCI Herlong Federal Correctional Institution
PO Box 800
Herlong, CA 96113
USA

Here’s some information from Peaceful Uprising about writing him.

Sometimes folks tell me they’re nervous writing prisoners, because they don’t know them personally and don’t know what to say. Don’t be! Tell a joke, describe something interesting you read recently, ask a question, draw a picture… anything you think might take their mind off their surroundings, if even for a moment. Now go write!

One month ago, environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for non-violent disobedience. The sentence was harsher than those handed down to people who burned churches and threatened black leaders. It was a sentence intended — like so many disproportionate sentences against activists — to send a message. But what message?

Environmental activists could have responded to this case in the way that corporations and politicians (who called DeChristopher an “eco-terrorist”) had intended. They could have scaled back their organizing to only milquetoast tactics that are 100% “safe”; they could have responded with fear.

Instead, we’re seeing something quite different as attention has shifted to the creation of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would draw oil from that tar sands of Canada to East Texas (this NPR story has a good overview). Already, more than 800 people been arrested for non-violent civil disobedience in Washington, D.C. Some of the arrests that have made headlines have included a top NASA climate scientist, Jim Hansen.

What has been even more inspirational is the response of young people who have been radicalized by both the sentencing of Tim DeChristopher and the Obama administration’s deference to corporate interests. A letter from student groups and youth leaders at the Tar Sands Action said in part:

Big corporations are using their financial influence to corrupt our democracy and deepen their pockets at the expense of Americans. And it’s not just related to energy and the environment; they are threatening the very foundations of our democracy, working to disenfranchise voters, attack workers’ rights and the middle class…The Keystone XL decision is a significant test of President Obama’s commitment to our generation, but it’s not the only one.

The letter astutely taps into what is so significant about the mass civil disobedience taking place in Washington right now. It has drawn national attention to a dangerous, misguided plan that President Obama should shut down. More broadly, though, I think these 800+ arrests  represent something bigger than this particular campaign. As Tim DeChristopher recently wrote from prison: “By its very nature, civil disobedience is an act whose message is that the government and its laws are not the sole voice of moral authority. It is a statement that we the citizens recognize a higher moral code to which the law is no longer aligned, and we invite our fellow citizens to recognize the difference.”

I would go even further: the government is not the sole voice of moral authority, and it is not any voice of moral authority. I don’t think most Americans would even consider that a radical statement at this point. Do you? We’ve watched bankers get bailouts while the environmental crisis worsens and unemployment increases. I think we need to remind ourselves that this is a sentiment that environmentalists in D.C. understand just as viscerally as pissed off Texans.

For more information and to get involved, visit Tar Sands Action and  Rising Tide North America.

Environmentalist Tim DeChristopher has received a longer prison sentence for non-violent civil disobedience than people who have burned churches, threatened African-American leaders, and plotted to kill people.

DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison today for disrupting an illegal oil and gas lease auction. Meanwhile:

• Yesterday (and also in Utah), a man who set fire to two Mormon churches was sentenced to probation.
• A Massachusetts man who mailed letters threatening to burn black churches and NAACP headquarters was sentenced to 15 months. In his letters he said: “I do not like African-American or minorities in charge as supervisors of my security department at Novartis, nor I like them as President of the United States… For that I am going to burn down your offices just let you know how I feel. What right does some black person [have] to be in charge of me.”
• A Salt Lake City woman who defrauded clients of about $300,000 (comparable to the loss of profits that DeChristopher caused oil and gas corporations) was sentenced to 15 months.
• A former FBI agent was sentenced to two years in prison for planning to assassinate an FBI official.

These examples aren’t isolated instances. They can be mixed and matched with countless others. The point, as we have seen consistently, is that people who break the law in order to stop an injustice, who break the law in order to make the world even the slightest bit better, are met with disproportionate penalties compared to those who break the law for greed, hatred and revenge.

And of course, the disparity becomes even more extreme if we also consider the criminal activities of corporations– including the corporations DeChristopher protested, and the corporations which lobbied for him to receive a harsh sentence.

As Jamie Henn of 350.org tweeted recently: “Wall Street wrecked the economy & got billions in bail. Tim stood up for his beliefs and gets 2 years in jail.”

Environmentalist Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for using non-violent civil disobedience to disrupt a sham oil and gas auction. He had been found guilty on two felony counts for making fake bids in the auction, costing corporations hundreds of thousands of dollars, and faced up to ten years.

He increased the bids on 22,000 acres of land in Utah national parks. A federal judge later ruled the auction was illegal.

DeChristopher’s case has attracted international attention, and he has become a spokesperson for the environmental movement. This case is much bigger than DeChristopher, though (as he has often said himself). We all need to be thinking: what’s next? How do we move forward?

Even if you do not consider yourself an environmentalist, or don’t agree with DeChristopher’s tactics, this case should raise serious questions about the misplaced priorities of our government and our entire culture. DeChristopher’s two-year sentence is comparable to what members of underground groups have received for property destruction. The court has sent the message that public, aboveground activists, who use non-violent civil disobedience, will be treated on par with underground activists who use economic sabotage.

More importantly, though, the government has sent the message that the people who step forward to stop ecological destruction will be met with harsh punishments, while those who responsible for this destruction, such as the oil and gas corporations bidding for public lands, will go about business as usual.

As the judge said during sentencing: “Civil disobedience can’t be the order of the day,” or it will lead to “chaos.”

But chaos for who? For the people? For the planet? Or for corporations?

This case, and the larger crackdown on the environmental movement, makes strikingly clear that the government is more concerned about the latter. As defense attorney Ron Yengich said: “We never impose the rule of law on people who steal from poor people, destroy the banking systems or destroy the earth.”

Moving forward, we need to remember one thing above all else: this is happening because DeChristopher was effective.

DeChristopher’s actions exposed what goes on inside sham corporate auctions, it cost corporations hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it galvanized the movement.

At sentencing, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson said that DeChristopher’s leadership in the environmental movement, his “continuing trail of statements” for civil disobedience, and his speech outside the courthouse were the reasons he faced prison time.

The judge went so far as to take the unusual step of having DeChristopher taken into custody of the U.S. Marshalls until his prison sentence begins. In many other cases I have covered, including those of convicted arsonists, the prisoners were allowed to self-surrender. People are generally only taken directly into custody if they are a violent threat or a flight risk. Why was this different?

Because DeChristopher is inspirational, and he would clearly use his time before prison to organize.

“You have authority over my life, but not my principles. Those are mine,” DeChristopher said to the judge. “I’ll continue to confront the system that threatens our future.”

Others have vowed to do the same. Thousands will be in Washington, D.C. in August to protest the Keystone XL pipeline to the Tar Sands. They are planning mass non-violent civil disobedience.

Tim DeChristopher gave a moving speech after he was found guilty today. In a few months, he will be sentenced. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

“Everything that went on inside that building tried to convince me that I was alone, and that I was weak. They tried to convince me that I was like a little finger, out there on my own, that can easily be broken. And all of you out here were the reminder, for all of us, that I was… connected to a hand, with many fingers, that could unite as one fist. And that fist could not be broken by the power in there… All those authorities in there wanted me think like a finger. But our children are calling to us, to think like a fist.”

Thanks to Rising Tide North America for the link.

Tim DeChristopher has been found guilty on two felony counts for making a fake bid in an oil and gas auction. An auction that was later ruled by a federal judge to be illegal.

Meanwhile, a bus driver who gave his students an impromptu detour so they could see the mass protests outside the courthouse was fired.

And the people who were involved in this sham auction? And the corporations who were profiting from it? They still have their job, they’ll still have their freedom.

I think Bill McKibben summed this up pretty well:

Tim has shown the power of civil disobedience to shine a light — the government should be giving him a medal, not a sentence, and in time this will be recalled as a key early battle in the century’s long fight for a livable climate.

Just in case the federal government thinks that it’s intimidating people into silence with this kind of prosecution, think again. In fact, this is precisely the sort of event that reminds us just why we need a real, mass mobilization to stop the climate crisis.

Tim DeChristopher’s “crimes” were a peaceful response to a global crisis.

Twenty years from now we will marvel at such restraint.