WORLDFIRE - Chapter 21, Part IV

Shaping the State of the Union

The energy of our cellblock had a fairly organic flow. There would be lots of talk for a while, then things would settle down and everyone would get quiet for an hour or two. Then the conversations would start up again. At one point, we did a round of shouting out our top movies and books. My favorite was the inspiring quotes round, which came so fast and furious it made me wish I had a pen and paper to write them all down. Some people talked a lot. Some said very little. Others didn’t speak at all. I was somewhere in the middle. Everyone copes with incarceration in their own way. One of the more uplifting moments came when Bill McKibben led the group in a song from the civil rights era. I remember Gus Speth following that with a short lecture from his latest book, but he was at the far end of the cellblock and we could only make out the occasional word. At one point, Bill and Gus were taken from the cellblock to meet with our lawyers. When they returned, they told us a second wave of protesters had been arrested on Sunday. That is when we knew the intimidation strategy had backfired. We’ll return to this, too.

Twice daily, a “gourmet meal” of two plastic-wrapped bologna and cheese sandwiches was delivered to our cells. They were handed through the little barred slots at unpredictable times in the morning and at night. A guard would also occasionally walk up and down the cellblock offering to fill our cups with fruit punch or water. Seeing all the disembodied hands sticking out of the gaps in the bars clutching little Styrofoam cups helped me understand how prisoners can easily become dehumanized in the eyes of their captors. If you can’t really see the person behind the door, they stop existing for you as a person. As if to ensure that none of us got any real sleep, every few hours a guard would also walk up and down the cellblock doing roll call. I eventually grew tired of this charade and started responding, “Still here.” As if any of us were going to dig our way out.

Wanting to fully experience life in our stainless steel abode, I offered to trade bunks with Ari on the second night, despite his warning that it was hotter and brighter up there. The glaring light got me to thinking how I could shade it to make our stay a little more comfortable. Looping my dress socks through the small metal bars guarding the light fixture, I used them as small ropes to secure my dress shirt as a curtain, which gave the bright light a muted green glow, vastly improving the ambiance of our cell. But the next guard who walked by didn’t like that at all and barked at me to take it down. Ari replied that there was plenty of light from the hallway to look in on us and what kind of trouble did they think we were going to get into anyway, to which the guard sarcastically snapped, “You were brought here in handcuffs, weren’t you?” My efforts at home improvement rebuffed, I reluctantly took the makeshift curtain down.

Sometime in the wee hours of the night on Monday, we were greeted by female guards. With the shift change came a shift in energy. Kinder than most of the male guards we had encountered during our incarceration, they told us we would be leaving that morning at 6:30am, but the appointed hour came and went and we were still locked up. An hour or so later, the cell doors finally began swinging open and we were again shackled (if memory serves, this time to each other, like in a chain gang) and led down the stairs in small groups, after which we were loaded into another paddy wagon to be transported to another holding facility a few blocks away.

Greeting us at the back docks of the courthouse building were snarling federal marshals who let us know in no uncertain terms who was in charge. As we filed out of the police van, we were regaled with a modern-day version of the “there’s a new sheriff in town” speech. We were told in a very aggressive tone that we were no longer dealing with the D.C. Police, or the Park Police, and that we were now in the hands of U.S. Marshals. We were ordered to face the wall, remove our shoes, and run our fingers through our hair, after which we had metal irons attached to our feet, shackled by an 18-inch-long chain that allowed you to walk, albeit at a crawl. I also remember a chain being strung around each of our waists, attached to metal handcuffs that secured our hands in front. The only missing ingredient was an orange jumpsuit.

In marked contrast to everything we were experiencing was the kindhearted demeanor of the calm U.S. Marshal who led us through a labyrinth of hallways, elevators, and cells. Astonished, I watched him greet every inmate he encountered as “brother.” When I thanked him for his inspiring kindness, he said to me, “I can’t let it be personal.” That this man was able to maintain such an enlightened outlook in such a harsh penal environment, day after day, speaks volumes about his character and about humanity’s potential to bring light to the darkness. His love for others also safeguarded his own humanity in that place. I will never forget that man.

Our group was then led into a large jail cell, which was already occupied by close to a dozen other inmates. I recall the bars being painted a bright red and it being very loud inside. A large barred cell adjoining ours was even more crowded. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in observing that almost every man locked up with us was Black. I have long understood intellectually that African Americans suffer disproportionately higher incarceration rates than white people (many for nonviolent drug offenses–a testament to the Nixon administration’s nefarious war on cannabis), but seeing it with my own eyes brought home to me the injustice of our justice system. Mass incarceration does not just happen. It happens by design. Think about how many lives and families have been destroyed because of this. Too many people of color to count have had their freedom stripped away from them for nonviolent drug offenses, many for having smoked a God-given plant. President Biden’s pardon of individuals convicted of cannabis (more commonly known as marijuana) possession at the federal level rightly cleared the records of thousands of people, but tens of thousands more convicted at the state level still unjustly languish behind bars, probably including some of the men I was sitting in that jail cell with.

Jammed together in our crowded holding pen, there wasn’t room to lie down without touching someone else, but I managed to get a little rest in between conversations with cellmates. It surprised me how tolerant total strangers were to having their personal space violated in this way. Out on the street, such closeness would be met with fisticuffs. In jail, it was different. Everyone seemed to be going out of his way to make the best of a bad situation. As guards called out individual names, the population of our holding cell slowly shrank, until after a few hours it was mostly only the male contingent of the Tar Sands 65 remaining. When they got to our group, I heard my name called out first, followed by Dan Choi and David Slesinger. A guard then shuffled the three of us off to an adjacent cell. It seemed strange to be separated out in this fashion. Maybe it was our history of arrests at other nonviolent protests that singled us out for special treatment? We would later learn that the rest of our group had been released shortly after that, with all of their charges dropped. But that is not what happened to us.

Together with several other men not from our group, Dan, Dave and I were locked up in a nearby holding cell, where we waited some more, until a mustached U.S. Marshal finally showed up. He led us all up some stairs–feet and hands still shackled–to a very small cell, where maybe ten of us were jammed in together. He then laid down the law in a boisterous tone, letting us know who was in charge and what he expected of us. He said if we didn’t give him any trouble, he wouldn’t give us any, but if we did…

A short while later, the marshal ordered the three of us and a disheveled-looking older man out of the cell and marched us in shackles downstairs to the courtroom. He pointed to where we should sit and warned us not to look into the audience, which not being able to help myself I surreptitiously proceeded to do. I remember him then turning to the three of us and quietly asking if he should be concerned about the changing climate’s effects on New York and Maryland. I asked him if he had any kids. He said yes. I told him he should be very concerned for his children.

When the judge announced there was no paperwork for us, the marshal marched the four of us back up the stairs to a separate cell, this time with the door left open (he must have sensed we weren’t the dangerous type). He then betrayed his sense of humor when he referred to Dan, Dave and me as the "3 Amigos” (ostensibly because we were talking and laughing so much). I still chuckle at the memory of him barking at us to "keep it down!" A short while later, we were marched back down to the courtroom, where we again took our seats in front of the judge.

The first one to be called before the judge was the older man, hunched over and looking scared. What happened next I think surprised us all. We watched this fierce-looking federal marshal gently comfort the old man by putting a hand on his shoulder not once, not twice, but three times. I will never forget the caring look in that marshal’s eyes. His loving compassion stood in marked contrast to the aggressive behavior he had exhibited earlier to keep us all in line. It was deeply touching to witness this gentle treatment of a man who was so clearly suffering; one more beautiful act of humanity in a place intentionally designed to strip it away.

The judge called me next. I rose and stood next to my pro-bono counsel, happy to let my lawyer do the talking. I was then given a court date by the judge and released from my shackles. Before walking out of the courtroom, I made a point of leaning in to the marshal to whisper, “Take it easy.” He replied, “You, too.” We can’t let it be personal.

Minutes after my release, I learned that the women in our group had been treated even worse than the men. Lacking bunks, they were forced to resort to lying on a concrete floor, with the air conditioning blasted into their cell requiring them to huddle together for warmth. I was later told some even resorted to using plastic wrap from their sandwiches as “clothing” to keep warm. I also later learned that news outlets reported four separate police officers telling action organizers the prolonged detention of day one’s group of 65 was ordered from higher up to discourage more people from taking part in the protests going forward; that they had wanted to make an example out of the Tar Sands 65. It is hard to imagine this happening without White House approval. The Secret Service and the Park Police answer to the White House. Regardless of who made the call, their intimidation strategy backfired. Far from chilling dissent, their overreach only emboldened more protesters to show up and lay their bodies on the line. By the time the protest concluded, 1,253 brave souls had been arrested.

One of those 1,253 people was actress and activist, Daryl Hannah, whose arrest took media interest in the action to a whole new level. Most know her from movies she’s starred in like Splash, Blade Runner, Wall Street and Kill Bill. In a society obsessed with celebrities, Hollywood actors are America’s version of royalty, but Daryl does not see herself that way. To the contrary, she is as humble and unassuming a person as I have ever met. What sets her even further apart from so many Hollywood actors is her willingness to use her celebrity to focus the public spotlight on causes in which she believes, even if that means going to jail.

I was still in DC when Daryl and her agent arrived. We connected at the evening training at the church and met over breakfast the following morning to go over logistics before walking down to Lafayette Park. As I expected it would, Daryl’s arrest on day ten of the protest sparked an explosion of media coverage. Not content with simply preaching to the choir, she made the smart strategic decision to appear on Fox News to educate conservative viewers about the perils of the pipeline. Being who she is, she even managed to charm the prickly Bill O’Reilly (who would later be ousted from Fox under a cloud of scandal) on “The O’Reilly Factor.” The day after headlines splashed news of Daryl’s arrest around the world, Nebraska’s Republican governor and former Democratic Vice President Al Gore both issued public statements opposing the Keystone XL pipeline. Coincidence? I think not. Never underestimate the power of celebrity.

It is not every day that more than a thousand people collectively send a proverbial warning shot across the bow of a presidential administration that they are not going to stand for the planet being plundered. But I wondered then, and still do, what might have happened if the two-week action had continued indefinitely, with a steady stream of green patriots showing up outside the White House. We might have gotten Keystone XL’s northern leg cancelled a lot sooner. Who knows? We might even have been able to prevent President Obama from fast-tracking the construction of Keystone XL’s southern leg, a pipeline President Biden should have shut down.

Reflecting back, if I had to do it over again, I would do it all again, despite everything that happened to us, for any personal discomfort I experienced pales in comparison to what is in store for our children if we do not heed the warning cries of Mother Nature. We are at the beginning of a protracted struggle for climate justice that will demand citizens of conscience making far greater sacrifices than serving 52 hours in jail. But when things look the darkest, I will keep looking for the goodness around me, for as my Keystone incarceration showed me, there is no shortage of it to be found. The light that shines in each of us is what gives me hope that humanity will yet awaken from our slumber in time to save ourselves.

NOTE: The written form of WORLDFIRE is the authoritative version. Any inadvertent errors in transcribing the recordings are mine and mine alone.