Trial Results in Conviction For Declare Emergency Supporter

Court

Jan 9

(Washington DC) Judge Jones Bosier convicted a supporter of the Declare Emergency campaign with incommoding for blocking the Rock Creek Parkway west of the Watergate Complex in Washington DC on Jan. 25th, 2022.

The conviction from Judge Tanya Jones Bosier came after hearing testimony from defendant Michelle Wehner. She was sentenced to 15 day of suspended sentence (ESS), 3 months unsupervised probation and a $50 fine. She is an ordinary person who is passionate about raising the alarm to expose the truth about the climate crisis. She accuses the fossil fuel industry, the US government and the media of covering up this truth.

Michelle Wehner, 55, Eugene OR grandma and mother said, “Our government is betraying us all. They have known for decades via testimonies to congress by the world’s top scientists and through the best intelligence in the world - their own! And yet they continue to knowingly and willingly murder billions of people through their actions of continuing with fossil fuel subsidies, extraction and new infrastructure. And the justice system is shackled by the rules they’ve set up to support this death march unabated. “My six year old grandson’s future is filled with the utter misery of mass migration, mass starvation, social and economic collapse and war. I can’t even come up with the words that adequately express the terror I feel for his future. What do I have left that I can do for him and others facing this reality? Radical nonviolent civil resistance. It’s not only our right, it’s also our duty to defend us, our families and our communities from a government gone rogue”.

Prof. Hans Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said in September 2019 “Based on sober scientific analysis, we are deeply within a climate emergency state but people are not aware of it.” Scientists have said that the world needs to stop drilling for new oil and gas and rapidly reduce CO2 emissions. This is the first step to avert the worst of the climate catastrophe. The widely hailed Inflation Reduction Act President Biden signed onto in July will not only expand fossil fuel development in the US, it will subsidize it with billions more in new tax credits.

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said "Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels," followed by "Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness." (Citation)

It has been noted before by Declare Emergency supporters that their actions are an expression of their fear for their families, for the future of humanity and life on Earth. They have been acting upon what thousands of scientists have been informing the world, because the US government is refusing to.

“The fossil fuel industry is paying our legislators to knowingly kill us all. If we don’t act in nonviolent civil resistance and disrupt this business-as-usual death march, we are all going to die,” says Wehner.

ABOUT DECLARE EMERGENCY

Declare Emergency is a member of the A22 Network for Civil Resistance, a ten-country coalition formed following the 1.2 degree Celsius increase in global average temperatures. Each member has a distinct policy demand from their respective governments. In the United States of America, Declare Emergency demands that President Biden declare a national climate emergency, and cease all extraction on federal and indigenous lands . https://www.declareemergency.org/

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