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Outside/In

When protest is a crime, part 2: city in a forest

Outside/In

NHPR

Natural Sciences, Society & Culture, Nature, Science, Documentary

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After the gathering at Standing Rock, legislators across the United States passed laws in the name of “protecting critical infrastructure,” especially pipelines.  At the same time, attacks on the electrical grid have increased almost 300%. But that threat isn’t coming from environmental activists.  It’s coming from neo-Nazis.  This is the second episode in our series examining the landscape of environmental protest in the United States, from Standing Rock to Cop City and beyond. Listen to the first episode here. As the space for protest in the United States shrinks, this year marked a major escalation: the first police killing of an environmental protestor in the United States, plus the arrests of dozens of people at protests under the charge of domestic terrorism.  Featuring Naomi Dix, Lauren Mathers, Jon Wellinghoff, Will Potter, Hannah Gais, Alex Amend, Aurielle Marie, and Madeline Thigpen. Special thanks to Micah Herskind, Mike German, Yessenia Funes, Clark White.    SUPPORT Our free newsletter is just as fun to read as this podcast is to listen to. Sign-up here. Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of the show.  Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook. Submit a question to the Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).   LINKS Further reading on the ideology of far-right accelerationism by Alex Amend  Hannah Gais’ reporting on Atomwaffen and the planned Baltimore grid attack  Check out this excellent explainer on Cop City in Scalawag Magazine, written by Micah Herskind. Read “The Forest for the Trees” in The Bitter Southerner, a profile of life in the “forest defender” camp in the Weelaunee Forest. It includes a conversation with the late Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, better known at Tortuguita. More than 60 human rights and environmental organizations signed this letter condemning the domestic terrorism charges in Atlanta, Georgia. Unicorn Riot’s livestream of the police action at the concert. Two activists face felony charges for distributing flyers which identified a police officer linked to Tortuguita’s killing. Plus, leaders of a bail fund were arrested on charges of charity fraud for their support of the people recently charged with domestic terrorism – as the Atlanta Press Collective reports, the history of bail funds in the United States goes back to the Civil Rights movement.   CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Justine Paradis  Mixed by Justine Paradis and Taylor Quimby Edited by Taylor Quimby with help from Jack Rodolico, Rebecca Lavoie, Felix Poon, Jessica Hunt, Jeongyoon Han, and Nate Hegyi Executive producer: Rebecca Lavoie Music came from Blue Dot Sessions, Autohacker, Blacksona, The Big Let Down, and Hatamitsunami.  Audio of the events after the concert in the South River Forest was recorded in a livestream by Unicorn Riot and shared under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Previously on Outside In.

0:07.0

Did you watch your mom get arrested?

0:11.3

Yes, I did.

0:12.6

I held her purse.

0:14.7

The gathering at Standing Rock caught the world's attention.

0:18.0

Those became like national conversations rather than just indigenous conversations.

0:25.1

And the attention of the fossil fuel industry.

0:27.6

These are the same forces that called us.

0:31.2

We American Indians, religiously driven indigenous jihadists.

0:39.6

In the years since, a wave of legislation has swept across the country.

0:43.4

I don't think they did damage to property, but obviously they're.

0:45.8

I'm pretty sure they did a whole lot of damage for property in North Dakota.

0:50.0

Criminalizing acts of protest, especially near pipelines.

0:54.0

There is no state that forgot to make it illegal to destroy people's property.

0:58.4

So the legislation is really just upping the ante on peaceful protest activity.

1:03.0

That is the main thing they're trying to restrict.

1:19.6

From a Saturday afternoon in early December, Naomi Dix arrived at the Sunrise Theater

1:24.5

for rehearsal.

1:25.7

Soundshed, lighting cues, making sure that we were putting on, you know, a perfect production

1:31.0

for this community because they had never seen a show like a drag show like this before.

1:37.4

This show was in a rural part of North Carolina, in a town called Southern Pines.

1:43.2

Naomi is a drag artist.

...

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