This Is What Democracy Looks Like pt.5

“The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

- Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

Add comment August 10th, 2011

This Is What Democracy Looks Like pt.4

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

- Dalai Lama

(Above: Members of Peaceful Uprising shut down a major intersection and train crossing in downtown Salt Lake City following the sentencing of Tim DeChristopher.)

Add comment August 3rd, 2011

This Is What Democracy Looks Like pt.3

You law abiding citizens
Come listen to this song
Laws are made by people
And people can be wrong
Once unions were against the law
But slavery was fine
Women were denied the vote
While children worked the mine
The more you study history
The less you can deny it
A rotten law stays on the books
’til folks with guts defy it!

- Peter, Paul & Mary

(Above: Peter Yarrow sings with members of Peaceful Uprising outside the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, during the sentencing of Tim DeChristopher)

Add comment August 2nd, 2011

This Is What Democracy Looks Like pt.2

“If… the machine of government… is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”

- Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849

(Above: Members of Peaceful Uprising take over the federal courthouse steps in Salt Lake City, following the sentencing of Tim DeChristopher)

Add comment August 1st, 2011

This Is What Democracy Looks Like pt.1

“I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me.  If you side with [prosecuting attorney] Mr Huber and believe that your role is to discourage citizens from holding their government accountable, then you should follow his recommendations and lock me away.  I certainly don’t want that.  I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false.  I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government.  I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience.  If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them.  You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path.  You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing.  You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the [Bureau of Land Management].  You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it.  This is not going away.   At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like.  In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like.  With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.”  – Tim DeChristopher to Judge Dee Benson during DeChristopher’s sentencing on 7.26.11

(Above: A still from the video I filmed of DeChristopher being taken away in shackles to begin his 2 year sentence in federal prison.)

1 comment July 30th, 2011