Why I was arrested outside of Chase Bank
June 14, 2017
As May 8th turned into May 9th, I sat in a holding cell watching police officers shuffle papers and stride slowly through the booking facility of King County Jail.
As May 8th turned into May 9th, I sat in a holding cell watching police officers shuffle papers and stride slowly through the booking facility of King County Jail.
On October 11, 2016, my husband Ben was among those supporting the 5 activists who shut down all five tar sands pipelines into the US in an action called #ShutItDown. Theirs was an unprecedented act of climate direct action, and the biggest coordinated move on U.S. energy infrastructure ever undertaken by environmental protesters. Ben faces up to 5 years in prison (the people who actually turned the valves face up to 21 years). We’re in the waiting period, with ears ready for trial dates and lots of time for reflecting…
Sitting in the Pacific Building in the morning on March 9th, I learned an important lesson: high-powered decision-making is incredibly dreary. The halls of power (at least in Seattle) are lined with drywall and floored with shabby office carpet. Windowless conference rooms are stocked with the same drab plastic tables you would find in any corporate office. This seemed intentional—and a bit ironic, given that the people in this room could have a serious impact on climate change.
Millie always asks me to talk about our name for a minute, so excuse me if you’ve heard this before. Our group is called 350 because this is a number that’s essential to life on this planet. Throughout human history, we’ve had about 280 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere. As we’ve used radically more fossil fuels in the last hundred years, that number has climbed and climbed. And scientists know that in order to have a stable climate, we have to be below 350 parts per million—maybe even lower.
“If the climate were a bank, it would be saved by now.”