this is what hope looks like this is what love looks like and it will only grow the choice you are making today is what side are you on i appreciate this opportunity to speak openly to you for the first time i am here asking that you know me at the auction the first person who asked me what i was doing there was agent don love and i told him very clearly that i was there to stand in the way of an illegitimate auction that threatened my future i proceeded to answer all his questions openly and honestly and have done so to this day i've made my views clear that i agree with the founding fathers that juries should be the conscience of the community and they defense against legislating tyranny i never attempted to taint the jury as claimed by sharing any of the relevant facts about the auction in question that the court had decided were off limits i didn't burst out and tell the jury that i successfully raised the down payment and offered it to the i didn't let the jury know that the auction was later reversed because it was illegitimate in the first place to this day i still think i should have had the right to do so but disagreement with the law should not be confused with disrespect for the law i have also made public statements about the value of civil disobedience in bringing the rule of law closer to our shared sense of justice in fact i have openly and explicitly called for nonviolent civil disobedience against mountaintop removal coal mining in my state of west virginia mountaintop removal is itself an illegal activity which is always been in violation of the clean water act and it is an illegal activity that kills people it with virginia state investigation found that massey energy had been cited with sixty two thousand nine hundred twenty three violations of the law in the ten years preceding the disaster that killed twenty nine people last year the investigation also revealed that massey paid for almost none of those violations because the company provided millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions that elected most of the appeals court judges in the state when i was growing up in west virginia my mother was one of many who pursued every legal avenue for making the coal industry follow the law she commented hearing zero petitions and filed lawsuits and many have continued to do so ever since to no avail i actually have great respect for the rule of law because i see what happens when it doesn't exist as in the case of the fossil fuel industry those crimes committed by massey energy led not only to the deaths of their own workers but to deaths of countless local residents such as joshua mccormick who died of kidney cancer at age twenty two because he was unlucky enough to live downstream from a coal mine when he corrupted government is no longer willing to uphold the rule of law i advocate that citizens step up to that responsibility this is really the heart of what this case is about the rule of law is dependent upon a government that is willing to abide by the law this respect for the rule of law begins when the government believes itself and its corporate sponsors to be above the law claims that the seriousness of my offense was that i obstructed lawful government proceedings but the action in question was not a lawful proceeding a federal judge ruled last year that b l m was in constant violation of this law throughout the bush administration in all the proceedings and debates about this auction no apologist for the government or the below him has ever tried to claim the below him followed this law in both the december two thousand a doctrine and the creation of the resource management plan on which this auction was based the b l m did not even attempt to follow this law and this law is not a trivial regulation about crossing the t's or die the nine has to make some government accountants job easier this law was put into effect to mitigate the impacts of catastrophic climate change and defend a livable future on this planet this law was about protecting the survival of young generations that's kind of a big deal it's a very big deal to me if the government is going to refuse to step up to the responsibility to defend a livable future i believe that creates a moral imperative for me and other citizens my future and the future of everyone i care about is being traded for short term profits i take that very personally until our leaders take seriously their responsibility to pass on a healthy and just world to the next generation i will continue the reality is not that i lack respect for the law it's that  greater respect for justice where there is a conflict between the law and the higher moral code that we all share my loyalty is to the higher moral code the authority of the government exists to be gree that the rule of law reflects the higher moral code throughout history it has been civil disobedience that is bound them together this philosophical difference is serious enough that mr huber thinks i should be imprisoned to discourage the spread of this idea that the government's memorandum states as opposed to preventing this particular defendant from committing further crimes the sentence should crafted to afford deterrents to criminal conduct by others their concern is not the danger i present but the danger presented by my ideas and words that might lead others to action the things i've been publicly saying may indeed be threatening to that power structure there have been several references to the speech i gave after the conviction but i've only ever seen half of one sentence of that speech quoted in the government's report they actually had to add their own words to that one sentence to make it sound more threatening and the speech was about empowerment it was about recognizing our interconnectedness rather than viewing ourselves as isolated individuals the message of the speech was that when people stand together they no longer have to be exploited by powerful corporation alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in america and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool but the sentencing guidelines don't mention the need to p corporations or politicians from ideas that threaten their control the guidelines say protect the public the question is whether the public is helped or harmed by my actions the easiest way to answer that question is with the direct impacts of my action as the oil executive stated in this testimony the parcels i didn't bid on average twelve dollars per acre but the ones i did that on average one hundred twenty five dollars those are the prices paid for public property to the public trust industry admits very openly that they were getting those parcels for an order of magnitude less than what they were worth of oil company knew they were getting  steel from the american people more generally the question of whether civil disobedience is good for the public is a matter of perspective civil disobedience is inherently and the attempt at change those in power well mr hoover represents are those for whom the status quo is working so they always see civil disobedience as a bad thing the decision you are making today your honor is what segment of the public you are meant to protect the majority of the public is exploited by the status quo far more than they are benefited by it the young are the most obvious group who is exploited and condemn there is an overwhelming amount of scientific research that reveals that catastrophic consequences which the young will have to deal with over the coming years but just as real is the exploitation of the communities where fossil fuels are extracted as a native of west virginia i've seen from a young age that the exploitation of fossil fuels has always gone hand in hand with the exploitation of local people in west virginia we've been extracting coal longer than anyone else and after one hundred fifty years of making other people rich west virginia is almost a dead last among the states in per capita income education rates and life expectancy and it's not an anomaly the areas with the richest fossil fuel resources whether coal in west virginia in kentucky or oil in louisiana mississippi are the areas with the lowest standards of living in part this is in the cess of the of the industry the only way to convince someone to blow up their backyard or poison their water is to make sure they are so desperate that they have no other option but it is also the nature of the economic model since fossil fuels are a limited resource whoever controls access to that resource in the beginning gets to set all the terms they set the terms for their workers for the local communities and apparently even the regulatory agency a renewable energy economy is a threat to that model since no one can control the sun or the wind the wealth is more likely to flow to whoever does the work of harnessing the energy and therefore to create a more distributed economic system which leads to a more distributed political system it threatens the profits of the handful of corporations for whom the current system works but our question is which segment of the public are you tasked with protecting i am here today  to protect the people locked out of the system over the profits of the corporations running the system i say this not because they want your mercy but because i want you to join me the government tries to sue my intentions and then claims this is consistent with the testimony that mr christopher provided at trial admitting that his intention was to cause financial harm to others with whom he disagreed the statement claimed by the government never happened the statement in the government's objection is a complete fiction the truth is that my tension then as now was to expose embarrass and hold accountable the oil industry and to play a role in the wide variety of actions that steer the country toward a clean energy economy the only loss that i intended to cause was the loss of secrecy by which the government gave away public property for private profit as i actually stated in the trial my intent was to shine a light on the corrupt process and get the government to take a second look at how this auction was conducted i knew that allowing the auction to proceed would mean the permanent loss of lands better suited for other purposes and the permanent loss of a safe client the intent was to prevent loss i believe  important factor is the loss to the public which i helped prevent this is a case about the right of citizens to challenge the government the u s attorney's office makes clear that their interest is not only to punish me for doing so but to discourage others from challenging the government even when the government is acting in appropriately their memorandum states to be sure federal prison term here will deter others from entering a path of criminal behavior the certainty of this statement not only ignores the history of political prisoners it ignores a severe ity of the present situation those who are inspired to follow my actions are those who understand that we are on a path toward catastrophic consequences of climate change they know their future and the future of their loved ones is on the line and they know we are running out of time to turn things around the closer we get to that point where it's too late the less people have to lose by fighting back and the power of the justice department is based on its ability to take things away from people the more the people feel that they have nothing to lose the more that power begins to shrivel the people who are committed to a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today and neither will i and i will continue to confront the system that threatens our future the people who are committed to a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today and neither will i i will continue to confront the system that threatens our future democratic institutions give citizens access to power my future will likely involve civil disobedience nothing that happens here today will change that i don't mean that in any sort of disrespectful way at all but you don't have that authority you have authority over my life but not my principles those are mine alone 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 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 the choice you are making today is what side are you on i do want to point this out folks this movement and tonight's of that was not covered by corporate media at all right but i do want to give a big shout out to any of you who are watching me right now let's just acknowledge you're watching it on people's media wherever it is that you're watching me right now some unpaid volunteer took the time to record it thank you some unpaid volunteer took the time to upload this to create the infrastructure for you to watch it so we support people's media yes to the local cable access program that this is going to be played on and also can we get a big shout out to your community radio station it is a people's own people's operated radio station so the point i'm making is this ma'am let's build alternative people's media so that we can talk to each other and let's have those kind of conversations and let's build political power that is serious that takes ourselves seriously because we have to because a just world is at stake and frankly not only a peaceful and just world but we know that the ecology that we depend upon for life itself is in the balance so let's do our work joyously but let's also be serious about it peace strickland founder of the pacific northwest trail a twelve hundred mile route from the continental divide to the pacific ocean ron personally scouted and explored the entire trail the areas you can see behind me there was no trail of all there was thank brownish ocean spray himalayan blackberry hundred foot tall douglas fir trees and we came through here worked out a route for the trail by marking the brush crawling over the brush falling in holes getting all scratched up this again it was starting from nothing and other no trails just runs idea and this vision that captured other people's imagination to join and help with the trail the idea for the pacific northwest trail for me when i was in graduate school at georgetown university we were idealist too and we we we believed in the dream and the dream is coming true you know ron is a master of getting support for the pacific northwest trail primarily just just perseverance and everyone he speaks to come a long way in the last thirty years from my initial assumption of the idea nine hundred seventy two all the work that you can see here along the trail but there's something that remains to be done which is to add the pacific northwest trail to the national trail system nineteenth century lighting out for the territory you come to love the spirit of independence of being out there able to decide just exactly what you're going to do from one moment to the other to look forward to walking toward that the most arduous part of creating a new trail the stamina and patience because as in the case of the pacific northwest trail i really started in one nine hundred seventy and it wasn't given the ok by congress rabbit to the national trail system until last year two thousand and nine i had been hiking the pacific crest trail in one nine hundred sixty eight and i had the idea that the countryside there in the north cascades was so beautiful and i would like to showcase this were people all over the country who could come and hike in east west through the new east west route from the continental divide to the pacific ocean and that's what last year president obama signed into law a new part of the national trail system and that is what this bill does from coast to coast it protects treasure places from the appalachians of virginia and west virginia to michigan's upper peninsula from the canyons of idaho to the stands sandstone cliffs of utah from the sierra nevada us in california to the badlands of oregon it doesn't need more than two million acres across nine states as well as almost as much as was designated over the past eight years combined creates thousands of miles of new scenic historic and recreational trails you have to be pretty patient to get into doing something like this but on the other hand the reward is really tremendous i think the day hikers the most important person on the trail because our trails won't continue to exist unless we have a lot more people on them what i really like is to be out for say a month and just keep going for the distant horizon and when you've been out for a month you suddenly transform your inner jogger feet in a sense that you feel at home where you are at that moment you're not looking back to where you came from or even so much through the final destination but you're at home where you are in the moment and so that itself is a very wonderful feeling well what excited excites me especially now is the idea of taking the trails to where people live you know this has been tremendous success with rail trail soul railroad grades that are transformed into trails so i am particularly interested in things like the east coast greenway a multimodal self propelled trail and i would like to get more of these added to the national trail system japan to the united states and create any health problem whatsoever california republican congressman devon nunez want to see to her new reactors belt congress and that's going to be a tough sell these days how do you think it's going to go my hope and my prayer is that everything ends up ok over time the people realize that nuclear power is the way to go  louisiana where b n f l and other companies are dumping level waste that's leaking out that's harming these communities we don't know how many people are going to die there but we see this problem because tokyo electric was found to be cheating on their inspection data they did all sorts of things terrible things for example government inspectors were there checking the containment and they would be on the other side of the containment pumping air so that it would make it look like the containment was safe they were manipulating it on the other side even as in statures were there onsite testing for years for many years i was an investigator for the government of racketeering and fraud committed by nuclear plant operators and builders i did several cases one of them against builders and operators of a short nuclear plant and we discovered systematic fraud inception from the highest levels of these corporations and the jury agreed that they had committed conspiracy and racketeering and ordered the company to pay for billion dollars everybody knows that  electric and the government are in together on these issues even that scandal that occurred what got out of it is exactly what it wanted for many years and that is the government rule that the instructions for to use strict and therefore companies were forced to cheat and therefore the in stash and standard should be relaxed i saw personally in the information that we put in court top executives industry and engineers who said we were forced to change seismic that is earthquake proofing on plants from failed to pass the company that the earthquake proofing was called stone and webster stone or webster is the nuclear unit now a shocker shaw group is the is the company that is designated to build all three of the new nuclear plants planned for the u s the guys that fake the earthquake proofing are the guys who are designated to build the quests in two thousand and six huge japanese corporation acquired the nuclear division of westinghouse later company called the touchy a big japanese corporation as well when it's a partnership with  general electric and its nuclear division why this is very important is that g e and westinghouse have been the coke and pepsi of nuclear power worldwide for for ever for decades eighty percent of phantom the first two plants will be built in south texas project units three and four because of the questionable background of the companies involved including the company that the jury found liable for racketeering stone webster they brought in a respected operator they sent to train the workers in how to properly build and properly operate a plant tokyo electric power which will own twenty percent and is being brought in because of their expertise and the faith that the industry has in them to properly operate and properly build a nuclear plant bringing in tepco tokyo electric power resigned about nine months prior to tokyo electric power as disaster now what happened at focus is certainly not good for business and this is deep very deep japanese corporate involvement and the global nuclear power trade provides an additional incentive for the  japanese the tokyo electric folks and the japanese government officials to to not tell the truth to their people and to the world about what has happened and what continues to be happening regarding f one of the biggest nuclear plant builders was halliburton its brown and root subsidiary they were involved in the grasp of the workers faking of the safety documents lies about the cost of the plant i say lies about the cost they were they had an overrun of one thousand percent one thousand percent came real company real industry survive and that they did they did pretty well they're back i just finished an investigation shaw group in louisiana they are the number one donor for example to the governor of louisiana bobby jindal they can buy and sell politicians with our money because we give them billions of dollars in subsidies and with that billions of dollars in subsidies they can make congress get down on its knees and eat out of a dog food bowl one of the biggest and and someways least well known subsidy is called the price anderson act which was passed in one nine hundred fifty nine to basically provide an insurance for the nuclear power industry so taxpayers pick up the cost of any nuclear disaster that law was passed in one thousand fifty nine was we authorized in two thousand and five in the energy policy act two thousand and five so right now there's an initial twelve point six billion dollars in disaster cost that any operator of a nuclear reactor would would bear and then anything on top of that is borne by the taxpayer the power companies get to make all the money on selling the power and taxpayers pick up the cost for any disaster sorry nuclear engineering supervises at general electric resigned in the one nine hundred seventy s bride and miner and auburn and media have reported that it had to do with the naacp one in the flaws in the mark one and that was part of it but in testimony before congress what the three engineers studied it is that they could no longer continue doing something involved in an industry which as they put it threatens the life on earth so you get the mach one mach one has an add flaws but nuclear power has a bigger floor industry is rife with corruption rife with fraud because there's no way to build a safe nuclear plant the problem of nuclear power is that it's not  owns now the indian point nuclear plant in new york where senator clinton was very reluctant to call for the closure of this obvious danger right here in new york city they basically own the clinton family and i saw this when i was working an investigation in britain where entergy this little company from our can song from little rock arkansas bought the entire london electric system because of the connection between entergy and the clintons and their influence with the blair government in britain and then entergy turned around and flipped the london  lecture company for a billion dollar profit in just a few months nice what does entergy do for the president for the first lady at the time to remember that there was an investigation of her billing records  i never heard anyone say who she was supposedly billing where the billing records were faked the company was entergy entergy notes if they were deliberately overcharged and maybe they wanted to be overcharged because it's a way to pay the governor hiring his wife for doing nothing they knew it and they could do with they want and today entergy is at the forefront of the nuclear industry in the us at the forefront of buying up plants cheap and then getting extensions on the life of these plants plants that are almost ready to be shut down and should be these are political power again extension a plan and they get free money billions of dollars for extra decades it's quite a game president obama i mean he he was highly critical of nuclear power when he was a he was candidate obama when he was running for election and he said that the problem with nuclear power is that these these nuclear plants going to blow up and kill people i mean he didn't know the situation it wasn't like an empty headed george w bush but once in office just forget about it i mean in the wake of focus shaimaa there was obama on the television the national address saying that we should provide thirty four billion dollars in taxpayer based loan guarantees to build more nuclear plants wallstreet more touch nuclear bera so here's our president saying that we should not only risk our lives but we should give our money to build these these these lethal machines and the on pushing nuclear power despite a campaign promise not to go ahead with nuclear until we know we were going to put dispose of the waste it's like building a building without a toilet how do you go back on that well let's  emanuel between being the congressman and being chief of staff at the obama white house he was an investment banker and he made millions of dollars on this deal creating the biggest nuke we could you tell living in the united states a company called exelon based out of chicago it all in seventeen nuclear power plants seventeen and fact it's now in the process of acquiring constellation energy and it would become a bigger nuclear utility barack obama's political career has been owned operated and defined by exon before which was previously common in chicago which has a dozen nuclear plants bringing the city in which has really been the major force running that city for many many years it's no accident now that rahm emanuel has come back out of the white house to be the mayor of the biggest nuclearized city in the country as rahm emanuel at the right and obama on the left hand side he and steven chu is very much into that tradition he absolutely minimizes in fact he did not rise of the consequences of radioactivity thinks it's something we can live with relicensed all of them eighty years but has been upgrading the allowing them to run at fifteen and twenty percent more power a running faster running order running along absolutely these folks  inviting disaster inviting catastrophe sometimes when we look at the old atomic energy commission or the nuclear regulatory commission they see the same games coming up over and over again we have musical chairs effort the citizens to the end was that they were strengthen the quote unquote education program for students in public schools so that they could be quote unquote educated properly about nuclear power and the teachers were forced to teach industry on the talk shows and people who are sitting across from the anchors in these all the way from local t v stations to the biggest radio and t v shows these are all coming from the p r stable of the corporate nuclear power industry you have westinghouse and general electric owning their own t v networks you have rupert murdoch a very very committed nuclear backer and having fox it's all lined up to tell the big lie and to get and more money from the taxpayer i mean this is the ultimate irony in a many ways atomic energy is just a big scam to skim the taxpayer huge quantities of money out of the federal treasury and throw them down the toilet of massive commercial atomic reactor construction projects it's been one of the most massive cover ups in the history of media in the history of the press and fact the nazi propaganda minister would look on what has gone down in the last few decades and smile as an example of of just the most  struggling with this and we won't get anywhere but i believe that we've been in the middle and we're continuing to head to what will end up in terms of the numbers of people will die a nuclear holocaust and here is the new york times just just from a journalistic point of view from the point of view of journalistic ethics and honesty being utterly outrageous i mean here's this big piece about don't worry no immediate danger is just low levels of radioactivity it's on believe a bull i mean for the times to join with the nuclear pinocchio's of a nuclear can stop this industry we can get these thirty six billion dollars out we can prevent these reactors one by one from being built and we can install all the little features that we need to survive on this planet and that is our mand think we will do it in the ultimate down between the profit motive and the survival instinct i think the survival instinct will win and we have a duty to make sure that all the research that we have done and that people all over the world have died in the last few decades that the greatest single environmental factor that has been ignored has been bomb fallout and nuclear radiation from permitted releases from th we see now all too clearly atomic technology is at war with our eco systems it's centralized corporate nature puts democracy itself at risk it jeopardizes the very survival of life on this planet with all the alternative forms of real clean energy it seems senseless that we still rely on an archaic form of energy to jeopardize the lives of tens of millions just to continue to line the pockets of a few people around the world can keep up the pressure and bring about the green energy revolution we will see the end of the nuclear power industry let's rise up and st