Citizen Comments Deflected--Civil Disobedience Must Follow

“Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.” 
― Thomas Paine, The Age Of Reason

“When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government” 
― Thomas Paine, Rights Of Man

A tweet from  Jenn Walling, of the Illinois Environmental Council:  "My favorite part of today was my hair looked amazing..."  (5pm on day of her House testimony regarding fracking regulation bill, SB1715)

On May 22, 2013 the Executive Committee of the Illinois House of Representatives unanimously passed SB1715, the so-called fracking regulation bill. The full House is expected to vote on the measure before the end of May. The committee vote reflects a common reality in 21^st century American politics: committees allow the expressions of majority citizen opinions in strong opposition to a bill but know full well that corporate opinions on the issue will trump any evidence concerned citizens might present. In other words, free speech in America has become our version of the bread and circuses that Rome provided for its suffering citizens. When free speech of U.S. citizens is discounted in arena after arena—and when corporate desires prevail again and again—American citizens’s first amendment right becomes a sham. Careful viewing of Sandra Steingraber’s testimony before the House Executive Committee is an example of this current reality.

At the May 22^nd hearing, scientist and writer Sandra Steingraber presented powerful evidence refuting claims in support of SB1715 by Jen Walling of the Illinois Environmental Council, Mary Morrisey, Deputy of Chief of Staff for the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, and Mark Denzler, spokesman for the Illinois Manufacturing Association. The hearing room was packed with citizens opposing the bill. Steingraber’s testimony was strong enough to set mouths into tense lines of disapproval for all four of the pro-fracking witnesses (John Bradley is hidden behind Mark Denzler in the photo below).

Photos thanks to EcoWatch, “After One Arrest, Sit In Continues Demanding Moratorium on Fracking,” May 22, 2013, http://ecowatch.com/2013/after-one-arrest-sit-in-continues-demanding-moratorium-on-fracking/. The video can be seen at “Testimony by Dr. Sandra Steingraber on Illinois Fracking Regulatory Bill” on YouTube.

 

The House sponsor of SB1715, John Bradley of Marion, found Steingraber’s words so difficult to listen to that his head drooped, in frustration or shame, as she spoke. Notice the dark-haired woman in the gallery, to the upper left in the photo, who is staring intently as he hangs his head.

When Steingraber’s excoriating testimony continued for longer than Bradley seemed willing to endure, he actually looked up at the Executive Committee chair, and later toward someone seated slightly above him to his left, as if asking for someone on the committee to end his torment. Notice how interested Jen Walling and Mark Denzler seem to be in his attempt to communicate, albeit silently, with the committee member. Shortly after Bradley’s wordless appeal, the committee chair informed Steingraber that her time was up.

At the conclusion of witness testimony on the 22^nd, the committee voted in favor of SB1715 and passed it on for a vote in the House. The members of Illinois House Executive Committee in 2013 include eight Democrats and five Republicans: Daniel J. Burke (23^rd District in Chicago), Joseph M. Lyons (95^th District in Chicago), Dan Brady (88^th District in Bloomington), Edward J. Acevedo (2^nd District in Chicago), Maria Antonia Berrios (39^th District in Chicago), Bob Biggins (41^st District in Elmhurst), Richard T. Bradley (40^th District in Chicago), Brent Hassert (85^th District in Romeoville), James H. Meyer (48^th District in Naperville), Robert S. Molaro (95^th District in Chicago), Robert Rita (95^th District in Crestwood), Angelo Saviano (95^th District in River Grove), Arthur L. Turner (95^th District in Chicago). Of the thirteen members, only Dan Brady represents citizens outside of the greater Chicago area. Notice, too, that party affiliation provides no clue as to a representative's position on this environmental issue.

Five counties in southern Illinois have passed resolutions calling for a fracking ban in Illinois. None of these counties’s districts were represented on the Executive Committee. These counties are located in a part of Illinois where fracking would likely first appear, should SB1715 become law.

Citizens calling for a moratorium on fracking, or an outright ban, who attempted to meet with Governor Quinn about SB1715, received no admittance to the Governor’s office. He has already expressed his willingness to sign off on this bill that promises to regulate fracking, in spite of the fact that fracking has proven impossible to effectively regulate in every other U.S. state where it has secured a right to do business. Illinois citizens are already going to jail when their attempts to continue a peaceful protest outside the governor’s office are meeting with police attempts to remove them.

As they say in the world of professional gambling, “The fix is in, boys.” In other words, the Executive Committee was required by law to allow public testimony from those who registered to provide such comments, but the law does not require the committee to stay its course even if persuasive testimony against proposed law is brought before it. The committee can decide to find industry evidence more persuasive even when any reasonable person would wonder why evidence of pollution, health dangers, and the inability of other states to control fracking indicate that legislators should, at the very least, further study fracking before allowing the industry a foothold in Illinois.

Interestingly, the Illinois Sierra Club, after seeing the outpouring of public comment against SB1715 and considering Steingraber’s testimony, has reversed its position on the bill. The Illinois Sierra Club is now calling for a fracking moratorium in Illinois. In some arenas at least, a citizen’s right to freedom of speech has the potential to effect change. The Illinois Sierra Club is a major player in the state and its change in position could exert some influence on the course of the fracking bill. But the crucial reality to focus on is the cavalier way in which legislators now treat the protests of citizens.

In April, Sandra Steingraber commented in an interview with Bill Moyers that she now chooses to commit civil disobedience when fighting to keep fracking out of New York, the state where she currently lives. After pursuing, as she described it, “every legal avenue to raise serious health, economic and environmental concerns,” (http://personal.alternet.org/fracking/sandra-steingraber-issues-statement-being-led-jail-act-civil-disobedience-last-resort-me) Steingraber and two other activists, stepped onto a fracking storage company’s driveway and attempted to prevent operations at the plant. She was arrested and convicted for trespassing and, when she refused to pay the fine required by the court, she was sentenced to fifteen days in a New York jail and served eight of them. She seems to have realized that a citizen’s legal rights to express an opinion has no effect on the legislative process.

When a citizen’s First Amendment right to free speech becomes a way to make him or her feel, mistakenly, as if the act is part of the decision-making process in our country, when it becomes a way for citizens to stay occupied so they do not choose more active approaches, then our right to freedom of speech has become a way for the government to create a façade of democracy, even as corporate money and influence exert hidden power.

Steingraber’s turn toward civil disobedience has company in calls by Bill McKibben for activists to “peacefully but firmly” stand up to the Keystone XL pipeline. He aims to put thousands of protestors in the path of KXL, some of whom are willing to be arrested. His actions are founded on those of Martin Luther King, Jr. who protested the conditions faced by blacks in 1960’s Birmingham, Alabama. From jail, King wrote, “I am here because injustice is here. I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’” http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/king/aa_king_jail_2.html.

Just as laws can be unjust, the process whereby the laws are crafted can be unjust. Steingraber and McKibben and all citizens opposing current attempts by the oil and gas industry to wring a few more billion out of the world, having exhausted all legal means at their/our disposal, and must now follow in King, and Thoreau, and Ghandi’s footsteps. When free speech is deflected, civil disobedience must follow. The stakes are too high, for us, for our children, and for the planet to allow backroom deals and corporate/government collusion to prevail. Citizen speech that cannot influence government policy is a reality that insults the American people.  The people are marching now.

In a separate post today I will publish a point-by-point comparison of government promises regarding SB1715 and Illinois State University professor emeritus William Rau's analysis of how the bill will put the state of Illinois at risk. Please read and then join a civil disobedience action on this issue near you. Springfield on Tuesday should be jumpin'.