The whole point of civil disobedience is to intentionally commit a non-violent and non-destructive crime.
If there is no crime, in the US it's just a lawful protest as permitted by the First Amendment.
If there is no crime, in the US it's just a lawful protest as permitted by the First Amendment.
Either I can't write (which is possible) or you can't read (which is also possible), but where did that come from?
On the trespass charges, most the land the protest took place on was on Standing Rock reservation, and used with permission, on federal land and used with explicit permission of the BLM, or on privately owned tracts of land and used with implicit permission in that the deeded landowner did not object to the use and their expressed objection would be necessary for it legally to be considered trespassing.
The destruction of property in this specific incident refers to a handful of people, including US Presidential Candidate Jill Stein, spray painting slogans on the scoop of a bulldozer. The main effect of this action was to protect the scoop against corrosion for a day or so before it was next used and the paint abraded again as it was once before on the first day the bulldozer was ever used after initially bought sporting a fresh coat of paint. Rather than bulldozer vandals from a scientific and practical viewpoint they would be more accurately described as bulldozer protectors.
There is also the issue that the specific land in question off the present "reservation" was acknowledged as being eternally the property of the Sioux people in a legitimate legal treaty ratified by the US Government, and the US Supreme Court has previously ruled that this treaty was legitimate and nothing abrogated it. So the issues of whether the US BLM correctly permitted the protest (they did) or the deeded landowner objected (he didn't) aren't even relevant at all from that legal viewpoint where all the land in question legally still belongs to the Sioux, not just from their own perspective, but from both ratified treaties and contemporary rulings of SCOTUS.
Civil disobedience wasn't a major factor in the protests.
The pipeline itself wasn't legal. It didn't properly comply with the permitting process. They "smurfed" the applications by dividing the pipeline into a series of tiny unrelated projects in order to avoid the required environmental reviews. Smurfing to avoid regulatory requirements is explicitly prohibited under federal law.
So yes, federal crimes were committed there. No evidence by this guy.
And were there crimes by any protestors? Yes! One woman, a convicted felon, fired a gun while being apprehended by police. It later turned out the gun was planted on her by an FBI informant who had sexually assaulted her, but legally she was in violation of federal law because she possessed a firearm. So that was illegal to be sure. A bit reminiscent of similar FBI operations where mentally deficient and gullible persons are recruited by FBI agents and coerced into plotting terrorists acts that are entirely designed and organized by the FBI.
The main protest acquired permission from relevant federal authorities and movement leaders clearly communicated to protestors that violence, weapons, and drugs were all unacceptable. This was a legitimate protest, not civil disobedience. Though obviously many like to argue it was illegal, and King's Birmingham march as well, and the dogs sicced on protestors and firehoses in Alabama by law enforcement were every bit as legal and justified as the dogs and firehoses deployed against protestors in the Dakotas during this decade.