Hacker News Reader

Comment by amirmc | Hacker News Reader

"They knew what the potential punishments were."

I completely disagree with this. They could reasonably have expected to be charged with trespass and vandalism but to be labelled as terrorists is ludicrous. I doubt they even expected to get as far as they did (they had to hang around and sing songs before they were finally arrested).

View on HN

If you have been around the activist community, and people who are willing to engage in civil disobedience... Remember, I was raised as a Quaker. When I was in Middle and High School we used to take a road trip down to the Nevada Test site for the annual protests there. My Friends Meeting used to hold actual civil disobedience training sessions. One of the members of my Friends Meeting (Salt Lake Monthly Meeting) engaged in a similar protest (a lone trespass, though it did not involve cuttng through fences) and was acquitted by a jury. I knew lots of people who decided to trespass during the protests, and many who chose not to. When I was in Middle School I helped build rock barricades on the road into the test site, so I think I have a sense of what people think who engage in protests of this sort.

When someone in these communities decides to undertake a protest of this magnitude, particularly when it is against a military installation, they tend to expect the absolute worst. This means inflated charges, possibly long prison terms, and so forth. When someone decides to do it anyway, the typical approach is to try to use all of this to one's advantage, to emphasize the political prisoner aspect, and to use the trial and jail time as a soap-box from which to make one's view known. Quakers particularly have a long tradition of this but so do some Catholic groups.

"They could reasonably have expected to be charged with trespass and vandalism but to be labelled as terrorists is ludicrous"

No, it was very reasonable to expect exactly this to happen. They were offered pleas, but choose not to take these pleas. The US justice system always retaliates against defendants that are unwilling to take pleas. I'm not saying that it is morally right, but I am saying that the defendants knew this very well and willfully choose this over other options. As a result of this you now know about them.

My expectation (as a lifelong pacifist) is that, when someone gets arrested as part of a peace protest of this nature, they will try to face maximum charges and then plead guilty to them. That's part of the protest -- taking responsibility for your actions, and using that to highlight the "injustice" of war and the government's actions in relation to war.

Usually the maximum charges are things that match the protesters' perceptions of themselves -- trespassing, vandalism, things like that. "Terrorism" is a completely unexpected form of government retaliation.

Not plead guilty. You want to turn the trial into an exposure of what is going on. The trial is part of the protest too. Don't count that out. But yes, the jail term is a part of the protest, with that I am entirely in agreement.

> "Terrorism" is a completely unexpected form of government retaliation.

I don't think you can look at the way various other anti-logging protesters and the like have been treated, and the way terrorist watch lists have been assembled, or even talk with activists who were active in the 1960's and 1970's and not expect this.

In the current police state, if you do anything to infrastructure you are going to be charged with terrorism.

on related note - Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in MA (and, thanks to ALEC, coming soon to your state).

That's a good example of exactly why I suspect they would have expected such charges.

The driver of the truck that came to grief on the I-35W bridge should be sweating then.

I suspect they knew the possible consequences going in and did it anyway. They're obviously not stupid people, and knew the lengths the government would go to protect a nuclear weapons facility. I applaud them either way.

They have exposed how extremist our government has become in the name of "stopping" terrorism, and have probably had much more far reaching effects in doing so than if they had just been charged with trespassing.

Many eyes are on the US government right now, and things like this inspire criticism from within and without.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com