The Last Trial of the Fight Against Mountain Valley Pipeline

Margaret reports from her time at the trial of 12 environmentalists in Virginia who fought against a fracked gas pipeline through Appalachia.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about
things falling apart and the people trying to put them
back together again. I am today's guest host, Margaret Kiljoy.
Today is one of those episodes about people, well trying
to put it back together again, or I guess really
an episode about people trying to stop them from making

(00:28):
things fall apart, because today I'm going to talk a
little bit about the fight against the Mountain Valley Natural
Gas pipeline. Last Tuesday, February twenty fifth, twenty twenty five,
the last criminal trials from the campaign to stop the
Mountain Valley pipeline were held in Parisburg, Virginia. As you
might have guessed based on the fact that you've never

(00:51):
heard of Parisburg, Virginia, it's a tiny town nestled in
the Appalachian Mountains. It's also the county seat of Giles County, Virginia,
and it the town is home to almost three thousand people.
It's in the southwest of the state, right up against
West Virginia. Culture and geography, of course, both reject things

(01:11):
like state lines, though governments are obsessed with them. For
ten years, the people of Central Appalachia on both sides
of the imaginary line fought against this destructive pipeline. Their
campaign tied nonviolent direct action with lawsuits and public pressure campaigns,
and they very nearly won. It took backdoor dealings at

(01:32):
the highest level of power to force the pipeline's construction,
with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin holding twenty twenty three's
Inflation Reduction Act hostage until President Biden personally guaranteed that
the pipeline would be constructed, overriding all of the courts, activists,
and locals who blocked it along the way. Essentially, the

(01:53):
ostensible Democrat Joe Manchin said, fine, I'll vote for your
climate bill, but only if you fuck over the state
that I represent. The pipeline, owned by Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC,
was supposed to be built in a year. Thanks to
the campaign against it, it took six and a half
years to build. It was intended to cost the company

(02:16):
three billion dollars. It costs them more than twice that,
which is not bad for a scrappy movement of mountain people, hippies,
and punks. It's not bad for a bunch of grandma's
and college kids. I'll be covering the full campaign in
more details soon on cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
This podcast is instead about the trials. Twelve defendants went

(02:38):
before the court that day, eleven of them facing felonies
and serious prison time. In the end, none of them
were sentenced to time behind bars. I am happy to
say a friend of mine invited me down to cover
the trials. Twelve defendants, all in the same day, all
in the same courtroom, with the same judge. I said, yes,
West Virginia is a bigger state than its own map

(03:00):
would indicate because there aren't freeways that run through it,
so it takes a very long time to get anywhere.
So I packed up my van and headed down on
Monday night. That night, sleeping in my van, I had
a stress dream about court, where I'd forgotten to take
off my knife before going through the metal detectors and
spent a very long time talking to various cops about

(03:22):
who I was and why I was there, before being
stuck outside the courthouse and a large crowd of protesters
surrounded by a large crowd of cops. In that dream,
someone who wasn't on either side stood up to give
a speech but too near an open flame in his
clothes caught fire. Us anarchists again, I'm talking about my
dream here. Aus anarchist rushed to help him while the

(03:43):
cops stared on with blank Stairs. We beat out the
flames and held his burned body while the cops stared
on with blank Stairs. We screamed for someone to call
an ambulance while the cops stared on with blank Stairs.
I like when my dreams lend themselves to obvious symbolism
in this moment, where the apparatus of the state is

(04:03):
content to let all of us burn, whether in the
fires of fascism or the fires of climate change. But
I woke up disturbed nonetheless, with the sun barely over
the horizon. I ate a quick breakfast, and I drove
the rest of the way up to the actual courthouse
and the actual trial. Fortunately, at the actual thing, no
one caught fire. I parked on a nearby street and

(04:26):
made my way to the courthouse. It didn't accidentally bring
a pocket knife, which is easy for me to do
since I usually have three on me because I am
a totally normal human. I did, though, bring an audio recorder,
which was equally forbidden in the courtroom. I went through
the metal detector and surrendered my little bag with the
Zoom recorder. Later, press came into the room and I

(04:47):
tried to get my recorder back, but I was told
that's real media. Without a press badge, I don't look
much like someone who works for iHeart. I settled into
a seat and waited for the proceedings. ECO defendants and
ECO defenders both poured into the tiny, dingy courtroom. The
ceiling had holes in it, the drywall was sagging. Appalachia

(05:10):
isn't extracted from region. A place from which wealth is gathered,
not a place where wealth goes. We were reminded repeatedly
that the fire code limited occupancy of the roomed eighty
nine people, and it sure seemed like they brought in
as many cops as they could to limit our numbers.
Many more supporters waited outside. Most of what I did

(05:30):
that day was weight in the courtroom, because most of
the courtroom drama was happening behind closed doors as the prosecutor,
the judge, and the aid or so defense attorneys all
argued and fought over the details of plea deals. Most
of these characters judge, prosecutor, and lawyers were quite familiar
to the people working with the movement. This was the

(05:51):
last trial of many throughout the ten year campaign, which
has relied heavily on nonviolent direct action since twenty eighteen.
The prosecut in particular, a guy named Bobby Lilly, was
a well known figure. Usually when people say things like
the prosecutor was a clown, they're speaking figuratively. But Bobby Lilly,

(06:12):
the prosecutor is a balloon artist in his free time,
and his Facebook is full of photos of all of
his balloon creations. The rumor is that he clowned his
way through law school, all right. Which, look, if I
wasn't predisposed to not like this man because he was
arguing for the imprisonment of people trying to save all
life on earth, I would kind of think that's cool.

(06:33):
But it does mean that there was a clown prosecution.
And some people who were there to support the defendants
wore balloon animal hats to mock Bobby Lily, though they
were forced to leave those hats outside as no hats
of any kind were allowed in the courtroom. Coming in
that morning, we expected most of the defendants to take
non cooperating plea deals. They'd already agreed to. Non cooperating

(06:57):
plea deals are deals in which the defendant refuses to
cooperate with the state's investigation of other protesters. Basically, this
means these are non snitching deals a few of the defendants,
though we're ready to take their cases to trial, I've
decided to largely not use people's names in this reporting.
Those names are a matter of public record, of course,

(07:18):
but we are entering unprecedented times, and I don't see
any particular advantage in making their names more public than
they already are. But do you know what I do
want to make public the sweet sweet deals offered by
our advertisers. I love making those public. Here they are,

(07:46):
and we're back. The charges against the defendants seem politically motivated.
This isn't to say the defendants might not have walked
onto pipeline work sites and disrupted activity there. There was
certainly a coordinated campaign to do just that, but the
charges against them were artificially inflated. I was talking to
a supporter during one of the many long interludes in

(08:08):
the proceedings who explained to me that nearly everyone on
trial that day, and a large percentage of all defendants
throughout the course of the campaign were charged with felony
misuse of a motor vehicle aka joy riding. To be clear,
no one has been accused of hijacking construction equipment and
riding it around. It's just one of the many charges

(08:31):
levied at protesters in order to get their bail denied
or inflated to tie everyone up in legal proceedings for
longer and intimidate people into pleting guilty to lesser charges.
These are similar to the kidnapping charges that a lot
of protesters got as well, despite that, well, no one
was kidnapped during the course of the campaign, except of course,

(08:53):
by the state. Another supporter explained to me, inflated charges
has been part of the Mountain Valley Pipeline's legal strategy
all along. The same as protesters look to tie the
pipeline company up in court and delay construction, MVP's strategy
seems to have been to drag out court cases and
keep as many individual force defenders caught up in legal

(09:15):
jeopardy as possible. Of course, they shouldn't actually have the
means to change people's charges, But if the fight against
MVP has taught us anything, it's that the state caves
to business interests every time. Most defendants from the course
of the campaign have taken pleas that include suspended sentences

(09:36):
so that they never do jail time as long as
they promise to never try to save the world from
fossil fuel infrastructure. It seems like MVP wants each person
who catches charges to be out of the fight, but
fortunately Frontline's work is only a portion of the work
involved in defending the earth. When someone told me that
this was MVP's strategy to catch everyone up on charges,

(10:00):
I wasn't really skeptical because it made sense, but I
still had that confirmed for me in the courtroom. You see,
a few lawyers or other legal representatives of MVP were
present in the courtroom that day, standing at the back
of the room, seemingly eves dropping on the courtroom chatter.
Word on the street was that part of their goal

(10:20):
was to gather information for the ongoing civil litigation happening
against environmentalists. But eves dropping goes both ways, and one
supporter I talked to overheard them talking to each other
about how they wish they could drag these cases out
even longer. Once court began, defendants went up one by
one before the judge, most entered pleas of not guilty

(10:43):
with stipulation. This is, in essence, a way to accept
a plea agreement without actually accepting guilt. So each person
went up pleaded not guilty with stipulation, and then was
found guilty by the judge on their lesser charges. The
process took three to six minutes per defendant attract it.
The defendants were there for arrests stemming from actions that

(11:06):
happened between October twenty twenty three and March twenty twenty four,
from three different actions, all on nearby Peters Mountain, a
mountain which sits on the horizon of Parrisburg, Virginia, and
which defies the border between Virginia and West Virginia. Most
of the action from the campaign happened on either Peter's
Mountain or another mountain in another county, Poor Mountain. One

(11:31):
action in October twenty twenty three, like I said, court
has been dragged out for a very long time, was
an action in which one person locked themselves to an
excavator while others were there in support. The supporters of
the action were facing felonies too, some of them A
while back were re arrested at their own arraignments, given
additional charges, and put into jail for days. It's not

(11:54):
hard to imagine why the defendants were nervous in the
courtroom that day, even though most of them had already
seen sorted out their plea agreements ahead of time. The
state is fickle, condescending, and unpredictable. One of the defendants
that I talked to told me about their own case.
The evidence supporting the charges against pretty much everyone was weak,

(12:14):
but the evidence supporting the charges against this particular person
were particularly weak. The state kept offering this person plea
deals before anyone else. Will you be offering the same
deal to my co defendants, the defendant kept asking. The
state kept saying no, so the defendant kept refusing the deal.
That defendant came to court fully expecting to stand trial

(12:38):
rather than take a better deal than what their co
defendants were getting. The big story of the day actually
revolves around that particular point. At least one of the
defendants who came prepared to stand trial last Tuesday wound
up being offered much more generous plea agreements at the
last minute because the state knew its case against them
was flimsy. Those who accepted non cooperating plea deals were

(13:00):
hit with suspended sentences, community service, and restitution. The details
differed from case to case, but in general, people were
given a year in prison hanging over their heads if
they're caught breaking the law in the next year, and
have to spend between fifty and one hundred hours doing
manual labor for Giles County, Virginia. I've been told this
can range from something benign like painting murals to something

(13:23):
intentionally humiliating, like cleaning the toilets at the police station.
The single biggest issue of contention was restitution. The defendants
are being ordered to pay for the overtime costs associated
with arresting them. One defendant, who was I believe arrested
at a mom's against the pipeline's action, a woman who
simply wants her children to grow up in a world

(13:45):
with a habitable ecosystem, was in court last Tuesday to
contest their restitution payments. This is, as I understand it,
the only issue that was not fully resolved that day.
The case the defense made was one that I found convincing,
though of course I bias in that direction. Essentially, The
defense's case was that people are not legally on the

(14:06):
hook for the investigation of their own crime, that it
would set a very dangerous precedent to have people have
to pay for the cops's time to arrest them. The
prosecutor's argument was, and I rudely paraphrase here, yeah, but
fuck these people in particular, that because there was a
campaign against the MVP, their crimes ought to be treated differently,

(14:28):
in the same standard of the rule of law should
not apply to them. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but that really
was the takeaway that I seem to get. The judge
said he would need to consider the case law on
the matter and would not rule on it that day.
But you know what he would have ruled on if
he was the judge of this podcast. He would have
ruled that it is time for advertising and we're back.

(15:02):
The only case that actually went to trial, as I
understand it, was for the only misdemeanor case of the day,
a protester who was accused and convicted later at the
end of the trial of spending a couple days living
inside a length of pipe to prevent it from being
buried in the earth. The full incompetence of the police
was on display from the state trooper who didn't know

(15:23):
what the word diameter meant when asked to describe the
pipeline in question, to the police, who admitted that they
didn't actually bother watching the entrance to the pipe, so
they didn't actually see the protester. When they emerged from
the pipe. In court, the cop said the protester came
up to them to turn themselves in and said, quote, well,
you're lucky, I'm honest. A large part of the defense's

(15:45):
case was that the defendant had been denied the right
to a speedy trial, which seems true to me. Misdemeanors
in particular supposed to move through the court system quickly,
not drag on for a year, because again it seems
quite likely that MVP has been working and from the
start to drag on court cases as long as possible.
All the while the trial went on, supporters outside had

(16:07):
a table set up in the parking lot with homemade food,
a staple of this movement. As far as I can tell,
the connections between the front lines and their supporters built
a very strong movement. Indeed, after the trial, an older
local man gave a heartfelt thank you to everyone who
had put their bodies on the line to protect the
mountains he loves, and I went around and talked to people,

(16:28):
feeling a bit odd to be there as a stranger
to the movement and as a journalist. Blocking pipeline construction
through nonviolent direct action is simple and principle, but complicated
in the details. The core of it is that you
leverage your own safety in order to prevent construction crews
from working. Since your own safety is what you're gambling with,

(16:49):
it's well not safe the ideas you put your own
body on the line. In nineteen ninety eight, for example,
an Earth First activist named David died when a lagger
dropped a tree on him and killed him, and despite
ample evidence that the lagger in question had been aware
of the protesters and had been threatening them, no charges

(17:11):
were pressed against him. In two thousand and three, an
American anarchist piece worker named Rachel Corey was killed in
the Gaza Strip when she stood in front of an
Israeli bulldozer trying to stop the bulldozer from demolishing a
Palestinian home. Even when you aren't murdered for doing it,
the work itself is dangerous too. Shortly before I joined

(17:32):
my first forest defense campaign in the Pacific Northwest, an
activist named Whorhound had just fallen to her death from
a tree sit and her absence was a tangible presence
in every meeting and every forest defense camp for years after.
So I don't feel like I'm speaking hyperbolically when I
say that in that courtroom were some of the bravest
people I've ever met, who risked their lives to stop

(17:54):
a clear and present threat against it. And again, I
genuinely believe this is not hyperbolic to say clear and
present thread against all life on Earth. Climate change could
very easily destroy every ecosystem on the planet. This fight
is bigger than Appalachia. These forest defenders at this last
trial knew that they would likely face felonies where they arrested,

(18:17):
and they knew that people have died doing this work
before them. And I don't want to speak to everyone
involves gender identity, but it seems likely that some of
them were trans as well, and thus risking spending prison
time in the wrong prisons, which is a particularly dangerous
position to be in. I don't say this to try
to scare people out of joining movements like this. I

(18:37):
can name people who have died in nonviolent direct action campaigns,
and occasionally people have served real jail time. But I've
met thousands and thousands more who have saved wild places,
who have built lifelong friendships, and who have proven to
themselves that they are who they hoped they would be.
I want to end this by reading two statements. One

(18:59):
was written by one of the defendants and was posted
onto the Ablachians Against Pipeline's Facebook page on March third.
You can read the full statement over there if you'd
like quote. Today we proved that co defendant solidarity works.
We were able to see how different strategies against a
stacked system play out. It is in the court's best

(19:20):
interest for us to take a deal out of fear
of trial, but today we showed that they are just
as afraid of an uncertain outcome, and we can use
that to our advantage when we work together. The people
who went to trial or pushed it to the brink
got objectively better outcomes than those who took deals ahead
of time, and those who took deals often had to
struggle with changing conditions at trial, but still felt obligated

(19:43):
to comply. I and another defendant held out, in part
out of principle for people who had not been offered deals,
and in part to say fuck you Bobby Lilly, our prosecutor,
who is a literal clown. My co defendant and I
went to bat for another who was not offered a
deal at first. My co defendant was offered a deal,
rather nice one at that, but my friends said no.

(20:06):
The clown blinked. My friend basically went to trial. Technically
they took a deal, but they basically started a trial.
Prosecution made a motion to amend charges, but abruptly the
clown and his cop body left. They ran they had
no evidence. Another deal, which was even better, was offered,
and this time I got one too. For me, it

(20:27):
was good and an agreement. We took our deals. The
one other person was offered an okay deal, but opted
to go to trial with eyes open at the courts
in competence and crushed it. Little Bobby Lilly looked even
more like a clown. Every deal that was offered only
got better, especially on the day of the trial. You
don't have to accept the first deal, or the second,

(20:48):
or the third, or the fourth, and when they try
to pit us against each other, it is because they
know we are stronger together. Initially we were charged with conspiracy.
The real conspiracy is between prosecutors and the judges, between
the cops and the corporations. It is the conspiracy between
your landlord and your boss to keep you exhausted and hungry,

(21:09):
unable to fight back. It is the dictatorship of the
billionaires to keep us bound to their world where they
make and break their own rules. This is bigger than
a forty two inch wide, three hundred and three mile long,
ticking time bomb running to Appalachia. It is the fact
that our lives are bought and sold by the large
land owning class who are able to ram this project

(21:31):
through under Joe Biden, despite the harm it'll cause, because
it will make them money as the world burns. Then
here's another statement from the person who sat inside the pipe,
and the statement is from last year. Quote. Winning looks
so much bigger than just stopping this pipeline. It's a
win through the community folks continue to build. It is

(21:53):
a win because of the insane amount of skills that
people have gathered and shared. It's a win because whether
or not this pipeline ever has gas running through it.
The legacy of resistance in Appalachia still lives. Extractive industry
knows that they can't fuck with the communities here without
going through hell, and we better not let them forget that.

(22:15):
Many times in my life I have felt consumed by grief.
Grief for all the places this pipeline has destroyed, for
communities who continue to be ravaged by the state and industry,
for the senseless violence committed against people and land every day,
for friends and strangers forced into cages. But what keeps
me moving is knowing that I feel such grief only

(22:36):
because I have such deep hope and love for what
could be and what we have the power to create.
Find or facilitate radical community wherever you call home, Think
about the things you are willing to sacrifice for people
near and far. Dream of worlds that feel out of reach,
because I bet they aren't as far away as it
may seem. That's the end of the quote. And so yeah,

(23:00):
though the criminal trials are over, the civil legal fight
rages on. MVP is attempting to wield civil courts to
silence its opposition. And if you want to help support
that fight, which continues. You can donate to Appalachian Legal
Defense Fund, which you can find probably by just searching
for it, but you can also find it by going
to bit dot l y slash app Legal Defense all

(23:26):
one word, no dashes. Anyway, that's it for the episode.
I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
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