I had not heard of Tim DeChristopher, a brave young man who, in the dying days of the Bush administration in 2008, attended an oil and gas auction in Utah in 2008 and disrupted it by submitting winning bids on various tracts of land, with no intention of paying for them. Despite the fact that the auction was later determined to be largely illegal, DeChristopher was charged with disrupting an auction and sentenced to
two years in prison this past July.
An indication of how threatened the 'powers that be' felt by DeChristopher's actions can be inferred from this
excerpt from the prosecution's sentencing report:
The rule of law is the bedrock of our civilized society, not acts of “civil disobedience” committed in the name of the cause of the day. A significant term of imprisonment will underscore this truth for the defendant and the community.
In other words, the system protecting the forces of greed and environmental depredation felt the need to send a strong warning to discourage others from trying to alter a status quo that seems impervious to conventional avenues of remediation.
In a time when there seems to be a growing recognition of the need for civil disobedience, this young man's story is a very important one. You can read about him and see a number of short interviews with him
here.
