4 ms·

Greenpeace must pay millions over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury

21 points by n1b0m 2y ago

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
North Dakota government is corrupt so none of this surprised me.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  I'm not super surprised either, except at the scale of the verdict. $300m for helping people protest the destruction of their land and water isn't something we can accept; as a society, or as individuals. If we allow this to go down like that, shrugging off this scale of corruption as mere business as usual, then we'll (continue to) get exactly what we deserve. Three hundred million dollars - and ETP don't even appear to have had actual evidence of anything Greenpeace did to 'incite criminal behavior'. Just a stacked jury in a cherry-picked court. $300m, for helping a peaceful protest get attention... I think Greenpeace USA have about $20m in assets?
  - TomK32 2y ago
    It's all about sending a message: Civil protest will ruin even the best known and most established organizations. Dire times for all who disagree with the corporate fascism taking over the USA.
quantified 2y ago
Free polite speech has rarely been enough to have meaningful results. In the USA, you can thank the Boston Tea Party, heck the American Revolution, for political change, and lots of civil violence in order to get a 2-day weekend and a more-or-less 40-hour work week. The Tea Partiers that the Koch brothers funded that disrupted orderly speech became Maga and run Biden campaign buses off the road, that's been effective too.
cpncrunch 2y ago
More details about the actual defamation claims here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/19/greenpeace-dakota-access-pipeline-energy-transfer/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/1...
sjmulder 2y ago
[previously posted on a dupe] “The problems included a jury that was patently biased in favor of Energy Transfer, with many members working in the fossil fuel industry; a judge who lacked the requisite experience and legal knowledge to rule properly on the complex First Amendment and other evidentiary issues at the center of the case; and incendiary and prejudicial statements by lawyers for Energy Transfer that tried to criminalize Greenpeace and by extension the entire climate movement by attacking constitutionally-protected advocacy.” “In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace that just ended in the courts of North Dakota. This is one of the most important cases in American history.” https://www.trialmonitors.org/statement-of-independent-trial-monitors-on-verdict-in-greenpeace-trial https://www.trialmonitors.org/statement-of-independent-trial...

21 points by n1b0m 2y ago

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

North Dakota government is corrupt so none of this surprised me.

mandmandam 2y ago
I'm not super surprised either, except at the scale of the verdict. $300m for helping people protest the destruction of their land and water isn't something we can accept; as a society, or as individuals. If we allow this to go down like that, shrugging off this scale of corruption as mere business as usual, then we'll (continue to) get exactly what we deserve. Three hundred million dollars - and ETP don't even appear to have had actual evidence of anything Greenpeace did to 'incite criminal behavior'. Just a stacked jury in a cherry-picked court. $300m, for helping a peaceful protest get attention... I think Greenpeace USA have about $20m in assets?
- TomK32 2y ago
  It's all about sending a message: Civil protest will ruin even the best known and most established organizations. Dire times for all who disagree with the corporate fascism taking over the USA.

quantified 2y ago

Free polite speech has rarely been enough to have meaningful results. In the USA, you can thank the Boston Tea Party, heck the American Revolution, for political change, and lots of civil violence in order to get a 2-day weekend and a more-or-less 40-hour work week. The Tea Partiers that the Koch brothers funded that disrupted orderly speech became Maga and run Biden campaign buses off the road, that's been effective too.

cpncrunch 2y ago

More details about the actual defamation claims here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/19/greenpeace-dakota-access-pipeline-energy-transfer/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/1...

sjmulder 2y ago

[previously posted on a dupe] “The problems included a jury that was patently biased in favor of Energy Transfer, with many members working in the fossil fuel industry; a judge who lacked the requisite experience and legal knowledge to rule properly on the complex First Amendment and other evidentiary issues at the center of the case; and incendiary and prejudicial statements by lawyers for Energy Transfer that tried to criminalize Greenpeace and by extension the entire climate movement by attacking constitutionally-protected advocacy.” “In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace that just ended in the courts of North Dakota. This is one of the most important cases in American history.” https://www.trialmonitors.org/statement-of-independent-trial-monitors-on-verdict-in-greenpeace-trial https://www.trialmonitors.org/statement-of-independent-trial...