Justice Half Served

*This was originally published in The Ithacan on March 25, 2015

Dwain Wilder, Colleen Boland, Sandra Steingraber, Roland Micklem, Susan Mead, Judy Leaf, Jimmy Betts, John Dennis, Michael Clark and Kelsey Erickson. They all have at least two things in common. 1) They are outstanding and involved citizens in both their regional and global communities. 2) They went to jail for their efforts to protect Seneca Lake and expose the problems with Texas-based company Crestwood Midstream’s plan to store highly-pressurized gas in crumbling salt caverns.

Outstanding, involved, passionate and concerned citizens, going to jail. For a violation trespass — not a criminal trespass. They went to jail over something equivalent to a parking ticket.

...Then they fight, and then we win

*Originally published in The Ithacan on December 23rd, 2014

My lungs burned from climbing up the quarter mile of stairs, and the cold December air I inhaled soothed them momentarily, but then intensified the fire as I exhaled.

I smiled as I came around the corner of the gorge wall, the distant rumbling I had been hearing erupted into a gushing roar as Lucifer Falls came into sight. With a sigh I leaned against the icy wall of the trail, which wound along the cliff faces like Ithaca’s version of the Great Wall of China. The spray of Lucifer Falls that landed on the gorge walls froze in brilliant swirling ice sculptures, fashioned by the hand of nature herself. Thousands of feet below me, the water crashed into a lovely aquamarine pool, a chilly mist rising off the surface.

I took another deep breath, enjoying the sting of the frigid air. If things had gone as I planned this week, I’d be in jail right now, not enjoying a hike in Robert Treman State Park. The longer We Are Seneca Lake’s campaign to stop Crestwood Midstream’s ill-fated project to store methane along the lake’s western shore drags into the winter, the stranger our court proceedings get. Just two weeks ago, if I had gone before the judge, I’d surely be in the slammer.

Learning the Jails

I've never had much experience with jails. I was briefly introduced to a holding cell in Washington D.C.'s Anacostia police station in March of this year after refusing to move from the White House sidewalk while protesting the KXL Pipeline. I stood in there for ten minutes with five other female college students before I was processed and released.

However, I now find myself quickly becoming familiarized with the procedures and expectations of Schuyler, Chemung, and Yates County Jails as the We Are Seneca Lake civil disobedience campaign continues into December.

Suggested Reading: Featuring Rebecca DeSol

Suggested Reading

It is my pleasure to introduce Viridorari’s first guest writer, my eleventh grade English teacher, Rebecca DeSol! Mrs. DeSol is an inspirational and insightful human being with an unprecedented amount of devotion to her students. When I leave high school and head off into the world, I will remember her for her caring soul and our shared enjoyment for deep, philosophical conversation. She is one of the best high school teachers there is, and I can’t think of anyone better to kick off Viridorari’s “Suggested Reading” section. Today, she will be sharing Feed with you, a futuristic fiction novel by M.T. Anderson she teaches her students. While the focus of this book is the influence of technology on society, it also provides a horrifying view of what our future planet could be like if we keep traveling on our path of environmental destruction. First, I’ll get you started with some information about Mrs. DeSol, and then I’ll let her sweep you away with her prolific and thought-provoking writing. 

    Mrs. DeSol teaches at Pal-Mac High School, and she wishes she had the time and energy to ride her bike to work, she would like to see renewable energy made more available, and she needs to save her money for a house with a bigger backyard so she can grow more vegetables to eat and share with friends in the summer.  In the meantime, she composts when she can (trudging through a foot of snow makes a garbage can appealing sometimes), avoids eating meat, and believes her students will not only find the answers they seek, but act upon their questions, continuing to change our world for the better.