Criminalizing Protest

Now, legitimate protest is under threat once again. Not just overseas, in some far-off dictatorship with cockroach-infested prisons, but here, where the divide is economic and political and increasingly bitter. It's environmentalists who are the new fifth columnists, and new mechanisms are being forged to squash them.

That's from Elizabeth Renzetti's article yesterday. We're no longer environmentalists who recognize the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, we're "anti-petroleum extremists."

This two-minute video explains the importance of being anti-petroleum (h/t Lorne):




Bill C-51will criminalize "activities that undermine the security...economic or financial stability of Canada." They're hoping we'll all stay home, cowering rather than marching.

Climate activist and artist Franke James (that's her work at the right here) wrote a book about her experiences being denied a chance to tour with her work:

It’s very Orwellian to see that I was being censured because of the way that I thought. They were telling me ‘do not talk about climate change.’ That is a really horrible thing for them to be doing; we need to be talking about climate change, it’s not about to disappear. We have to figure out strategies. 

In fact, I think we should be taking about it more than most things until we get a solid and serious plan of action ironed out. Paris is cutting driving in half because they've hit emergency air pollution levels. We need to act BEFORE we get to a state of emergency.

On April 11th, all the premiers will be in Quebec City to discuss climate change and a national energy strategy in order to, according to Couillard, "pave our way to the Paris conference of 2015 with concrete commitments." An Act on Climate March is being planned for the same time and place to show them that we want to keep fossil fuels where they are. It'll be family friendly event that uses people to make a huge thermometer. Let's show them we're not ready to cower.