Josh Graupera
Template:TOCnestleft Josh Graupera
2008 actions
In 2008, according to Lancaster Students for a Democratic Society members Amber Nitchman and Josh Graupera:
- Lancaster SDS has been focusing on anti-war and environmental work. We joined with the Lancaster Coalition for Peace and Justice and the Lancaster Interchurch Peace Witness to form Lancaster Supports the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Together we held a series of fund raisers for IVAW that helped raise awareness about and support for IVAW: a concert, a Booze Not Bombs festival, and a film festival featuring Turtles Can Fly, The Ground Truth, Why We Fight, and Sir! No Sir!. We raised almost $5,000 for IVAW. Some of that it was saved for the Lancaster chapter of IVAW, still in formation.
- Lancaster SDS also helped organize the rally for the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq War in downtown Lancaster. The night before the rally, Jana El-Horr, a Fulbright Scholar and member of the American Islamic Congress, spoke about her work the Congress and her experience as a Muslim woman in America. Over 700 people attended the rally, town hall meeting, and candlelight vigil the next day.[1]
Marfork Five
College senior Isabelle Rozendaal and four others were arrested last January for protesting mountaintop removal mining at Coal River Mountain in Marfork, West Virginia. Though criminal charges against them have been dropped, the “Marfork Five” still face a civil suit that may require them to pay up to $75,000 in damages to Marfork Coal Co., a subsidiary of Massey Energy Co. According to legal support for the Five, Massey’s tactics in the case could also be a foreshadowing of a domestic terrorism suit.
Mountaintop removal mining is a process in which the peaks of mountain ridges are blasted off to access the coal seams beneath. Though mining companies often claim that increased safety and cost-effectiveness make mountaintop removal a preferable alternative to underground mining, the hundreds or thousands of acres left barren by each of the hundreds of sites have inspired enormous controversy since the practice began in 1970.
The less visible human costs can be just as bad, Rozendaal said. People living near mine sites, for example, have to tolerate pollutants for many years, which is devastating for their health.
After years of unsuccessfully fighting mountaintop removal through what they see as a corrupt legal system, however, activists are turning to more desperate measures, Rozendaal said. She became personally involved with anti-mountaintop removal action at the invitation of West Virginia natives who have begun using direct action as a last resort, she said.
“By the end of the day,” Rozendaal said, “mountains are still being destroyed, and one way to stop that is by standing in front of a bulldozer.”
On Jan. 21, 2010, the Marfork Five snuck onto the grounds of the Bee Tree mountaintop removal site at Marfork, WV, to stop the construction of an access road between the mine and the Brushy Fork Slurry Impoundment, a several billion-gallon lake of coal sludge. The Five managed to delay progress for nine days by setting up and occupying three 60-foot-high platforms in trees directly in the path of the proposed road.
Rozendaal and one other protester, who were acting as ground support, were immediately arrested, and the three tree-sitters were taken into custody when they descended from their perches. A temporary restraining order was issued before they even came down, barring them any future access to property owned by Marfork Coal, which owns Bee Tree.
In February, the case went to the United States District Court of Southern West Virginia, where Judge Irene Berger filed a permanent restraining order against the protesters. This injunction barred them entrance to any Massey-owned property in Southern West Virginia, an area covering 24 counties and half of the state.
If the Five are found guilty of these charges at their June 15 trial, they will owe Marfork Coal between $66,000 and $75,000 in damages. This is the largest penalty any protester has yet faced in the direct action campaign begun two years ago by Climate Ground Zero, the anti-mountaintop removal group that organized the Marfork tree-sit.
In a recent deposition, Marfork lawyers demanded that tree-sitter Amber Nitchman identify all people directly or indirectly involved in this and past protests, said Rozendaal.
Sidney suspects that Massey may be trying to amass a database of information to portray anti-coal activists as domestic terrorists. Its tactics in the Marfork case are identical to those in three other lawsuits brought against CGZ by three separate Massey subsidiaries, with a total of 29 CGZ activists on defense.
Under a West Virginia law acts of terrorism are described as acts that are “likely to result in serious bodily injury or damage to property or the environment” or influence the conduct or policy of government by “intimidation or coercion.”
Following a February 2010 occupation of a Massey office in Marfork, former CEO Don Blankenship condemned the actions of Ground Zero activists.
Fearing the consequences for those she might identify, Nitchman refused to answer Massey’s questions, pleading her Fifth Amendment rights. Judge Berger, however, issued a subpoena forcing her and the rest of the Five to talk. They have issued a response which has delayed further depositions, however, and they hope it will allow them to permanently refuse what they see as unconstitutional questioning.[2]
The Marfork Five were David Aaron Smith, Amber Nitchman, Eric Blevins, Joshua Francisco Graupera and Isabelle Rozendaa.[3]