Environment & Energy
Related: About this forum‘Bidder 70’: Wily Tree Hugger Does Time for Disrupting Eco Crime
In 2008, the soon-departing Bush administration placed the oil and gas rights to 116 parcels of pristine public land in Utahs wilderness up for auction. Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher attended the auction and, wielding auction paddle number 70, bid nearly $2 million for drilling rights to 22,500 acres. DeChristopher had no intention of paying for his purchases. His bids were a classic act of civil disobedience.
During DeChristophers subsequent trial on two felony counts of interfering and making false representations, supporters of the environmental activist viewed what they saw as a grotesque misuse of the legal system, culminating in DeChristophers 2011 conviction and two-year prison sentence, and lamented: This story isnt being told!
Filmmaker George Gage, with his wife Beth, aims to remedy that lapse in the new documentary Bidder 70, which opened theatrically in New York recently and will play across the country in the coming weeks.
The real story certainly wasnt told in the trial, George tells TakePart.
The Gages initially conceived of Bidder 70 as a short profile of DeChristopher. The former wilderness guide was a wily, outside-the-box thinker with a knack for outsmarting the entrenched power of a too intertwined government and private sectoran excellent subject for a 20-minute exploration.
However, once the Obama administration pursued a case against their charismatic subject, the Gages saw the profile piece grow into a feature.
At the beginning of filming, in January 2009, the couple never could have predicted the rollercoaster trajectory of DeChristophers trial, postponed nine times over the course of two years, a span of time in which the very auction DeChristopher had disrupted was deemed by the government to be illegal.
. . .
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05/20/bidder-70-tim-dechristopher-disrupts-eco-crime
pscot
(21,024 posts)and they have the courts in their pocket. I wonder how they'll like the other kind.
badtoworse
(5,957 posts)Nihil
(13,508 posts)> DeChristophers trial, postponed nine times over the course of two years,
> a span of time in which the very auction DeChristopher had disrupted was
> deemed by the government to be illegal.
Do NOT question the state citizen or there WILL be consequences!