Hey, there! Log in / Register
Another 15 arrested at West Roxbury pipeline site as work continues
By adamg on Thu, 11/12/2015 - 10:42am
Two groups of protesters were arrested for blocking work on the West Roxbury pipeline on Washington Street this morning, even as workers continued uninterrupted digging a trench for the pipeline on Grove Street.
Protesters object to putting a high-pressure natural-gas pipeline in a densely populated neighborhood and a gas transfer station across the street from an active quarry.
City councilors Matt O'Malley (West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain) and Michelle Wu (at large) and councilor-elect Annissa Essaibi-George (at large) joined them before the arrests to show their support. O'Malley, possibly the first city official to protest the pipeline, months ago, and Wu left before the first set of arrests; Essaibi-George stayed for both.
Around 8:30 a.m., a group of eight protesters split into two smaller groups and climbed into opposite ends of the Washington Street work zone at Stimson Street. In what has become a routine after several weeks of such protests, workers stopped major work and either stood around or did minor cleanup work as the protesters sang anti-pipeline songs.
After awhile, prisoner transport wagons showed up and police plastic-cuffed the protesters and led them to the vans for transportation to District E-5 to be booked and summoned to court. Not long after, another group of seven protesters move into the center of the work area and the process repeated.
Sergeant tells protesters they will be arrested if they don't leave; they don't:
"We'll be back!" supporters chanted as they were driven away, and as workers around the corner on Grove Street continued their work:
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Without an actual dog in the
Without an actual dog in the fight here, can anyone tell me if these protests are actually accomplishing anything?
Strictly in terms of stopping the work, not really
Work stops for 15-20 minutes, the protesters are arrested and work resumes. And now there's a second work site on Grove Street (where the pipe will make the turn from Washington).
City councillors
Did the city councillors show up in support, against or to observe? Were they also arrested?
There to show support for the protesters
But, no, not arrested. O'Malley (who might have been the first city official to speak out against the pipeline, months ago) and Wu left before the first set of arrests; Essaibi-George stayed for those and the second set. I'll make that clearer in my post.
Resist! Residents wants safety and a clean energy future
What the daily protests signify is that opponents of this gas pipeline will continue their resistance and will not quit even after exhausting of all other means of getting the project shutdown via city government, federal elected officials including congressmen and senators, to state senate president meeting with FERC in D.C. to a lawsuit in the courts.
hope
They seem to think since the pipeline will not go online until 2017 that they have a chance to stop it. i suppose there might be a chance but it seems awfully slim since the federal judge has ruled against them at every turn. Some of the protesters are just against the pipeline and dirty fracked gas.
Just curious. Why are these
Just curious. Why are these protesters arrested and not the wage protesters who blocked the T and traffic last week?
because of the Natural Gas
because of the Natural Gas Industrial complex
2 reasons Yupster
1. The wage protest is more of a 1st amendment issue with people using a public space (well a public space with some restrictions) to organize. The gas co. protest is a direct protest against a specific worksite, at a specific location. It is also a project/issue that the courts already ruled on.
2. Large protests like the wage one was still pretty peaceful, and the intent of the protest was not some sort of civil disobedience like the one in WR is. The WR protestors wanted to be arrested to prove a point.
First Amendment
Applies just as equally to Washington Street in West Roxbury as it does to Huntington Avenue.
There are actually two groups of demonstrators: The people who have gone through training and are willing to be arrested, and a larger group of supporters, who stand on the sidewalk (and obey police requests to get out of the street so they don't wind up in an ambulance to Faulkner after they're hit by a car) holding signs and singing and chanting.
Well...
The wage protestors standing on the T tracks were actually trespassing, and should have been arrested and removed if they refused to get off the tracks. Standing on the tracks was clearly an act of civil disobedience, albeit a peaceful one. Still the peacefulness of their behavior doesn't get them a "get out of jail" card for the trespassing violation. (The other protestors standing on the sidewalk were however fully within their 1st Amendment rights to be there.)
A guess ...
In West Roxbury, the protesters show up and they meet with the commanding BPD officer on scene (and since they hold their protests on a publicly available schedule, BPD knows to have extra officers on hand). The protesters who plan to get arrested (all of whom have gone through non-violence and arrest training) cross over the barriers (basically just these thin plastic things strung between traffic cones), join hands and stand there. The officer tells them that they are now subject to arrest, that if they're still there when the transport wagon shows up, they will be arrested. They acknowledge him, start chanting/singing/waving at sympathetic motorists who beep their horns, then about 15 minutes later, the wagons show up, the CO gives the order, the plastic cuffs come out and the police give the protesters one last chance to leave the construction area, which they, of course, decline and then, one by one, they are gently cuffed, walked over to a wagon, patted down and put inside for the ride up to E-5.
Different police districts may do things differently, but I suspect something similar happened up on Huntington Avenue, only that the protest leaders decided they didn't want to get arrested. So they had their 15 minutes, then dispersed. Had they stayed on the tracks, yes, at some point they would have been arrested.
Because it takes natural gas to make French Fries
and Chicken McNuggets in the fryolator, burgers on the griddle, and run the BK broilolator! Fast food places couldn't afford to pay workers $15/hour if their energy prices keep going up too!
Any ideas on what lenient
Any ideas on what lenient repercussions the criminals face once arrested and taken to jail? 25.00 fine and a pat on the back and sent home? Just curious.
Probably pretty lenient
In the past, they've gone down to E-5 and get issued a summons for a court date, at which, yes, they get a fairly lenient fine, if any, because courts have more critical concerns than a bunch of middle-aged people and the occasional college student protesting something.
30 days in jail is the max penalty for trespassing
With the abortion protests, judges would eventually sentence people to jail, although those protesters would resist arrest also (even passive resistance like laying down and making the cops drag them), this adds 2.5 years max to the potential penalty for judges to use.
Arrested and booked
The first three arrests of Rev Anne Bancroft, Chuck Collins and Rev.Martha Niebanck resulted in being fingerprinted, getting photographed, spending the day in separate cells, and appearing before a judge.
We were charged with criminal disturbing the peace and released without bail. We returned to court where the charge became civil rather criminal. We face a substantially higher fine if we are rearrested in the next 3 months, up to $5,000..
We also have an arrest record that will complicate plane travel and Cori reports.
Let the lawsuits began
Your honor my client is a senior citizen who has lived in West Roxbury her whole life and she was arrested for blocking a hole in the ground. Meanwhile in another part of the city out of town rich kids are allowed to block the E-Line and disrupt service for people trying to get to work or doctor appointments because city leaders are afraid of bad press.
You underestimate them
They're willing to get arrested for a cause. There will be no lawsuits out of West Roxbury.
Not yet. I'm sure there will
Not yet. I'm sure there will be plenty of lawsuits down the road if this pipeline and metering station leak at all. What moron(s) thought this location was a good idea?
Not News
A bunch of trained individuals getting themselves arrested based on a pre-set schedule, regarding a moribund issue, isn't really news. This is more like a press conference that burdens the criminal justice system.
Beg to disagree
This is West Roxbury, where this sort of thing normally doesn't happen.
Yes but the West Roxbury court is actually busy Adam...
But I actually think the court fines these people will pay will actually help anyway since the cost of "booking" them is pretty low.
West Roxbury court in Jamaica Plain, you mean ...
They handle cases from JP, Hyde Park, Roslindale and Mission Hill, in addition to West Roxbury. I don't think West Roxbury can be called a high-crime area - or hotbed of this sort of activism - by any definition.
My comment was in resonse to the CJ system being overburdened
from the above poster, not the actual crime in WR.