Smokestack Six Member Sentenced  to 30 Days By Josh  Raisler Cohn Co-defendants receive five days

Pennsylvania power station

Activist at work Josh Raisler Cohn

Today I was sentenced to serve 30 days in the Green County Prison in
southwestern Pennsylvania for an action I was a part of last summer.
My co-defendants all received sentences of 5 days in jail. On June 23^rd,
six of us climbed a 700-foot smokestack at the Hatsfield Ferry Power
Station, one of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the country. We hung
 a 120-foot long banner declaring “The Bush Energy Plan Kills, Clean Energy Now.”
Within 24 hours of touching the ground we had both state and federal charges
-including a charge amended under the PATRIOT ACT-- which all added up
to about 90 years in prison.
 
Over the past few months we had some of the state felonies thrown out, and
the federal charges are dismissed “pending resolution of the state case”.
We were unable to plea bargain down to only misdemeanors, and after
Allegheny Power, who owns the plant where we hung the banner approached
us, we entered into a deal with them. We, as individuals, and Greenpeace
USA agreed to stay off their property for five years in exchange for the
remaining felony being dismissed. Our lawyers were confident that we could
easily be convicted of all charges, including the felony, and, due to
my record, I would serve a lengthy prison sentence if we went to trial. The
decision to agree to this deal was a painful one, made with a heavy heart
on my part, but it is the decision we all came to in the face of an unjust
felony charge and an overzealous prosecutor.

I will likely serve out this imprisonment in the Green County Prison
http://www.county.greenepa.net/secured/gc/depts/lo/comm/gcp/index.html
in Waynesburg PA. Letters can be sent to me at:


Below is my sentencing statement to the court. Know that you are all an inspiration to me.

Cohn’s Sentencing Statement, Greene County Courthouse, Feb. 15, 2005
 
I would like to acknowledge that whatever happens to us here in court
today is slight compared to the impact on citizens of Greene and nearby
counties who live in the shadow of these toxic, poisonous coal power
plants. In 2002, according to energy policy analysts who contracted for
the Bush Administration, the pollution from the Hatsfield Ferry power
plant caused 237 deaths. Along with shortened lives these power plants
also cause asthma, heart disease, cancer and other serious illness.

The impacts do not stop at humans. Every lake, river and stream in the
state of Pennsylvania has a mercury advisory on it, which impacts people
here, as well as everyone downstream. Acid rain contributes to
deforestation from here to the Great Smokey Mountains, and eastward to the
Atlantic. With deforestation comes a loss of habitat for all of the
wildlife and flora that rely on intact ecosystems to survive. But the
dirty coal industry, from mountaintop removal mines to pollution from the
stacks is ripping out the very life support system of the planet.

I believe this is unacceptable.

I believe that we all have a right to clean water and clean air.

I believe that we have the right to live in communities free from toxic
pollution.

I believe that corporations should not be able to profit from poisoning us.

I believe that people should be allowed to determine for themselves the
conditions of their lives.

I believe in political protest and direct action. For me direct action is
an expression of hope and love, a call for us all to move towards a more
just, egalitarian and sustainable world. Growing up I learned about direct
action as a core component of the history of this country, from a
rebellion against unjust taxation to enslaved Africans escaping bondage in
a bid for self-determination, to Black Americans and White Women putting
their bodies on the line for equal rights and fair treatment. Many things
we take for granted were won through direct action. The right to vote was
not given freely to many people in this country. The 8 hour work day and
child labor laws were not gifts from a benevolent boss. These are things
that were fought for and died for by the people, for the people. Direct
action is an American tradition and it deserves to be treated as such.

We all share some level of responsibility for the problems in society.
When we know that people are dying from environmental pollution, if we
don’t do something about it, we are letting it happen. Of course there is
a difference between the people who are deciding not to clean up the
emission from Hatsfield Ferry and people who simply do nothing about it
because they don’t see the effects. But by not acting, we allow the
problems to continue. Complicity is a heavy burden, and in my life that
burden is lightened by acting, breaking a cycle of complicity and silence
by saying “no more.

Any sentence that you impose today will do nothing to change the
conditions that got us in “trouble” with laws and government in the first
place. It will not solve the problems that come from environmental
pollution and human illness caused by Hatsfield Ferry and other plants
like it. It will not solve the economic injustice which allows people with
more money to move out from the shadows of these plants, while leaving poorer
people no option but to continue living in a place where the air is
darkened by toxic clouds. It will not solve the problem that companies
like Allegheny Power turn a profit while jeopardizing our health and well
being.

We live in a country where the profit margin of a company is prioritized
over the health of a family or the purity of a mountain stream. Power
companies pay fines for violating environmental regulations instead of
cleaning up their emissions to increase their profit margins. But, they are
never around to pay when the next bill comes for an inhaler, another
round of chemotherapy, or for a coffin.

Economic indicators, like the GDP, go up every time someone is diagnosed
with cancer, every time the top of a mountain is blown off to gut the coal
from deep below. We as citizens participating in a democratic process for
change are criminalized for boldly and dramatically petitioning the
government for a redress of grievances. We hung a banner. That’s it. We
are criminalized by the judicial process while the Bush Administration
weakened the Clean Air Act so plants like Hatsfield Ferry can continue to
pollute.

One charge we are pleading guilty to is recklessly endangering another
person. We were meticulous in our preparations and during the
demonstration as well. We took great care to make sure that no one would
be hurt, that there would be no interruption of service, and that banner
could not billow out very far. Between 2000 and 2002 Hatsfield Ferry
knowingly, recklessly released over 500,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 70,000
tons of nitrogen oxides, and 1,500 pounds of mercury - a dangerous
neurotoxin. Who is reckless, and who is in danger?

In the 1300s in Ireland, there was an interesting way that people worked
to resolve disputes. If someone felt they were wronged they could go to
the home of the person who they were upset with and sit on that person’s
doorstep and refuse to eat. They would not eat until the person offered
them food, an act which was some acknowledgment of the problem, and an
offer to move forward. I learned this history from the writings of
imprisoned suffragists, who often declared hunger strikes after being
imprisoned for holding banners in front of the white house during WWI in
their efforts to win white women the right to vote. As long as I am
imprisoned, and there is no prosecution of Allegheny power for the deaths,
illness and ecological destruction it has caused, I will not eat.

But I offer to the court, and to Ms. Fox, that you are welcome to join us
in this struggle for justice, and a good first step could be to start
investigating and prosecuting Hatsfield Ferry for its violations of the
law.

Feel free to write Christy at cpardew@soaw.org if you have any questions
or anything you want her to pass on to Josh Raisler Cohn.