From: EcoWatch
04-12-2013
Phil Radford
Greenpeace
activists scale Statoil drilling rig shortly before the company
announces its canceling its drilling plans this year. Photo courtesy of
Greenpeace
Corporations want to work in secret. It’s what they do, and why they have lawyers. In secret, they can spill,
clearcut, burn and otherwise destroy the environment and local
communities while telling the world they’re doing just the opposite.
Shell Oil’s legal team is currently working overtime to keep the
company’s Arctic work secret from advocacy groups like Greenpeace.
It’s a battle that will have implications well beyond the Far North. If
Shell ultimately wins the legal battle with us this month, corporate
secrecy will have the blessing of a federal court—and America’s First
Amendment rights will take a devastating hit.
The thought is chilling.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California is currently
weighing whether Shell has the right to preemptively stop Greenpeace
from protesting Shell’s drilling in the Alaskan Arctic. If the court
ultimately rules in Shell’s favor, nothing would stop other corporations
from taking the same preemptive action against anyone they saw as
likely protesters—from neighborhood groups to Amnesty International. The
worst of these suits would eventually be overturned on appeal, but with
the precedent set by Shell, anyone who wanted to silence protest
outside a convention or a disaster site could do so for the duration of
whatever activity they wanted to keep secret.
Advocacy groups like Greenpeace adamantly oppose this type of
corporate secrecy. We work to bring attention to corporate destruction
so people understand the stakes in fights from the Arctic to the Amazon.
Our ability to go wherever the planet and its people are in danger is
why Greenpeace strikes fear into corporations like Shell, so much so
that they will go to extraordinary lengths to stop us from exposing the work it wants to keep secret.
In February 2012, as Shell prepared to begin what became its
disastrous attempt to drill in the Arctic, the company filed an
injunction against Greenpeace USA. This came the day after activists
associated with Greenpeace New Zealand boarded the Noble Discoverer,
one of Shell’s two Arctic class drill rigs. On March 1, 2012, despite
the fact that no Greenpeace USA activists were involved in the New
Zealand action, a federal judge granted Shell a temporary restraining
order and preliminary injunction prohibiting Greenpeace USA from taking
action against “Shell’s interests,” including any otherwise lawful
activity that might happen within a court-mandated “buffer zone.”
Greenpeace appealed this action, but through the summer 2012 drilling window in which Shell proceeded to “screw up”
(according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar), the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals considered the case. So by simply mobilizing its lawyers,
Shell was able to use the process to keep lawful protest away from the
actions it wanted kept secret. Instead of seeing this as an abuse of the
system, the three-judge panel rejected our appeal the day after Shell
officially abandoned its plans to drill for 2013.
We have asked for an en banc review (in which a full slate
of the circuit judges can hear the case), and we hope the court takes
the full implications of what’s at stake into consideration.
If we have no plans to engage in civil disobedience, why would we
appeal Shell’s preemptive legal maneuver? Why not just proceed with
legal protests and other advocacy work while the case worked its way
through the system? Because allowing a corporation to use its massive
financial and legal resources to tie us up in court while it attempts to
drill in secret would establish a terrible precedent for American
democracy.
Greenpeace fully embraces our First Amendment right to raise our
voices. We oppose any effort to take this right away through
extraordinary legal means. Our power as citizens lies in our ability to
shine a light on actions detrimental to public good. This freedom—this
right— is the only thing that puts people power on any kind of scale
relative to the power of multibillion-dollar corporations like Shell.
Even though it’s enshrined in the Constitution and upheld through
hundreds of court cases, Shell through extraordinary legal means is
trying to take our right to protest away. If they succeed, it will have a
devastating effect on protest rights in the U.S.
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