A jury in a civil trial in North Dakota returned a chilling verdict last week in a suit against the environmental organization Greenpeace. Greenpeace was ordered to pay $660 million to pipeline corporation Energy Transfer—because Greenpeace supported the very powerful protests against Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock Indian Reservation. The verdict if actually carried out would bankrupt Greenpeace U.S. The verdict is a further leap towards the criminalization of oppositional speech and protest actions in the U.S. 

Marty Garbus, an attorney who monitored the trial and who has represented well-known resisters and voices of conscience Nelson Mandela, Daniel Ellsberg, Cesar Chavez, and Vaclav Havel, said, “In my six decades of legal practice, I have never witnessed a trial as unfair as the one against Greenpeace that just ended in the courts of North Dakota. This is one of the most important cases in American history. The law that can come down in this case can affect any demonstration, religious or political. It's far bigger than the environmental movement. Yet the court in North Dakota abdicated its sacred duty to conduct a fair and public trial and instead let Energy Transfer run roughshod over the rule of law.”

Greenpeace is a world-renowned environmental organization. They use what they call “non-violent creative confrontation” to fight for environmental causes. Since 1971, they have mounted campaigns against nuclear testing, whale hunting, and the destruction of forests. In 2016 and 2017, they responded to calls from Native people to participate in protests at Standing Rock.

In 2016 and 2017, the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline drew tens of thousands to the remote Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. The pipeline, with 500,000 barrels of oil a day flowing through it, would accelerate global warming and directly threaten the land, water and sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux people. Greenpeace assisted the protests, but they were not the main organizers.

Although the Dakota Access Pipeline eventually was forced through after Trump became president the first time, the powerful protests delayed it and this cost Energy Transfer some money. But while they sued for damages, the aims of Energy Transfer were not mainly financial but part of a fascist political agenda. Al Jazeera reported: “Energy Transfer’s billionaire CEO Kelcy Warren, a major Trump donor, was often candid about his motivations.

“His ‘primary objective’ in suing Greenpeace, he said in interviews, was not just financial compensation but to ‘send a message’.

“Warren went so far as to say that activists ‘should be removed from the gene pool.’” In other words, killed.

A Travesty of Justice from Beginning to End

The trial was a travesty of justice from beginning to end. Among the egregious violations of basic rights and justice in this case:

- Energy Transfer is one of the 100 largest companies in the U.S. It owns 120,000 miles of pipeline, enabling a fossil fuel economy that is destroying the planet with climate change. This company was laying pipelines on land that was stolen from the Sioux and other Native peoples, destroying the water, the earth, and their sacred sites. In any decent system of justice, their suit against Greenpeace for daring to stand in their way would have been thrown out of court. 

- The trial took place in Morton County, North Dakota, where most people work in the fossil fuel industry or have close ties with people who do. The state Supreme Court turned down Greenpeace’s request to hold the trial in a different county. The request included results from a 2022 survey of 150 potential jurors which found 97 percent of residents said they could not be a fair or impartial juror in the lawsuit. 

- The judge allowed people onto the jury despite ties to the fossil fuel industry. A group of legal monitors observing the trial reported: “Most jurors in the case have ties to the oil and gas industry and some openly admitted they could not be impartial, although the judge seated them anyway.”

- The proceedings were held largely out of public view. Trials in North Dakota are generally live-streamed, but the judge, at the request of Energy Transfer, cut this off. In addition, thousands of documents were sealed and are not available to the public. This is why a group of prominent attorneys and others traveled to North Dakota to monitor the trial and report what happened.

- Attorneys for Energy Transfer claimed Greenpeace directed a “criminal conspiracy.” The truth is that Greenpeace assisted the Standing Rock protests in some very positive ways (like providing nonviolence training), but the protests were organized by Native Americans and gathered over 200 Native American tribes in support, and many thousands of supporters came from all corners of society.

- The suit claimed that the protests were “violent.” The reality is that there was a lot of violence—directed overwhelmingly by the local police and the private security goons the company hired against the protesters. Vicious repression was brought down against the protests, including pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, sound cannons. Protesters were sprayed with water cannons in subfreezing temperatures. Many protesters were seriously injured. 

The legal implications of this very dangerous verdict is, as Greenpeace has pointed out, a threat to anyone who participates in any protest, whether they organize it or not or whether they even agree with all of the aims and actions of the leaders of the protest. It is aimed at Native Americans, at climate and environmental protests, and at any protest that goes against the perceived interests and objectives of the fascists now running America. 

Greenpeace is appealing the verdict. Their legal efforts should be supported. At the same time, and even more important, we must powerfully resist the whole fascist regime. as Bob Avakian says in his important message, “Trump’s fascist rule, like Hitler’s before him, is a regime of horrors—and completely illegitimate”:

Before Trump’s fascist rule can become fully consolidated and carry out even far worse horrors than what it is already perpetrating, it must be defeated through powerful mass mobilization—overcoming all “divide and conquer” schemes, uniting all who can be united, from many different viewpoints and perspectives, in actively opposing, defying and resisting this fascism, in continually growing numbers—moving to quickly involve millions, determined to create such a profound political crisis that Trump cannot govern the country and continue to implement his fascist program, with all its terrible consequences.