Disobedient demonstrators arrested in a climate-change protest at the White House on Saturday were held in what one Vermont detainee called “deliberately harsh” conditions before being released without penalties on Monday afternoon.
Christopher Shaw, a 62-year-old Bristol resident, writer and Middlebury College lecturer, suggests that federal and District of Columbia police were trying to discourage activists from moving ahead with daily arrests planned for the next two weeks.
If that's so, the authorities' strategy is not proving successful. A total of 93 demonstrators were arrested at the White House on Sunday and Monday in addition to the 65 locked up on Saturday. Organizers of the effort to persuade President Obama to block a Canada-Texas oil pipeline say about 1500 people have pledged to join the civil-disobedience campaign scheduled to continue through September 3. A contingent of Vermonters plans to travel by bus from Burlington to Washington on August 28.
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