Editor:

When protesters flooded the lobby of the Holiday Inn in Longmont, where the Bureau of Land Management was holding a public lands leasing auction for oil and gas industry representatives to procure public lands for fracking and drilling for as little as $2 an acre on May 12, Lakewood police protected the auction and allowing it to continue, thereby protecting industry over protester health. It was a surreal moment to watch nonviolent civil disobedience weaponized against free speech as the BLM closed 100 percent of their public access to witness these auctions. We’re in a battle here in the Rocky Mountain West. Hundreds are mobilizing to defend our communities and only one of those groups feels tone-deaf to this citizen of Colorado: The government.

How can hundreds of people turn up in protest of these activities for days in a row, yet these auctions are protected? The Colorado Supreme Court denying communities the right to regulate fracking in their own areas is garbage. The Paris Agreement is garbage. Here and abroad protesters alongside people like myself, an environmental journalist, all recognize that we don’t have the kind of time we may think we have when it comes to facing down what I experience as an onslaught of intrusive activities by oil and gas companies in my state. This is the thing the Break Free from Fossil Fuels protestors and I share.

On May 14, a 13-year-old young woman scaled a fracking build next to Silver Creek Elementary school, on her own accord and with parental consent, with a banner that said, “DEFEND OUR COMMUNITIES.” When police arrived, she stood there fiercely and watched as seven vehicles worth of police arrived to defend industry. Ultimately, the police decided not to pursue action against any of those engaging in active civil disobedience. In both cases, the governmental mechanism arrived not to protect and serve but to protect the industry and serve those interests. What happened here between May 12 and 14 are calls we are all served to listen to. The police stood down in the face of a 13-year-old named Lexi.

We need our government to have as much moral urge to support and protect young people declaring their rights to what happens in the Rocky MountainWest as much as the next person. That starts with keeping fossil fuels in the ground and committing to things like solar energy, not leasing the lands off for fracking and oil drilling, and definitely not attempting to build one the largest fracking installations in the nation next to an elementary school in Thorton.

Desiree Kane

Denver

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