From March to May of last year, for 57 days, Nutty lived on a tiny cot atop a tall monopod, blocking MVP’s access to the top of so-called Peter’s Mountain in the Jefferson National Forest. On January 24 Nutty appeared in court, and pled guilty to ‘Blocking a Forest Service Road or Gate’. The prosecutor was asking for 30 days, but Federal Judge Ballou sentenced her to 14 days in prison. On January 25, she turned herself in to serve the sentence. Directly before her sentencing, this is the statement she made to the courtroom.

Originally published by Appalachians Against Pipelines Facebook page.

Note: Enough is Enough is not organizing any of these events, we are publishing this text for people across the US and Europe to be able to see what is going on and for documentation only.

“As long as there have been laws, there have been circumstances that call on us to break them. As pipeline work approached the mountain, I judged that circumstances made it necessary to take a stand.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline does not exist in isolation, and neither does any other pipeline. They are being built at the culmination of hundreds of years of enclosure and theft and colonization. Each new fossil fuel infrastructure project is a step further along the path of rampant and unnecessary environmental devastation, another aspect of humanity’s dangerous alteration of the systems life on earth relies on.

MVP claims that this pipeline isn’t just an attempt to extract profit from the destructive processes of fracking. They claim it’s in the public interest. But we don’t need pipelines. We need the freedom and the space to build a world without them. We need breathable air and drinkable water and wild places.

When they began their project MVP said they’d be done in 2018. Right now on Peters Mountain, there’s a swath of felled trees that breaks apart the canopy and cuts for miles through streams and wetlands and sensitive forest. But the broken trees are still shading the ground as seedlings grow in their place, and there is not a single piece of pipe buried or section of trench dug. No matter the consequences, I cannot regret the part I played in that.

I want people behind me in this courtroom to know that we can be stronger than the fear of legal consequences and police actions. I was neither the first nor the last to set my body in the path of MVP’s destruction. Threatening or jailing us cannot hide the harms the pipeline brings, and will not erase the urgent need for resistance.

Thank you to all the friends who came here today. That is all I have to say to this court. “

#BeLikeNutty #NoMVP #DefendWhatYouLove #NoPipelines

Support resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline: bit.ly/supportmvpresistance

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