Above photo: Lockdown on September 25, 2014. From Rising Tide Vermont.
Pipeline Resisters Refuse to be Intimidated, Going to Trial
Burlington, VT – Fred Wolfe, the former Santa of Strafford, VT, is awaiting a jury trial with the surviving members of The Williston Six in Chittenden County in the next few weeks. In September 2015, Wolfe and five other grandparent activists were arrested on trespassing charges by Williston Police, while blocking the pipeline construction staging site of Vermont Gas Systems on Route 2. Now, the State of Vermont is seeking jail time for the five activists. (One of the defendants, Nina Swaim, died of a stroke on October 15th, shortly after the September action.) The group says the project, and all fossil fuels, threaten the future of their grandchildren and future generations.
“Oil, gas, and coal that is in the ground must stay in the ground. This is what climate scientists are saying if we want to avoid catastrophic global warming,” said Fred Wolfe, a great-grandfather, and Korean War veteran. “Climate change is real, it is here now and we must act before it is too late.”
A tongue-in-cheek Wolfe added “Climate change is also a threat to his North Pole workshop and the future of the children he has grown so fond of throughout his career as Santa.
The group hopes to convince jurors and the public that their action was necessary to stop a much greater crime which threatens global food supplies, coastal cities and communities across the world.
VIDEOS FROM RISING TIDE VERMONT:
Santa’s Going to Trial…
Jay O’Hara and Maeve McBride Discuss “Getting in the Way of the Machine”
MEET THE ‘WILLISTON 6’:
Fred Wolfe is an 85 year old great-grandfather to 5 wonderful youngsters. After graduating from Rochester Institute of Technology with a BS in Printing Management he spent many years in Graphic Arts management positions, owned his own commercial printing company, helped found a Technical High School and taught printing. After leaving the teaching position his life became very interesting as he moved through a number of endeavors: farmer, toy maker, country store owner and finally rural retirement, where he still raises chickens. In the process of all the above, he build an off-grid solar house, organized a multi-town fair for the first Earth Day, drove a truck to deliver for a local food coop, severed as the president of a food shelf/family center, Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club and as moderator and Director of his local Universalist Church. In every town he has lived in he has been active in town management and has served on many various committees and boards.
For ten years he was the local Santa Clause in Strafford. He is currently an elected Justice of the Peace for the Town of Strafford, VT.
The environment, peace, justice and concern for others has been influential in all of his endeavors. His wife of 62 years, Lorry, has shared these attributes and his two sons are on board as he currently advocates for the climate and Peace. His 4 grand kids and their children are the driving force in his efforts to do all that he can to protect our Mother Earth and its peoples.
Ulrike von Moltke grew up in Germany where she was born in 1944, the same year her father was executed for his resistance against the Nazis. In 1967, she moved with her family to the States, then went back to Germany for 12 years and in 1984 came to stay in Norwich, Vermont.
Ulrike is a mother of 4, and a grandmother to 7. She was a bread baker, safe home provider, caregiver and editor before she finally left her private niche and joined the Occupy movement, followed by the anti-nuclear and the climate justice movement. She sees the nuclear and the climate issues as equally threatening to the future of the planet but find herself at this time more involved in trying to prevent further expansion of the fracked gas pipeline infrastructure.
On fracking, Ulrike states, “Contrary to what our politicians want us to believe, fracking is adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere at dangerously high levels, thereby contributing substantially to climate change. Fracking is also ruining nature’s and people’s health in the extraction and distribution process. What upsets me most is the presumption by big corporations that they are entitled to amass more and more wealth. I find their contempt for the earth they exploit and for the people, mostly from indigenous and poor communities, they harm deeply disturbing. If we don’t stop this behavior of inflicting damage with disastrous consequences this planet will no longer be welcoming future generations.”
Douglas Smith was born in the Adirondacks. He studied engineering in college and became an international consultant in water and energy planning. Most of his work was in the poorest countries; e.g., Malawi, Bangladesh, Nepal, Mozambique, Chad, etc.
He first studied global climate change in the late sixties when it was of unknown consequences. By the late seventies he was working to design projects with significant small hydro, biomass, and solar components. He watched as the big electric utilities and fossil fuel companies squashed renewables’ development, just as climate change became more and more evident.
Doug has been active against war and nuclear development since the late sixties. He now has two grandsons about to enter adulthood as the effects of climate change wrench our world apart.
Nina Swaim was born into a conservative family in Sherborn, Mass. She earned a B.A. at Boston University, and M.Ed. at Columbia University, and a Certificate in Conflict Resolution at Woodbury College. As an administrator in the Foreign Students Office at Columbia in 1968, Nina was originally negative about the disruption of campus life during protests against secret war research at the university. After learning more about the links between the university and the war in Vietnam, she came to understand the corruption of the military/ industrial/educational complex and the racism inherent in Columbia’s expansion plans into Harlem. She joined the protesters and her life was transformed as a fighter for peace and social justice.
Nina became active in the anti-nuclear movement and was a founding member of the Upper Valley Energy Coalition, with close ties to Clamshell Alliance.
In 1980 she wrote “A Handbook for Women on the Nuclear Mentality” with Susan Koen.
She was a passionate foe of war and blocked the gates at the General Electric plant in Burlington, Vt., when it was manufacturing gatling guns for use against indigenous people in Central America; and she was a tireless organizer of vigils in the Upper Valley, as war after war scarred our national fabric. Nina took action with the “Williston 6” to protest the import of fracked gas the continued expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. A month later, Nina passed away from a stroke. She looked forward to a jury trial to defend the necessity of acting to prevent further climate disruption.
Margaret (Peggy) Benoit is a full-time bus driver and has been for more than 30 years. Her mother Eva Leuenberger was Swiss born and her father Fred Benoit is of Irish and Native American Mohawk heritage. Peggy’s native roots are very much part of who she is and how she sees the world.
After Hurricane Irene ravaged Vermont with her destruction, Peggy saw that Warren was in need of volunteers, so she went up the following Saturday and returned every weekend for a year and a half until everything was rebuilt. She also helped remedy the effects of this climate disaster in Rebuild Waterbury.
Peggy is active in the campaign to stop the fracked gas pipeline because she is appalled that our State’s Governor has allowed a foreign corporation (Gaz Metro, owner of VT Gas) to bully and threaten hard working Vermonters with eminent domain. Peggy Benoit won’t stop fighting the fracked gas pipeline till they stop their destruction to Mother Earth!
Karen Starr was born in Wellfleet, Ma. in 1953 to working class parents. She is one of four siblings. The responsibility to speak up against injustice was a frequent theme in her home and one that her parents modeled through their own lives in the community. Karen herself has been a community activist for over 45 years, working on issues as various as militarism, racism, women’s and LGBT liberation, AIDS treatment policy, nuclear energy, food security, and climate change. She is currently working with others around the globe to halt the destruction caused by the energy extraction industries. She is fighting for a future for the coming generations of all life on our Mother Earth, not just humans.