Glitter-Covered Banner Got These Protesters Arrested for Staging a Bioterror Hoax
by Molly Redden
Mother Jones
December 17, 2013
Energy giants have lobbied police to treat environmental activists like potential terrorists. Looks like it’s working.
It’s not uncommon for environmental protesters to face arrest, but here’s an apparent first: On Friday, Oklahoma City police charged a pair of environmental activists with staging a “terrorism hoax” after they unfurled a pair of banners covered in glitter””a substance local cops considered evidence of a faux biochemical assault.
Stefan Warner and Moriah Stephenson, members of the environmental group Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, were part of a group of about a dozen activists demonstrating at Devon Tower, the headquarters of fossil fuel giant Devon Energy. They activists were protesting the company’s use of fracking, its role in mining of Canada’s tar sands, and its ties to TransCanada, the energy company planning to construct the Keystone XL pipeline. As other activists blocked the building’s revolving door, Warner and Stephenson hung two banners””one a cranberry-colored sheet emblazoned with The Hunger Games “mockingjay” symbol and the words “The odds are never in our favor” in gold letters””from the second floor of the Devon Tower’s atrium.