Climate Defense Project co-founders Alice Cherry and Kelsey Skaggs have been awarded a prestigious two-year Echoing Green Climate Fellowship to support their work with the organization. As Echoing Green Climate Fellows, Alice and Kelsey will receive financial support for CDP’s work defending climate activists and will take part in a network of Echoing Green alumni, advisors, and...
Climate Defense Project’s work to promote the climate necessity defense is featured in Jeremy Brecher’s article in Common Dreams about the importance of climate legal activism. Brecher quotes CDP co-founder Ted Hamilton: Ted Hamilton of the Climate Defense Project notes that a criminal defense cannot be based solely “a constitutional right to a safe climate or on...
The Washington Court of Appeals today ruled against a group of defendants known as the Delta 5, who had attempted to present a climate necessity defense in the criminal trial stemming from their 2014 blockade of coal and oil trains in Washington state. While the court found that the defendants had not provided enough evidence...
ThinkProgress has a piece on the big climate necessity win at the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Kelsey Skaggs, co-founder and staff attorney with Climate Defense Project, is quoted: “This is a big win for anyone who cares about climate change,” Kelsey Skaggs, a co-founder of Climate Defense Project and a member of the defendants’ legal...
Climate Defense Project April 23, 2018 Contact: Ted Hamilton, (847) 859-9572; info@climatedefenseproject.org In a high-profile victory for climate activists and lawyers, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled today that four protesters may present their climate necessity defense at trial. The decision — which rebuffed prosecutors’ attempts to keep the defense out of court — allows...
CDP co-founder and staff attorney Alice Cherry is quoted extensively in a ThinkProgress article on efforts by the fossil fuel industry and conservative state lawmakers to criminalize protest activity directed against the industry: “I think these bills represent an escalation,” Alice Cherry, co-founder and staff attorney of the Climate Defense Project, told ThinkProgress. “The main...
March 28, 2018 Contact: Alice Cherry, (847) 859-9572, info@climatedefenseproject.org. In a victory for the climate movement yesterday, Judge Mary Ann Driscoll of the West Roxbury District Court in Massachusetts found 13 activists not responsible for charges stemming from a 2016 protest against the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline. Judge Driscoll found that the defendants were motivated by...
CDP co-founder Alice Cherry was quoted at length in a ThinkProgress article about the West Roxbury case (which you can read about on our Updates page), in which the judge accepted the activists’ necessity argument after prosecutors downgraded the charges to avoid a jury trial: “According to Alice Cherry, co-founder and staff attorney of the Climate...
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 22, 2018 Contact: Alice Cherry, 847.859.9572 One week prior to trial, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office has abandoned its plans to prosecute the remaining Resist the Pipeline defendants, downgrading all criminal charges to civil infractions and moving the cases out of its jurisdiction. The defendants, who had blocked...
The Intercept has a story by Alleen Brown on the Valve Turners. Climate Defense Project continues to represent this group of climate activists; on Tuesday, our client Leonard Higgins received no jail time for his part in their October 2016 action against tar sands pipelines.
