June 19, 2021
Hello friends, allies and comrades alike! My name is Acre. I briefly occupied a long standing aerial blockade known as a “treesit” against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. I was sentenced to 4 months real time (more on paper). The judge said, “A day for each day in the tree”. However, the physical blockade lasted much longer than my stay – a little over 2 ½ years! The physical stand I and many others have taken against the MVP represents much more than just fighting climate change. My occupation and extraction from pipeline property symbolizes a larger struggle against settler colonialism. The police told us we were on land that didn’t belong to us, but the truth is we are all on stolen land. The inherently unethical nature of capitalism and expansionism assigns arbitrary values to invaluable things and poses real violence to the earth and its occupants (two legged, four legged, winged, gilled alike). How do you put a price on a persons time as the prison system does? Or the contents of soil or the purity of the water? These are things we never get back, yet they are constantly taken without our consent. It’s a violation of the autonomy of our natural world. I encourage you to see my actions as a guide to stand up for what you believe in.
Love and Rage,
Acre
Mongoose Distro 