UU Environmental Activist Punished in Prison

By Ted Resnikoff

Tim DeChristopher asset_upload_file654_198851
Reposted from the online edition of UU World.- Ed.

UU environmental activist isolated in prison

Move allegedly follows complaint from U.S. congressman over Tim DeChristopher email. By Donald E. Skinner 4.2.12 Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher, serving two years in federal prison in California for disrupting a federal auction of oil and gas leases in 2008, was abruptly moved from a minimum security camp to a more restrictive “special housing unit” within that same prison complex on March 9, then was just as abruptly moved back to minimum security on March 29, apparently because of public pressure. DeChristopher, a member of First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City, began serving his sentence last September. According to Henia Belalia of Peaceful Uprising, a group DeChristopher started after he was arrested, the prisoner was moved to the special unit after he had sent an email to a friend inquiring about the business practices of a person who had contributed to DeChristopher’s legal defense fund. In the email DeChristopher threatened to return the money if the donor’s values no longer aligned with his own. According to a Peaceful Uprising press release March 28, DeChristopher said he was informed by a prison officer that he was being moved to the special unit because a congressman had called from Washington, D.C., complaining about the email that DeChristopher had sent. READ THE REST OF THE STORY AND RELATED ARTICLES ON UU WORLD