BLM postpones DC oil/gas lease auction under threat of protest

On the 1oth of December, the Bureau of Land Management had planned to hold an auction near the Navy Yard to sell oil and gase leases on public land. Two parcels in Arkansas and 7 in Michigan were on the block, with fracking as their possible fate. Climate activists had been planning some rather confrontational actions against this. With Obama"s involvement in the Paris climate talks, any news coverage of the protests could have been a major political embarassment. On the other hand, a publiclty-avoiding refusal to arrest protesters no matter what would give activists a free hand to shut the proceedings down entirely. As a result, the BLM has postponed the auction until March 17, 2016.

Tim DeChristoper went to jail for nothing more than submitting false bids at a similar auction back in 2008, spending 21 months in enemy hands. This showed how afraid they are of any kind of disruption. Enough of these false bids can easily cripple any auction, and the authorities were determined to put these auctions off-limits to protest. On the other hand, they have also shown that the same people who jailed Tim DeChristopher are cowardly bullies by folding under nothing more than the threat of a protest. Bullies are easily defeated, and in this case activists won what martial arts teachers say is the ultimate victory-to win without fighting as your opponent taps out.

This fight isn't over, as the auction will come up again on March 17 next year. That, however, is in the thick of Democratic primary season, another critical time for Obama and for Hillery Clinton. An ugly confrontation over oil and gas leases could be just as toxic to that process as it would have been to the Paris climate talks, as in both cases it would have shown Obama and the Democrats to be hypocrites on climate change in front of the whole world.

http://www.blm.gov/es/st/en/info/newsroom2/2015/december/bureau_of_land_...