Help Support One Last Protest Against Bush PDF Print E-mail
Andy Rowell, 6 January 2009
On December 19 last year Tim DeChristopher, a 27 year-old economics student from the University of Utah, finished his exam and hurried out the door.  Rather than head to the bar to celebrate with his friends, DeChristopher headed to downtown Salt Lake City.

There, in an anonymous looking building, the Bush Administration was leasing off huge tracts of land to oil and gas companies in a public auction.  But the Salt Lake City event was the final auction by the Administration’s Bureau of Land Management before the Bush Administration loses power in January.  Stephen Bloc from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said:  “This is the fire sale. The Bush Administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.”

In total, the Bureau was leasing nearly 150,000 acres of beautiful rugged wilderness areas in southern and eastern Utah, famous worldwide for its stunning redrock desert. Even this total had been reduced from around 360,000 acres because of the huge public opposition as well as from the US National Park Service, members of Congress and John Podesta58 members of Congress sent a letter to the Obama-Biden transition team urging the incoming U.S. Department of Interior to reverse the oil and gas lease sale the Bureau of Land Management held Friday, the head of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team.  

Another high profile opponent of the sale was Robert Redford, the Hollywood actor, and star of films such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting”, “All the President's Men” and “The Horse Whisperer”, who lives in Utah. “Anyone who has been there will testify that there is no place like these lands”, argues Redford. “These lands are not Bush and Cheney’s, these are our lands. No place on earth can speak to the balance of beauty and nature like these areas”. 

Redford complains that concerning the sale, there was “so much deception, so much sleight of hand.” He asks “how would you feel if you had an heirloom in your family that was centuries old and someone came in when you were not looking and took it away from you?”

When he heard about the auction, DeChristopher was horrified. He was determined to do something to try and impact the process. But not quite knowing what he was going to do when he got there, DeChristopher walked past placard waving protestors into the building. He felt he should do more than just wave a banner. “This kind of injustice demands a higher level of disruption,” he argues.

Having passed security and registered for the auction, it suddenly dawned on him that he could start bidding for the parcels of land coming up for lease. He started bidding at first - a bit cautiously to start with – but then much to his surprise started winning bids.

In total DeChristopher won bids totalling about $1.8 million on more than 10 lease parcels, totalling 22,000 acres. He also started pushing up the value of other pieces of land by over $500,000. “Once I started buying every parcel of land there was a lot of chaos and people didn’t know how to proceed” he recalls.  In total, DeChristopher won bids on over 20 per cent of the auction.

As bidders complained, DeChristopher was then arrested and questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “He’s tainted the entire auction,” said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the federal Bureau of Land Management in Utah. He has been released although he is prepared to go to jail. “I decided I could be much more effective by an act of civil disobedience,” he said afterwards. “There comes a time to take a stand”.  

DeChristopher argues that the real fraud of the auction is that it was being rushed through quickly by the lame-duck Bush Administration. Writing about what he did, DeChristopher argued that, because of the challenges of climate change he had come to the realisation that the time for talking was over, and the time for action was now. “This year I have come to terms with the idea that I might be my own best hope to defend my future. Hopefully all of us will realize that we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

DeChristopher now has to make a first downpayment of $45,000 by this Friday, January 9th to secure the leases he bought. Of course he does not have the money. So far he has raised $18,000. If he does not raise the money, he faces fraud charges and possible jail. In his appeal letter Tim writes: “With much advice from my legal team, it has become clear to me that making the down payment on the leases is the best way to protect the land until we can restore open, transparent and democratic procedures for determining the fate of valuable public lands.”

Whatever happens DeChristopher has disrupted the auction long enough to see Obama in power, but as he notes, “it is still unclear how the new administration will deal with this inappropriate auction and the disruption I caused to it, but I can only hope the President Obama follows through on his promise for a transparent government. Until then I will make sure that no drilling or development happens on this land, and for that I need your help. This is an opportunity for all of us to make a clear statement of how much we care for our land, our climate and participatory democracy.

If anyone wants to donate money to Tim, go here. 
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