Tom Perriello’s “New Virginia Way” Jumps in To Help “Red,” Other Water Protectors, Pay for Mounting Legal Fees

A movement is growing that defies party, region and ideology. Powered by a common belief that parents have a right to protect their children’s drinking water and that communities should determine their own future instead of having it imposed by energy monopolies, citizens are coming together to oppose the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines.

The face of this movement is Red Terry, a 61 year-old Appalachian woman who has spent the past four weeks in a tree on her family’s land to block a corporate chainsaw crew from clear-cutting. Police are waiting at the base of the tree to arrest her for criminal trespass — on her own property! Just this weekend, authorities blocked her from receiving medical treatment or supplies.

Red is one of a growing number of community advocates — mostly women — who have literally taken to the trees at great personal risk to stop this pipeline. Almost all of them are now facing mounting legal fees, as the corporate monopolies exploit every available avenue to threaten them and their families.

Please donate here, and every dollar will go to various legal defense efforts fort he group known as “water protectors.”

With a host of pending legal challenges and bipartisan coalition of elected officials against these pipelines, the tides are turning. However, it was announced last week that the Federal District Court issued contempt charges against the Terry family. This is the first in what will likely be lots of legal battles against individuals protesting the pipelines, so New Virginia Way is announcing a new fund to support the legal fees of protestors and those standing with them.

The pipeline fight is the latest in a decades-long struggle for dignity and respect in rural America. And at the heart of the fight is one fundamental question: who should control our energy economy? Should it be for-profit fossil fuel corporations that are willing to buy out legislators and rig the regulatory process for their own profits, at the expense of landowners, communities of color and our natural heritage?

Please click her to help defend those who are defending our future.

Thanks,

Tom

PS: We also strongly encourage everyone to ensure everyone from your local officials to the Governor hears your voice. After donating, please click here to sign a petition to the DEQ, asking them to suspend all pipeline preparations, including on Red’s land, until a stream by stream review has been done. Everyone who signs the petition will receive an email about how you can ask your elected officials to #StandWithRed.