The five climate activists, members of Climate Direct Action, cut their way through fencing and turned the valves. They have since been dubbed the “Valve Turners”, profiled in the New York Times magazine and featured in a recent documentary titled The Reluctant Radical. In a recent intelligence bulletin evaluating domestic terrorism threats between 2018 and 2020, the department included the Valve Turners and described the group as “suspected environmental rights extremists”. Two of the Valve Turners are listed alongside violent white supremacists such as Dylann Roof and James Fields, who have both been convicted of murdering innocent civilians. “Equating mass murder by white supremacists with what Michael and I did is totally obscene,” Jessup said in an email.

Source: The Guardian January 13, 2020 09:56 UTC