Posted on 01/27/2015 4:35:20 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis. – Following her sentencing last week on felony theft and misdemeanor damages to property convictions, environmental extremist Katie “Krow” Kloth has apparently written a bitter screed against the judge who sentenced her and the proposed northern Wisconsin mine project she despises.
In her online “post-sentence statement,” Kloth, 27, characterizes Gogebic Taconite, the developer and supporters of the proposed iron mine south of Lake Superior, as “extreme” racists, while decrying Price County Judge Douglas Fox’s order that she find full-time employment following her nine-month jail term.
“… (I) maintain that G-TAC and their pro-mine affiliates are waging extreme racist resource colonialism on the land and connected peoples and creatures with the proposed Penokee Mine …,” Kloth scrawls in her statement on Penokee Defenders, an online “clearinghouse of anti-extraction news & analysis in the penokee hills” of northern Wisconsin.
Kloth faced up to a year in jail for her part in a raid on Gobebic Taconite drilling sample site for the developer’s proposed $1.5 billion mine in June 2013. Fox sentenced Kloth to six months in Iron County jail on the felony robbery conviction; Kloth received another three months in jail on a conviction of criminal damage to property.
Kloth is slated to begin her consecutive sentences next week.
Kloth, according to court documents, grabbed the cell phone and camera of Stacy Saari, an independent biologist hired by GTAC. Other protesters damaged drill machinery, and the extremist movement placed boulders and timber in the road and changed the locks on the gates leading to the mine site’s testing area.
Saari called the act a form of “eco-terrorism” and claimed she feared for her life, according to the Daily Press in Ashland.
Kloth sounded defiant in her online statement, asserting that her sentence in conjunction with a withheld felony sentence equates to 15 years in prison if “I ‘step out of line’ in the eyes of the ‘state.’ She called it a “classist attack on my beliefs and lifestyles.”
The activist could not be reached for comment. A GTAC spokesman declined to comment for this story.
Kloth takes issue with the “lifestyle enforcement” portion of her five-year probation sentence requiring full-time employment. She describes it as “culturist, and out-of-touch with today’s employment landscape.”
“Innumerable individuals work seasonal jobs for life in a responsible manner, thus Judge Fox’s ruling is based on the disappearing myth of the white American Dream that supports and enforces a destructive capitalist regime,” Krow writes.
Fox did not return a call from Wisconsin Reporter on Monday seeking comment. His assistant suggested Wisconsin Reporter send the judge a letter.
While Kloth says she wishes no harm to Saari, “it saddens me that she continues to despise the fiber of my being, and continues to support industrial resource extraction ..”
The Gogebic plan has elicited strong support and opposition since it was first proposed. Supporters like the jobs and economic opportunity it could bring to a struggling region of the state. Opponents worry the mine will have a disastrous impact on the area’s pristine natural resources.
The rhetorical heat turned up in early 2013 after the Republican-controlled Legislature passed a bill streamlining the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ permit process involved in the Gobebic proposal. Gov. Scott Walker swiftly signed the bill into law.
A few months later, the Gogebic site became ground zero of protest and a radical environmental movement.
Here’s how one environmental extremist entry for the extreme Earth First! Journal described the day of the raid:
“Wearing t-shirts and bandannas for masks, about fifteen wild ones sprang into action, added their own lock and chain to the gated entrance and built several barricades out of small boulders and downed trees. This was done on the access road in order to delay the anticipated police response for what was to happen,” the anonymous correspondent wrote on the blogsite.
The activists then “took the space over for about an hour,” the blogger said. They jumped on trucks and threw pieces of equipment, pickaxes, fire extinguishers, shovels, into the thick woods. They knocked over fences and raided cigarettes while “workers and the manager stood in awe,” according to this anonymous reporter.
Bill Thomas, an Iron County Board member who supports the mine proposal, said he doesn’t think Kloth’s sentence was stern enough.
“Not only did she steal a camera, she threatened to burn the (Gogebic staff’s) houses down,” he said. “They put their own locks on the gates and put boulders in the road. If something bad had happened up there, there would have been no way to get ambulances up there. It could have been a bad situation.”
Thomas, who has served on the Board of Supervisors for 12 years, said he’s not worried of subsequent assaults on the project from environmental extremists. He said things have been pretty quiet in recent months, but he’s sure there will be more demonstrations at the site when the weather warms.
State Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, a key proponent of the mine legislation, said he hopes the judge’s sentence on Kloth acts as a deterrent. He called Kloth “unhinged” and said her past record shows she doesn’t have much respect for the law.
“I give the judge a lot of credit for giving her a jail sentence,” Tiffany said. “A lot of people thought he would not do that. Clearly he saw what her past history is and what she was doing and said there has got to be a deterrent.”
Meanwhile, the deliberate environmental testing in the permit process drags on. Thomas, 74, said he’s confident he will not see the mine open in his lifetime.
“Post 37 in error.”
Open a few more Windows, LOL! (I do that all the time.)
I love this. I wish I knew whether it really happened.
At least I didn’t post my ebay bid.
enjoy the fiber of your cold hard bunk,, greenie!!
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