Island News & Views
General · 6th April 2007
Ray Grigg
Betty Krawczyk is going to jail — again. This time she has been sentenced to 10 months in detention for criminal contempt-of-court because she refused to respect an injunction ordering her to stay away from an Olympic highway construction project in West Vancouver’s Eagleridge Bluffs. This project, promoted as the greenest Olympics ever, is going to destroy an ecologically valuable wetland, endangered red legged frogs and a grove of ancient arbutus. The 78-year-old great grandmother has already spent 2 1/2 years behind bars for four similar environmental protests and defiance of court injunctions. And once more, as on previous occasions, the “Eco-Granny” — as the media has dubbed her — is unrepentant.
She could be summarily dismissed as a stubborn old woman who refuses to obey the law, if she wasn’t so eloquent, reasoned and principled in defence of herself. Granted, her condemnation of business and corporate powers may be slightly simplistic considering their legal and economic strength is really authorized by the collective will of society through our laws. If we want to reduce these powers, then we have to do so through the laws we make, not through our courts. But philosophically, morally, ethically and spiritually, Betty Krawczyk is on solid ground, a woman who sees essential issues clearly and will not compromise her principles.
At her February 19th, 2007, sentencing before Madam Justice Brown of the Supreme Court of BC, Krawczyk’s comments — cited here from court records — were respectful, insightful and cogent. And she did apologize as much as the circumstances allowed. “I know I have been discourteous to Your Ladyship in this courtroom at times,” she said, “and it grieves me to be in such a contentious situation with another woman.” But Krawczyk correctly recognized that the court injunction residing at the root of her criminal contempt charge is actually a misuse of the civil court’s authority.
Even BC’s Attorney General Wally Opal tacitly agreed with her, conceding that contempt-of-court cases “often involve ordinary people concerned about valid issues...” (Globe & Mail, Mar. 6/07). The injustice is that a civil court becomes involved in a criminal issue, and the court’s involvement through the injunction process makes it an inadvertent partner in the suppression of legitimate public protest. This strategy, often used deliberately by contractors, corporations and even governments, has been called SLAPP, an acronym for strategic litigation against public participation.
This is how it works. In Betty Krawczyk’s case, she trespassed a Kietwit and Sons construction site. “Instead of police enforcing the existing law against trespass by arresting protesters and sending them to trial,” explains Stephen Hume (The Vancouver Sun, Mar. 9/07), “a civil injunction is sought. This means that focus is shifted away from the alleged legal infraction — trespass — and frames the issue instead as an affront to the court’s authority. In other words, the courts become party to the very disputes they are supposed to objectively adjudicate.”
Instead of being able to plead her case before a judge and jury where she could attempt to justify her actions, Krawczyk was cast into a legal situation that had nothing to do with her original offense. She couldn’t present her cause to be judged by a jury of her peers, and she couldn’t present it to the judge presiding over the contempt-of-court charge. As Krawczyk said in her comments to Madam Justice Brown, “...Your Ladyship would not allow my lawyer, Cameron Ward, to argue the very rulings that I was arrested by..., [consequently,] my lawyer quit the case saying that he would not lend legitimacy to this trial by his presence because the trial was so unfair.”
Indeed, Krawczyk was not only placed in a situation that she could not win but she was sent to jail for contempt-of-court, the only way such penalty can be rendered without a guilty verdict reached in a criminal trial by a judge and jury under the provisions of law. As Krawczyk said to the judge, “the very expediency of this method of depriving citizens of their lawful rights...is quite remarkable. I protest this, My Lady, and will protest with my dying breath.”
As an option to jail, Krawczyk might have had the opportunity for other punishments. But her principled comments are illuminating. “I won’t do community service should that be part of my sentence. I have done community service all my life and I have done it for love. I refuse to have community service imposed on me as a punishment. And I won’t pay a fine or allow anyone else to pay a fine for me. I won’t accept any part
of electronic monitoring as I would consider that an enforced internalization of a guilt I don’t feel and don’t accept and I refuse to internalize this court’s opinion of me by policing myself.”
But Krawczyk had another point to make that was far more principled than either personal or legal . “[I]n a very real sense,” she said, ”this trial is not about me. It’s about an awakening human consciousness, a consciousness that wants to do things differently, that wants to be healthy, and that wants a healthy planet.” She went on to speak of the “decomposing” planet due to climate change, of ecologies that are being “cut down, burned out, dug out, or hacked to death for profit”, of the cancer epidemic, the collapse in sperm count, and — as the ultimate indignity to a great grandmother — that “human breast milk has become the very most polluted human food on this increasingly chemically polluted earth.”
But the reason she gave for going up to Eagleridge Bluffs on June 3th, 2006 — the evening she was arrested — was eminently practical and compassionate. Her 71 year-old friend, a Pacheenacht elder named Harriet Nahanee, “said she had to go to the Bluffs to say prayers for the dead and dying creatures...due to the logging and blasting there.” Nahanee had been most concerned about the red-legged frogs. “When I asked her
why especially the frogs, she said that red-legged frogs only live in wetlands and they signify life because that’s where we all came from, the wetlands, and so the red-legged frogs also signify life to humans, and that in the Pacheenacht belief when the last red-legged frog dies, all of humanity will also die.”
Harriet Nahanee, weakened from chronic asthma, influenza and 14 days in jail, died one month after her release from custody. Betty Krawczyk, still alive and fit of body and mind, is in jail again. One very tough woman! One very justified fight
She could be summarily dismissed as a stubborn old woman who refuses to obey the law, if she wasn’t so eloquent, reasoned and principled in defence of herself. Granted, her condemnation of business and corporate powers may be slightly simplistic considering their legal and economic strength is really authorized by the collective will of society through our laws. If we want to reduce these powers, then we have to do so through the laws we make, not through our courts. But philosophically, morally, ethically and spiritually, Betty Krawczyk is on solid ground, a woman who sees essential issues clearly and will not compromise her principles.
At her February 19th, 2007, sentencing before Madam Justice Brown of the Supreme Court of BC, Krawczyk’s comments — cited here from court records — were respectful, insightful and cogent. And she did apologize as much as the circumstances allowed. “I know I have been discourteous to Your Ladyship in this courtroom at times,” she said, “and it grieves me to be in such a contentious situation with another woman.” But Krawczyk correctly recognized that the court injunction residing at the root of her criminal contempt charge is actually a misuse of the civil court’s authority.
Even BC’s Attorney General Wally Opal tacitly agreed with her, conceding that contempt-of-court cases “often involve ordinary people concerned about valid issues...” (Globe & Mail, Mar. 6/07). The injustice is that a civil court becomes involved in a criminal issue, and the court’s involvement through the injunction process makes it an inadvertent partner in the suppression of legitimate public protest. This strategy, often used deliberately by contractors, corporations and even governments, has been called SLAPP, an acronym for strategic litigation against public participation.
This is how it works. In Betty Krawczyk’s case, she trespassed a Kietwit and Sons construction site. “Instead of police enforcing the existing law against trespass by arresting protesters and sending them to trial,” explains Stephen Hume (The Vancouver Sun, Mar. 9/07), “a civil injunction is sought. This means that focus is shifted away from the alleged legal infraction — trespass — and frames the issue instead as an affront to the court’s authority. In other words, the courts become party to the very disputes they are supposed to objectively adjudicate.”
Instead of being able to plead her case before a judge and jury where she could attempt to justify her actions, Krawczyk was cast into a legal situation that had nothing to do with her original offense. She couldn’t present her cause to be judged by a jury of her peers, and she couldn’t present it to the judge presiding over the contempt-of-court charge. As Krawczyk said in her comments to Madam Justice Brown, “...Your Ladyship would not allow my lawyer, Cameron Ward, to argue the very rulings that I was arrested by..., [consequently,] my lawyer quit the case saying that he would not lend legitimacy to this trial by his presence because the trial was so unfair.”
Indeed, Krawczyk was not only placed in a situation that she could not win but she was sent to jail for contempt-of-court, the only way such penalty can be rendered without a guilty verdict reached in a criminal trial by a judge and jury under the provisions of law. As Krawczyk said to the judge, “the very expediency of this method of depriving citizens of their lawful rights...is quite remarkable. I protest this, My Lady, and will protest with my dying breath.”
As an option to jail, Krawczyk might have had the opportunity for other punishments. But her principled comments are illuminating. “I won’t do community service should that be part of my sentence. I have done community service all my life and I have done it for love. I refuse to have community service imposed on me as a punishment. And I won’t pay a fine or allow anyone else to pay a fine for me. I won’t accept any part
of electronic monitoring as I would consider that an enforced internalization of a guilt I don’t feel and don’t accept and I refuse to internalize this court’s opinion of me by policing myself.”
But Krawczyk had another point to make that was far more principled than either personal or legal . “[I]n a very real sense,” she said, ”this trial is not about me. It’s about an awakening human consciousness, a consciousness that wants to do things differently, that wants to be healthy, and that wants a healthy planet.” She went on to speak of the “decomposing” planet due to climate change, of ecologies that are being “cut down, burned out, dug out, or hacked to death for profit”, of the cancer epidemic, the collapse in sperm count, and — as the ultimate indignity to a great grandmother — that “human breast milk has become the very most polluted human food on this increasingly chemically polluted earth.”
But the reason she gave for going up to Eagleridge Bluffs on June 3th, 2006 — the evening she was arrested — was eminently practical and compassionate. Her 71 year-old friend, a Pacheenacht elder named Harriet Nahanee, “said she had to go to the Bluffs to say prayers for the dead and dying creatures...due to the logging and blasting there.” Nahanee had been most concerned about the red-legged frogs. “When I asked her
why especially the frogs, she said that red-legged frogs only live in wetlands and they signify life because that’s where we all came from, the wetlands, and so the red-legged frogs also signify life to humans, and that in the Pacheenacht belief when the last red-legged frog dies, all of humanity will also die.”
Harriet Nahanee, weakened from chronic asthma, influenza and 14 days in jail, died one month after her release from custody. Betty Krawczyk, still alive and fit of body and mind, is in jail again. One very tough woman! One very justified fight