Five 'grannies' face trial for protesting pipeline along Mississippi River

Ask any member of the 100 Grannies, and they'll say their mission is to educate, advocate and agitate for a better environment.

For five of the group's members who face trial in May for trespassing charges, they take the third tenet to heart.

On Oct. 1, in an attempt to halt work on a portion of the now-completed 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline that travels below the Mississippi River near Sandusky, Ia., in southeast Lee County, Ann Christenson, Miriam Kashia, Georgiane Perret, Aaron Silander and Mary Beth Versgrove were arrested. According to Assistant Lee County Attorney Clinton Boddicker, the five were a handful of some 20 to 30 people arrested at the work site.

The five women have refused a plea deal offered by the Lee County Attorney's Office that includes paying $60 for court costs in return for dismissing the trespassing charges. Instead, the five women say they want their concerns raised in court about the need for clean water, the dangers they say potential pipeline leaks pose to the area's residents and the need for environmental safeguards.

The protest

Christenson, 80, said when she and her four cohorts — joined by other grannies and members of several other activist groups, some from the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota — set off for the site, they did not plan to be arrested.

"This is something people have got to understand: The motto of the 100 Grannies is 'educate, advocate and agitate.' We'd rather educate, but if we have to, we're going to agitate and go to jail," Christenson said. "It is serious and time is very short. People don't seem to understand that this is urgent."

After a pre-action training session, a common practice before protests where demonstrators are given guidance on nonviolent protest practices, Kashia, 74, said the large group of about 100 people made its way from a road near the Mississippi River up a bluff, through a wooded area and a crop field before they reached the work site.

The site, Kashia said, was about a third of the size of a football field bordered by a chain-link fence. Inside, crews were using boring equipment and other machinery to drill underneath the river. There also were several security guards who were joined by local and state police.

"There were enough people there that totally surrounded the excavation site several persons deep," Christenson said.

Christenson said she and her husband made their way under the fence while other demonstrators lifted it and other protesters climbed the fence. Eventually, the fence was knocked down and several other protesters made their way onto the work site.

"I walked over the fence and sort of hunkered down behind some machinery. I was partially hidden and had gotten pretty far in before someone spotted me and came after me," Kashia said.

Perret, 72, said the goal was to halt the work the crews were doing, but they kept working even after protesters made their way onto the site.

"We were trying to get them to stop digging the trench and boring under the Mississippi. I think most of us were going to try to get to the digging machine and turn it off," she said. "I was arrested right away after I climbed over the fence."

Officers and security guards at the work site immediately began making arrests, Christenson said, and brought between 20 and 30 demonstrators to the Lee County Jail to be processed.

Perret, who had been arrested two weeks earlier at a Sept. 17 protest for blocking a service road to the site, said she spent the night of Oct. 1 in jail. She pleaded guilty to the Oct. 1 arrest but has pleaded not guilty to the prior arrest.

Case about more than trespassing

Kashia said, initially, the pretrial conferences for each of the five women had been scheduled for March 1 before they were rescheduled to March 8. The hearings now are scheduled for May 22 in Keokuk.

The five women will be represented by Iowa City attorney Rockne Cole. Cole said one of the main focuses of the May 22 hearing will be to seek to combine the five cases into one trial.

"They really felt strongly that they wanted to have a common defense, there are common issues associated with why they did what they did and that is why the court is going to determine whether we can have a joint trial," Cole said.

The concerns of his clients are more far-reaching than trespassing, he said, and their hope is to call into question what threats the pipeline poses to nearby communities.

"The city of Keokuk relies on the water treatment plant, which is just downstream of the pipeline," Cole said. "We haven't announced all of the experts yet, but we're going to try to get expert testimony related to basically two questions: One, is there risk of catastrophic failure? And two, what would happen if that occurs?

"Those are a couple of the things they feel strongly about and one of the reasons why they did what they did at that particular location. They were worried about the water quality, and they were also concerned about the climate-change issues," Cole said.

Versgrove, 64, said she and other members of the group have been traveling around the state participating in several protests, marches and public hearings. She said she had been to public hearings in the Keokuk area and talked with residents about their shared concerns.

"For me, it's been about the people that live down there and their drinking water. I'm very concerned about what a leak could do and how damaging it could be," she said.

Silander, 67, said another goal of seeing the cases through to trial is keeping the discussion around the Dakota Access Pipeline despite its completion.

"We want to keep the public talking about it and talking about how detrimental a leak could be. There is an imminent threat to aquifers nearby and in the event of a spill or leak there would be less than an hour to mitigate that," she said. "That's a pretty imminent threat in the event of an oil spill to everyone who lives there.

"... From my perspective, it's not too late. We're going to keep acting and we're all going to continue to try to get that oil flow turned off."

Kashia added: "I think we're trying to turn the tide of public opinion because that's what creates change. The climate crisis deniers are vocal, but they're the vast minority. We want people to stay motivated to keep trying. The real purpose of what we are doing is growing public awareness."

Boddicker said a majority of the demonstrators arrested on Oct. 1 pleaded guilty immediately. In addition to the five members of the 100 Grannies, though, he said there was a group of six to eight demonstrators who did not appear in court and have warrants out for their arrest, and two other demonstrators are facing trial on trespassing and interference charges.

"My goal for the five cases from Johnson County would be to have a trial toward the end of the summer," Boddicker said.

Reach Andy Davis at 319-887-5404 or at aldavis@press-citizen.com, and follow him on Twitter as @BylineAndyDavis.