FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: marla@climatedisobediencecenter.org, 781-0475-0996
kira@climatedefenseproject.org, 802-417-2173
Date: September 26, 2023
Prosecutor Drops Loitering Charge After Activist Challenges Statute as Unconstitutional
After years of targeting by law enforcement, activists expect state-sanctioned
harassment to continue.
CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE – In the early morning of May 12, 2023, New Hampshire law enforcement officers seized environmental justice activist Jess Mills while he was walking down a public roadway in Bow, New Hampshire. Under the pretext of enforcing New Hampshire’s archaic Loitering and Prowling statute, law enforcement arrested Mr. Mills and brought him to the public safety complex in Bow. There he was detained for several hours in a small metal cage with an approximate footprint of 5’x5.’
Mr. Mills was set to stand trial today for the Loitering and Prowling charge. However, two days after his attorney filed legal arguments challenging the statute as unconstitutional, the State dismissed the case—evidently preferring to concede a single conviction so that the statute remains and enables continued harassment and persecution of individuals like Mr. Mills.
The Loitering and Prowling statute, a remnant of Old English vagrancy laws, functions as a tool for law enforcement seeking to justify otherwise unlawful searches, seizures, and other government intrusions. The statute provides broad cover for law enforcement to detain, question, and arrest anyone for nearly anything—including playing a dangerous sport, covering themself in fake blood to protest livestock slaughterhouses, or yelling in an “alarming” manner. The broad sweep of what might constitute loitering or prowling gives law enforcement the discretion to arrest anyone who is out too late at night, seems suspicious, or holds any combination of perceived identities that law enforcement frequently targets for criminalization (such as being Black, Indigenous, LatinX, poor, disabled, unhoused, trans or gender nonconforming, or “antifa”).
Evidence disclosed by the State in Mr. Mills’ case has revealed that law enforcement’s interest in Mr. Mills was in large part due to his suspected affiliation with the No Coal No Gas campaign, and that law enforcement was in close and regular communication with Merrimack Power Generating Station representatives throughout the early morning of May 12.
The No Coal No Gas campaign, a nonviolent coalition of individuals and organizations, is fighting to shut down Granite Shore Power’s coal-fired Merrimack Generating Station with a wide range of creative and nonviolent tactics. In 2019 the group staged a demonstration that brought together hundreds of concerned participants calling attention to the coal plant’s harms, resulting in 67 arrests by law enforcement. Last year, members of the coalition staged a “ballroom coup” of the regional grid operators’ Consumer Liaison Group, replacing the committee of corporate tycoons with a slate of environmental justice advocates. The coalition also organized over four hundred people to submit comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission objecting to the use of ratepayer dollars to subsidize the Merrimack Power Generating Station.
At the behest of, and with funding from, coal plant representatives, law enforcement in New Hampshire has targeted No Coal No Gas activists for years, and this corporate-state repression has only intensified over time. In advance of the nonviolent demonstration in 2019, the coal plant paid nearly six figures to law enforcement—marshaling SWAT teams with assault rifles, law enforcement agents from the Department of Homeland Security and National Guard, a helicopter, a drone, the railroad police, State Troopers, Fish and Game Department officers, and several local police forces—in order to protect private corporate interests driving the sixth mass extinction and killing people in the area from toxins and pollutants. Two No Coal No Gas activists convicted with nonviolent protest-related trespass misdemeanors received sentences that included five years of probation each. One was also put in jail following an arrest based on a warrant for littering.
“Even when charges are dropped, these dismissals come after the opponents to this lethal facility are themselves arrested, jailed, searched, interrogated, and prosecuted. For my client and so many others the court process is in and of itself a punishment, regardless of how it is characterized,” said Mr. Mills’ attorney Kira Kelley.
Unfortunately, activists expect this state-sanctioned harassment to continue. Says Mr. Mills: “Dismissal might seem like a victory, and in a small way it is. Law enforcement overreached and now it's slinking away because I was lucky enough to have legal support that enabled me to put up a fight. But there's no ground gained here. This isn't justice, and it's definitely not a conclusion. The fight will continue until the Loitering and Prowling statute has been struck down and the Merrimack Generating Station closed for good."
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No Coal No Gas is a regional sustained direct action campaign dedicated to building community, demonstrating what’s possible when we work together, and ending the use of fossil fuels in New England, starting with the last coal-fired power plant in New England – the Merrimack Station in Bow, NH. The grassroots campaign is supported by Climate Disobedience Center and 350 New Hampshire. For more information, see nocoalnogas.org
Climate Defense Project (CDP) provides free defense representation and other legal support to the climate justice movement. Using a movement-centered approach, CDP supports front-line activists, advances overlooked legal arguments, and connects climate defense attorneys with communities, experts, and each other.
