{"id":806316,"date":"2022-09-21T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=589059"},"modified":"2022-09-21T10:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T10:30:00","slug":"the-long-legal-saga-of-alleged-dapl-arsonist-ruby-montoya-is-coming-to-an-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/09\/21\/the-long-legal-saga-of-alleged-dapl-arsonist-ruby-montoya-is-coming-to-an-end\/","title":{"rendered":"The long legal saga of alleged DAPL arsonist Ruby Montoya is coming to an end"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
A week after FBI agents ransacked her bedroom in August 2017, Ruby Montoya sat before a videographer. Just steps away from the rooms where FBI agents had hauled dozens of bags and boxes from the Des Moines Catholic Worker House where Montoya lived, the 27-year-old addressed his questions with a preternatural calm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou really put your life on the line. How do you feel about the whole ordeal?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have kids,\u201d she explained. \u201cI don\u2019t have any obligations like that, and I saw a necessity to act in a different way that I believe is more effective.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That \u201cway\u201d entailed a series of arsons that Montoya and her friend and Catholic Worker housemate, Jessica Reznicek, committed along the route of the Dakota Access Pipeline a few months earlier. Beginning on election night 2016<\/a> and continuing intermittently through early May 2017, the women ignited oil-soaked rags to try to destroy heavy machinery. They also lit acetylene torches to burn holes in the 1,172-mile-long pipeline, which at the time was under construction but nearing completion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Though the women were never apprehended by law enforcement while taking these actions, they failed to stop completion of the pipeline. So, that July, Montoya and Reznicek called a press conference and took credit for the arsons, even though they knew doing so would expose them to felony prosecution. \u201cIf we have any regrets, <\/strong>it is that we did not act enough,\u201d the women said in their joint statement<\/a>, which was intended to steer attention toward the threat the pipeline posed to drinking water sources along its route from North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. (This pipeline has leaked at least five times<\/a> since it began carrying oil in May 2017.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe anticipated the repercussions of every action that we took,\u201d Montoya told another interviewer that same summer. \u201cWe were fully prepared going into it, in that mental mind game of, \u2018I\u2019m driving myself to jail right now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite expressing their willingness to surrender themselves to authorities in the weeks following their credit claim and the FBI raid that followed, law enforcement officials did not bring charges for more than two years. By early September 2019, the women were a thousand miles apart. Reznicek lived with nuns and attended daily mass at the St. Scholastica monastery in Duluth, Minnesota. Montoya taught grades 3 and 4 at the Running River Waldorf School in Sedona, Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n