Protest: Respect It Defend It Use It - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Annie Leonard is a lifelong activist who has protested on multiple continents over many years. She spent seventeen years with Greenpeace US, including serving as Executive Director from 2014 to 2023; created The Story of Stuff film, book, and organization; co-launched the Jane Fonda Climate PAC; and campaigned against the international trade in hazardous waste and technologies around the world. Annie speaks and writes frequently about environmental and democracy issues, focusing on pollution, waste, consumerism, climate, and activism. She has appeared in numerous media, has testified before Congress, and has received a number of awards for her work, including an honorary degree from Vermont Law School and inclusion in Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment.

André Carothers is an activist, writer, and organizer. André has been involved in campaigns and protests on issues of climate change, human rights, environmental protection, and nuclear disarmament for over four decades. He worked for Greenpeace US for thirteen years, including serving on the board of directors. He is the cofounder of the Rockwood Leadership Institute, a training organization for activists, and works as an organizational development consultant and coach for leaders in the social change sector. He has served as an adviser and board member of numerous organizations, including International Rivers, the Center for Environmental Health, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Furthur Foundation, Rainforest Action Network, and the Story of Stuff Project


Robert Reich is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and he served as secretary of labor in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. He was also a member of President Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board. In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the Ten Most Effective Cabinet Members of the century; in the same year The Wall Street Journal placed him sixth on its list of Most Influential Business Thinkers.

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Protecting Our Right to Protest  

Annie Leonard

I could not have been in a more fitting place when I heard the news—standing next to a giant oil flare so hot that I worried my vibrating cell phone would melt. The sudden buzzing came from a flood of messages from around the world. The jury verdict was in, and it could bankrupt Greenpeace.

I’d traveled almost four thousand miles from a North Dakota courtroom to Lago Agrio, Ecuador, to see the maze of oil pipelines, storage tanks, and pumping stations where thriving rainforest once stood. The Ceibo Alliance, an Indigenous-led network working to protect the Amazon, had organized the visit for representatives of Indigenous nations from other parts of the country where new oil leases were planned. Their forests were still intact, but the leaders were under heavy pressure to consent to drilling, and Ceibo wanted them to witness firsthand what that would mean. I’d been invited to tag along, because I, too, had a personal connection: My home state of California is among the top importers of Ecuadorian oil and I wanted to see where it came from.

Our hosts led us by open ponds of dark, oozing crude and pumps with water too contaminated to drink. They spoke of fish with tumors and a toddler dead after playing in a fouled river. They warned of settlers drawn to the area by the new roads, who then clear the forest even more. They explained that the oil company had promised schools and health clinics, but what the people of the area got instead was illness and hunger. They lost the forest that sustained them; it had been their pharmacy, grocery store, building supply depot, and home.

As the reality of a future living alongside oil pipelines sunk in, the visitors asked “How can we prevent this? How can we protect our forests and communities?” A translator summarized the responses bubbling up from the group: “Stand together. Speak out. Work with your allies here and around the world. And peacefully protest.” 

That is just what Greenpeace US had done. And now it was facing a $660 million verdict.

The Verdict Heard Round the World

The messages on my phone were still racing in. Not only had Greenpeace lost, but the jury’s monumental verdict left the future of Greenpeace US in jeopardy. Friends and allies messaged me expressions of outrage and shock. One colleague said simply, “We are fighting monsters.”

Energy Transfer’s legal attacks against Greenpeace US started in 2017. The energy development company accused Greenpeace of defamation, trespass, nuisance, and civil conspiracy around the Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock, where at its peak, ten thousand Indigenous people and allies had gathered to try to stop the construction of the company’s Dakota Access Pipeline.  

As executive director of Greenpeace US at the time, I was very familiar with the limited support role the organization, invited by the Indigenous water protectors themselves, had actually played in the historic protests. Testifying under oath one week earlier, I explained that peaceful protest is woven into 

democratic tradition. I shared that I was proud of Greenpeace's unshakable commitment to nonviolence, respect for Indigenous leadership, and sense of urgency about the climate crisis. I hoped the jury would see Greenpeace’s support of the campaign for what it was—nonviolent, respectful, lawful, and limited—and bring this meritless lawsuit to a close. Instead, they returned a verdict that starkly illustrated the existential threat environmental and social justice movements face today. 

The right to protest, enshrined in the constitutions of any democratic society, is central to the US  origin story and national sense of identity, as it is in so many other countries.   The eighteenth-century colonists who signed the Declaration of Independence  were themselves engaged in an act of protest against a distant monarchy’s attempts to control them. Protest has been used for many generations to make countries freer, fairer, safer, and healthier. 

People know this, even those who live in more repressive societies  . They share a broad understanding that peaceful protest is integral to a healthy democracy and is an important tool for creating change. Multiple studies show that a significant majority of people from across the political spectrum recognize it as a critical form of free speech and believe that we should all be allowed to express unpopular opinions. We understand it's part of democracy, even when it's messy, uncomfortable, or inconvenient.

For four decades—seventeen years working with Greenpeace and over twenty more with allied organizations—I have seen change forged when people put not just their voices but their bodies on the line. I have used my constitutionally protected right to protest in myriad ways: speaking out at rallies around the country, occupying the New Jersey office of a trafficker in hazardous waste, blocking the road in front of the White House with a truck modified to look like a belching smokestack, hiking into the Nevada nuclear test site, and refusing to vacate the lobby of a Senate building or oil company’s office, along with dozens of others, to bring attention to the need for climate action.

That’s why, as I stood beside the huge oil flare with Indigenous leaders calling for different kinds of protest to protect their forest, communities, and way of life, the devastating effects of potentially losing our right to do so hit me so hard. What our Indigenous friends said in Lago Agrio has never been truer: The power to stop the corporations and governments wreaking havoc on our communities and the planet must come from us, the people, speaking out and taking action together.

What Is Protest? 

When we think of protest, we often envision a group of people gathering in a public square, holding signs and banners. Sharing dissenting opinions, in speech or writing, can also be an act of protest, as can recruiting others to join the cause. A protest can involve thousands of people acting together or one person standing or kneeling alone. It can include direct action, where people courageously put themselves in the way of an imminent harm in order to stop it and draw attention to the cause. At other times, protest requires refraining from action and refusing to cooperate in the face of unjust laws, unfair systems, or undemocratic rulers, thereby depriving them of legitimacy and support. 

In some places, wearing a specific garment is an act of protest; in others, removing one is. Refusing to eat—a hunger strike—is a form of protest. And providing food and water to others can be an act of protest, if the recipient is a migrant crossing the desert into the US or a voter waiting in line near a polling station in the state of Georgia.  A protest can be refusing to work (a strike), refusing to buy something (a boycott), or refusing to move (an occupation or blockade). 

Some protests are symbolic, permitted, and avoid causing discomfort; they may seek to be joyful, family-friendly, and inviting. Others deliberately cause disruption and delay, with the participants willing to risk scorn and arrest to stop what they see as a greater wrong, convey a sense of urgency, disrupt the status quo, and increase pressure on decision-makers to act. 

The constant in all of these is that the protesters feel morally compelled to make their voices heard. And for those excluded from the decisions that impact their lives, protest is...