In 1972, after a century of being ruled by copper barons, Montana passed a state constitution enshrining environmental preservation. So why, in 2013, are big coal companies running the state and what are the lessons for legal activists?

“It’s going to be a long day for you guys – they’ve already started arresting people downtown,” the senior court officer told me on the morning of November 17. Two days after the raid on Zuccotti Park, the 17th was a day of mass demonstrations confronting the injustices of global capital at its symbolic center in the Financial District. A five-minute walk from Wall Street at the Manhattan Criminal Court, it was also arraignment day for 30 of more than 700 people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge six weeks earlier.

Montana contains over one-quarter of the coal reserves in the United States. Coal companies which are already actively mining throughout the state plan to capitalize on the growing global energy shortage by ramping up extraction, expanding rail lines to the Pacific coast, and shipping coal to Asia. The prospect of increased coal extraction and shipping has mobilized environmental activists throughout the Northwest and NLG members are supporting them every step of the way. 

Ward Morehouse was a longtime Guild member and an inspiration to many around the world.

As an attorney, scholar, author, and publisher, he worked to provide tools for people to understand the causes of oppression and to take action for social justice.

Ward graduated from Yale University and held teaching positions in New York, Sweden, and India. In 1976, he took over as president of the Council on International and Public Affairs, a nonprofit human rights organization he helped found in 1954.