On Saturday April 20, 2024, climate activists from Extinction Rebellion Boston (XR) disrupted business as usual at Laurence G. Hanscom Airfield to protest the proposed expansion of 17 new private jet hangars. The protesters sang, chanted, held banners, and never endangered a single passenger. They simply prevented planes from taking off in order to highlight the dangers of the proposed expansion. The activists aimed to amplify the voice of the public, which has opposed the expansion on many occasions, including 1,500+ critical public comments that were submitted on the developers’ Draft Environmental Impact Report, along with 13,500 petition signatures opposing the proposed expansion.
21 courageous activists were arrested that day, kicking off what has been nearly a year of court appearances.
The focus of the protest was the proposed expansion of Hanscom that accommodates a 300% increase in private jet services. The Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) is still considering this plan and Governor Healey has not condemned it, despite marketing herself as a “Climate Governor.” Based on a comprehensive analysis of private flights traveling to and from Hanscom Field over an 18-month period, the expansion would primarily serve the wealthiest travelers in the region. Many of these jet-setters frequently take short-hop flights to recreational and luxury destinations. Numerous flights are as little as 15 minutes, traveling from Concord to Boston Logan International Airport. As planes expel the most emissions during take-off and landing, these brief flights are exceptionally damaging.
After attempting to negotiate fair deals with the Commonwealth to resolve the case, 15 people will possibly stand trial for this act of civil disobedience. This strategy would create a legal precedent for climate civil disobedience in Massachusetts. Obviously, the most efficient route would be to try all the defendants in one trial with a single court date. However, the Commonwealth is moving forward with 15 separate trials, using 15 different juries over a span of more than 15 weeks. This would mean a trial once a week for an XR defendant throughout the summer. When XR Boston accepted this trial schedule without backing down, the court offered new deals and the 15 defendants currently scheduled to move forward with trials are evaluating their next steps.
To move forward with the judge’s suggested plan, the Commonwealth will need to process 15 separate juries. Just think about the loss of productivity! For separate trials, 90 people would be impaneled for a six person jury. Let’s say that each juror normally works eight hours per day and each jury is made up of six people. This means a total of 720 work hours are lost for the jurors alone, not to mention the courthouse staff required to assist these trials. If the group was tried as a single unit, only 12 or six people would be needed for the jury.
The trials are scheduled to start in May, over one year since the Hanscom action. In the past, XR Boston’s civil disobedience cases have been resolved in a matter of weeks. The legal process has been costly for the defendants and taxpayers in terms of trial court resources.
Perhaps the kind of resources that the Commonwealth is spending on taking these concerned citizens to trial could be invested in other areas, like a transition from fossil fuel infrastructure to green energy.
Members of Extinction Rebellion are your neighbors. They can be your professional colleagues, your doctor, your college professor, your yoga teacher, your friends, your children, your parents, or your grandparents. They are risking their own well-being to demand a livable planet and a viable future for our children—it’s time Massport listened.