On the one hand, there was a bevy of climate change activists who had blocked the road to the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada on Sunday.
On the other, there was a pickup truck with some very unhappy law enforcement folks who were responding to a miles-long traffic backup.
As illustrated by videos posted to social media by FreedomNews.tv, it really was no contest at all.
Rangers belonging to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Police Department drove straight through the blockade, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
WARNING: The following videos contain vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
#BREAKING “I’m gonna take all of you out!” – Nevada Rangers ram through climate protest blockade, point a gun at an activists as they smash them onto the ground for arrest after group @7seven_circles shut down BURNING MAN
Video by @ScooterCasterNY [email protected] to license pic.twitter.com/Z3Bvknx8ES
— FreedomNews.Tv FNTV (@FreedomNTV) August 27, 2023
As shown by the videos, once the blockade was gone, so was the fight in the protesters, who whined and cried as tribal rangers ordered them to the ground.
Police charged the protesters with trespassing on tribal land, according to the New York Post.
Video of the traffic backed up on Nevada freeway leading to #BurningMan after climate Protesters blocked the road pic.twitter.com/YxCdWBEpsh
— FreedomNews.Tv FNTV (@FreedomNTV) August 28, 2023
Prior to the dramatic end of the blockade, drivers and protesters had argued, with some of the drivers trying to get through to push the barricade out of the road.
A female protester who had chained herself to the trailer blocking the road yelled out, “Hey, you’re hurting me.”
“Well you chained yourself to it,” a man trying to move the barrier said.
A woman also irked with the protesters called the tactic a “dumb-a** move.”
Burning Man SHUT DOWN by Climate activists, people stuck in traffic shove and remove blockade with activists chained to it – NEVADA #BurningMan pic.twitter.com/zVvw17TuS8
— FreedomNews.Tv FNTV (@FreedomNTV) August 27, 2023
The protesters were from the group Seven Circles, according to the Post.
The group claimed the protest was meant to shine a spotlight on “capitalism’s inability to address climate’s ecological breakdown” and to combat the “popularization of Burning Man among affluent people who do not live the stated values of Burning Man, resulting in the commodification of the event,” the report said.
Seven Circles claimed the festival’s actions are “detrimental to its claimed values, especially as carbon emissions continue to rise despite government and corporate commitments to reduce carbon emissions by more than half by 2030.”
“We do not have a climate problem, the climate is behaving exactly in line with the laws of physics,” Thomas Diocano, co-founder of Rave Revolution, said in a statement, according to the Post. “We have an economic system problem, and that economic system is capitalism.
“History shows that capitalism cannot be reformed. It cannot be changed from the ‘inside,’” he said. “Are we really ready to sacrifice everything for an outdated, unequal economic system?
“The time to evolve has come.”
This group should be sued by everyone that they caused to miss events, and time lost for work. Wouldn’t have bothered me if the Rangers had shot them; they deserve it. “Activism” is no different than terrorism.