The Daily Camera thought nothing of printing a letter to the editor calling for violence and even murder to stop fracking, until a conservative website in Washington called them out on it.
The Daily Caller still has the original wording that was published and left on the website unaltered for at least a day before someone at the paper realized that First Amendment rights don’t include a call to blow up wells and kill workers.
“If the oil and gas industry puts fracking wells in our neighborhoods, threatening our lives and our children’s lives, then don’t we have a moral responsibility to blow up wells and eliminate fracking and workers?” Andrew O’Connor wrote in a letter to the paper’s editors.
The letter was edited the following day to read “don’t we have a moral responsibility to take action to dissuade frackers from operating here?”
The paper now includes an editors note explaining that some wording was removed, but leaves the bulk of the letter because it “presents a philosophical question the Camera believes is worthy of community conversation in the context of the ongoing discussion over fracking.”
It’s not so much a philosophical question as a courtroom defense for breaking the law:
The oil and gas companies are putting their profits ahead of the health of the people in Colorado; consequently, fracking equals murder. Malcolm X said: ” I don’t call it violence when it’s in self-defense; I call it intelligence.” Coloradans must be intelligent and act in self-defense to protect their neighborhoods and children from the existential threat of fracking. Weibo Ludwig of Calgary, Canada fought back by pouring cement down wellheads and blew up wells.
Crossing the road could get one run over by a car, but that doesn’t mean we should advocate killing everyone on the planet who owns a vehicle.
The Daily Camera might have gotten off as being ridiculously careless by publishing this letter to begin with, but the editing seems to suggest they agree with message.