Bundy Brothers Acquitted As #NODAPL Activists Evicted

FEATURING ARUN GUPTA – Remember the Bundy brothers’ led takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon earlier this year? The armed right wing group laid siege to federal lands for months before they were finally arrested. On Thursday all seven people arrested including Ammon and Ryan Bundy were surprisingly acquitted of federal conspiracy and weapons charges.

The timing of the acquittals couldn’t have been better. It offered a sharp contrast to the on-going presence of indigenous activists in North Dakota against the Dakota Access Pipeline. That, much larger and more popular mobilization, has faced massive police opposition, arrests, and violence. My guest Arun Gupta who had covered the Bundy brothers’ occupation in Oregon recently wrote in Raw Story that the “Acquittal of Bundys is proof of racial double standards — and a green light for right-wing terrorism.”

Arun Gupta, an investigative journalist who has written for dozens of publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Nation, and Salon. He writes regularly at teleSUR English. He was a founding editor of the Occupy Wall Street Journal. His article in the Nation Magazine is entitled, The Financial Firm That Cornered the Market on Jails.