The Guardian doesn't have a paywall, it just shows an annoying message you can get past. At least my browser doesn't prevent me from seeing the article, so I'll copy the essence.
It was jurisdiction shopping by the oil company, trial errors by the court and manipulation of public opinion, third world oligarchy style. :(
- The jury – the most sacred due process protection available to a defendant – was patently biased in favor of the company. Seven of the 11 people seated had ties to the fossil fuel industry. Some had admitted they could not be fair, but the judge seated them anyway. There was no Native American or person of color on the jury even though issues of Indigenous rights were central to the trial.
- Morton county, where the trial was held and where many of the protests took place, voted 75% for Trump in the last election and has extensive ties to the fossil fuel industry. In a pre-trial survey, 97% of residents in the county said they could not be fair to Greenpeace. Yet the judge refused repeated requests by Greenpeace to move the case.
- Energy Transfer ran a major television and online advertising campaign in the county lauding itself in the weeks leading up to the trial. A newspaper called Central ND News, with articles critical of the protests, was also sent to county residents; Greenpeace believed Energy Transfer might have been responsible for it. But the court refused to allow Greenpeace to use court discovery procedures to determine how this unethical campaign to taint the jury pool happened.
- Adding to the absurdity, Greenpeace was blamed for the entire protest movement even though it played only a minimal role. The protests were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, on whose ancestral land the Dakota Access pipeline was being built. In fact, only six of the 100,000 people who came to the protests were from Greenpeace – yet Energy Transfer was able to convince the jury to hold the organization responsible for every dollar of supposed damages that occurred over seven months of protests.
- Secrecy pervaded the proceedings. The court repeatedly refused to open a live stream to the public or to create and release transcripts. A request by media organizations (including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times) to access the live stream was denied. Thousands of key documents were sealed and thus hidden from public scrutiny.
- The judge, James Gion, made evidentiary decisions that gutted Greenpeace’s ability to mount a defense. For example, a major expert report showed that the pipeline had leaked roughly 1m gallons of drilling fluids into drinking water sources used by millions of people. Greenpeace lawyers needed the document to debunk the argument that the pipeline was safe, but the judge refused to let the organization use it.
- The 35-page verdict form was confusing and the results seemed to prove the jury was in fact confused. It appears the exorbitant damages number was calculated by pulling numbers out of thin air – including millions for public relations expenses, private security costs, which were being paid anyway, and refinancing costs due to various banks withdrawing from the project once they learned about the protests. (Lobbying banks is also constitutionally protected advocacy.)
I have participated in holding about ten, and when it moved indoors to become a freeshop, I have volunteered a dozen times.
Unless local climate favours you - if you hold it outdoors, your biggest concern will be weather prediction. You'll want people to exchange their goods, but not a truckload of abandoned goods damaged by rain. Avoid rainy dates, avoid announcing too far ahead (when the error margins are big), if risk of rain becomes likely, have a large quantity of plastic sheet available to cover goods. If possible, avoid changing dates - information travels slowly. If you have to cancel, announce the cancellation well, visit the site and put up a sign saying the market's canceled.
Your market will have a "surplus". Some people will bring more goods than others take. You will need to make a compromise between warehousing and discarding goods. We used the local autonomous social center for warehousing goods between markets. We lacked a good plan for offloading surplus to others who might distribute them to people, since we were the first local phenomenon of this sort.
Transporting goods to warehouse will likely require a car. I used a heavy electric bike with a towed cart first, but that quickly became insufficient. My car had no towing hook, so it was full of goods up to the ceiling. As the warehousing situation becomes more dire, be prepared to inform people about capacity limits. As a last resort, ask "unsold" goods to be taken back. Some will ignore this, but you can handle a few.
If you observe hoarding behaviour, set reasonable limits (e.g. "as much as you can lift with one hand"). I have observed serious hoarding only once.
Our market typically offered some easily prepared vegan snacks and drinks. It is always good style to display a list of ingredients and potential allergens.
This can wear you out. Never do this alone, we had at least 8 bored people on our team and also used the opportunity to spread anarchism.