Rally held in Concord as climate change protesters arrested at Hanscom Field appear in court

CONCORD, Mass. — Climate change protesters arrested at Hanscom airport in Bedford earlier this year will likely go to trial.

Those defendants and their supporters rallied outside of Concord District Court before a hearing on Wednesday morning.

The demonstrators said their fight is focused on combating climate change and fighting an expansion at Hanscom Field which they are calling a fuel farm.

“The companies that operate at Hanscom derive most of their revenue from selling the fuel to the planes. So this is like an enormous gas station to refuel jets in addition to housing 80 or 90 additional private jets within the hangers themselves,” said Alex Chatfield, a member of the Coalition to Stop Private Jet Expansion.

Chatfield said the project they are trying to stop at Hanscom will double hanger space and “it will have four 20,000 gallon tanks for jet fuel and another 5,000 gallon tank for the leaded fuel that they put into the propeller planes.”

He calls it new fossil fuel infrastructure and added, “It benefits only a few wealthy travelers, it has no other public benefit either to these communities or to this state as a whole, and climate change is already doing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to the economy in Massachusetts.”

Twenty-one people were arrested in April at Hanscom Field as they protested the project.

Demonstrators allegedly breached a security perimeter and trespassed on the tarmac. They were arrested and charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.

The judge previously denied their request to dismiss the charges against 20 of them.

Their attorney on Wednesday also tried getting a felony charge dismissed for one person charged with opening the door to get into the airport.

There’s been no decision on that just yet.

“This was about political speech and they were simply trying to express that we’re in an emergency and this plan on behalf of Massport and the developers is a direct threat and they felt that they need to take extraordinary measures in order to draw attention to the issue,” Chatfield said.

Defense attorney Kylah Clay, who is representing the group, said each defendant could face up to 30 days in prison on the trespassing charge and or a fine, and a fine for disorderly conduct if it’s their first time being convicted.

The 21 defendants will return to court on Dec. 4 for another hearing, at which time a trial date could be set.

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