Climate activists sentenced for red powder attack on US Constitution

Two climate activists accused of throwing a red powder on the U.S. Constitution display case at the National Archives earlier this year have been sentenced to more than a year in prison, The Washington Post reported.

Donald Zepeda, 35, of Maryland, and Jackson Green, 27, of Utah, were charged with felony destruction of government property after dumping the fine red powder over the display case, according in an indictment that was unsealed in District Count on Thursday per the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The act, which the DOJ said caused more than $50,000 in damage and closed the Archives Rotunda for four days, was aimed at drawing attention to climate change, as reported by The Post.

The rotunda houses the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

“The National Archives Rotunda is the sanctuary for our nation’s founding documents. They are here for all Americans to view and understand the principles of our nation. Attacking such national treasures is “not the same as vandalizing a public park or the wall of an office building — physically or symbolically," Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan said in a statement to the court, as highlighted by The Post.

The Post said that Zepeda's attorney argued that "as viscerally infuriating” as the defendant's actions might have been, "he never intended to damage the Constitution nor its case, nor anticipated the cost of cleaning it." The intention, his defense said, was to have "the Biden administration declare a climate emergency," The Post reported.

Green, according to The Washington Post, apologized and wrote, "I have come to realize that in addition to causing direct harm to individuals, destructive protest actions like the ones I carried out can lead to the opposite of our intentions by creating a negative response — turning people off from climate activism and creating further discord."

The powder, made of pigment and cornstarch, was so fine that an industrial vacuum couldn’t pick it up and crews were “on their hands and knees until midnight” cleaning it before resuming the next day, The Associated Press, which was granted access to the rotunda following the incident, reported.