Jessica Reznicek

Jessica Reznicek (born July 25, 1981) is a Catholic Worker Movement and climate activist from Iowa. On June 29, 2021, she was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for a series of attacks on the Dakota Access Pipeline. Reznicek, along with fellow activist and Catholic Worker Ruby Montoya, held a press conference in July 2017, in which they announced they had sabotaged the pipeline over a number of years.

Personal life

Reznicek grew up on a farm in Perry, Iowa. She was raised Catholic, but was not a regular churchgoer after her childhood. She left the faith in her teens. Her father worked for the sheriff's department.

After high school, she drove a fork lift at a Hy-Vee distribution center and took a job at a country club. It was there that she met her future husband, whom she described as a "millionaire businessman." By her mid-20s, she was married to this pharmacist in the Des Moines area and was studying political science at Simpson College. His wealth enabled her to wear designer clothing and drive expensive cars, as well as hand out $20 bills to those standing in line at soup kitchens. When she told her husband she wanted to attend the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, he said that if she left, their marriage would be over; she went anyway.

Activism

By the time she committed her first arson in November 2016, she had been a part of the Catholic worker movement, the Plowshares movement, and other Catholic-activist movements for more than a decade. Her activism began with an impromptu trip to Colorado in the mid-2000s. She had hoped to commune with God in nature, but instead found polluted water that could burst into flames and large sections of earth torn up by the oil and gas industry.

While in Buffalo, New York, Reznicek canvased with the Public Interest Research Group. She participated in protests around the world, and was deported from Israel after helping Palestinians plant olive trees in occupied lands. After learning of the Occupy Wall Street protest, she boarded a bus for Manhattan and joined the camp there. When she heard of a satellite protest in Des Moines three weeks later, she returned to Iowa. At the Des Moines Occupy protest, she met members of the Catholic Worker movement and was attracted to their social justice mission.

In the fall of 2015, Reznicek used a $1,000 grant to conduct research into defense contractors near Omaha. When she learned that Northrup Grumman was developing the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone, she abandoned plans to leave the United States and focus on her spiritual life. Instead, she visited the facility on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, introduced herself to the guard on duty, and then smashed a window and a door with a sledgehammer. When finished, she kneeled on the sidewalk to await her arrest. She served a 72-day prison sentence.

Catholic Worker Movement

After the Occupy protest fizzled out, Reznicek then moved into the Rachel Corrie House, one of four Catholic Worker houses in Des Moines. In the Catholic Worker movement Reznicek was able to merge her concerns about injustices in the world and the "nagging void" in her spiritual life.

During this time Reznicek wrote for Via Pacis, the local Catholic Worker newsletter, and described her journey from a financially secure housewife and college student to finding her spiritual purpose as a Catholic worker and activist. She also went on "long walks", including one from Kansas City to Guatemala and another from Iowa to Washington D.C. She was occasionally joined on these walks by Frank Cordaro.

After her acts of sabotage, reaction within the Catholic Worker movement was mixed. Many opposed Reznicek's actions because the property destruction was "actual, not symbolic", and not in line with the nonviolent principles of the movement.

Dakota Access Pipeline

Reznicek opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline because she feared the pipeline would leak and contaminate the land and water around it. She took part in a number of protests against it, including locking herself to the construction equipment used to excavate the pipeline route. In the process she was arrested several times.

Indigenous runners

In the spring of 2016, Reznicek began walking and hitchhiking to Standing Rock Reservation to join in the protests against the pipeline. In August, she encountered a group of indigenous young people who were running to Washington D.C. to raise awareness and urge the government to revoke the project's permits. She joined them on their journey.

Mississippi stand

Later in August 2016, Reznicek blockaded a road construction workers were using to bore a hole underneath the Mississippi River. She then sat down beside it and began playing her guitar. She was arrested later that day and spent the night in jail. After being released, she blocked the road again and spent another night in jail. On the third day, she set up camp on adjoining land and began to pray that others would join her protest, which she called the Mississippi Stand. Within a week, 50 others joined her. Hundreds more arrived in the following weeks.

Over the next eight weeks, the protesters attempted to slow or stop the work by blockades, chaining themselves to construction equipment, and more. Arrests were made by the dozens at a time. After Energy Transfer Partners announced in October that their work there was complete, the protesters dispersed.

Newell arson

In November 2016, Reznicek and Montoya burned a section of the pipeline at a worksite outside of Newell, Iowa. They punctured holes in coffee cans and then filled them with motor oil. The cans were then placed inside the cabs of machinery and lit on fire.

Hunger strike

Several weeks after the Newell arson, Reznicek began a hunger strike. After two weeks, when President Barack Obama rescinded the pipeline's permits, Reznicek had her first meal, a bowl of chicken soup.

Sabotage of the pipes

After Donald Trump took office, he reinstated the pipeline's permits.

Between March and May 2017, Reznicek used oxyacetylene cutting torches and gasoline-soaked rags to damage or destroy other sections of the pipeline around Iowa and South Dakota. She had previously seen constructions workers using the torches to weld the pipes together, purchased her own tools, and taught herself to use them so she could undo their work. Reznicek and Montoya also began lighting more fires on construction sites saying that "property destruction, or as I prefer to call it, property improvement, is the only solution I foresee." They stopped once they discovered that oil was flowing through the pipes.

The goal was to cost the company building the pipeline so much money that they would eventually run out of resources and abandon the project. They were not caught during these acts, but also failed to stop the pipeline. On July 24, 2017, as a last ditch effort to raise awareness, they held a press conference outside the Iowa Utilities Board announcing their acts of sabotage. It is estimated that theair actions cost $6 million in damage by stopping 30 million barrels of oil, or one-sixth of 1% of the total budget.

Sojourn, arrest, and conviction

The FBI raided the Catholic Worker house in Des Moines where Reznicek and Montoya lived at 6 a.m. on August 11, 2017. The agents left after four hours with 20 boxes of materials, including legal notes Reznicek and Montoya had made after consulting with their pro bono attorneys.

Later in August, their attorney emailed the assistant United States Attorney in Des Moines with an offer for the women to surrender at any time. In September, Reznicek and Montoya left the Catholic Worker house for a speaking engagement on the West Coast, but they never arrived. They also stopped responding to calls and text messages. After a month, the women sent letters to their parents explaining that they had left and cut off contact because they had "too much spiritual work to do." A private security company hired by the pipeline company followed the pair for eight months.

Eventually Montoya returned to her parents in Arizona and Reznicek joined the St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth, Minnesota as a monastic intern. In September 2019, more than two years later, a grand jury approved charges against both women. In October, after being charged, they were released on house arrest with ankle bracelets.

The two were then each charged with nine federal criminal charges each. Reznicek was accused of setting 11 fires, but says she was only responsible for 8. Because of Reznicek's previous arrests for things like trespassing, federal sentencing guidelines called for a prison sentence of more than 100 years. Following their indictments, Reznecik and Montoya publicly expressed regret that they did not do more to try and stop the pipeline.

Reznicek accepted a plea deal where she pled guilty to a single count of damaging an energy facility, a charge that alone could bring up to 20 years. Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger labeled Reznicek a "domestic terrorist" applied a terrorism enhancement under the USA Patriot Act to Reznicek's sentence. Reznicek has appealed the terrorist designation.

Reznicek was sentenced to eight years in a federal prison with three years of federal supervision to follow. She was also ordered to pay $3.2 million in restitution to Energy Transfer, LLC.