© MotherboardThe banner and atrium in question via Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance.
It's understandable that, as the location of one of the worst act of terrorism in American history, Oklahoma would have strict laws against even threatening a terrorist attack. It's just hard to understand how glitter falling from a
Hunger Games-themed banner as it unfurls looks anything like terrorism.
Last Friday morning, a group of protestors from
Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance and Cross Timbers Earth First! entered the 50-story Devon Tower in downtown Oklahoma City. They were there to protest the building's namesake, Devon, an energy company that is involved in fracking for oil and natural gas in both the United States and Canada, and their CEO sits on the board of directors at TransCanada.
Two protestors locked themselves in a revolving front door using a bike lock and two others went to the second floor and, from a balcony, unfurled two banners: one in support of indigenous activists protesting energy extraction from their land in Canada and another that had the
Hunger Games Mockingjay emblem and the phrase "The odds are never in our favor."
As the banner unfurled, glitter - referred to by the police as a "black substance" - fell from it onto the ground. One of the activists, Eric Whalen,
told KWTV 9 that the "black substance" in question was "simply glitter to make for good pictures and video and to make it pretty."
A spokesman for GPTSR said that a janitor came out and swept it up, while building security asked the protestors to leave, which they did, with the exception of the two who were locked in a revolving door. The fire department had to come to get them out. All in all, pretty normal sounding end of a protest, complete with some cuffing and trips to the police station.