ARE FELONY CHARGES FORGIVABLE?

Police warned her to leave, so she packed up her camera gear, but when she got to her car she was arrested on felony charges and risked a 30-year sentence.

The charges wouldn’t hold up in court, and Lindsey Grayzel, the producer, director, and editor of the documentary “The Reluctant Radical,” could have sued the police for wrongfully arresting her and her crew.

But, she had a bigger goal in mind: She knew telling Ken Ward’s story was more important than fighting the police.

The filmmaker-activist recounted her challenges during the latest in Mt. Hood’s Mouths of Others guest speaker series, appearing in the Visual Arts Theatre on Wednesday, March 7.

The Reluctant Radical follows Ward through a year and a half of combating climate change and the fossil fuel industry. After long, in-depth research, he spent years pleading with businesses, organizations, and friends to take action. No one understood the impending destruction fossil fuels can have on the world.

He described the weight of his knowledge as living in an alternate reality because no one seemed to care about the looming disaster. When no one would listen, he decided to put his own body on the line. It was his moral calling to break the law for the greater good, he decided.

Oct. 11, 2016, was the day he, along with the film crew, was arrested.

Ward had coordinated a plan to shut down all the U.S. tar sands oil pipelines, flowing west and south from Alberta, Canada’s, tar sand region. With the film crew recording from a distance, the 60-year-old activist from Corbett, Oregon – not far from the Mt. Hood campus – parked at a dead-end road, grabbed his red-handled bolt cutters from the passenger seat of his Jeep Wrangler and headed toward the gate.

Within 11 minutes, he racked up three felony charges and a misdemeanor charge: He had shut off the emergency valve of the Trans Mountain pipeline, pumping crude oil from Alberta to Washington state.

The charges against Grayzel and her crew were dropped, and after several court dates, Ward got off with a few days in prison, and community service.

The documentary started off as a short film, but as her crew followed Ward, she saw the depth of his cause and the extreme actions he was willing to take to fight climate change. People called him crazy, and his psychiatrist even put him on medication, when the reality of climate change started to scare him and consume his thoughts, but he wouldn’t be muffled. People around him weren’t willing to face the uncomfortable truth, but he was.

The worst thing to do is turn away from uncomfortable situations, Grayzel.told the Mt. Hood audience. Throughout her work, she has seen people turn away from hard truths, like when she freelanced for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Dougy Center. Ignoring the truth complicated the situations and grieving process, she warns.

Grayzel said that sometimes we think it is easier to avoid the reality, but we need to face the facts, and do our part in creating needed change.

The Reluctant Radical will be screened in film festivals across Oregon and the rest of the country. It will screen at 7:30 p.m. on April 21 as part of the Portland EcoFilm Festival hosted by northeast Portland’s Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd.

Ticket information and more viewing dates and locations are available on the documentary’s website, thereluctantradicalmovie.com.