If you’re thinking of taking a stand on principle on behalf of American workers and the American economy, maybe you’d better think again.

A young man’s protest two years ago that took the form of bidding on government oil and gas leases in a Utah wilderness area should give pause to folks concerned about working Americans, especially if it involves going up against the “energy industry.” In this particular case, Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison, during which sentence he landed in solitary confinement (now they use the euphemism “segregation”) for an alleged threat he made.

The “threat” comes later in the story. First, DeChristopher was making a statement and a protest when he went to the 2008 government auction, in which wild land was to be sold as leases to the highest bidder to search for gas and oil or any other mineral that might bring profits to the companies’ shareholders.

DeChristopher was alarmed that they would do such a thing to some gems of wilderness and went to observe the auctions. When he actually was in the presence of the corporations and their bidding process, he decided to bid himself, although he said later that he didn’t go there for that purpose.

In the process of bidding, he ran up the cost of leases for other bidders and ended up with the purchase of $1.79 million worth of leases that totaled 22,500 acres. Being a 29-year-old student at the time, he didn’t have the money and he was eventually indicted for disrupting the sale of leases.

He was eventually tried and sentenced to two years in prison for his protest. To show the character of American jurisprudence at this time and the climate of imbalanced punishment (prison for the 99 percent and an award for good citizenship to the 1 percent), at sentencing, Judge Dee Benson said, among other things, “This is not a case of Rosa Parks,” adding that it is a “myth” that DeChristopher acted because he had no other choice when he deliberately derailed a federal oil and gas lease auction in 2008. The sentencing took a few hours, including a 35-minute statement by DeChristopher. And then, the judge pronounced his sentence.

Considering the crimes (some of them “high”) and misdemeanors of Corporate America, especially in the massive sector of “energy extraction,” the vengeful sentencing of DeChristopher by Benson stood in sharp contrast to the lack of jail time or even a reprimand of those wealthy among criminals and the nearly total lack of punishment of corporations who have done harm to Americans and their land for generations.

Indeed, it may be that DeChristopher is no Rosa Parks, but Benson and his supporters in the harsh sentencing indicated that Parks took her stand of civil disobedience after a long struggle against unjust laws…for many generations, in fact. What they failed to notice is that the struggle against the gross imbalance of power in America (Corporate America vs. The People) has been going on nearly as long and it will continue. Civil disobedience of the kind engaged by DeChristopher seems to be warranted, and he’s been described as a political prisoner, as have so many black and minority activists over the years.

The lease auction was termed to have been improper or illegal, and that’s one of the things that DeChristopher was protesting in the first place, even before he decided at the last minute to make a bid. Also, many of his supporters have pointed out that there have been other cases in which untold lives have been lost and unimaginable amounts of money have been spent or pocketed by industry without fear of prosecution, let alone punishment.

But, after all, Judge Benson himself was quoted as describing the real reason that DeChristopher was sentenced harshly: In the process of sentencing, he admitted that “the offense itself ... wasn’t that bad,” but that DeChristopher’s “…continuing trail of statements…” as the reason for the harsh sentence. “Free speech” certainly can get one in a lot of trouble in 2012 America.

Now, for the speech that got DeChristopher in solitary confinement: He was placed in a minimum security prison to serve his term, but, while there, he got wind that a corporate donor of $25,000 to his legal defense fund might be a party to the transfer of jobs or industry from the U.S., to another country. He communicated with the staffer of the non-profit he co-founded, Peaceful Uprising, and said that if it were found to be true that the company shipped out the jobs, he would feel compelled to return the money and write a letter to the firm, telling them that he would conduct a campaign against their actions at some future time.

Well, that was two threats: to return the money and to conduct a campaign against taking the jobs out of the country. There are computer programs that pick up on trigger words among billions of words that instantaneously home in on the perpetrator. DeChristopher’s jailers apparently have that and they picked up on the “threats” and removed him from the minimum security to the segregation unit, an eight by 10 cell shared with another inmate. Along with the miniscule space go other punishments, such as 15 minutes of phone calls a month, limited (or no) visits, limited ability to write or otherwise communicate, and hardly any access to sunshine and air and exercise.

The outcry from DeChristopher’s supporters and the general public was deafening and, within a matter of days, he was moved back into the general population of the minimum-security prison. How did he get to solitary? According to several press and other sources, a phone call from a single congressional representative about his “threats” was enough to get him sent to the box. It took a volume of calls from the people to get him out.

The only good thing that can come out of this kind of episode in the pathetically unbalanced judicial system is that environmentalists may begin to see that people of color have been subjected to this kind of treatment for decades…and they still are. The lopsided percentages of the two million-plus inmates in America’s prisons are (for their percentage of the general population) still overwhelmingly black and others of color.

Americans know that the nation’s judicial system needs reform, so that the people are treated as gently as Corporate America is treated, when corporations commit their crimes. Reform seems to be happening all the time, but the structure and slant of the system can be counted on to remain the same: if you’re rich, you’ll get off; if you’re poor, you’re going to jail.

None of this will change, unless the people in their endless variety begin to demand justice and until they start supporting people in positions of power who will actually change the judicial system and change the political system that makes it all possible. Men and women who are defending the rights and well being of the people need to know that there are millions standing behind them, who will fight to protect them from arbitrary prosecutions and, even more strenuously, from authoritarian punishments.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.