Anti-FPL activists gets Palm Beach Post reader support

Anti-FPL protester Panagioti Tsolkas received positive support from Palm Beach Post readers in letters to the editor published by the paper on Sunday.

Following criticism in a Feb. 8 column by retired Post editorial writer Dan Moffett, one reader wrote in that the actions of Tsolkas and others arrested for protesting environmental damage by an FPL plant in Palm Beach County are "legitimate attempts to draw attention to serious, even life-threatening situations," and continued:

"The protest against Florida Power & Light Co.'s West County Energy Center was a perfect example. This project could pollute our air and threaten the purity of our ground water. Its location makes it a danger to the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge."

Another reader said that Moffett's column was "an untruthful attempt to influence readers against an environmental activist who risked his safety and freedom to protect what little remains of the environment in Florida," adding that:

"Throughout our history, the powers of the status quo have used all kinds of punitive measures to silence our voices. But we will not be dissuaded, we will not be frightened, we will not be silenced.

Tsolkas also wrote in his own defense:

I was sentenced to 60 days in the Palm Beach County Jail by Judge Laura Johnson - double the time requested by the state attorney - for asserting my right to defend land, liberty and the water we all drink from.

And, he noted the response of Henry David Thoreau, jailed for opposing slavery, to his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson when the latter visited Thoreau in jail:

When asked by Emerson what he was doing in jail, Thoreau responded with an answer that should resonate with people of conscience today in Palm Beach County; perhaps even The Post's Dan Moffett: "What are you doing out there?"

Read the letters to the Palm Beach Post editor, here.