CT Resident Sam Waterston Arrested At Yale-Harvard Game

NEW HAVEN, CT — Sam Waterston, actor, Connecticut farmer and activist was arrested at the Yale-Harvard football game, the 136th meeting of the two teams, at the Yale Bowl Saturday.

Hundreds of activists from both Ivy League universities descended on the field in a peaceful protest against fossil fuel investments by the schools and demand Puerto Rican debt be canceled.

What began with a few dozen on the field to disrupt the action and demand divestiture, grew to hundreds, shuttering the game for around 45 minutes.

Yale Police, helped by New Haven Police, arrested 50 people, according to reports, charging them with misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Requests for more information from Yale Police was not immediately returned.

The Hartford Courant reported Monday that 48 people received misdemeanor summons' for disorderly conduct. All are due in New Haven Superior Court on Dec. 6. Two others faced additional charges including trespass and resisting arrest.

But activists wrote that, "Once again, instead of listening to student demands, Yale arrested more than 30 activists at the game, and charged many with disorderly conduct. " They said the fine for the charge upon conviction is up to $500.

The group Fossil Free Yale said its mission was to"call for climate justice and divestment."

"Over 150 Yale and Harvard students and alumni;" students and alum of myriad groups including the Yale Endowment Justice Coalition, Fossil Free Yale, and Divest Harvard "stormed the field and disrupted" the game saying "Nobody wins when our universities invest their combined $70 billion endowments in fossil fuels and Puerto Rican debt holdings."

Fossil Free Yale called the protest a "game-changing moment for the student divestment movement, and the first time in history that students have disrupted a major sporting event for fossil fuel divestment."

And they posted about Waterston's involvement to its Facebook page. The Academy Award-winning actor graduated from Yale in 1962.

"'I’m here because I hope the students' determination, and maybe my joining in, will give some heart to the great majority of us who know we are in the middle of a climate emergency, but are paralyzed by the size of the challenge, so that we will take courage from these young people to speak up ourselves; that, seeing them, we’ll feel a new confidence in our numbers and strength, and in our power to move even a mountain of inertia and resistance as big as this one.You don’t get to have the facts, the truth, and the right on your side every day. This is one of those days.'"

There's a GoFundMe to raise funds for future action and to pay for lawyers, court fees and fines.

"Many of the amazing activists who were arrested rely on financial aid for tuition, and we do not wish for any student to suffer financial repercussions for participating in direct action against climate injustice," activists from Fossil Free Yale wrote.

"We would also like to pay for transportation costs for Harvard students to meet their court appointments, so that already vulnerable students are not financially burdened for putting themselves at risk to make their institutions more just. "

Waterston was arrested Oct. 18 in a climate change protest outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Waterston owns a farm in West Cornwall, Litchfield County in northwestern Connecticut.

Just after 4:30 p.m., Saturday, Yale won in a double overtime game, 50 to 43. And just in time. The more than century-old Yale Bowl has no lights.

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