Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)

By Alnoor Ladha - Common Dreams, March 8, 2017

Last week, on February 22, 2017, water protectors at the Oceti Sakowin camp, the primary camp of Standing Rock, were evicted by the Army Corps of Engineers in a military style takeover. A peaceful resistance that began with a sacred fire lit on April 1, 2016, ended in a blaze as some of the protectors, in a final act of defiance, set some of the camp’s structures on fire.

The millions of people around the world who have stood in solidarity and empathy with Standing Rock now stand in disbelief and grief, but the forced closure of the encampment is simply the latest chapter in a violent, 500-year-old history of colonization against the First Nations. It is also the latest chapter in the battle between an extractive capitalist model and the possibility of a post-capitalist world.

Of course, the ongoing struggle will not go down in the flames at Oceti Sakowin. We should take this opportunity to remember the enduring lessons of this movement, and prepare ourselves for what is to come next.

By Jeff Abbott - Truthout, March 2, 2017

The defense of water knows no borders, according to the Mayan Ancestral Authorities, the communal authorities and elders of Mayan towns across Guatemala. This reality has led the Mayan leaders to work in solidarity with the Lakota Sioux as they challenge the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.

The conflict in North Dakota between the Lakota Sioux and the company over the construction of the 3.6 billion dollar Dakota Access pipeline began in April 2016. The Sioux communities began their protest following the failure of the company to consult the tribe over the use of their tribal lands -- despite multiple requests by tribal leaders -- and a demand that the company preform an honest environmental impact report for the project.

On February 23, the National Guard and police raided the Oceti Sakowin camp, evicting the protesters. But despite the eviction, the example of Standing Rock continues to mobilize Indigenous activists across the world in defense of water. Thousands of supporters had traveled to the encampment to support the Sioux and their defense of water.

"When everybody showed up, including the clergymen of the world, I stood up on the bridge and I felt the meshing of all the religions, all the spirits, all the creators of all nations, and all the colors meshed as one people," Eddie P. Blackcloud Sr., a Sioux leader who was among the first to stand against the pipeline at Standing Rock, told Truthout. "This is more than just about Standing Rock; this is about the world."

The international support for the resistance will only strengthen as the United States Army has given the project the green light, despite the company's failure to consult the Indigenous populations impacted by the project's development.

Standing Rock and the struggle against Dakota Access pipeline have become the international example and rallying point for the defense of Indigenous territory. This resistance has brought Indigenous leaders together in solidarity from across the globe.

"Every community must arrive at its own means of struggle," Ana Lainez, an Ixil Maya spiritual guide and member of the Ixil Maya Ancestral Authorities told Truthout. "It is time for them to organize and move forward in the struggle."

Among those that traveled to Standing Rock to stand in solidarity with the Sioux were five representatives from the National Council of Ancestral Authorities of Guatemala. It was raining on October 12, 2016, when the representatives of Mayan political and spiritual leaders arrived at Standing Rock to stand in solidarity with the Sioux. The trip was organized by the International Mayan League, an advocacy group based in Washington, DC.

"We went primarily to stand in solidarity with the Sioux communities in resistance to the construction of the pipeline," Diego Cotiy of the Council of Indigenous Authorities of Maya, Xinca and Garifuna, told Truthout. "As members of the Ancestral Authorities of the Maya, Xinca and Garifuna, we are working to strengthen the movements and resistance against transnational companies that are violating the collective rights of our peoples, as well as violating our rights to land without any collective authorization to do so."

The leaders arrived to share experiences and have an interchange between the elders, which also included the sharing of different ceremonial performances and practices.

"When we arrived, a member of the tribe stood up and offered to sing for us in his language," Lainez told Truthout. "We felt incredibly welcomed."

The Maya of Guatemala have a long history of struggle, which they shared with their brethren at Standing Rock. Since the end of Guatemala's 36-year-long internal armed conflict in 1996, the Maya communities of the highlands have resisted the increased threat of the dispossession of Indigenous communal lands by transnational capital for the expansion of mining interests, the generation of hydro energy, and the expansion of export agriculture.

"We told them that they are united in the struggle, and that they are not the first or the last to be attacked," Lainez explained to Truthout. "They are defending the river. It is [a] point of unification of many Indigenous peoples in the United States, and the world, because the water is calling us."

"Without water, even the rich leaders of the United States cannot survive," Cotiy told Truthout. "We must respect water, and where it comes from. It is a spring of life. Water is the blood of our mother earth."

Others who have traveled to Standing Rock could feel this connection as well. Pamela Bond, the Fish and Wildlife coordinator for the Snohomish tribe, was present the nights of the visit by the Maya Ancestral Authorities of Guatemala, and pointed to the way in which the visitors brought the force of their own struggle to the NoDAPL camps.

"They all brought their songs and their prayers. It is like waiting for someone to come home, and to say, 'we support you,'" Bond explained to Truthout.  "There are no English words [that] can describe the feeling of your spirit, and the knowledge that people are uniting for a cause, for our first mother."

By Lauren McCauley - Common Dreams, February 28, 2017

Rash of anti-protest laws and effort to dismiss demonstrators as 'paid agitators' are 'standard operating procedure for movement opponents,' says expert.

An Arizona bill that sought to prosecute protest organizers like racketeers is officially dead after widespread outcry forced state lawmakers to put that effort to rest, marking a victory for the national resistance movement currently facing a rash of legislation aimed at stifling dissent.

Arizona House Speaker J.D. Mesnard announced late Monday that the bill, SB 1142, would not move forward in the legislature.

"I haven't studied the issue or the bill itself, but the simple reality is that it created a lot of consternation about what the bill was trying to do," Mesnard, a Republican, told the Phoenix New Times. "People believed it was going to infringe on really fundamental rights. The best way to deal with that was to put it to bed."

Indeed, the legislation, which would have expanded state racketeering laws to allow police to arrest and seize the assets of suspected protest organizers, made national headlines last week after passing the GOP-led Senate.

However, according to The Arizona Republic, the bill's "fate was sealed over the weekend" as Mesnard "fielded phone calls from the public to complain about the bill. The House leader's personal cellphone number is listed on his personal website. As he listened to the callers, Mesnard realized their belief that the legislation was intended to curb free-speech rights outweighed any merits its supporters might put forward. He carefully read the legislation and by the time he returned Monday to his office, where there were more than 100 messages about the bill awaiting him, he decided he would kill the measure."

The so-called "Plan a Protest, Lose Your House Bill" was the most recent state-level attempt to crackdown on the growing protest movement and opponents celebrated its defeat.

"Thanks to everyone who spoke out against this terrible proposal!" the ACLU of Arizona wrote on Twitter. "Continue fighting for our civil liberties!"

A recent analysis by the Washington Post found that "Republican lawmakers in at least 18 states have introduced on voted on legislation to curb mass protests," which includes bills that would "increase punishments for blocking highways, ban the use of masks during protests, [and] indemnify drivers who strike protesters with their cars."

As Common Dreams has previously observed, most of these anti-protest bills have sprouted up in Republican-dominated states that have seen a flurry of demonstrations and civil disobedience.

By Marty Goodman - Socialist Action, February 25, 2017

In a move that surprised no one for its greed and arrogance, on Jan. 24 President Donald Trump reversed President Obama’s Executive Order impeding construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The route of the pipeline goes across sacred Sioux land and under the Missouri River near Standing Rock, North Dakota.

Delivering on a promised one-two punch against climate sanity and Native American rights, climate change denier Trump also approved restarting the Keystone XL oil pipeline project, halted in November 2015 and stretching all the way from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

In order to stoke chauvinist rhetoric that attempts to address the burning desire of working families for good jobs at decent pay, Trump said that the pipelines must be “American made.” That might sound promising to some because the Democrats have done little to create good paying jobs. But here’s the kicker: Trump promises 28,000 jobs at Keystone XL, but a State Department review found that the project would yield only 35 permanent jobs! Trump invited Keystone to re-apply to start digging.

The fossil fuel industry’s blitzkrieg has outraged Native Americans who are vowing to take the fight to a new level. “We will fight back through the courts, protest in any means possible and necessary,” said Ariel Derenger of the Athabasca first nation.

After court challenges by the Sioux Nation, if what’s called an “easement” or permission to dig under the Missouri and Lake Oahe, a source of drinking water for the Sioux and millions downstream, is granted, and if the digging resumes, it is estimated it could take as little as two weeks to complete the pipeline. But that depends, again, on the courts and the mass movement. John Hasselman, an attorney for the Sioux Nation, says that stopping the oil in the pipes through the courts is still a possibility. He states that Trump “unlawfully and arbitrarily sidestepped” the findings of the Obama administration.

We will see if any justice in the capitalist courts is possible, but the experience of Native Americans in this country is 400 years of rape, murder, theft of resources and broken treaties!

The flashpoint of resistance at Standing Rock has ignited unprecedented mobilizations and unity among over 100 Native American nations. In December, crowds were said to peak at 10,000, including thousands of native and non-native American solidarity activists from across the US and Canada, 3000 of whom were veterans.

The largest numbers of water protectors were in camp around the time Barack Obama ordered an environmental review on Dec. 4, demonstrating the power of mass mobilization for Standing Rock across the world. About 500 remain at Standing Rock in the sub-zero North Dakota weather.

At the present time, the main camp at Standing Rock, Oceti Sakowin, is being relocated due to oncoming spring floods in the plain area and a unanimous decision by the Tribal Nation Council, reiterated on Jan. 21, to leave the camp. Cops and security goons are taking quick advantage of the situation.

Diné water protector and videographer Marcus Mitchell spoke with Pacifica’s “Democracy Now!” (Jan. 25) lost sight in one eye after a police attack. He described cops brutalizing water protectors: “After about five minutes on the bridge, my hands were raised, and I was saying, ‘I am an American citizen practicing my First Amendment right to freedom of speech. I’m unarmed, and I am in peaceful protest.’ I was then shot in the leg. I looked down. And as I looked up, a beanbag hit me. … And then, another round came in my face and hit me—hit my eye directly.

“I then turned around to run and was nearly shot in the back of the head. At this point, I became disoriented. In the chaos, another water protector pushed me to the ground to protect me.”

Donald Trump invested up to $1 million in Energy Transfer Partners (owner of the Dakota Access pipeline), but last year was reported to have divested his stock in the company. Nevertheless, he was the recipient of large campaign contributions from Energy Transfer Partners head Kelcy Warren—including a $100,000 check to the Trump Victory Fund.

What’s more, in June 2015, Warren gave $5 million to a PAC that supported the presidential campaign of Ex-Governor Rick Perry, now Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Energy. Perry sat on the board of Energy Transfer Partners until Jan. 5 and also Sunoco—a corporation that also is involved the Standing Rock pipeline. During his time as Texas governor, Perry distributed hundreds of millions in “incentives” to corporations wishing to do business in Texas.

The nominee for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is the longtime CEO of Exxon Mobil, the wealthiest corporation in the world and the biggest threat to the climate’s survival.

The Democrats hardly pose as an alternative to Trump’s fossil fuel madness. Hillary Clinton refused to speak out against rampant police brutality against peaceful protesters at Standing Rock, seen by millions in news broadcasts and YouTube videos across the world (which has continued), while she continued to pose natural gas as an alternative to coal. Senate Democratic Minority leader Chuck Schumer has been a big recipient of Wall Street donations, including from energy companies.

Donald Trump’s orders to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines sparked a number of emergency protests in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, and other cities. Josh Fox, filmmaker and protest organizer, told “Democracy Now!” that “we had, we think, between 2000 and 5000 people last night in New York City in the freezing rain.”

Thousands of No DAPL protesters are expected at this #SuperSundayMarch in Pershing Square in Los Angeles. (Stay in touch with #NoDAPL and #NoKXL, Stand With Standing Rock and Labor for Standing Rock).

Troy Fairbanks, the sixth-generation grandson of Sitting Bull, told the British Guardian, “Have we as Native people ever been given a fair shake? Nah. But this time, the whole world is watching.”

Another method of resistance was shown by Local 10 of the International Longshore Workers Union, which carried out a one-day strike at Bay Area ports on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. This points a way toward further labor action against Trump and his billionaires. Militant labor action, alongside oppressed communities within the working class, can ultimately take down the whole rotten system, now plunging headlong toward environmental disaster.

By Teressa Rose Ezell - The Bullet, February 9, 2017

Lakota prophecy tells of a mythic Black Snake that will move underground and bring destruction to the Earth. The “seventh sign” in Hopi prophecy involves the ocean turning black and bringing death to many sea-dwelling creatures. It doesn't take an over-active imagination to make a connection between these images and oil pipelines and spills.

It's troubling enough that the growing “Black Snake” has branched out at an alarming rate, forming a massive subterranean coast-to-coast web. But to make matters worse, the nefarious reptile seems to suffer from leaky gut syndrome, so that it functions as a toxic underground sprinkler system, spreading gas, oil, and poisonous by-products everywhere it goes – including into waterways and drinking water sources.

Protest actions against major pipelines such as the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) have called attention to the potentially devastating effects of pipelines, but much of the general public still doesn't understand the scope of the existing and proposed pipeline network in the U.S. and around the globe. Executive actions by Donald Trump just four days into his presidency practically guarantee expedited approval for DAPL, as well as for Keystone XL. This indicates, among other things, that the maze of oil and gas pipelines in the U.S. will continue to expand at an unprecedented and reckless pace.

By Yana Kunichoff - In These Times, February 22, 2017

Donald Trump was elected in November on a platform that included both climate denial and the promise of jobs for Rust Belt communities still hurting from deindustrialization. In the months since, his strategy to create jobs has become increasingly clear: tax breaks and public shaming of companies planning to move their operations out of the country.

Take the case of Carrier, a manufacturing plant in Indianapolis that produces air conditioners. Trump first threatened to slap tariffs on Carrier’s imports after the company announced it would move a plant to Mexico. Then, he reportedly called Greg Hayes, CEO of the parent company United Technologies, who agreed to keep the plant in the United States in exchange for $7 million in tax breaks. (Carrier later admitted that only a portion of the plant’s jobs would remain in the country.)

The company’s decision to keep jobs in the United States was declared a victory for the Trump PR machine, but it’s unclear that it can create a major change in access to jobs in the long-term. Hayes, announcing that the tax breaks would allow additional investment into the plant, noted that the surge of money would go towards automation. And with automation, eventually, comes a loss of jobs.

“Automation means less people,” Hayes told CNN. “I think we’ll have a reduction of workforce at some point in time once they get all the automation in and up and running.”

Unlike traditional manufacturing jobs, green jobs in the clean energy industry have been on a steady upward swing. This past spring, for example, U.S. jobs in solar energy overtook those in oil and natural gas, and a Rockefeller Foundation-Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors study found that energy retrofitting buildings in the United States could create more than 3 million “job years” of employment.

That means green jobs remain one of the key hopes for revitalizing communities. But can they move forward under a climate-skeptic and coal-loving president?

By Mark Clatterbuck - Lancaster Online, February 12, 2017

On Feb. 3, the dangerous marriage of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and billionaire energy companies was on full display.

For three years, residents of Lancaster County have demonstrated unprecedented opposition to the proposed Atlantic Sunrise pipeline. Yet when Williams gas company sent a brief letter to FERC asking that a decision be made seven weeks early —for no other stated reason than the company’s own convenience — FERC eagerly obliged.

The decision was so premature that the commissioners themselves had to include a 100-page addendum of issues that had yet to be resolved before permission could legally be granted.

The LNP Editorial Board last week opined that “protests and arrests aren’t going to change the reality” of this situation. To the contrary, history has shown that large-scale, nonviolent civil disobedience is one of the few, and arguably most effective, ways of changing systems of exploitation when all other means have failed.

The women’s suffrage movement did not achieve success by patiently waiting for the Supreme Court to acknowledge women’s right to vote. Nor did the civil rights movement overturn segregation by making timid, well-behaved appeals to Congress. Disciplined, creative, courageous civil disobedience gave women the right to vote and broke the back of legalized segregation.

Industry billionaires — along with cowardly politicians who serve them on both sides of the aisle — are hardly motivated to abolish the system that lines their pockets. The system will not change unless we, the people, force a crisis of conscience on a scale that can’t be ignored. Every successful movement to check systemic abuse in this country has known this.

It is not easy to protest.

At Standing Rock, North Dakota, members of local tribes spent months enduring enormous sacrifices to peacefully protect their sacred land and drinking water. My daughter was among those who faced pepper spray and attack dogs by industry-hired security thugs after Native Americans held a sacred ceremony on ceremonial tribal grounds threatened by construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Originally, the Dakota Access Pipeline was going to cross the Missouri River just above the city of Bismarck. However, the plan was scratched due to complaints that the route put the capital city’s drinking water at risk. The solution? Reroute the pipeline through the reservoir that provides drinking water to the entire Standing Rock Sioux Nation.

Chris Stockton, the ubiquitous spokesman for Transco/Williams, loves to talk about all the adjustments they’ve made to the Atlantic Sunrise route due to public comments. He forgets to mention that our community doesn’t want an explosive, high-pressure, fracked gas pipeline-for-export running anywhere through our county. Moving the route simply poisons different streams, violates different Amish farms, permanently fragments different forests, threatens different families.

When someone is threatening to beat you in the head because you’re standing in their way, and they ask, “Would you rather I smash your kneecaps, instead?” we hardly praise the abuser for his mercy.

Lancaster County residents are facing the very real prospect of having our water poisoned, our forests clear-cut, our preserved farms violated, our Amish neighbors shamelessly exploited, and our ancient indigenous burial grounds desecrated. Thirty landowners in Lancaster County alone are facing condemnation proceedings for refusing to allow a company halfway across the country to inflate their profits by shipping explosive gas through their property to foreign markets.

Each of these abuses represents an unacceptable harm. Taken together, they represent an assault on Lancaster values and basic American liberties than many of us refuse to tolerate.

No wonder more than 500 local residents, in the past three weeks alone, have signed a pledge vowing to participate in creative, nonviolent, civil disobedience to stop this dangerous project.

The gas industry is already attempting to paint us as “radicals” or “outside agitators.” But here in Lancaster County, we know better.

We are teachers and students, counselors and construction workers, mothers and grandfathers, Republicans and Democrats, farmers and business owners who believe this land and community are worth defending, even at risk of arrest.

This is not the time for hanging our heads and saying “what a shame.” This is the time for courageous, creative, nonviolent, massive civil disobedience.

After three years of public comment, town halls, lawsuits, fruitless meetings with elected officials, and expert testimony confirming the irreversible harms we face, FERC’s approval Feb. 3 leaves us one option. We are compelled by a moral imperative to use nonviolent civil disobedience to change this fatally broken system.

For anyone willing to join us, we welcome you to our peaceful encampment at The Lancaster Stand.

By Bill Onasch - Socialist Action, February 22, 2017

The Trump administration wasted no time before launching a veritable blitzkrieg on all fronts in pursuit of an “alt-right” America First agenda. But resistance has been swift and massive.

In addition to various movements mobilizing we also heard from scientists. Agence France Presse (AFP) reported: “Comments by U.S. President Donald Trump on nuclear weapons and climate change have helped make the world less safe, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned … moving its symbolic ‘Doomsday Clock’ 30 seconds closer to midnight.”

This heightened warning by atomic scientists about two overarching crises closely followed an announcement by climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that, for the third consecutive year, 2016 had been the hottest since record keeping began in 1880.

Trump replaces an Obama administration that offered token gestures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are the prime culprit in heating our planet, while at the same time also promoting fossil-fuel expansion through destructive fracking of gas and oil.

Now, the 45th president has dismissed global warming as a job-killing hoax perpetrated by China to sabotage the American economy. Rather than presenting any of his signature “alternative facts” to bolster this fantastic conspiracy theory, he has focused on the job-killing argument. Jobs are a big and legitimate concern of the working-class majority.

By Seth Sandronsky - Mint News Press, February 17, 2017

President Donald Trump claims that his energy policy creates high-wage construction jobs. Some of organized labor in the United States agrees with him, including North America’s Building Trades Unions, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of unions.

On Jan. 24, NABTU released a statement in support of Trump after the president issued an executive order for completion of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines to move fossil fuel around North America.

“We are grateful that President Trump understands that 32 percent of today’s construction industry workforce is employed on energy projects, amounting to over 2 million workers, and that projects such as the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines are significant job creators that generate above-average wages and benefits for hard-working Americans,” said the statement prepared by the alliance of 14 national and international unions in the building and construction industry that represent over 3 million skilled craft professionals in the United States and Canada.

In April of 2015, well before Trump was elected to the Oval Office, Sean McGarvey, president of NABTU, addressed the union’s ties to the Koch energy titans, major funders of the GOP and its tea party wing. In an interview with Kent Hoover, Washington Bureau chief of The Business Journals, McGarvey explained:

“Even if you look at Koch Industries — they’re one of our biggest clients. You’ll never see us making public statements saying negative things about Koch Industries. They’re a huge client of ours. Do we agree with some of the things that they supposedly support? No. Do we understand why they do it? Yeah, Ok, because they’re looking for political advantage for a political point of view, and the Democrats don’t see it the way they see it. And other unions in the labor movement tend to be much more Democratic unions. And if you can hurt the labor movement, i.e. you hurt the Democratic Party. It’s just a system that we really don’t want to be engaged or involved in.”

According to OpenSecrets, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics, Koch Industries spent $9.84 million on political lobbying in 2016. This followed years of a heavy spending from the Kansas-based multinational corporation, which had spent $10.83 million on lobbying in 2015 and $13.7 million in 2014. In the 2016 election cycle, Koch Industries donated more than $1.86 million to GOP Congressional candidates and just $23,000 to Democratic candidates, OpenSecrets reports. The top Republican recipients were the recently appointed CIA director, Mike Pompeo, a representative from Kansas who received $71,100 from Koch Industries; Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, who received $40,700; and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a representative from Wisconsin, who received $39,522.

Yet there are other views of the U.S. labor movement as the Trump administration wages a “shock and awe” campaign of rolling back climate and environment-related rules.