Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)

By Sabal Trail Resistance - Earth First! Journal, February 16, 2017

Over the last month many of you responded to the call Sabal Trail Resistance (STR) put out to mobilize around the Suwannee River pipeline drilling site over the MLK Day weekend. Thousands helped to spread our calls to action, hundreds made the trek out to blockade construction and 48 organizations thus far—from national to local—vowed to lend their support to this effort.

Jan 14 was the largest mobilization to date against Sabal Trail and the Southeast Market Pipelines Project, and despite differences of opinion on strategy and tactics, we presented a unified front against the pipeline pushers that continues to be talked about, as people keep sharing stories, photos and videos from that weekend, a month later.

But successful displays of resistance don’t appear from thin air. Much organizing work goes into building moments like that. For example, in the lead up to the MLK Day weekend events, we:

• hosted multiple workshops, where over a hundred people got training on the strategic use of direct action;
• invited a founding organizer from the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota to give talks about the experience of watching the camp grow from ten people to ten thousand;
• organized group hikes to the drill site;
• coordinated with lawyers from Southern Legal Council for free speech protection and legal support;
• assisted with email blasts to the memberships and social media base of large activist networks such as Rising Tide, Power Shift, Greenpeace, 350.org, and Food & Water Watch.
• generated local/national/int’l media coverage about the pipeline and civil disobedience to stop it (Gainesville Sun, Jacksonville Times Union and Tallahassee Democrat, The Guardian, to name a few, as well as multiple TV stations in the region.);
• kept a social media buzz about the MLK weekend of action, including the creation of a powerful short video through Nomad’s Land;

written or assisted with articles in multiple independent publications (printed and online), including Earth First! Journal, the Iguana, It’s Going Down and The Fine Print;

• circulated over 3000 flyers across North/Central Florida; and
• supported other groups in protests and outreach events all across the state, including the Dec 29 multi-city action and the die-in/banner-hang at the State Capitol.

We mention these things to illustrate the effort that goes into movement organizing. We built from the foundation of over three years of community organizing against this pipeline, and we continue to do so.

By Sarah Jaffe - Truthout, February 9, 2017

It can be easy to despair, to feel like trends toward inequality are impossible to stop, to give in to fear over increased racist, sexist and xenophobic violence. But around the country, people are doing the hard work of fighting back and coming together to plan for what comes next. In this ongoing "Interviews for Resistance" series, we introduce you to some of them. Today's interview is the eleventh in the series. Click here for the most recent interview before this one.

Activists in Iowa are currently organizing to stop a draconian criminalization of dissent bill at the Iowa State Capitol. In this interview we speak with Iowa community organizer David Goodner -- a member of the Iowa City Catholic Worker Community and a member of an ad hoc organizing group that has loosely been called the "Kill the Bill Organizing Committee" -- about criminalization-of-protest bills, tactics and organizing in rural "middle America."

By Mark Paul - Dollars and Sense, February 2017

Last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order to advance approval of the Keystone and Dakota Access oil pipelines. This should come as no surprise, as Trump continues to fill his administration with climate deniers, ranging from the negligent choice of Rick Perry as energy secretary to Scott Pruitt as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt, a man who stated last year that “scientists continue to disagree” on humans role in climate change may very well take the “Protection” out of the EPA, despite a majority of Americans—including a majority of Republicans—wanting the EPA’s power to be maintained or strengthened.

As environmental economists, my colleague Anders Fremstad and I were concerned. We crunched the numbers on the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The verdict? Annual emissions associated with the oil pumped through the pipeline will impose a $4.6 billion burden on current and future generations.

First and foremost, the debate about DAPL should be about tribal rights and the right to clean water. Under the Obama administration, that seemed to carry some clout. Caving to pressure from protesters and an unprecedented gathering of more than a hundred tribes, Obama did indeed halt the DAPL, if only for a time. Under Trump and his crony capitalism mentality, the fight over the pipeline appears to be about corporate profits over tribal rights. Following Trump’s Executive Order to advance the pipeline, the Army Corps of Engineers has been ordered to approve the final easement to allow Energy Transfer Partners to complete the pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux have vowed to take legal action against the decision.

While the pipeline was originally scheduled to cross the Missouri River closer to Bismarck, authorities decided there was too much risk associated with locating the pipeline near the capital’s drinking water. They decided instead to follow the same rationale used by Lawrence Summers, then the chief economist of the World Bank, elucidated in an infamous memo stating “the economic logic of dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.” That same logic holds for the low wage counties and towns in the United States. The link between environmental quality and economic inequality is clear—corporations pollute on the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable; in other words, those with the least resources to stand up for their right to a clean and safe environment.

By Michael Ware - Socialist Worker, February 9, 2017

DONALD TRUMP'S executive orders for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and for building a border wall provoked the most visible and immediate responses of the early days of his presidency.

But his moves to restart construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines and the new administration's censorship of government workers and federally funded scientists regarding climate change were a shot across the bow of the environmental movement.

Upon taking office, Twittler and his henchmen directed federal agencies to cease public communication that wasn't vetted by the new administration, effectively putting a gag order on any talk about climate change or scientific research that contradicts the administration's taste for "alternative facts."

The Badlands National Park Twitter account defied the ban, issuing unspeakable truths like "The Pre-Industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). As of December 2016, 404.93ppm." The account has since been reigned in and the tweets deleted.

This week, the new administration scored a victory when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, bowing to an order from Trump, reversed its denial of an easement needed to complete a section of the Dakota Access Pipeline running under the Missouri River. The Army Corps not only abandoned plans to wait for an environment impact study, but rushed through approval so drilling could start in 24 hours--making it harder for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to take action in court.

By Ruth Needleman - Portside, February 6, 2017

Now more than ever we need a strong united labor movement. We do not, however, have one.

The Trump administration has further deepened the wedge dividing workers by hosting the Building and Construction Trades leaders on January 25, 2017. Trump dangled before their eyes his rejection of an already dead TPP trade deal, and, even more to their liking, a commitment to build pipelines, in particular, the Dakota Access pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline. 

The AFL-CIO had already disappointed members and allies nationally when Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, came out in support of the pipelines during the massive protests organized by indigenous nations at Standing Rock. Trumka pointed to jobs. But what kind of jobs and for whom and at what cost? There are jobs and then there are jobs with justice.  Temporary construction jobs on the pipelines for the building trades would come at the expense of clean water, land, environmental and indigenous rights.

Nonetheless, Sean McGarvey, president of the North American Building Trades, called the pipeline jobs “an economic lifeline.” In a letter to President Trumka, dated September 14, 2016,  McGarvey referred to the Standing Rock protestors as “environmental extremists,” and “professional agitators.” He denounced the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), National Nurses United (NNU), Communications Workers of America (CWA), and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) for their support of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. He claimed that building trades members “have been subjected to intimidation, vandalism, confrontation, and violence.”

His insulting tirade went on to say, “Now, rather unfortunately but I suppose not surprisingly, it seems the same outdated lowest common denominator group of so-called labor organizations has once again seen fit to demean and call for the termination of thousands of union construction jobs…I fear that this has once again hastened a very real split within the labor movement.” Further on he added, “It is both offensive and inappropriate for them as General Presidents to be so narrow minded, disregard facts, dismiss and disparage careers in the Building Trades, support lawlessness and violence at the workplace, and jump to the beckon call of outside interests and politicians at the expense of AFL-CIO members.”(sic)

Now the Trades are embracing Trump; “We have a common bond with the president,” according to McGarvey.  Terry O’Sullivan of the Laborers International, a dinosaur on climate issues and environmental concerns, stressed Trump’s “remarkable courtesy and the commitment to creating hundreds of thousands of working-class jobs.” Union Participants described their meeting with Trump as “incredible.”

McGarvey’s “all-out verbal assault and slanders directed at me and other union leaders,” answered APWU president Mark Dimondstein, “will not go unanswered. First, I do not answer to Brother McGarvey, nor seek his permission for the views of the APWU,” Dimondstein stressed. “Nor will I be intimidated by him and his innuendos and insults.”

Also responding to the ideas promoted by the Trades were over 3 million women who protested against Trump and many against the pipeline. The immigrants, Muslims, African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ activists and Indigenous nations who stand to lose so much are the heart of the US working class and labor movement. The ever-shrinking labor unions, down again in 2016 to 10.7% of the workforce, (only 6.4% of the private sector) cannot afford to turn their back on members and allies, thereby surrendering to right-to-work, frozen minimum wages, lost access to health care, all in exchange for pipeline jobs.

The problem with these Trades misleaders is their narrow self-interested philosophy and practice of looking out only for themselves and their willingness to throw other workers under the bus.  Bill Fletcher, Jr, journalist and black labor activist, compared the collaboration of these Trades’ leaders with Trump to the Vichy government’s collusion with Hitler in France during World War II. A harsh but sadly accurate comparison.

By Sara Rougeau, Ragina Johnson and Brian Ward - Socialist Worker, February 7, 2017

WATER PROTECTORS and supporters of the #NoDAPL movement have been rocked by a series of orders and press releases from the Trump administration and the state of North Dakota in recent weeks. The pronouncements appear to set the stage for the resumption of construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

While some politicians backed by various oil and gas corporations overstated the implications of these announcements, water protectors are also debating what the pronouncements mean and the best way to continue the fight against the pipeline.

Some movement leaders are calling for continuing the struggle by rebuilding the protest camps, but others, including Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault II, have called on protesters to stand down and limit the struggle to a legal battle in the federal courts.

Already on February 1, law enforcement carried out 74 arrests of water protectors establishing a new camp on land belonging to Energy Transfer Partners--and on February 3, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced it would send additional agents to assist local police in clearing the camps, according to the Washington Post.

By Deirdre Fulton - Common Dreams, January 30, 2017

With his order to revive the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, President Donald Trump "has declared war on Indigenous nations across the country," one Cheyenne River Sioux organizer said Monday. 

But he'll be met by a fierce native resistance movement that "will not back down," said the organizer, Joye Braun, on a press call organized by the Indigenous Environmental Movement (IEN). 

Trump signed executive orders last week advancing the controversial KXL and Dakota Access (DAPL) pipelines, prompting widespread outrage and vows of bold resistance from the Indigenous activists, climate campaigners, and countless others who have fought against both projects. What that opposition will look like came into sharper focus on Monday.

"Make no mistake: resistance to the toxic Keystone XL pipeline will only grow stronger," declared Dallas Goldtooth, IEN's Keep it in the Ground organizer. "We will mobilize, fight back, we will resist the Keystone XL pipeline. We plan to create camps along the Keystone XL pipeline route to fight this pipeline every step of the way."

A press release from his organization confirmed that Indigenous groups are "organizing spiritual camps to resist the Keystone XL pipeline up and down the pipeline route, in addition to reviving the Standing Rock camp" which sprang out of resistance to DAPL and at its height housed thousands of protesters. 

Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chippewayan First Nation added: "My nation is not taking Donald Trump's new memorandum on Keystone XL lightly—we will fight back through through the courts, protests, and any means available and necessary."

Following Trump's orders last week, IEN vowed to launch a "massive mobilization and civil disobedience on a scale never seen of a newly seated president of the United States." Or perhaps of any president who's ever faced an anti-pipeline protest.

By George Gresham - SEIU 1199, January 26, 2017

“As union members, we know that the #1 priority for working Americans is good jobs and economic progress. That is one of the major reasons why we strongly oppose the construction of any dirty fuel pipelines, including Dakota Access and Keystone XL. Oil, coal and gas are relics of the old economy that create few permanent jobs while costing Americans billions of dollars related to health problems from pollution and clean-ups from spills.

“On the other hand, clean energy from solar, wind and wave power would create millions of good jobs without toxic pollution. We need massive public and private investment in clean energy manufacturing, construction, and innovation to rebuild the American middle class. Right now, other countries are taking leadership in the global clean energy market, building solar panels and wind turbines and installing them around the world in the absence of American initiative. America should be leading the global clean energy economy, but instead we are giving away billions to oil, coal and gas companies and American workers are being left behind.

“Not only are pipelines the wrong direction for American workers, they are disastrous for human health, which we know firsthand as healthcare workers. Time and time again, spills from pipelines have contaminated drinking water and land. The process of digging up, transporting, refining and burning dirty fuel is toxic and increases rates of sickness and death from asthma, cancer and other diseases.

“The Dakota Access Pipeline threatens the drinking water of Native Americans, and also defiles sacred cultural lands. After all that indigenous people have been through, the Standing Rock Sioux deserve respect for their land, water and religious values.

“Finally, wasting resources on pipelines and dirty fuel infrastructure worsens climate change, which poses a severe threat to American security and human civilization. Climate change increases the spread of dangerous diseases like Zika, Chikungunya and West Nile; causes droughts, floods, extinctions, fires and superstorms; creates civil unrest, food shortages, war and climate refugees; and has a disproportionate impact on the health and safety of working people and people of color.

“It is a proven fact, not an alternative fact, that burning dirty fuels is causing dangerous, runaway climate change. We must make the transition to a clean energy economy now in order to create millions of good jobs, rebuild the American middle class, and avert catastrophe. We call on people of good conscience throughout our country and our world to join thousands of healthcare workers at the March for Climate, Jobs & Justice in Washington, D.C. on April 29th. Together we can stand up for our vision of a new, just economy for working people with clean water, air and energy.”