The unholy and hated corporate leviathan known as Dominion Energy has begun felling trees for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a project poised to cross hundreds of rivers and streams and bore underneath the Appalachian Trail. Dominion’s ACP (along with EQT’s Mountain Valley Pipeline) disproportionately target communities of color and working class families in Appalachia. These projects have been rammed through via Dominion’s political and economic monopoly over every aspect of Virginia’s energy economy.
Dominion has already commenced with clearing and surveying using crews from Utah and Texas, despite their ear numbing promises of jobs for Virginians. We send out cheerful greetings to comrades everywhere.
Water Is Life! Death to the Black Snake!
– Three Sisters Camp
Despite a court-ordered injunction barring anyone from coming within 5 meters (approximately 16.4 feet) of two of its BC construction sites, opponents of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion sent a clear message Saturday that they would not back down.
Twenty-eight demonstrators were arrested March 17 after blocking the front gate to Kinder Morgan’s tank farm in Burnaby, BC for four hours, according to a press release put out by Protect the Inlet, the group leading the protest.
According to the release, the protesters were a mixed group of indigenous people, families, retired teachers and other community members.
“We’re going to do whatever it takes, and by any means necessary, and we’ll show up day after day until we win this fight,” Treaty-6-Mathias Colomb-Cree-Nation member Clayton Thomas-Muller said in the release.
Saturday’s action was an intentional show of civil disobedience.
“Everyone was very aware of the situation, of the possibility of arrest. And everyone was given the chance at any time during the day to leave that zone and not be arrested,” Amina Moustaqim-Barrette, protestor and 350.org communications coordinator, told the Vancouver Sun.
According to the Protect the Inlet website, Saturday’s action will kick off a two-week mobilization from March 18 to March 24. The activists need to prevent Kinder Morgan from completing key clear-cutting work by March 26, when the return of migratory birds will cause delays.
Thursday’s injunction also applies to the pipeline’s construction site at Westridge Marine Terminal, the Sun reported.
According to 350 Seattle, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project aims to triple the amount of Alberta tar sands oil carried from the Canadian Rockies to Burnaby, BC and Anacortes, WA from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day. It would also increase oil tanker activity in the Salish Sea and Strait of Juan de Fuca by 700 percent, threatening vulnerable orca populations and other marine animals.
The Trudeau government approved the Trans Mountain expansion in November 2016, but the social action group the Council of Canadians says it is inconsistent with Canada’s commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris agreement. It is also opposed by over 61 indigenous groups; of the nine cases challenging the project in Canadian courts, seven were brought by First Nations.
Saturday’s action comes exactly one week after indigenous leaders from the U.S. and Canada inaugurated a traditional Coast Salish “Kwekwecnewtxw” or “a place to watch from” in the pipeline’s projected path. While construction started on the Watch House, 10,000 demonstrators marched in solidarity.
Trans Mountain’s lawyer Shaun Parker requested that Justice Kenneth Affleck, who issued Thursday’s injunction, also order the new Watch House removed. Affleck, however, ruled that it could stay, the Canadian Press reported Thursday.
“I’m sensitive to the concern of those who created this Watch House, that it is of considerable significance to them,” Affleck said, further ruling that the pipeline could remove it only if it demonstrated an emergency need, and that it would have to replace it afterwards.
Saturday’s protest wasn’t the only direct action against the pipeline expansion this weekend. 30 “kayaktivists” from a group called Mosquito Fleet surrounded a Kinder Morgan oil barge in Seattle’s Elliott Bay Sunday to protest the increased tanker traffic the project is slated to bring to the Salish Sea, King5 News reported.
Mosquito Fleet’s Zara Greene told King5 that the pipeline expansion would threaten communities on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border. “Kinder Morgan is a threat to us all,” she said.
For Immediate Release
Media Contact: Talon Brings Buffalo
406-404-9131
Stephens Creek Trap, Yellowstone National Park
March 16th 2018
Hours before dawn on Friday March 16th, two members of the Wild Buffalo Defense collective arrived at the gate of Yellowstone National Park’s Stephens Creek Buffalo capture facility. They blocked the gate with three 55 gallon drums filled with concrete, locking their arms inside the barrels. The three 1000 pound drums blocked access to the facility, preventing livestock trucks from taking the wild buffalo to slaughter. This action came in the wake of a similar event last week at the Stephens Creek Trap, where two buffalo protectors locked themselves to the hydraulic squeeze shoot using a metal pipe.
Wolf, the first individual locking down, described why he was taking the action: “My father is from Michaocan, Mexico, so I have both native and colonizer blood. Since I wasn’t raised in a native setting, this is my way to give back to the native community. I’m from Illinois — it’s called the Prairie State, and there’s less than one one-hundredth of the prairie left. It’s all strip malls and corn fields…I don’t like seeing just concrete and steel. Seeing how peaceful the buffalo are and how strong they are, they go through enough hardship in their lives in the forest and the plains and then with what Yellowstone National Park is doing to them they still carry on. They inspire me to keep going.”
Coyote, the other individual blocking the gate, said: “I’m doing this to get a better understanding of what is really going on and to protect the buffalo and the lands that they roam. I feel like I have been lost inside…but now that I’m here I feel more combined with myself, with others, and with knowledge and understanding. Whenever I’m with the buffalo I feel like my heart runs with them. When I’m with them they already know the questions, they already know the answers, and I don’t have to respond because they already know. I think it’s a good thing for people to learn. There’s not a day in this world where you’re not able to learn something. What we’re doing is something we love to do and we only live once so we should do what we love to do and if anybody wants to come out and join and learn this experience then they should.”
The barrels were painted with two phrases, “Protect the Sacred” and “Honor the Treaties.” The words highlight the fact that Buffalo are sacred creatures to the Plains Indians. Blackfeet and Lakota prophecies say that when the wild buffalo return, the people and the earth will be healed. Yellowstone National Park currently captures and slaughters about 25% of the herd every year. If this mismanagement of the population continues, these prophecies will… [press release ends].
An hour before sunlight on march 5th two members of the Wild Buffalo Defense collective named Cody and Crow descended from the hills onto Yellowstone National Park’s Stevens Creek buffalo trap and using a steel pipe, locked themselves to the bars of the “Silencer”, a hydraulic squeeze shoot that holds buffalo for testing, shipping and slaughter. In freezing temperatures the individuals blocked the buffalo processing facility and prevented the park from shipping wild buffalo to slaughter.
When asked why he was taking this action Cody stated, “I am standing with the plains Indians as a member of the Ojibwe tribe in Minnesota, I have a Blackfeet friend who helped me protect my territory from the line 3 pipeline and now I am here for him and the buffalo. I have a love for the people. That’s what my mom passed down to me. And I have love for the environment and animals and I feel like I have an obligation to protect them. If I have to put my body on the line to do so I will.”
The two Yellowstone buffalo herds are the last free ranging, genetically pure, plains buffalo in the United States. These buffalo are decedents of the 23 that survived the buffalo extermination campaign that the US government implemented in the 1800s to starve the plains Indians into submission.
Today the Stevens Creek Buffalo Trap costs the Yellowstone Parks Service 3 million dollars per year to maintain and despite years of public opposition continues to operate their capture-for-slaughter facility within the park boundary. Activists and tribes allege that the Montana cattle lobby controls how the Parks Service manages of the wild buffalo. Crow, the other individual who locked himself to the facility stated “They say they need to kill the animals to stop the spread of Brucellosis, but the wild elk have Brucellosis and they are allowed to roam free because the cattle industry is not worried about elk competing for grass and the state receives income from the elk hunting permits.” Every year the facility captures and sends roughly 1000 animals of the 4000 wild buffalo population to slaughter.
While the two individuals locked themselves to the shoot, some activists gathered at the gate of the facility with banners reading “Wild buffalo slaughter = cultural genocide.” Their signs spoke to the connection between the culture of the plains tribes and the wild buffalo, suggesting that by exterminating the last wild buffalo, Yellowstone is effectively attempting to do the same to the culture of the plains tribes. The non-violent direct action came in the wake of a decision by the Montana department of livestock and the animal plant and health inspection service to deny the Fort Peck Indian reservation the right to receive wild buffalo from the park.
To Support Wild Buffalo Defense please contribute to our campaign and legal fund!
Deep Green Resistance will conduct advanced training in direct action, revolutionary strategy, tactics, and organizing June 22 – 24. This workshop is aimed at providing practical skills and networking to activists, organizers, and revolutionaries interested in saving the planet.
Environmental and social justice activists realize we are losing. Our tactics are failing and things are getting worse. This training will focus on escalation and creative, advanced tactics to increase our effectiveness.
Topics include the use and deployment of soft and hard blockades; hit and run tactics; police interactions; legal repercussions of resistance work; operational security; terrain advantages; strategy; escalation, and more.
The training will be conducted by experienced Deep Green Resistance activists / organizers as well as noted guest speakers (to be announced).
Sessions will be held next to Yellowstone National Park, providing a perfect setting to immerse ourselves in the natural world and activism.
Space is Limited and priority will be given to front-line activists, marginalized communities, and women. And save money with Early Bird Tickets – available for a limited time.
Featured image: Water Protectors from the Raccoon Rebellion-Arkansas Chapter conduct a safety lock-out/tag-out of a Main Operating Valve on the Diamond Pipeline as a Christmas gift to the Natural State.
Editor’s note: This news illustrates how simple, relatively safe, and cost-effective small actions can be. They simply put locks on a pipeline valve control box. The company only needs to send an employee out with bolt cutters to undo the action, but it’s a good example of how easy it is to access such equipment, and how easy it would be to cause more lasting effects.
On Christmas, with help and assistance from Santa Claus, his reindeer, and mischievous elves, some raccoons from the Arkansas Chapter of the national “Raccoon Rebellion” conducted a safety lockout tag-out on Diamond Pipeline Main Operating Valve (MOV) #2021 east of Jerusalem, Arkansas in accordance with common industrial safety procedures. The Lockout/Tagout devices were placed to prevent access and operation of this hazardous inter-state tool of the extractive, exploitative fossil fuel industry.
Using an eminent domain provision of the State Constitution – created in the last century, the Diamond Pipeline has been drilled, dug, and blasted across the Natural State. Chairman and CEO Greg “Scrooge” Armstrong of Plains-All American (PAA) used every loophole on the books to avoid common sense review, mediation, and mitigation while misrepresenting those that opposed the threat to their water as terrorists.14 Counties, 13 major rivers and creeks, 11 drinking water watersheds, 4 Arkansas NRC Priority Watersheds, 10 Critically Endangered Species, 2 Nuclear reactors as well as major portions of the Arkansas and Mississippi River, 5 Heritage crossing sites, and countless homes, farms and property owners are affected. Any moment now the imported steel from the lowest bidder could break and the ghost of Mayflower past will coil like a black evil spirit – with no emergency plan in place.
This pipeline is unsafe. The continued construction and operation of new fossil fuel infrastructure projects like this and so many others is the TRUE CRIME. We know this from years of extensive monitoring, study, and observation supported with hard evidence–photos, federal regulation, and personal observations by experts. The flora and fauna of the Natural State admire and support the efforts of so many organizations and people that have used every available means to have an open and meaningful dialogue and review. However, we can wait no longer.
Future interventions in the interest of common public safety must occur. In solidarity with the “Rabbit Ridge Resistance” we echo the demands they made before the line went into limited operation.
We demand that Governor Asa Hutchinson:
– Invoke executive authority to halt operation of the Diamond Pipeline for the protection of the people, lands, and wildlife of Arkansas.
– Conduct a complete review of all the information concerning pipeline safety and construction irregularities and hold public meeting in every county affected.
– Conduct complete review of use of law enforcement and security groups in the suppression of lawful 1st Amendment activities associated with protest and opposition to oil and gas industries.
– Invoke a complete moratorium on any OTHER use of eminent domain laws by private utility companies until effective procedures are in place to assess and provide public input to ANY use of those laws.
– Create a bonded, insurance fund to cover ANY potential damage caused by the leak, explosion, or faulty construction by any oil and gas infrastructure project.
–Raccoon Rebellion – Arkansas Chapter
