#pipeline protests

and WATCH AND SHARE THIS VIDEO: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBA-wUzJotX/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link DIGITAL RESOURCES

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

A dilapidated snow plow, three tents and some barrels sit beside the snowy tracks of the Canadian National Railway in Tyendinaga, Ontario, a protest in support of Indigenous leaders trying to stop the construction of a gas pipeline thousands of miles away, in British Columbia.

The blockade, set up by the Mohawks of Tyendinaga, may not look imposing. But the barricade, and similar ones erected at transport points across the country, has disrupted travel for Canadians since last week — and drawn attention to the pipeline dispute.

Tens of thousands of travelers have had to scramble after rail service was halted between Toronto and the cities of Montreal and Ottawa. Hundreds of freight trains have been stalled, and ports in eastern Canada have been isolated from the rest of Canada and the United States. Factories have braced for closing because of delivery interruptions.

This dispute, though, is largely unfolding under the jurisdiction of the provincial government in British Columbia.

Both British Columbia and the elected band councils of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in the province — the leadership established under Canadian law — have signed onto the 416-mile pipeline project, which links gas wells in the British Columbia interior to a new liquefied natural gas terminal on its coast.

The company building the pipeline, which will cost 6.2 billion Canadian dollars, has promised hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to Indigenous businesses.

But another branch of the Wet’suwet’en’s leadership, the hereditary chiefs, says the pipeline would alter their traditional lands; they have been protesting in an encampment at the construction site for more than a year.

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs are fighting for their people’s right to clean water and a safe environment - and the building of the pipeline (without their consent!) not only puts the Wet’suwet’en people at risk for COVID, but the pipeline harms the environment.

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

Anti-pipeline protests have shut down major rail networks across Canada as indigenous rights and environmental activists act in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en people of British Columbia, who are fighting to keep a natural gas pipeline off their land.

Canadian National Railway (CN) said Thursday it would shut down its freight network east of Toronto in response to rail blockades, CNN reported. The same day, VIA Rail, which predominantly uses CN tracks to run passenger trains, said it was suspending the majority of its service. Then, on Sunday, CN announced 1,000 temporary layoffs, The Globe and Mail reported.

"It's our future that's going to be destroyed – it's really important for youth," 17-year-old Malika Gasbaoui, an Ojibwa-Métis from the Laurentians in Quebec who visited one of the blockades, told The Globe and Mail.

Gasbaoui was visiting a blockade in the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville, Ontario, which has cancelled train trips for more than 83,000 people since it began. The blockade was launched Feb. 6 in response to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raid on camps set up by the Wet'suwet'en to block the construction of the $6 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline, according to CBC News. The demonstrators say they will maintain the blockade until the RCMP leave Wet'suwet'en territory.

Excerpt from this story from The Intercept:

At a casino in the small coastal town of North Bend, Oregon, dozens of law enforcement officers and corporate security personnel gathered for a two-day training on how to wage propaganda battles against protesters. The November 2018 event was organized by the National Sheriffs’ Association, one of the country’s largest law enforcement organizations, and hosted by the Coos County Sheriff’s Office, which has spent years monitoring opposition to the Jordan Cove Energy Project — a proposed liquid natural gas pipeline and export terminal that the Trump administration has named one of its highest-priority infrastructure projects.

The cost of the event, however — totaling $26,250 — was paid by Pembina Pipeline Corp., the Canadian fossil fuel company that owns the Jordan Cove project.

In fact, for nearly four years, Pembina was the sole funding source of a unit in the sheriff’s office dedicated to handling security concerns related to Jordan Cove — despite the fact that there is not yet any physical infrastructure in place to keep secure.

The Coos County partnership is an extreme example of a trend in policing that has gained momentum across the United States — particularly since thousands of protesters from around the world gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017 in an effort to halt construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. Corporations are developing creative means to funnel millions of dollars to local law enforcement groups, and this funding has often been paired with increasingly elaborate private security and propaganda operations.

Excerpt from this story from The Advocate:

Environmentalists and activists arrested for protesting around the Bayou Bridge pipeline have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a state law passed last year that allows law enforcement to charge protesters as felons.

The new law, which changed the definition of "critical infrastructure," is intended to protect sensitive areas such as power plants, petrochemical facilities and water treatment sites. Pipelines and pipeline construction sites were added to the critical infrastructure list, making it a felony to trespass at the pipeline as of last August.