Protest - Revolt

Sovereignty, ecology, and decolonizing the female body 

Interview with Alex Wilson of Idle No More movement, by Ragina Johnson and Brian Ward, March 7, 2014

DESPITE THE threat of heavy rain and against the backdrop of billowing smoke emitted into the atmosphere from the nearby Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, more than 400 people marched through the streets of the Wilmington neighborhood against hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Young people gathered by the thousands in Washington, DC on Sunday to demand the Obama Administration reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Calling itself #XLDissent, the extra-large, student-led rally included a vocal ecosocialist contingent organized by System Change not Climate Change. Hundreds chained themselves to the gates of the White House. Others unfurled a large, black tarp representing an oil spill and spread their bodies out over it on Pennsylvania Ave.

“The fight to stop KXL will be one of the defining battles of our generation. A victory here will mark the close of the old carbon era, and the start of the new energy revolution—our revolution. America’s youth now have the chance to take up the torch, and light a new fire.” Conor Kennedy, youth climate activist. Revolutions are unpredictable things, literally. Was there anyone who thought that when Rosa Parks sat down in 1955 on that Montgomery, Al. bus that her action would lead to a powerful Freedom Movement which, in ten years, would force an end to legal segregation in the South?

In the latest in a series of announcements escalating resistance to oil and gas development in North America, the Oglala Sioux nation and its allies have committed to stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline on their territory if Obama approves the project.

Here we go again. With President Obama on the cusp of a decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, on March 2, hundreds of students and young people are expected to risk arrest in an act of civil disobedience at the White House to pressure President Obama to reject the project. The sit-in is expected to be the largest act of civil disobedience by young people in the recent history of the environmental movement and it will be led by just the demographic that helped propel Obama to the presidency.

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Unist’ot’en Camp has recently learned that the construction phase of the proposed Pacific Trails Pipeline has started from the East and also from the West. They intend to have the pipeline finished to the Eastern and Western borders of our unceded lands with us as the last obstacle. The entire illegitimate BC governmental system as well as the Harper regime plan on using mainstream media and their powers within to come down hard on the Wet’suwet’en for our refusal to allow them to bully their way into our lands.

TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline was originally celebrated as the project that would connect the East and the West. Then, proponents said it was the project that would allow the Canadian petroleum industry to access new international markets. Next, it was known as the project that would provide oil for Eastern Canadians. Amidst all the propaganda from the government, it is still another pipeline proposal to add to the mix of fossil fuel pipelines for which the industry is lobbying heavily.

VANCOUVER — The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association has accused Canadian law enforcement agencies of needlessly spying on environmental groups opposed to oil projects in the province, which it says may even amount to illegal activity by authorities.