BROKE Calls for Continuing Talks Over Camp Cloud Tensions

BROKE Calls for Continuing Talks Over Camp Cloud Tensions

July 30, 2018

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Contact Gene McGuckin at emcgthree@gmail.com or at 604-254-1421

In light of recent tensions among anti-pipeline land protectors at Camp Cloud, the City of Burnaby, and some of the residents near the Burnaby Mountain Kinder Morgan tank farm, the core group of BROKE (Burnaby Residents Opposing Kinder Morgan Expansion) offers the following.

The growing movement against Kinder Morgan’s pipeline/tanker expansion project has brought a healthy range of diverse tactics of opposition. BROKE recognizes the old saying that if the movement has no disagreements, then the movement is too small. Nevertheless, we sincerely believe unrestrained conflictual behaviour can undermine the larger goals so many of us are struggling for.

Camp Cloud has played a key role in keeping alive the public opposition to the pipeline/tanker project through the land protectors’ presence over the fall and winter of 2017-2018 at Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Marine Terminal and then at its current site across the street from the gate to the Burnaby Mountain tank farm. The few hardy and durable activists who have occupied both locales have played a valuable role in the effort to stop the pipeline/tanker expansion project.

Appreciating these efforts does not mean that BROKE agrees with everything the current occupants of Camp Cloud do or don’t do. However, we stand in solidarity with their struggle, our struggle, to stop the relentless community-threatening, world-wrecking quest for profit by fossil fuel corporations.

Regarding the tensions mentioned above, BROKE urges the Camp Cloud land protectors, Burnaby City Hall, and area residents with understandable safety concerns to continue their dialogue to find mutually satisfactory solutions. Progressive people, seeking a socially just and ecologically sane future for our children, should struggle against our common adversaries, not against each other.

We especially urge authorities to take all necessary steps to prevent any violence or other actions that have been threatened or hinted at by organized provocateurs who claim to be supporters of the pipeline/tanker expansion project.

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