This morning, one person was arrested at Enbridge’s headquarters in Superior, Wisc., an action timed to protest Enbridge’s annual shareholder meeting in Calgary where the company no doubt was praising its proposed new Line 3 project. The water protector was suspended from a tripod and hung there until the local Fire Department came and brought him down.
It was part of an ongoing protest against the Line 3 tar sands crude oil pipeline. It would cross 340 miles of northern Minnesota, ultimately connecting to a terminal in Superior. Line 3 would cross more than 200 Minnesota water bodies (including the Mississippi headwaters), threaten treaty rights and create as much climate damage as approving 50 new coal-fired energy plants.
Today’s action offers a small metaphor for how distorted the public thinking has become on these issues. Somehow Anthony Graham (Chumash), the person suspended from the tripod, was seen as the threat requiring a heavy police response instead of the much more dangerous pipeline.
“I stand in solidarity with my relatives up north and across Turtle Island,” Graham said in a media release from the Ginew Collective. “This is for the future. We have to be brave and fight. The oil industry is trying to grow when we know climate change is killing us. No more tar sands.”
Here’s an update on today’s actions and reflections on what is and is not a threat. Continue reading
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