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Builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline are making final preparations to drill under the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Reservation despite not having the final permits needed to proceed. Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the pipeline, has indicated they plan to drill under the Missouri within two weeks. They plan to finish the last segment at the river although the Army Corps of Engineers has not granted an easement to drill under Lake Oahe.

Thousands of indigenous people and allies have been holding firm in the standoff against hundreds of militarized police near the Reservation. In what has become the largest resistance involving indigenous rights since Wounded Knee, Water Protectors are standing up against an energy company determined to complete an oil pipeline near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.

The uprising near Lake Oahe on the Missouri River has drawn a brutal application of police force and is likely to shape the character of fossil fuel project fights for years to come. Hundreds have already been arrested, along with several key members of the press.

The Sioux have demanded that pipeline construction not cross the Missouri at Lake Oahe, which would risk contaminating their water supply. They also object to construction crews destroying their sacred ancestral burial sites.

A masked warrior woman raises her fist at a Dakota Access construction site./Photo by Doug Grandt

Police from five nearby states have joined the Morton County local police force, carrying assault weapons, chemical agents, and flashbang grenades, and equipped with LRADs, helicopters, surveillance aircraft, and military grade assault vehicles. The Water Protectors of Standing Rock include over 300 tribes from 90 Red Nations and have encamped at four locations close to the pipeline path.

Tribe Elders have requested Water Protectors to remain nonviolent, but tension has sparked clashes. Water Protectors continue challenging authority by inserting themselves in the face of overwhelming police force. They filed for a temporary court injunction, but when that failed, they erected road barricades, forced work stoppages by chaining themselves to equipment, and blocked crews from accessing project sites to stop pipeline construction.

The FCC has declared a four-mile no-fly zone over area where area where police and Water Protectors are staged, prohibiting media from using drones equipped with cameras to capture confrontations. But independent media has nevertheless been able to report key events.

Dakota Access LLC, the corporation building the Dakota Access pipeline, is intent on completing the $3.8 billion project by year’s end despite a tsunami of mounting opposition, both grassroots and political. If completed, the project will send 470,000 barrels of Bakken crude from North Dakota to Illinois for refining.

Energy Transfer Partners Criticized by Its Own Industry Publication

A high profile energy trade publication, American Energy News, which typically reports on the side of the gas and oil industry, came out with uncharacteristic criticism of the project, describing it as a liability for the reputation of and a “political disaster” for the American gas and oil industry. Energy Transfer Partners, it said, had “a lot of soul searching to do” with regard to their handling of the project.

“Energy Transfer Partners and the Petroleum Institute have just made a huge strategic mistake with their handling of the Dakota Access pipeline protests,” it said.

The standoff has become a spectacle of state-sponsored violence against indigenous people. Standing Rock Sioux have reported trauma from police during arrests and processing, including many injuries, strip searches, and include a horse that was shot and killed by police. Images of Water Protectors with wounds from rubber bullets are being circulated on social media.

A private security firm released dogs on Dakota people outraged that an area just determined to be a burial site was being uprooted.

Democracy Now reporter Amy Goodman was charged last month with inciting a riot, although she was only equipped with a microphone, camera, and crew. The charges were later dismissed by a judge.

A dog attack on September 3, unleashed by a security firm hired to guard the pipeline, resulted in six injuries, including a child and a pregnant women, was but a forewarning of what was yet to come.

Erin Schrode, an independent journalist, was shot by police with what is believed to be a rubber bullet while she interviewed an activist Cantapeta Creek. Her camera caught the moment of her shooting and reaction as she fell to the ground. A photo of her back showed a grapefruit sized welt on her upper left back. Police denied they shot her but they were recorded carrying and pointing weapons, grenade launchers, and firing teargas at the Water Protectors.

Both sides of the standoff are deeply entrenched, refusing to concede ground in the 1,168-mile project. Sioux Elders have accused the police of being used as a corporate styled security force to enforce its agenda.

Police military tactics have solidified tribe alliances in a nearly unbreakable bond of solidarity not seen in many decades. Indigenous tribes joined at the camps now number over 300; elders and youth standing shoulder to shoulder against four-man-deep lines of militarized police. Internal fissures of between tribes from long ago have been forgotten. The Seven Council Fires, an alliance which has not been invoked in many generations, has also been rekindled.

Water Protectors have grown emboldened too, defiantly erecting barricades on highway 1806, a road near the camps, and setting them on fire, a tactic sometimes seen in politically tattered developing counties where unrest commonly pits governments and police against citizenry. Cat-and-mouse resistance tactics have been effectively delaying completion of the pipeline. They have been well-supported by copious donations of money and supplies from loyal social media followers.

The United Nations has weighed in on the uprising as well, calling for a halt to construction and condemning police tactics, further tarnishing the industry.

Police have used a military weapon called an LRAD, or sound cannon, on protestors./Photo by Doug Grandt

The UN requested the U.S. government to comply with its commitment to the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. “We call on the government of the United States to… ensure the right of the Sioux to participate in decision-making, considering that the construction of this pipeline will affect their rights, lives and territory,” said Alvaro Pop Ac, Chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The governor of North Dakota activated the National Guard and condemned the Water Protectors for endangering public safety, but there are no residents in the remote area around the camps or adjacent to the pipeline path at the Standing Rock Reservation.

July 25, 2016: The Army Corps of Engineers issued a finding of no significant impact on the environment.

July through September: Standing Rock Sioux assemble “Spirit” and “Red Warrior” camps near Lake Oahe not far from the Standing Rock reservation.

August 13: Water Protectors surged onto the pipeline construction site. Morgan County police arrested 18, including Sioux elder Dave Archenbault II.

August 24: Tribes packed U.S. District Court in Washington, DC. Judge James E. Boasburg issued a temporary injunction until he could consider a ruling which he planned to issue in a week.

September 3: A security company hired by Dakota Access released dogs on hundreds of Water Protectors, injuring six. Reporter Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, who was filing a news segment at the time and released a viral video report of the attack showing Water Protectors being bitten and dogs bloodied from biting them.

September 9: North Dakota State’s Attorney Ladd Erickson issued an arrest warrant for Amy Goodman for misdemeanor criminal trespass; later dropping that charge, but filing a felony warrant for inciting a riot. Press freedom groups decried the prosecutor’s act as a blatant infringement of press freedom and a trampling of First Amendment rights.

Macauley Brown, a Standing Rock Sioux, ran from South Dakota to Washington, DC to draw attention to the Dakota Access Pipeline./Photo by Anne Meador

September 9: Judge James E. Boasberg ruled pipeline construction could proceed. Minutes following his ruling, the Obama Administration requested Dakota Access to voluntarily stop construction. In a joint published statement, the Army Corps of Engineers, State Department, and Department of Interior, wrote, “We request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.” However, construction continued.

October 17: Charges against Amy Goodman were dropped. Goodman heralded the decision, calling it “a great vindication of the First Amendment and of our right to report.”

October 22: Water Protectors established Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp, a front line encampment directly in the path of the pipeline and declare they have re-occupied the land under eminent domain. In 1851, the land had been affirmed as under domain of the Oceti Sakowin in the Fort Laramie treaty. Police respond in full battle gear, deploy mace, and arrest 83 people.

October 23: Water Protectors returned and took back the same land where arrests occurred the previous day. They re-established camp Oceti Sakowin, setting up several tipis and structures, erected two barricades on highway 1806 and confronted police. Police lined up with humvees, MRAPs and body armor.

Week of October 23: More than a million people “signed in” at the Sacred Stone and Oceti Sakowin camps on Facebook. The online sign-in’s purpose was to throw off known police tracking tactics.

October 28: Water Protectors clashed with police in a major escalation resulting in 141 arrests. During the confrontation, protectors claim police fired tasers and rubber bullets. An LRAD was turned on the Water Protectors and recorded on video at the scene. Police sprayed chemical agents into Water Protector’s faces. Police wrote numbers on arms of those arrested with indelible ink and confined them in what Water Protectors claim were dog kennel cages, further inflaming anger at the camps.

November 2: Police engaged Water Protectors again at the edge of Cantapeta Creek at Turtle Mountain, a known burial site, north of Cannon Ball Run. Protectors were trying to access the mountain as the pipeline buildout approached Lake Oahe. Protectors had built a wooden foot bridge over the creek to access the sacred land from the reservation side. Police fire rubber bullets and mace protectors as they stand in the water near the creek edge.

Also on November 2 at Cantapeta Creek, journalist Erin Schroeder was shot in the back with a rubber bullet while interviewing a Water Protector. Her camera captured video of the moment she was shot. A photo taken of her back injury was widely shared.

November 3: The UN sent a team to investigate indigenous people’s claims of human rights abuses of Water Protectors by North Dakota police. “When you look at what the international standards are for the treatment of people, and you are in a place like the United States, it’s really astounding to hear some of this testimony,” Robert Borrero of the International Indian Treaty Council told Reuters.

The Obama Administration is presently considering a reroute of the pipeline away from the planned pipeline tunnel under Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Reservation. Obama spoke on November 2, saying the Army Corps of Engineers is considering a reroute because of the unrest.

But Elders say the project route has already destroyed burial sites and whatever river crossing is chosen, it will still cross the Missouri upstream, potentially affecting the reservation and millions dependent on the river.

Water Protectors, Sept. 27, 2016/Photo by Doug Grandt

Indigenous burial sites have already been plowed under by construction crews despite efforts to protect them, and over 400 have been arrested. Many have suffered injuries from rubber bullets and strong-armed police tactics.

The Standing Rock Sioux Elders have reinforced a peaceful ethic among all the water protectors. It is possible there would by now have been fatalities in the tense standoff if Water Protectors had taken more militant measures.

The Standing Rock Sioux have vowed to remain by Lake Oahe through the harsh North Dakota winter or until the pipeline is permanently stopped.

Even with a reroute and possible completion of the pipeline, suspicion and resentment over the character of the build-at-any-cost project runs deep and has cast what will be long lasting bitter memories for those who took part in the uprising against the Dakota Access pipeline.

It has also marked the beginning of a new epic of aggressive environmentalism in the U.S. It is also the new face of a environmental movement defaulting to resistance which from now on, the delegitimized fossil energy industry will have to contend with.

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From left, Niki Carroll, Eula Dyson, Joan Biren, Bethany Flores, Joshua Pena protest Dakota Access Pipeline project at Washington, DC, branch of Bank of America./Photo by Mark Hand

Washington, DC — Protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline resumed one day after Donald Trump shocked most prognosticators by winning the U.S. presidential election. In Washington, DC, people gathered in Farragut Square in the early evening on Nov. 9 to express their opposition to the construction of the $3.8 billion pipeline and the financial institutions that are providing loans to its developers.

Several people marched from the downtown park to a nearby branch of Bank of America to protest the Charlotte, NC-headquartered bank’s loan of $375 million to the pipeline developers. Activists across the nation are hoping constant pressure will convince banks to opt out of bankrolling the 1,172-mile pipeline, which would carry crude oil produced in the Bakken fields of North Dakota across four states, with an end point in southern Illinois.

In Farragut Square, protesters expressed concern about the decision to route the pipeline system through Native American lands in North Dakota, including under the Missouri River. Leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose reservation is located about 50 miles south of Bismarck, ND, contend the pipeline could threaten their sole water source.

Eula Dyson, a Maryland resident who has friends on the Standing Rock reservation, lamented that pipeline construction crews have succeeded in getting almost the entire pipeline built in the contested region, except for the Missouri River crossing. “That’s the final piece,” Dyson said at the protest. “I grew up in south Louisiana. I know what oil is all about, the destruction caused by the oil industry to the environment down there.”

As proposed by Energy Transfer Partners, the lead developer of the pipeline, the Dakota Access system would cross the Missouri River less than a mile north of the Standing Rock reservation. An early proposal for the pipeline called for the project to cross the Missouri River north of Bismarck, but one reason that route was rejected was its potential threat to Bismarck’s water supply.

Joshua Pena, who had never attended a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, decided to join the Nov. 9 action in solidarity with Native Americans. “I’ve been seeing the repression of these people for so long. What we’ve done to them over the past several hundred years is absolutely embarrassing and disgraceful. And the fact that in this day and age, we continue to exhibit the exact same behaviors is unacceptable,” said Pena, who lives in Vienna, Va.

The original path of the Dakota Access Pipeline “was going to go through some white people’s land and they complained about it and so they re-routed it to go through the Native American land because apparently their rights aren’t as important as the white people are,” he said.

Niki Carroll, who lives in Purcellville, Va., and was also attending her first protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, felt it was important to express her support for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. “When a white community said they did not want the Dakota Access Pipeline to go near their community and the developers decided to re-route it through Native American lands, it was typical of what settler culture has always done,” Carroll said.

None of the banks financing the Dakota Access Pipeline has backed away from the project. But Citigroup reportedly has raised concerns over the project with Energy Transfer Partners and called for greater engagement with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. Environmentalists have targeted banks in other campaigns. Banks such as Barclays, ING and Deutsche Bank have opted not to finance projects that involve mountaintop removal mining. JPMorgan Chase announced earlier this year it would no longer finance new coal-fired power plants in the United States but the move could be related to the declining profitability of investing in coal as opposed to concerns over climate change.

Mandy Stussman and Brandon Johnson demonstrate against Dakota Access Pipeline in Farragut Square in Washington, DC./Photo by Mark Hand

Pena does not believe Hillary Clinton, if she had won the election, would have helped to stop the pipeline project. “I think either Clinton or Trump would have had approximately the same policy in this regard. They’re both owned by the same people. They’re both answering to the same type of people. Neither of them would have made a change. If we would have seen Jill Stein as president, absolutely the pipeline would have been stopped in an instant,” he said.

Dakota Access Pipeline supporters have noted that the pipeline would follow a similar route to an existing natural gas pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. The Northern Border Pipeline, operated by TransCanada Corp., crosses the Missouri River near Dakota Access Pipeline’s proposed river crossing. Supporters have questioned why the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe did not protest Northern Border’s proposed Missouri River crossing at Lake Oahe when it was built decades ago.

But Pena does not see a double-standard in the Standing Rock Sioux tribe opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline project. “An oil spill would be orders of magnitude more devastating to the environment and the water than a natural gas rupture would. There’s no comparison,” Pena said.

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Washington, DC — The annual Million Mask March returned to the U.S. capital city on Saturday, November 5, drawing hundreds from around the country in protest against war, state surveillance, wealth inequality, poverty, and a long list of other grievances.

Hundreds affiliating themselves with the group Anonymous and adopting the anachronistic personage of Guy Fawkes, staged their 7th annual protest. The march wound through Washington, DC, and stopped at key government and corporate buildings.

The Million Mask March commemorates Guy Fawkes Day, which has been celebrated in London for centuries. Fawkes, who was sentenced to be hanged for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605–a plan to blow up the House of Lords– jumped from the scaffolding, committing suicide before the sentence could be carried out.

Anons gathered in the shadow of the Washington Monument as the sun rose and walked to the White House, but they were obstructed by barricades erected for preparation for the January 20th presidential inauguration. They were met by dozens of Secret Service who confronted them in a tense standoff, but there were no arrests.

Protesters surround front door of FBI building, several arrested./Photo by John Zangas

As they passed a homeless man in Lafayette Square, they showered him with donations and food. One youth gave the man a bud of marijuana. In response, the man said he would gladly give back all of his money for it. They also did the same for a homeless woman nearby.

As the march meandered unpredictably, it passed the Trump International Hotel, which has become a hotbed for protests since it opened in September. Several dozen surged into the lobby but were escorted out by security. At they were ejected, several vandalized a free standing sign by the entrance. (See video.)

The march then went across the street to the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building where tensions escalated further. DC Metropolitan Police arrested several for disorderly conduct after they tagged the street with spray paint.

The situation was de-escalated by one youth at the bull horn, who asked everyone to remember their “message of peace.”

The march nearly doubled in size as more joined along the way to the U.S. Capitol Building. Access to the Capitol was also barricaded due to preparations for the Inaugural speech and parade.

There the group was met by a team of about 100 U.S. Capitol Police officers in riot gear, who blocked access to the Capitol grounds, but there were no arrests.

There were a variety of messages and reasons given for participating in this year’s march.

“We’re very unhappy with the way things are going, the environment, the corruption of a system without control, has gotten out of the hands of the people,” said Bell Jordan from New York.

U.S. Capitol Police in riot gear block marchers./Photo by John Zangas

Kevin Blanch, a key organizer for the march, said that the Million Mask March is in the spirit of Guy Fawkes and a way to give grassroots activists to get out into the streets. “The Million Mask March has become an international day of protest, and the [Guy Fawkes] mask has come to symbolize that,” he said.

Several others voiced concerns with the election and topics such as the environment and military spending.

“We are fighting everything from corruption to fiat currency to GMOs,” said Vanessa, who did not give her last name.

As of 5 pm, the march was still going after eight hours, passing the Washington Monument for the third time. Several were carrying a banner which read “Water Is Life” and “#NoDAPL,” intended as a message of support for the indigenous people’s uprising in North Dakota against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Click to view slideshow.

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Bailey & Glasser attorney John Barrett speaks at Nov. 2 press conference in Washington, DC, announcing lawsuit against Washington Gas and Kay Management./Photo by Mark Hand

Lawyers for the victims of a natural gas explosion and fire at an apartment complex in Silver Spring, Md., filed two lawsuits against Washington Gas Light Co. and apartment management company Kay Management. Seven people died as a result of the Aug. 10 disaster, including two children. At least 25 people were injured and about 150 were displaced.

The lawsuits, filed on Nov. 2 in Superior Court of the District of Columbia, place the responsibility for the explosion and fire on Washington Gas, as the entity responsible for the natural gas lines that delivered gas to the apartment complex, and Kay Management, as the entity responsible for maintaining the gas lines inside the apartment complex that exploded that night.

“We truly believe that Washington Gas and Kay Management are responsible for these seven deaths and many people who have been injured,” CASA Executive Director Gustavo Torres said at a Nov. 2 press conference in front of the Washington, DC, headquarters of WGL Holdings, the parent company of Washington Gas.

CASA, a nonprofit group that advocates for low-income workers and tenants, partnered with two law firms — Bailey & Glasser LLP and Gupta Wessler PLLC — to conduct an independent investigation into the natural gas-fueled explosion and fire at the Flower Branch Apartments complex and file the lawsuits on behalf of the apartments residents.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), two federal agencies that have investigated the explosion and fire, have not released any information on the investigation. The agencies have denied CASA and the law firms access to “crucial evidence in our ongoing inquiry,” Torres said. “If this happened in a rich neighborhood, we would have an answer immediately. But because these families live in a poor neighborhood, we still don’t receive any answer,” he added.

Washington Gas said its participation in the ongoing NTSB investigation precludes it from making any public statements about the inquiry or the explosion and fire at the Flower Branch Apartments. The company expressed its “deepest and sincerest condolences” to the residents affected by the disaster. But Washington Gas said it cannot at this time comment on the litigation related to the incident.

In a statement in response to the Nov. 2 press conference organized by CASA, Kay Management said it met with residents of the two affected buildings within days of the natural gas explosion to answer questions and to provide details on company-provided assistance packages. “We are continuing to work with CASA’s attorneys to coordinate a second meeting under mutually agreed-upon terms with any resident,” Kay Management said.

Of the 23 apartments that are no longer habitable, all leaseholders and their authorized occupants have secured housing, Kay Management said. “We are committed to work with government agencies to resolve the ongoing investigation as quickly as possible,” the management company added.

The first lawsuit seeks damages for personal injury and wrongful death for the families of those killed by the explosion and fire and for those residents who sustained physical injuries. About 30 people are represented in this lawsuit. The second lawsuit, a class action complaint, seeks justice for all of the residents of Flower Branch who were affected by the explosion, including the families who lost their homes and their life savings. About 75 households at the Flower Branch apartment complex are members of the class.

Seven people, including two children, died at the Flower Branch Apartments complex in Silver Spring, Md., as a result of an Aug. 10 explosion and fire./Photo by Mark Hand

In the wrongful death lawsuit, the plaintiffs are seeking economic and non-economic damages, including for physical pain and mental anguish suffered in the past and future, medical and other expenses incurred in the past and future, lost earnings in the past and reduction in earning capacity in the future, and loss of use of personal property.

In the class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs are seeking damages for being rendered homeless and displaced, harm to personal property, loss of use of personal property, loss of use of household goods or wearing apparel, loss of the benefit of leasehold interests, lost wages, and additional expenses. The plaintiffs also are seeking injunctive and equitable relief designed to prevent similar tragedies in the future, both at the Flower Branch Apartments complex and at other locations serviced by Washington Gas or Kay Management.

“The broader purpose of this legal action is improved safety for the area’s gas customers. We want safety reforms at Washington Gas and Kay Management and help ensure the nightmare at Flower Branch does not happen to other homes in Maryland or the District of Columbia,” John Barrett, an attorney with Charleston, W.Va.-headquartered Bailey & Glasser, said at the press conference. “They must improve their equipment and the processes by which they maintain their lines and respond to customer warnings about gas leaks.”

Based on preliminary findings, investigators and building management blamed a natural gas leak in a basement utility room. The NTSB took over the investigation into the causes of the disaster and is expected to issue a final report within 12 months of the August incident. An NTSB spokesman said the apartment explosion and fire are still under investigation. He also said the agency could not comment on the lawsuits brought against Washington Gas and Kay Management.

The claims in the lawsuits primarily relate to alleged negligence by Washington Gas and Kay Management with respect to maintaining the gas lines and responding to complaints about gas odors. Local residents said the smell of natural gas was commonplace in the Flower Branch Apartments, and some accused the apartment complex managers of ignoring their gas leak complaints.

“Less than three weeks before the explosion and fire, residents had reported the smell of natural gas, but the Defendants – Washington Gas Light Company, which supplied natural gas to the complex, and Kay Management Company, which managed the complex — failed to take any action to address the complaints,” the plaintiffs stated in the wrongful death lawsuit. “They did not repair the gas leak, did not make an appropriate inspection that would have identified a leak, and did not warn or evacuate residents. Defendants also failed to perform routine inspections that would have uncovered the potential for catastrophe and saved the lives and property of the residents.”

Residents of the Flower Branch Apartments complex in Silver Spring, Md., participated in the Nov. 2 press conference in front of Washington Gas’s headquarters./Photo by Mark Hand

Kay Management communicated with residents of the Flower Branch Apartments soon after the disaster because of the challenges facing the displaced residents. But since then, residents and their advocates have struggled to get additional answers from the management company, according to CASA. Washington Gas has refused to communicate with CASA and the plaintiffs’ attorneys about the Aug. 10 incident, Torres said.

“They’ve delayed and danced around our demands long enough. The victims and families are tired of waiting and we have been as patient as good conscience permits,” Barrett said. “The lawsuits we filed today give us the tools to get answers.”

Maria Escobar and her husband and three-year-old daughter attended the press conference, as did more than two dozen other residents of the Flower Branch Apartments complex. On the night of the explosion, Escobar and her family fled their apartment barefoot and lost everything in the fire. They are now living with family in the region. Another Flower Branch resident, Sara Yac, moved with her family to a different apartment at the complex after her apartment was destroyed in the explosion and fire. She is part of the class action lawsuit.

Bailey & Glasser also has represented communities impacted by disasters in West Virginia’s coal mining regions. “Those cases are very similar. We filed a number of lawsuits on behalf of entire towns and communities in southern West Virginia who were affected by coal mining and by coal mining disasters — losing their water, being subjected to a daily onslaught of dust and noise associated with coal preparation plants,” Barrett said. “This is very similar. The injuries that were involved in those cases don’t rise to the level that these families have experienced, but we are thrilled to be working with CASA. We are thrilled to be working with these families.”

Low-income residents throughout the Washington metropolitan area are subjected to “inhumane and dangerous” conditions, CASA said in a Nov. 2 news release. “In this case, the persistent conditions led to death and displacement. The truth is these conditions would never have been allowed to persist in more affluent communities,” the group contended.

The post Silver Spring Residents Sue Washington Gas, Apartment Management after Deadly Gas Explosion appeared first on DCMediaGroup.

Most protest in Virginia has centered around proposed fracked gas pipelines cutting through the state./Photo: Chesapeake Climate/Flickr

The League of Women Voters of Virginia completed an in-depth study of hydraulic fracturing and is now working with its local chapters to prepare a state policy position on the oil and gas production process. The study, released in October, provides an overview of the modern form of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” and identifies the areas of the state that could be targeted by natural gas producers using the technology.

In Virginia, the Marcellus Shale is found along the western edge of the state, while the Taylorsville Basin and other smaller basins are located in the eastern part of the state. Southwestern Virginia is known predominantly for its coalbed methane production, but the industry also has drilled thousands of oil and gas wells in the region over the past 85 years.

In its advocacy work and lobbying, the League of Women Voters of Virginia often relies on the policy positions developed by its national office in Washington, DC. With fracking, though, the state organization wanted to develop a position that would be more specific to Virginia, according to Lois Page, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Virginia.

“We were concerned that the only fracking position we had to work with as a state was a national position advocating for clean water,” Page said in an interview. “There seemed to be other issues involved. We felt that we had to study it just for Virginia, to see what Virginia needed.”

The state organization wants its 12 local chapters to review the study and then come to a consensus on questions that delve into how the use of fracking should be regulated at the state and local levels in Virginia. The local chapters’ consensus reports are due to the state organization by the end of March 2017. The state organization will then decide on a policy position regarding fracking in Virginia at its April 2017 board meeting, Page said.

At its state convention in 2015, the League of Women Voters of Virginia voted to undertake the fracking study. The 24-page study, researched and prepared by a group of League of Women Voters volunteer members, took approximately 14 months to complete.

“Hydraulic fracturing is a moving target. Every day, new legislation, lawsuits, and technologies are created,” the League of Women Voters of Virginia concluded in the study. “Every geology and well requires a different extraction method. Every piece of data has advocates and opponents. Industry, government, and citizens struggle to find a balance that will provide low-cost, environmentally clean energy in quantities that will support our current lifestyles and future energy requirements.”

The Virginia Oil and Gas Association (VOGA) said it encourages citizens and groups to research the facts about fracking in the state. “The Commonwealth of Virginia has a rich history of safe and environmentally sensitive natural gas and oil extraction with more than 80 years of history to back up the facts,” the trade association said in an Nov. 1 emailed statement. “There are more than 9,300 gas wells in Virginia  and there have been no proven cases of groundwater contamination attributed to fracking.”

Instead of preparing a new fracking study, some environmentalists believe the League of Women Voters’ time could be put to better use. Natalie Pien, chair of 350 Loudoun, a local chapter of the 350.org environmental group, contends researchers have conducted enough studies into the impacts of fracking.

“The time and energy should be spent on going ahead and opposing it. There have been plenty of studies, plenty of evidence that fracking is dangerous, whether it is happening in Virginia or Pennsylvania or West Virginia,” Pien said in an interview. “I can see where they want an independent study, but it’s like recreating the wheel.” Due to concerns over a rapidly changing climate, Pien emphasized “we don’t have time to recreate the wheel and then take action.”

An unconventional shale gas well drill site in Pennsylvania./Source: SkyTruth

Pien said she supports the League of Women Voters but wishes the organization would use studies already conducted by universities and other organizations. “Whether or not fracking occurs in Virginia or occurs in other states, it’s the same problems, the same issues, the same impacts,” she said.

The League of Women Voters has procedures it follows as it formulates policy positions. Preparing studies on issues, which represents one step in these procedures, allows the League to proceed with stronger support from all of its members, the organization said.

In December 2015, the Virginia Sierra Club joined other environmental groups to urge Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to order a “thorough, interagency, public review of the Commonwealth’s regulations and procedures” governing fracking in the state.

“Although some limited lower-volume fracking has occurred in the past, newer and more risky fracking techniques seen in other states would be new to Virginia, and Virginia is not prepared for them,” the Virginia Sierra Club said in the Dec. 3, 2015, letter. “A 2013 survey of regulations across the country found that Virginia has among the least stringent shale gas regulations of all 31 states in the United States with actual or potential shale gas production.” The McAuliffe administration has yet to order a comprehensive, inter-agency review of the state’s rules and regulations governing fracking.

Earlier in 2015, though, a Virginia advisory panel recommended that energy companies disclose the chemical ingredients they use in fracking. But the Sierra Club contended these recommendations and others did not go far enough. “Even with DMME’s [Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy] recently proposed amendments, Virginia’s drilling regulations fail to adequately protect the public,” the Sierra Club said in the December 2015 letter.

VOGA countered that additional regulation of Virginia’s natural gas industry is unnecessary because the sector is already regulated by a multitude of agencies at both the state and federal levels, including the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy’s Division of Gas and Oil, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Virginia Marine Resource Commission, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, and the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry.

It remains unclear which side of the debate the League of Women Voters of Virginia will fall. The organization could support the status quo, tighter regulation of the industry, or even a ban on fracking in the state. The League of Women Voters of Virginia emphasized its fracking study was guided by principles espoused by its national organization, including the belief that “the government should promote the conservation and development of natural resources in the public interest, share in the solution of economic and social problems that affect the general welfare, and promote a sound economy.”

The study’s authors put together a list of issues that it wants its local Virginia chapters to examine in relation to fracking: the public’s right to know, protection and management of natural resources, social and economic justice, and health and safety.

Companies have used fracking on approximately 2,100 wells in shale, sandstone and limestone formations in southwestern Virginia since the 1950s, according to the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy. Virtually all of these fracking jobs used small amounts of water and did not employ the high-volume, slick-water methods used in shale gas drilling operations since the early 2000s.

With the new technology mastered, producers were able to economically tap shale rock formations for both oil and natural gas. In Virginia, as little as 35,000 gallons of water may be required for a coalbed methane well compared to up to 6,000,000 gallons that may be used to frack a well in the Marcellus Shale.

The George Washington National Forest, located in western Virginia, has been viewed as a potential site for shale gas drilling. But two years ago the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced it would place nearly all of the 1.1 million-acre George Washington National Forest off-limits to shale gas drilling and fracking. In a decision issued in late 2014, the USFS said it will allow drilling on only 10,000 acres in the forest now leased for energy development and on 167,000 acres whose mineral rights are privately owned.

Preparing the fracking study turned out to be a major undertaking for the League of Women Voters of Virginia, an all-volunteer organization, aside from one recently created administrative position in Richmond. The organization does not have enough members to conduct major studies on a regular basis, Page said.

Construction of pipelines has emerged as another controversial energy-related issue in the state. League of Women Voters members in parts of Virginia are concerned about the numerous natural gas pipelines projects and pipeline upgrades that have been announced in recent years. But Page said it is too early to say whether the organization will conduct another study on pipelines. If enough members express an interest, the pipeline issue could be discussed at the organization’s next state convention in June 2017, she said.

The post New Virginia Fracking Study Lays Groundwork for Regulatory Battles appeared first on DCMediaGroup.

Dominion Transmission’s Leesburg Compressor Station in Loudoun County, Va./Photo by Mark Hand

Local lawmakers are bewildered by Dominion Resources Inc.’s latest plans to upgrade a natural gas pipeline compressor station in Loudoun County, Va., less than two years after the company promised no new compressor expansions in the area would be forthcoming.

The planned compression expansion is part of a project that Dominion is calling Eastern Market Access, a project that will increase capacity on its Dominion Cove Point pipeline by about 294,000 dekatherms per day. Washington Gas, the natural gas utility for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region, and Panda Power Funds, developer of the proposed Mattawoman Energy Center in Maryland, have agreed to long-term firm contracts for equal shares of the planned new capacity.

“In the similar application a couple years ago, they said they weren’t going to do this again,” Tony Buffington, Blue Ridge District supervisor on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, said in an interview at an Oct. 26 informational meeting held by Dominion at a local elementary school. “They said they wouldn’t be coming forward with anything like this. If anything, they would downsize. So there’s a concern that, well, if you said that last time and now you’re coming forward with this, why should anybody believe anything you’re saying?”

Buffington’s district includes the community that is home to two Dominion compressor stations as well as a Columbia Gas Transmission compressor station. “They basically are apologetic for the previous instance where they made that statement, and they said they shouldn’t have made that statement,” the Republican supervisor said of Dominion.

The previous company statements referred to a proposed compression upgrade related to Dominion’s Cove Point liquefaction and pipeline project, Dominion said. For a subsequent project, Dominion filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2015 to install one new 8,000-horsepower electric compressor unit at its Leesburg Compressor Station as part of its larger Leidy South Project. After receiving a FERC certificate of approval in August, Dominion has begun work on the Leidy South Project, with a projected in-service date of October 2017.

In its latest announcement, Dominion said it plans to add 7,000 horsepower of compression to the Loudoun Compressor Station as part of the Eastern Market Access project. Buffington said Dominion officials told him that the Eastern Market Access project application is based on the amount of pipeline capacity and compression the company knows it will need now. But the company did not rule out the possibility of another similar request in the future, he said.

In an Oct. 27 statement, Dominion said demand for natural gas to meet residential, business and power-generation uses continues to grow quickly in the region. “Just as local officials and community planners must manage the demand for new schools, roads and other services that comes with a growing population, we too must expand our pipelines and power lines to meet increasing energy demands,” the company said. “We have designed this project to have the least impact possible on neighboring property owners, including the addition of electric compression.”

Virginia Del. J. Randall Minchew, who represents the 10th district, which includes the community around the compressor stations, expressed disappointment with Dominion and is urging the company not to file the application with FERC for the Eastern Market Access compression expansion.

Public officials had an understanding, Minchew emphasized, that Dominion would not add new compression at either the Leesburg or Loudoun compressor stations. Minchew said he plans to work at both the state and county levels to stop the project to ensure the health and welfare of the residents who live near the compressor stations can be protected.

Entrance to Dominion’s Loudoun Compressor Station southeast of Leesburg, Va./Photo by Mark Hand

Dominion created a stir in the county when it vented its Loudoun Compressor Station on Sept. 26. Natural gas, mixed with an odorant for detection, spread as far as 10 miles east and north of the station. The local police and fire departments received more than 100 emergency calls.

Buffington said his office received “very late notice” about the venting. “My office got notice Friday afternoon and they did it Monday morning. It’s hard to get a news flash typed up and sent to constituents in order for them to read it and understand what’s going on,” he said.

Dominion is planning to conduct another round of venting at the compressor station on Nov. 1 and 3. But the company and county officials plan to make sure the community is better informed beforehand about what is happening, Buffington said.

Dominion owns the Leesburg Compressor Station, which serves its Dominion Transmission Inc.’s PL-1 line. On the opposite side of Watson Road southeast of the town of Leesburg, Dominion also owns the Loudoun Compressor Station, which serves the Dominion Cove Point Pipeline, a transportation system that interconnects with Dominion Transmission’s PL-1 line.

The Eastern Access Market project represents the third proposed expansion at its two compressor stations in Loudoun County in the last four years. In 2012, the community protested Dominion’s plans to add compression to its Loudoun Compressor Station as part of the Cove Point liquefaction project. The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution opposing the company’s plans to add the compression. In response to the county’s concerns, the company changed its plans and opted to add 62,500 horsepower of compression to its Pleasant Valley compressor station in neighboring Fairfax County as part of the Cove Point liquefaction and pipeline project.

About 20 people held a rally at Dominion’s Oct. 26 informational meeting to demonstrate their opposition to the Eastern Market Access project. The open house occurred one day after Dominion held a similar informational meeting in Charles County, Md., where the company plans to build a new compressor station as part of the project.

The demonstrators in Loudoun County expressed concerns about the potential health effects from the routine venting and blow-downs that occur at the compressor stations and questioned why Dominion announced the Eastern Access Market project so soon after receiving approval for the Leidy South Project. “Compressor stations have been shown to pose a health risk to those who live close by. Greene Mill Preserve is a community of over two hundred residents and is only one mile from the station,” local climate justice group 350 Loudoun, organizer of the rally, said in a news release.

Loudoun County, Va., Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis J. Randall./Photo courtesy of Phyllis J. Randall

Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis J. Randall also attended the Dominion open house. “Part of the reason I’m here is to learn why they’re doing it, why they need it, how it will affect Loudoun and how it will affect people in other counties and even in other states,” Randall said.

Randall, a Democrat who became the first African-American woman in the history of Virginia elected to chair a county board of supervisors, said she used both the “frequently-asked-questions” sheet provided by Dominion and the list of questions handed to her by the demonstrators to learn as much as possible about the project. “I’m pushing very hard for Dominion to give me the answers that are not on their frequently-asked-questions list,” she said.

After the venting incident in September, Randall said she heard complaints from residents. But she also has heard concerns about natural gas pipelines and shale gas drilling in general. “It’s not just about, ‘Are you going to expand the compressor station?’ It’s about how healthy is this for our neighbors.” Randall, along with her fellow board colleagues, may hold an informational session on the project “because I think it’s important for everyone to know,” she said.

“Some of what I’m hearing is concerning,” she said. “What’s really concerning is mostly not what’s happening in Loudoun, but what’s happening where the natural gas is being produced. For me, I’m, of course, here as chair of the Loudoun County board. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about people in other countries and other states.”

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Political groups Unity for Democracy and the New Progressives held a day-long rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday to draw attention to what they are calling is a rigged election system centered on moneyed interests and deaf to voters’ concerns. Several hundred joined in a “Take Back Democracy March” which kicked off the event. After walking to the White House, they returned to the Lincoln Memorial, where a dozen speakers spoke from its marble steps, highlighting serious problems with U.S. election process.

They included high-profile campaign people, activists and independent media personalities from a nonpartisan base, expressing deep frustration and dissatisfaction with the election system, balloting processes, voter disenfranchisement and corruption, along every step on the road to the presidency. There were many Bernie Sanders supporters as well as Green party speakers. A Trump supporter also spoke.

At the end of speeches, ten activists participated in an act of civil disobedience when they walked into the Reflecting Pool. But no U.S. Park Police showed up and there were no arrests. Walking in the Reflecting Pool is a misdemeanor, and act of civil disobedience which was a common tactic in the 1960s during the Vietnam War protests, and has often been borrowed by modern movements.

Reclaim Democracy rally at the Lincoln Memorial./Photo by John Zangas

Delegate Jeff Day who worked on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, encouraged organizers and activists to talk to their neighbors about issues important to them that are not being discussed by candidates. He urged making effort to reach out to others. “Talk to your neighbors and take time to make sure they’re voting,” he said.

He asked of those present to reflect on their involvement over the last year. “What are we doing for us?” he asked. He suggested letting go of the “let’s go shopping mentality” and adopting an attitude of “sacrifice for the common good mentality.”

Day decried the excess of the consumer based economic system as a key stumbling block for many which focuses on consumption as opposed to focusing on individual needs, such as single payer healthcare, public education and community involvement. “The corrupt corporations and bankers that have paid and bought off all the politicians are taking this country in the wrong direction,” he said.

“We’ve got to speak up, step out and start being active,” he said.

Independent media streamer, Claudia Stauber from Cabin Talk, gave an unscripted talk about voter’s concerns with delegates, votes, and access to the Democratic National Convention, concerns which resonated throughout the Sanders campaign. She began her discussion by saying “Cabin Talk!” to draw attention to the simplicity of what she had to say as she does in her live streams. “We can disagree, and that’s what democracy is all about, but what we do need to have is that every voice actually gets heard but in this election cycle that hasn’t been the case,” she said.

“Even though we’re in DC, there should be log cabins right here,” she joked, in a reference to Lincoln. Stauber drew a comparison between U.S. elections of the 1860s and the modern elections in other parts of the world, where paper ballots ensured that all votes were counted. “We need unrigged elections with paper ballots with citizen oversight while they are counted,” she said.

Claudia Stauber addresses the Reclaim Democracy audience on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial./Photo by John Zangas

Stauber believes a paradigm shift is needed in the way success is defined. “How we define success, especially in the Western world, we define it only monetarily at this point. The way we need to define it is how many smiles we have and how happy we are,” She said.

Stauber said she wants to convey that there is a big change in direction happening as a result of new ideas and a positive message from the Sanders campaign. “Bernie did bring that out, and we need to continue it,” she said. “We need to be kinder to our planet, to each other, and to animals,” she said.

Law professor Tim Canova, who ran an unsuccessful insurgent Senate campaign against Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in South Florida, invoked the words of Lincoln, asking, “What is democracy? Lincoln talks about ‘of the people, by the people and for the people. Democracy requires human rights for everyone and not just here in this country but everyone in the world.”

Canova cited revelations from the Wikileaks site which has been releasing emails of the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, as evidence the election has been operated under a rigged system, influencing the media and the voters and tilting the nomination of the Democratic party in the favor of Clinton. “We’ve got to be vigilant, we’ve got to be loud, we’ve got to keep speaking truth to power and to the powerless,” he said.

Addressing the loss of trust in the election system, Canova offered, “There is a reason that every European democracy has banned the voting machine. Paper ballots, counted by hand in public [is a] true democracy.”

Canova said that people were waking up to issues such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement presently before Congress, climate change, high incarceration rates for non-violent drug arrests, and the overturn of Citizens United.

Though the election cycle seemed to beset with losses of key candidates progressives had been behind, Canova said that people are waking up and getting involved. “This year has been an historic election year and it’s going to seem a lot of us that we’ve fallen short, but this is only the beginning, we’ve just started to fight,” he said.

The post At Lincoln Memorial Rally, Progressives Vow to Fight Rigged Elections appeared first on DCMediaGroup.

A tanker and dump truck enter the Dominion Cove Point facility in January 2016./Photo by Jeff Dixon

Local police conducted a sobriety checkpoint in southern Calvert County, Md., to ensure construction workers at the Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project, owned by Dominion Resources Inc., were not drunk or using drugs as they headed to work. The early morning checkpoint occurred on the same day that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) employees traveled to Calvert County for a routine inspection of the Cove Point construction project.

The Calvert County Sheriff’s Office set up the checkpoint on Sept. 23 on a county-owned road that construction workers drive on as they head to a privately owned parking and project staging area, named Offsite Area A. Each day, after parking their vehicles, the workers are then transported in buses to the Cove Point construction site in Lusby, Md.

That morning, sheriff’s deputies randomly stopped vehicles on the public road to screen the occupants for alcohol and drugs. No workers were arrested as part of the Sept. 23 checkpoint, said Captain Steven Jones with the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office. Two cars were searched for drugs, but no drugs were found, he said. The sheriff’s office also stopped cars on Dominion property due to violations that occurred on county roads unrelated to the sobriety checkpoint. After the completion of the checkpoint, Jones said the sheriff’s office called Dominion to commend the employees for their cooperation and professionalism.

Dominion requires its workplaces and facilities to remain drug and alcohol-free, including construction projects like the Cove Point liquefaction and export facilities, according to Dominion Cove Point spokesman Karl Neddenien. “All employees and others working at Dominion Cove Point are subject to random screenings when they arrive at the work site, while they are on our property and when they leave the work site,” he said.

The Sept. 23 sobriety checkpoint “was a cooperative effort of the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office, Dominion Cove Point, and IHI-Kiewit to ensure compliance with this requirement,” Neddenien said in an email. In 2013, Dominion awarded Kiewit, a leading global LNG engineering firm, and joint venture partner IHI an engineering and construction contract for the Cove Point LNG export project.

Calvert Co. law enforcement pulls over a truck at Offsite A on Oct. 19, 2016 in a stop unrelated to the sobriety check./Photo by Jeff Dixon

In 2007, Calvert County reached a “security services agreement” with Dominion under which the sheriff’s office provides protection to the Cove Point facility. The Calvert County Sheriff’s Office used the $1.5 million paid by Dominion in fiscal year 2016 to fully fund eleven sheriff deputy positions that are part of a special operations team assigned to protect the Cove Point terminal.

Donny Williams, a resident of Calvert County and an organizer with the anti-LNG export terminal group We Are Cove Point, expressed alarm that anybody would feel the need to set up a sobriety checkpoint to specifically target workers coming to build the export terminal in his neighborhood. “It’s horrifying to think that there is enough concern of workers being drunk or on drugs on the job to lead Dominion and the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office to set up a sobriety checkpoint not for drivers going up and down Rt. 4, but specifically for workers on this site,” Williams said.

Construction on the Cove Point LNG export facility began in October 2014. The new facilities will be in the 131-acre footprint of the existing LNG terminal site. The liquefaction and export terminal project remains on schedule for a late-2017 completion date, according to Dominion.

At least one construction worker has been seriously injured during the construction of the export facilities at Cove Point. In March 2015, a Kiewit employee was reportedly transported by helicopter to Prince George’s Hospital Center in Maryland after suffering injuries at the construction site. The employee was injured during unloading operations for two rebar cages for the liquefaction facility.

In October 2015, about 5,000 gallons of a 50% solution of automotive antifreeze reportedly spilled from a pressure relief valve on an industrial heating system at the LNG terminal. The antifreeze is used in a system that processes LNG into natural gas by heating it. Dominion reported no injuries from the incident and no antifreeze was released from the Cove Point LNG site.

Other energy companies also have strict anti-drug policies for their employees who work on site at plants or other major energy infrastructure facilities. As a condition to gain access to work at Southern Nuclear-operated sites, all employees must agree to submit to a “fitness-for-duty” program, which allows the company to conduct pre-access alcohol and drug testing, random testing, follow-up testing and for-cause testing, the company said in an email. All personnel also are prohibited from reporting to work under the influence of alcohol or any illegal drug, the company said.

Southern Nuclear, a subsidiary of Southern Co., serves as the operator of three nuclear power plants and is the licensee of two new nuclear units currently under construction at the existing Plant Vogtle in Georgia. When completed, the two units, along with a pair of units under construction in South Carolina, will be the first new nuclear reactors built in the U.S. in 30 years.

“Everyone found in violation of this policy,” a Southern Nuclear spokeswoman said, “will be disciplined, up to and including termination, and denied access to all of our nuclear energy facilities.” Construction on the two new Vogtle units began in March 2013. Since the start of construction, the spokeswoman said she is unaware of local police setting up alcohol and drug checkpoints near the Plant Vogtle construction site similar to the checkpoint in Calvert County.

Preventing drinking on the job can be a struggle for some companies, including construction firms. In 2012, hidden cameras discovered workers drinking on the largest construction job in Washington State, a project on which Kiewit was a joint-venture partner.

On Sept. 23, the same day as the sobriety checkpoint near the Cove Point facility, FERC staff members performed an inspection of the construction site. In its inspection report, filed on Oct. 13, FERC staff concluded that construction activities at the LNG terminal “comply with the designs and plans filed with and approved by FERC.” The staff did not find any instances of noncompliance nor were any problem areas identified, according to the report.

Storage tanks at the Dominion Cove Point LNG terminal in Calvert County, Md./Photo by Mark Hand.

For example, FERC staff found that a temporary construction entrance on Cove Point Road (Route 497) was acceptable. The entrance provides access for construction workers, materials, equipment and vehicles. Dominion Cove Point routinely maintains the roadway with street sweepers to remove sediment and debris, FERC staff said. FERC’s next construction inspection of the Dominion Cove Point LNG terminal facilities is tentatively scheduled for the week of Nov. 14.

The sheriff’s office will occasionally set up sobriety checkpoints throughout the county. The Sept. 23 checkpoint was the first time the sheriff’s office had screened drivers in the vicinity of the Dominion Cove Point staging area, Jones said.

“We’re scanning for drugs and alcohol, just like we would for a DWI checkpoint or a drug checkpoint,” Jones said. “We have a national drug problem. We have a drinking and driving problem. We used to do it on Friday nights. Now, we find when we do it in the mornings or on Monday nights, we find the same results.”

The sheriff’s office told Dominion that it was planning to set up the checkpoint on Sept. 23. “We let them know we were going to do it because it was going to affect their operations. We don’t need their permission to do it because it’s a county road. But we did let them know out of respect,” he said.

The sobriety checkpoint is one more reason why Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan should order a full and transparent quantitative risk assessment for the Cove Point LNG export project, Williams contended. “We know it was unsafe as an import terminal. We have no idea how unsafe it would be as an export terminal, and the fact that workers are suspected of not being sober on the job certainly skyrockets our concerns about the safety of this facility,” he said.

The post Local Police Set Up Alcohol, Drug Checkpoint for Cove Point LNG Construction Workers appeared first on DCMediaGroup.

Protesters fear that a pipeline leak in the Potomac River could poison the drinking water supply of millions of people./Photo by Anne Meador

A fracked gas pipeline proposed by Columbia Gas was the motivation for a protest and march on Saturday at the C&O Canal National Park near the point where the pipeline may cross the Potomac River. While details are scarce about the pipeline so far, it will likely originate in Pennsylvania, traverse Maryland and connect with a distribution line in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.

On this glorious autumn day, a crowd of about fifty people cheered the arrival of two hikers on the C&O Canal towpath at the tiny town of Hancock, Md. The pair of young women–dressed colorfully in teal t-shirts and carrying a several yards of black piping–swept into their welcoming, even though they had already walked more than 100 miles since October 15. Kim Alexander and Aeryn Boyd are walking 313 miles along Maryland waterways.

“We’re walking across the state of Maryland to celebrate water and protect life,” Boyd said. She and Alexander support state legislation to ban fracking. “Fracking is a very big risk, and it’s not worth it when we have other types of energy.” They believe a fracking ban would not only protect people and the environment from harms created by wells, but also from their associated infrastructure, such as the pipeline proposed near Hancock.

Kim Alexander holds aloft a faux pipeline after arriving in Hancock, Md.

Russell Mokhiber of Morgan County, W.Va., addressed the gathering and described how another company in West Virginia, Mountaineer Gas, is depending on Columbia’s pipeline to supply its planned expansion. He speculates that it could even be one piece in a transmission system transporting gas from Pennsylvania’s shalefields to a terminal on the Chesapeake Bay for export. We have “a flood of gas” which leads to redundancies, he said.

“Many people here are from Morgan County. They don’t want this pipeline because, one, of the way this company [Mountaineer Gas] is bullying landowners, going to older people, saying: ‘If you don’t take this offer, we’re going to come and get it with eminent domain,’” he said. “But two, because we don’t need this gas. We don’t need it, and it’s very risky. There are leaks, there are explosions.”

Several protesters also carried “Ban Fracking in Maryland” signs. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan just released regulations on fracking as the first step toward lifting the moratorium against the extraction method in the state.

“The gas is from fracking,” Carolyn Reece of Morgan County said about the pipelines. “There are too many pipelines. Now there’s one in my backyard. It has to stop, this greed for gas.”

Following a march through the main thoroughfare of Hancock, the group gathered for a prayer circle on the Potomac. Amanda Kimimilla sang a “protection song” she said her Lakota grandmother taught her. Kimimilla of Hedgesville, W.Va., had recently returned from the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, where thousands of Lakota, Dakota and Nakota peoples—also known as Sioux—are trying to protect the Missouri River from contamination by the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Prayer circle on the Potomac River.

“All pipelines leak. Over time, they corrode,” she said. She noted that fifty pipelines have leaked this year, but news reports rarely cover them. Heat expansion and cold weather shrinkage cause “structural anomalies” which can lead to accidents. She also described the tendency for companies to abandon pipelines.

Columbia Gas must apply to the National Park Service to drill under the Potomac River to lay its pipeline. A pipeline leak or accident poses risks of fouling the drinking water supply of millions of people who live in Washington, DC and surrounding areas.

Those opposing the pipelines may clash with localities anxious to capitalize on gas-powered industries. Procter & Gamble, for example, is constructing a new manufacturing plant in Berkeley County, which some are hyping as an economic bonanza likely to transform the area. Part of the $8.5 million in infrastructure improvements provided by the county will include additional gas lines. The Mountaineer Gas pipeline expansion would likely provide gas to power the plant.

The executive director of the Jefferson County Development Authority told the Shepherdstown Observer that the county missed out on the Procter & Gamble gravy train in part because lack of gas distribution lines put it at a competitive disadvantage. He welcomes the Mountaineer Gas expansion.

Columbia Pipeline Group was acquired by TransCanada Corp. last March for $13 billion. TransCanada is probably most well-known for the Keystone Pipeline, which transports dilbit from tar sands mines in Canada to the Gulf Coast. TransCanada’s attempt to build the Keystone XL, the northern leg of the pipeline, were blocked last year when the U.S. State Department denied the pipeline’s permit.

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It wasn’t easy to catch up with Barbara Baker-larush as she walked briskly along the C&O Canal through Georgetown. Even on this magnificent autumn day, she wouldn’t be diverted from her important mission. Walkers, joggers, and bikes cleared a path for her. Cars halted at street crossings.

She couldn’t stop for me either, she said, only slow down a little. A copper pail covered with a red cloth swung lightly at her side in rhythm with the long grey pony tail down her back. She attended the pail with special care, I noticed, like a courier with an urgent delivery. She pulled back the red cloth to reveal the contents: clear, clean water taken from the source of the Potomac River.

Baker-larush is an Ojibwe woman from the Chippewa Indian Reservation near Hayward, Wisconsin. On Saturday, she walked one leg of the Potomac River Nibi Walk, which started on October 7 in Fairfax Stone, W.Va. and will conclude at Point Lookout, Md. on October 19.

Carrying a golden eagle feather for protection, the copper vessel with Potomac River water and a GPS tracker, is one of several Nibi Water Walkers. They say they are journeying along this river and others to draw attention to the pollution in the water, to “heal” it and change people’s current damaging relationship to waterways. The walks are “extended ceremonies to pray for the water,” according to the Nibi Walks website. “Every step is taken in prayer and gratitude for water, our life giving force,” it says.

Baker-larush’s tribal name is Spirit Bird Woman. She has participated in several Nibi Walks before, including the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. An experienced walker, on Saturday she had hiked several miles at a brisk clip southeast on the C&O Canal towpath, which runs parallel to the Potomac River, toward Washington, DC.

“Seventy-five percent of the earth is water, but only two percent is drinkable,” she said. “I do these walks to make sure that my children’s children, and seven generations down the line, have fresh water to drink. Because without water, there is no life.”

In crowded Georgetown, Sharon Day, executive director of the Indigenous People’s Task Force, waited for Baker-Larush in a well-traveled RV. She has helped organize many of the waterwalks. “Our waterways are severely impaired,” she said. “Water is life, and there can be no life without water.”

The water is usually fairly clean at the “headwaters” and gets more polluted as it goes downstream from human activity, she said. They carry some of the source water to the “confluence”—the Chesapeake Bay, in the case of the Potomac River.

A copper vessel contains headwaters of the Potomac River./Photo by Anne Meador

“We want to give river a taste of how she began, and that’s how we wish for her to be again,” she said. “All the while that we’re carrying the water, we’re telling it, ‘We love you, we thank you, we respect you.’”

In her tribe, she said, water is women’s responsibility, while fire is men’s.

Day believes that water is playing a special role for Native Americans right now. Over 300 tribes have united to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline and protect the Missouri River, in particular, the water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe at Cannonball, North Dakota. Day lent her support to the water protectors at Standing Rock at the end of August, bringing tents, blankets, and money, and performed a water ceremony at the launching of boats into the Missouri River.

She thinks that people need to change practices like putting chemicals on their lawns, and it is also important to stop extractive industries which pollute water. “One of the things that seems to be missing is this relationship with water, not just as a commodity, but as a living entity that has a spirit,” she said.

The Potomac River is the source of drinking water for millions of people, especially in the metropolitan Washington, DC area. The water quality is threatened by major polluters, stormwater runoff, extractive industries such as hydraulic fracking and mining, and sewage.

An Environmental Working Group study released in September found that levels of hexavalent chromium in drinking water supplying the metropolitan Washington, DC region far exceeded a public health goal. The DC Water and Sewer Authority, the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission and the Fairfax County Water Authority all obtain water from the Potomac River. Hexavalent chromium, a likely carcinogen made famous by the movie “Erin Brokovich,” often enters underground and surface waters from leaching hazardous waste sites.

Submerged aquatic vegetation chokes Oronoco Bay on the Alexandria waterfront./Photo by Anne Meador

Industrial neglect and malfeasance are sometimes responsible for toxic releases into the river. Last December, it was revealed that for decades, toxic chemicals from a coal ash pond have been leaking into Quantico Creek from Dominion Virginia Power’s Possum Point power station. Quantico Creek runs into the Potomac River.

Dominion Virginia Power also admitted that it was responsible for a 13,500-gallon spill of mineral oil into a waterfowl sanctuary near Reagan National Airport last February.

Huge swaths of submerged aquatic vegetation and algae have appeared in several spots in the Potomac around Washington, DC. Massive amounts of stormwater runoff mixed with raw sewage from Old Town Alexandria during heavy rains may account for the thick growth at Oronoco Bay.

Barbara Baker-larush hands over sacred water and an eagle feather to the next Nibi Walker./Photo by Anne Meador

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Democracy Spring protest at Capitol building, April 2016/Photo by John Zangas

Nothing lasts forever and this presidential election, it too will end. November 9 will be the end of a Caligula-esque presidential election. Its end can’t come too soon.

None of the last 18 months have resulted in any forward progress, no substantive discussion of solutions moving civilization forward. Nothing wise or learned has come from these would-be leaders.

The world does look toward the U.S. presidential election in a big way because it is a barometer of policies affecting billions. The world has been shortchanged this time.

We did stumble on one thing: how cunning and treacherous people feigning the narcotic of power become when there’s a threat of its being taken.

From the town halls, to the state caucuses, to the conventions, to the debates, this election has been a massive ripoff of the voters and those who donated time and money and trusted a system proved by ego and garnished by selfish greed and treachery.

Voters have been played at every act, scene and role. Nothing about what happened in this election this year has really counted. Many are now disillusioned.

One really can’t tell who Clinton is. Whether her statements are a public perspective or a private policy, or her public intent matches her private action, is a big mystery. Who is she? One cannot not find that out in mainstream media, less than 25 days from the voting booth.

Trump is a relic, so painfully, flagrantly and awfully out of step with the times. No hope there either.

Even presidential candidate Vermin Supreme has far more credibility with his promise of a pony for everyone.

When this election is over the same issues will still be there waiting to be fixed. Ironically, none of the elected will be up to the task. Maybe it’s not because they lack the will, or courage to try to fix them. Maybe our would be elected are trying to tell something they cannot come to admit: they simply don’t want to fix the national level issues.

What are those national level (big) issues?

The other day I thought large scale issues were important: national debt, wealth inequality, public education, unending wars, military spending (more than 53% of the discretionary budget), economy, bank fraud, corporate welfare, a tax on Wall Street, etc.

But now I realize the big issues affecting us are really not the big issues but the smaller local issues where organizing for change is not only realistically possible, it’s in our interest because it affects us directly.

Therefore the issues we need to be worried about are the ones we can reasonably change: the local bike trail that needs widening, local housing availability, local spending on public schools, a local board for police oversight, good community centers, moving money to a local credit union, viable public parks and spaces, etc.

So what options do we have?

Sides can keep beating up each other over how bad things have gotten at the national level. It hasn’t worked up to now. Leadership really doesn’t care to fix national problems or they would. Congress won’t even confirm a Supreme Court Justice!

Since it’s obvious we can’t rely on national leaders, anything we do is going to have to be done by local leaders at local community levels.

Communities with self-empowerment for common good are incredible vestiges of power. It doesn’t take as much to organize, and there’s more chance to speak truth to power at local levels.

Locals can’t control huge runaway issues like debt, banks, and Wall Street and wars that influential elites seem to have a grasp over. But maybe locals don’t need to have such concerns.

Maybe the elections we need to worry about are the ones close to home.

I still hope to get a pony someday.

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Washington, DC — A dozen groups rallied and marched Monday night in memory of Terrence Sterling, 31, an unarmed Black man shot by DC police officer Brian Trainer. About 250 took part in the demonstration at the 200 block of M Street NW, the busy intersection where he was killed.

Just paces behind them was a small memorial of teddy bears tied to a street lamp in Sterling’s memory. Above were signs reading “We have Questions, We Need Answers,” with the hashtag #TerrenceSterling. Motorists blew horns in support of the action.

Officer Trainer fired at Sterling from inside his vehicle while Sterling was riding his motorcycle in the early morning hours on Sept. 11, according an attorney for Sterling’s family.

Hundreds marched Monday night expressing their emotions about the incident and demanding more transparency and accountability from police and District government. After many organizers spoke, protesters shut down nearby New York Avenue until police ordered protesters stop blocking traffic. They reacted angrily to the police warning but after a short time began walking to allow traffic to pass. The demonstration continued with no incident, and no arrests were reported.

Terrence Sterling was killed by a police office in the District on Photo by John Zangas

Several mothers who had lost children to police and community violence joined in the action along with a number of friends of Terrence Sterling. They included Jerry Formey, a friend childhood friend of Sterling for over twenty years.

Formey spoke fondly and emotionally of Sterling as he told of a friend who was “easy to talk to, nonviolent and very loyal.” He said they watched many football games together, and he would miss sharing good times.

Formey said his friends affectionately nicknamed Sterling “Chicken” because his first job was at a fast food restaurant. “He had a smile that would light up the cold corner when he came through,” said Formey.

Activists expressed frustration with the reluctance of Mayor Bowser to hold police accountable. They also feel the police are too protected from oversight and unwilling to hold themselves accountable. “They want to sweep the murder of Terrence Sterling under the rug,” said Eugene Puryear, organizer with Stop Police Terror Project DC.

Puryear, who has been actively working on DC police accountability for over a decade, called police conduct in DC a national disgrace, undermining the world view of democracy here. He spoke of a United Nations report from last week highly critical of U.S. police conduct in handling cases like Terrence Sterling’s.

“The UN just came out and said that the killings of Black men in America is reminiscent of lynchings,” Puryear said. He admonished the falseness of democratic principles in the present day of policing standards. “More people have died at the hands of police than have been lynched in just the last ten years,” he said.

Carlan Martin, co-founder of Truth Seekers for India Kager, also had harsh words when she chastised Mayor Bowser and the City Council for not holding police responsible. “The elected officials of the city don’t have the balls to take on the Fraternal Order of Police,” said Martin. “We’re going to keep applying pressure to the FOP and stand up for people who can no longer speak for themselves.”

Cynthia DeShola Dawkins of Timothy Dawkins El Project and the Coalition of Concerned Mothers (COCM) speaks to protesters./Photo by John Zangas

Activists posed key questions for the Mayor and City Council, including why police used deadly force when Sterling was unarmed, why police fired upon him while he was riding his motorcycle, and why he was being pursued when there was already a standing order in the District for police not to pursue any vehicle. They demanded that the Mayor make the police answer questions about the actions of the officers involved leading up to Sterling’s death, and make sure they are prosecuted. They are also demanding the Department of Justice investigate the matter.

Black Lives Matter DC organizer April Goggins railed against police, saying, “His life and the way in which MPD and Mayor Bowser and the DC Police Union have treated its aftermath its dispicable, it’s disgusting.”

Goggins urged those present to become active in organizing for change.

The DC coroner’s office ruled Terrence Sterling’s death a homicide. It was the 764th police killing in the U.S. in 2016, according to a database project undertaken by the Guardian website called “The Counted.”

Since Sterling was killed on September 11, another 54 names have been added. It now stands at 818.

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@AngryBlkManDC tweeted a photo and video of the tagging in process.

Washington, DC — A man tagged the side entrance of Trump International Hotel with red and black spray paint on Saturday afternoon with slogans “No Justice [No] Peace” and “Black Lives Matter.” The graffiti defaced the side entrance to the ultra-luxury hotel named after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is infamous for his racist remarks against blacks, Muslims and Latinos. The hotel just celebrated its grand opening in September.

On Twitter, @AngryBlkManDC tweeted a photo of the graffiti and a video of the tagging in process.

Several pieces of plywood covered the tags while a security guard dressed in a business suit stood by to keep it from being removed.

The guard said that “a special process” would have to be used to remove the paint, but it could not be done right away because the 117-year-old edifice was made of marble, which could deteriorate if sandblasting techniques were used.

The guard also said Trump Hotel did not discuss “security methods” when asked if those responsible had been caught on camera. He referenced a post on Facebook purportedly showing those in action who had tagged the entrance.

Trump International Hotel leases the building from the General Accounting Office, who must must be consulted before removing the paint. In 2012, the company headed by presidential candidate Donald Trump leased the building for 60 years. It partnered with Colony Capital in a $200 million cash bid to renovate the Old Post Office Pavilion. The building houses the Old Bell Tower, the third tallest structure in Washington, DC.

“Black Lives Matter” and “No Justice” and “Peace” circled with a line through it were later covered with plywood at the side entrance of Trump International Hotel./Photo by Anne Meador

Trump Hotels won the bid with a relatively modest rent of $3.5 million a year and a commitment to $200 million in renovations, almost double the next highest bidder. The rent costs will likely be a tax write-off because the 117-year-old building is listed as a federally protected landmark.

The “Old Bell Tower” which was built in 1899, may have drawn Trump to it with its history of controversy. It was almost torn down in the 1920s, 1930s, and again in the 1970s. But its iconic tower, the third tallest structure in the District, staved off the wrecking ball as people warmed to its permanence.

Controversy has also swirled around Trump’s new hotel since opening day when local groups picketed the entire day, lambasting the presidential candidate for bigoted comments about minorities, Muslims, and women.

Trump has reportedly set the price of suites for the presidential inaugural weekend at a half million a night.

Protesters outside Trump International Hotel on September 12, 2016./Photo by John Zangas

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump./Photo by Gage Skidmore

Donald Trump showed up at an energy industry conference in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Sept. 22 to give a speech but remarkably left the venue without winning the award for making the most bizarre statement of the day.

That prize went to Bill Cole, president of the West Virginia Senate and Republican candidate for governor of the state, who stated that businesses in the state “need to be in control of the government, not the other way around.”

Let that sink in for a moment. A major party candidate for the top political job in West Virginia, a government official himself, believes business owners should control the matters of the state and government policies should fall in line with their dictates. Cole and his supporters appear to believe democracy is government by the corporations, for the corporations, not by and for the people. “We often talk about the speed of government versus the speed of business,” Cole said, adding that government needs to begin operating at the speed of business.

Politicians routinely fail to pass the hypocrisy test. Cole, who claims to champion less regulation, is no exception. The Republican lawmaker owns several auto dealerships in West Virginia and Kentucky. In 2015, Cole pushed for the passage of S.B. 453, which restricts (i.e., heavily regulates) car manufacturers from selling vehicles directly to consumers, instead requiring they sell vehicles through franchisees. West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin signed the bill into law in 2015, which essentially prevented Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors from selling its cars in the state.

Cole, who hails from a state whose economy has long depended on the coal industry, also appears confused about how natural gas markets will fare under certain regulatory regimes. Even though the natural gas industry is positioned to see tremendous growth under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, proposed under a Democratic president, Cole contends “natural gas will be the next one in the gun sights” of a Hillary Clinton administration. This statement ignores the fact that Clinton has been a strong supporter of the shale gas revolution and exporting natural gas from liquefied natural gas export terminals along the nation’s coasts.

Trump, surprisingly, wasn’t the winner of the runner-up prize for most bizarre statement on the final day of the Shale Insight conference either. At the conference, sponsored by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, that featured what many would consider extremist anti-regulatory statements, Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai called on industry officials “not to allow the extremists, particularly on the Left, to hijack the discussion” on shale gas drilling and infrastructure construction in the state. Turzai ignored how the shale gas industry has dominated the energy debates among policymakers in Pennsylvania and how state lawmakers have strongly supported the shale gas industry from its very beginning in the mid-2000s.

To his credit, the Republican lawmaker partly redeemed himself by posing the idea of building new pipelines in existing rights of way to avoid conflict with local communities. “To the extent that we can make use of putting pipelines near rail lines or locations that already have industrial or transportation purposes, the less you can put yourself in a position where you’re dealing with communities,” Turzai said. “The better off we are if we can find those locations on a map as starting points, that’s always very helpful.”

Following the panel of state lawmakers, Trump took the stage. Attendees were expecting fireworks from the Republican presidential candidate but instead heard a relatively subdued speech. Because throngs of national news reporters were covering the event, Trump did not solely address energy issues. He spoke about how he would fight crime in big cities and how any wrongdoing by the police would be “vigorously addressed” under a Trump administration.

The Republican presidential candidate made an eyebrow-raising comment about the influx of drugs into the United States and suggested that cities adopt Rudy Giuliani’s stop-and-frisk style of fighting crime in cities.

Trump condemned the protests in Charlotte, N.C., to the industry conference crowd composed almost exclusively of white men. He also failed to acknowledge the pattern of violence against African Americans at the hands of police, the reason why so many protesters have taken to the streets.

Once he turned to energy issues, the Pittsburgh crowd livened up. But his statements weren’t fully in line with the messaging of other conference speakers. “Our energy policy will make full use of our domestic energy sources, including traditional and renewable sources. We want everything,” Trump insisted. A day earlier at the conference, Marathon Petroleum CEO Gary Heminger blasted the nation’s growing focus on renewable energy. “What activists often call green energy is inconsistent, unreliable and very expensive,” Heminger said.

Earlier in his campaign, Trump advocated for abolishing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As with many other policy matters, Trump has flip-flopped on this issue and no longer supports eliminating the EPA. In his Pittsburgh speech, he emphasized the importance of protecting the environment. “I will refocus the EPA on its core mission of ensuring clean air and clean safe drinking water for all Americans,” he said. “I believe firmly in conserving our wonderful natural resources and beautiful natural habitats.”

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A family maple syrup business in Pennsylvania was destroyed to make way for the Constitution Pipeline./Photo by Vera Scroggins

Former Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McClendon may no longer be with us, but his old message about anti-fracking activists continues to echo in the meeting rooms of industry conferences.

Five years ago, McClendon, who died in a car crash in March, told the audience at the Shale Gas Insight conference in Philadelphia that life would be cold, dark and hungry if the protesters outside the Philadelphia Convention Center succeeded in stopping shale gas drilling.

Time has moved on, but the thinking of some executives in the industry remains the same. This year, at the Shale Insight conference across the state in Pittsburgh, Pa., Marathon Petroleum Corp. CEO Gary Heminger assumed McClendon’s role by chastising activists and regulators for failing to acknowledge the significant improvements in environmental quality the oil and gas industry has made over the past several decades.

“Despite the enormous benefits we have brought to our nation and its citizens, we face activists who tell us we should keep oil and natural gas in the ground,” Heminger said in a Sept. 21 keynote speech. “But we know that there are no energy sources capable of replacing what we produce every day. Without doing what we do, much of the world would simply go without energy.”

Members of the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes outside a Washington, DC courthouse hearing on the Dakota Access Pipeline./Photo by Anne Meador

Activists try to paint the industry as villains, Heminger said, noting that regulators at both the state and federal level are “making common cause” with these activists. Some regulators have become “almost militant” to the industry, he said, listing the Dakota Access Pipeline, in which Marathon Petroleum last month agreed to pay $2 billion to acquire a minority stake, as an example of how regulators are standing in the way of getting crude oil to market. Spun off as its own company by Marathon Oil in 2011, Marathon Petroleum is one of the largest petroleum product refiners, marketers and transporters in the United States.

In his rebuke to regulators, Heminger referred to the Department of Justice’s decision on Sept. 9 to request a “voluntary pause on all construction” of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The request was released jointly with the Department of Interior and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and came immediately after U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ruled against a Standing Rock Sioux motion to stop construction of the pipeline near their reservation.

Some industry supporters, however, are trying to get their colleagues to change with the times. Thomas Ahern, CEO of Five Corners Strategies, an industry public affairs firm, emphasized that the “crazy environmentalists” of Earth First! “chaining themselves to something” are no longer the normal opposition to the oil and gas industry.

The typical opposition the industry will encounter today are “normal people, actual regular people,” Ahern said. “Your neighbors, the people that you went to school with. Your barber. The person who sells you a bagel in the morning. They’re regular moms and dads. They’re police officers. They’re nurses. They are Democrats, but they are also Republicans.” If the energy industry is going to succeed in getting a pipeline built, officials must stop thinking “it’s just crazy environmentalists. That’s not the way it works any longer,” he said.

Spending time with impacted residents is a requirement when building a new pipeline because the project will be one of the biggest topics of conversation in each community, according to EQT Corp. Executive Vice President Blue Jenkins. “If you pick up any newspaper in the region, you will find headlines” critical of the pipeline project, Jenkins said. “It’s the new reality for what we deal with as pipeline developers.”

A sign reflecting the sentiments of Virginians against the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

EQT is the lead developer of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is designed to transport natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale plays into Virginia. “The opponents are very organized, they are very aggressive and they are very vocal. Some might call them the vocal minority,” Jenkins said.

If pipeline developers are to be successful in this “new world,” they must stay engaged and remain positive, he explained. “You must respect the public concern, but you also have to promote the facts. You must maintain a constant drumbeat of consistent messaging,” said Jenkins, who expects the Mountain Valley Pipeline to enter service by late 2018.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline project is one of several pending pipeline proposals that would carry natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale plays to various demand centers. “Every one of those projects is being hotly contested at FERC and in the communities along the proposed routes,” said Owen Kean, senior director of energy at the American Chemistry Council. “Without those pipelines, the Marcellus and Utica formations will not meet their full potential.”

Michael Krancer, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and a partner with the law firm Blank Rome LLP, said his primary goal today is making sure the industry reaches its full potential. “I am an advocate for this business,” Krancer told the conference audience. “There is a moral case for hydrocarbons. … I’m thankful for what you do. The public should be thankful for what you do. Environmentally, it’s beneficial. At the end of the day, we need to be proud of what this industry does and we need to stop spending our time being on the defensive.”

The industry has mastered building pipelines and operating them safely, Krancer contended. “What we haven’t mastered and what we face is this political process that is turning against us. Yet we’re relying on these old comfortable strategies and paradigms on how to approach what we do. It’s not working anymore.”

“The landscape today from the political risk front is so much different than it was 10 years ago where projects just got approved,” Krancer said. “Nowadays, things are different. Some are dedicated, ideologically, politically, for whatever passionate reason, to eliminate the use of hydrocarbon fuels,” he said. Krancer refuses to use the term “fossil fuel.” He believes the people who are “dedicated to eliminating the use of them” like to call them fossil fuels “because it makes them sound old, something that should be extinct.”

Like most speakers at the conference, Krancer said it is a vocal minority that is driving opposition to pipeline projects. He pointed to North Dakota where he believes a majority of the residents support the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. “What we have seen there is nothing short of mob politics,” citing the Native American resistance to the pipeline.

Photo by Anne Meador

Krancer stressed that the industry needs to stay engaged with the people to avoid future political risk. “We know what the majority of people want,” he said. “We have to be careful that what happened in New York doesn’t happen elsewhere.” After more than seven years of study, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in June 2015 issued a final document that was needed to ban fracking in the state.

Borrowing a term popularized by former President Richard Nixon during the height of public opposition to the Vietnam War, Krancer established a grassroots lobbying and advocacy firm called Silent Majority Strategies. The firm focuses on communicating to the public and shaping public opinion for the energy industry. “We have to harness the silent majority. That’s why we call our business the Silent Majority Strategies,” he said.

Engaging concerned residents one-on-one by knocking on their doors or speaking with them at pipeline “open houses” is crucial to gaining their support for a project, Ahern said. “Ten years ago, you could come in and say, ‘We’ll give you a new fire truck. How about a new police car? That’s not going to cut it any longer. It doesn’t work. You’re not buying fire trucks to get an approval any longer, even if FERC says, ‘Hey, that’s great.’ Because it’s not about that any longer. Ask anybody who has done work in New York if you can count on that.”

Ahern also stressed that state and local politicians likely support energy infrastructure projects in their communities, but often the public outcry forces them to come out against a project. “Give state and local politicians a reason to support you,” Ahern said. The industry needs to be in constant contact with local politicians and organize letter-writing campaigns to their offices, he said. “You need to give them ‘cover.’… That’s what they’re looking for. Elected officials want a reason to support you,” Ahern said.

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr

The U.S. oil and gas industry started a big comeback a decade ago at a time when environmentalists were predicting the industry would never recover, according to Harold Hamm, chairman and CEO of Continental Resources and energy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Speaking at the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Sept. 21, Hamm said the U.S. shale gas sector has “changed the world” in a way that will provide energy security to the U.S. for the next 50 years. The industry’s great success, however, has spawned great opposition, he noted.

“And that opposition is what you’re seeing out there today,” Hamm said. “The enviros … thought we were done. They thought it was over for energy in America. They were clapping their hands. They believed we were going to ride off into the sunset and be gone forever.” But the industry came “booming back” across the U.S., he emphasized.

Hamm’s remarks were part stump speech for the Trump campaign and part pep talk for the oil and gas industry. As part of the stump speech, he brought up the attack in Benghazi, Libya, a popular Republican talking point, and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email controversy and lamented a liberal tilt to the Supreme Court if Clinton wins the presidency in November. Trump was scheduled to address the Shale Insight conference on Sept. 22.

The oil and gas industry is getting attacked on numerous fronts, from renewable energy advocates to Hollywood actors to billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, Hamm complained. Opponents of the fossil fuel industry are resorting to using disparaging tactics, including adding a “k” to the word “frac,” an abbreviation of hydraulic fracturing, to make it sound like a dirty word, Hamm said. “If I’m introduced as a fracker, I’m going home. Nobody wants to be called the ‘f’ word. It’s undignified and I’m not putting up with it,” the 70-year-old vowed.

In July, Trump told a Denver television station that he supports fracking but said towns and states should be allowed to ban the drilling practice. That position was at odds with industry groups and congressional Republicans, who say localities should not have control over the practice.

During his keynote address, Hamm criticized the Obama administration for its handling of the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. “Not a foot of [the Dakota Access Pipeline] goes under tribal land,” Hamm said. “They come in again and shut it down.”

The pipeline, proposed by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, is designed to move large amounts of crude oil extracted from the Bakken Formation in northwestern North Dakota and eastern Montana, including volumes produced by Hamm’s own Continental Resources.

The Department of Justice on Sept. 9 issued a non-binding statement requesting a “voluntary pause on all construction” of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The request was released jointly with the Department of Interior and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and came immediately after U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ruled against a Standing Rock Sioux motion to stop construction of the pipeline near their reservation.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed suit against the Army Corps of Engineers for permitting the Dakota Access Pipeline./Photo by Doug Grandt

“Nobody expected that this could happen. This was after a federal court judge ruled that they had no standing,” he said. “What we’re seeing a complete and total disregard for what made America great, the one thing we always had working for our country — and that is a very strong rule of law.”

As the Dakota Access Pipeline battle heated up, the “rule-of-law” argument has became a rallying cry among both industry supporters and Native Americans. “The administration’s attempts to shut down construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline show that it is putting politics ahead of the rule of law,” North America’s Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey said in a news release issued by the American Petroleum Institute.

In July, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is the primary federal agency that granted permits needed for the pipeline to be constructed. The tribe is seeking injunctive relief to halt construction of the pipeline. The lawsuit alleged that the Army Corps violated multiple federal laws, including the Clean Water Act, National Historic Protection Act and National Environmental Policy Act, when it issued the permits.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Sept. 16 ordered Energy Transfer Partners to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline for 20 miles on both sides of the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, while the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s appeal of its denied motion to do so is considered.

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Vasu Abhiraman protests the AFL-CIO’s endorsement of the Dakota Access Pipeline in front of the labor union’s headquarters./Photo by Brendan Orsinger

The AFL-CIO is coming under attack from labor groups and their supporters angry about the organization’s support of the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through Native American land in North Dakota.

Demonstrators stood outside the AFL-CIO’s headquarters in Washington, DC, on Sept. 19 calling on the union federation to renounce its support for the oil pipeline project. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, in a Sept. 15 statement, called on Native Americans and the federal government not to “hold union members’ livelihoods and their families’ financial security hostage to endless delay” and asked the Obama administration to let construction on the pipeline continue.

“This is unacceptable behavior for the AFL-CIO, which has a rich history of supporting the right causes — civil rights, voting rights,” Brendan Orsinger, an activist and organizer, said in an interview at the demonstration. “My grandmother worked with unions to harness that people power and put pressure on Congress to help pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and 1965. My great-grandmother worked on the picket lines.”

The president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) came out with an even stronger statement against Native Americans opposed to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. “LIUNA is a champion of the right to peacefully demonstrate, however, extremists have escalated the demonstrations well beyond lawful civil disobedience,” Terry O’Sullivan, general president of LIUNA, said in a statement. O’Sullivan said he found it frustrating that Native Americans “have disregarded the evidence and the review process to vilify a project.”

Other labor unions have expressed solidarity with Native Americans in their fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, proposed by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners. The Amalgamated Transit Union condemned “the ongoing violent attacks on the Standing Rock Sioux and others who oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline” and noted “these attacks by a private security company bring back horrific memories of the notorious Pinkertons, who used clubs, dogs and bullets to break up peaceful worker protests.” The Communications Workers of America issued a statement in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe ” as they fight to protect their community, their land and their water supply.”

AFL-CIO emblem on the front of its headquarters building in Washington, DC./Photo by Mark Hand

“The AFL-CIO has a proud history of working with oppressed people to gain their rights and worker rights and they need to stake a strong stand on indigenous rights,” Orsinger said. “They have a seal on their headquarters of a black hand and a white hand shaking. It bothers me that they are betraying their history and their moral high ground.”

Activists are hoping to apply enough pressure on the AFL-CIO so the federation finds it politically infeasible to support projects such as Dakota Access. “As many jobs as they may get from this pipeline construction, it is dwarfed by the amount of jobs they will lose elsewhere from the public turning against them,” Orsinger said.

The Dakota Access Pipeline project is a proposed 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline designed to connect the Bakken production area in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline would transport approximately 470,000 barrels of oil per day with a capacity as high as 570,000 barrels per day or more, which could represent approximately half of Bakken current daily crude oil production.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Sept. 16 ordered Energy Transfer Partners to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline for 20 miles on both sides of the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, a dammed section of the Missouri River near the tribe’s reservation, while the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s appeal of its denied motion to do so is considered.

Dissent exists inside the AFL-CIO and within affiliated organizations on where the federation should stand on issues related to Native Americans and environmental justice. The Labor Coalition for Community Action, which represents the AFL-CIO’s bridge to diverse communities, on Sept. 19 announced its support for Native Americans in their fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Labor Coalition for Community Action’s six AFL-CIO constituency groups are the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work.

“Though cited to bring 4,500 jobs, the Dakota Access Pipeline seriously threatens tribal sovereignty, sacred burial grounds, and the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux,” the Labor Coalition for Community Action said in a news release.

“This was about pushing back on corporate greed. This was about standing up for environmental, racial and economic justice,” Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) Executive Director Gregory Cendana said in an interview. He noted that APALA also publicly opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, while the AFL-CIO supported it.

Brendan Orsinger, Aqeela Mehar and Lee Stewart demonstrate against the AFL-CIO’s support of the Dakota Access Pipeline./Photo by Mark Hand

“While this is not in line with the AFL-CIO stance, we want to send a message out to the labor movement and the broader community that there are differing views on this and that the Labor Coalition for Community Action and APALA stand in solidarity with the Native American community and will do what we can to continue pushing back on the building of the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Cendana said.

The AFL-CIO’s support for the Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrates Trumka’s willingness to assent to powerful unions like LIUNA while sacrificing its standing among related social movements, according to an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizer who attended the demonstration.

Trumka came to the AFL-CIO from the once-militant United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). The UMWA, as its membership dwindled in recent decades, has found itself on the defensive, fighting to preserve its members’ pensions and turning itself into a political organizing tool serving mostly Republican lawmakers who promote policies aimed at keeping coal companies afloat.

“From a historical standpoint, the labor movement is always weakest when it prioritizes immediate material interests over a larger vision for society,” the IWW organizer said.”And the AFL-CIO and the larger labor movement have been in a backward slide since the 1970s. This is a manifestation of that because it’s becoming a huge issue for so many groups to support the indigenous struggle, but the labor movement is lagging behind.”

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Hundreds rally at the White House in support of the Standing Rock Sioux on Sept. 13/Photo by John Zangas

Native Americans are traveling the nation once again to raise awareness of their exploitation. This time, indigenous activists are spreading the word about an energy infrastructure company, with the backing of police agencies, politicians and union leaders, running roughshod over them.

Among their recent stops was Washington, DC, where Native Americans pleaded for President Barack Obama and members of Congress to help them stop Energy Transfer Partners’ proposed Dakota Access Pipeline from snaking through their land. “They need to know that Native Americans are no longer expendable,” Lauren Howland from the International Indigenous Youth Council told a crowd of activists protesting the banks investing in the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Howland, who traveled with her friends from the Camp of the Sacred Stone to Washington, reminded the activists that it wasn’t tribal leaders who began the campaign last spring against Dakota Access. It was a youth-led movement. It was a group of young Native Americans who learned from their parents and grandparents how Europeans sought to wipe them off the map.

Jasilyn Charger, a Native American youth activist from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, has been resisting construction of Dakota Access Pipeline since April./Photo courtesy 350.org

“I am living proof that colonization has failed. I am decolonizing my people,” Howland said. She remembered the millions of Native Americans killed by white settlers. “It was the biggest genocide on this Earth and no one talks about it,” she said, before tears prevented her from continuing her speech.

A day earlier, Jasilyn Charger, a Native American youth activist from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a friend of Howland’s, told an anti-Dakota Access Pipeline rally how Obama once told Native Americans he would stand on their side in times of need. “You’re standing in silence as we’re asking for your help. You told the people if they wanted help to ask for it. Now we’re screaming it, we’re shouting it,” Charger said in Lafayette Square across from the White House.

But Charger understands it will be Native Americans and their allies, not the U.S. government, who will need to do the heavy lifting against the Dakota Access Pipeline and every other form of exploitation that comes later. “We have been here before this government has come here and we will be here long after, and that is a promise,” Charger said. “We are tired of people making decisions for us. So we are taking it into our own hands. We’re standing up. We’re organizing.”

After centuries of colonization, Howland sometimes feels a sense of isolation in a country where her ancestors lived and died long before European settlers arrived. Upon her arrival in Washington the night before she spoke to the anti-pipeline activists, Howland said she stood outside the White House.

Lauren Howland of the International Indigenous Youth Council speaks at anti-Dakota Access Pipeline rally on Sept. 14 in Washington, D.C./Photo courtesy Beyond Extreme Energy

“I came here last night and I was walking around and I was getting stared at by everybody I passed. Every single person that passed me looked at me like I was foreign, like I wasn’t from here, which is crazy. My people have been here for thousands of years,” Howland said. “It’s funny how I felt like a tourist in my own land. My ancestors died here. Everywhere in America is built on my ancestors’ burial ground. That is desecration.”

Back in North Dakota, Native Americans and their allies have been met by riot cops with semi-automatic weapons, private security guards with dogs and mace, and political leaders with a reverence for corporate shareholders over the protection of Native American land and water. They’ve witnessed union workers with the Dakota Access Pipeline project demolish dozens of Native American burial sites.

Despite the heavy-handed police tactics, the Native people gathering near the Standing Rock reservation promise to remain there in protest of these types of practices. “My people lived in unity. We still do,” Howland said. At the protest camp near Standing Rock, money doesn’t exist, she explained, but the people at the camp are making daily life work well. By witnessing the juxtaposition of land desecration in the name of economic growth and a peaceful gathering of Native Americans, one sees a perfect “example of how capitalism has taken over America,” she said.

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Lee Stewart applies crime scene tape to TD Bank branch door./Photo by Elisabeth Hoffman

Native Americans and environmentalists are targeting the financial institutions providing Energy Transfer Partners with loans to build its proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, an oil transportation system designed to carry Bakken crude near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.

The odds are slim the banks will choose to back out of their financial agreements with Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners. But the activists are preparing to settle in for the long haul and are planning to make the protests against the financial institutions part of a multipronged attack on the pipeline project.

“People think that everybody is going to leave when winter comes. I have a secret to tell you. We’re not leaving,” Jasilyn Charger, a 20-year-old activist from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, said at a Sept. 13 rally across the street from the White House in Washington, D.C. A camp outside the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation has become the focal point of resistance to the pipeline project.

Construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline would not be possible without major financial institutions, such as Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and TD Securities, providing project loans to the company. “We are up against the usual suspects. I’m talking Citibank. I’m talking Wells Fargo. I’m talking JPMorgan Chase,” Chase Iron Eyes, an American Indian activist and attorney from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said at the rally.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is worried the pipeline will negatively impact water quality on its reservation and imperil cultural heritage sites. The Dakota Access Pipeline would cross under the Missouri River, the source of drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The pipeline also would cross some of the tribe’s burial grounds. On Sept. 3, pipeline company security dogs with dogs and mace attacked people trying to protect the burial grounds from pipeline construction.

“It’s also good business to protect our water resources because we don’t have energy security unless we have water security. We don’t have food security unless we have water security. We don’t have national security unless we have water security. I say that with the truest of intentions,” Iron Eyes said at the rally. “We have been here since time immemorial and we have been telling you that you can get by love what you have taken by force.”

According to a new Food & Water Watch report, 17 financial institutions have loaned ETP subsidiary Dakota Access LLC $2.5 billion to construct the pipeline. Native Americans and other activists on Sept. 14 marched from Lafayette Square across from the White House to a nearby TD Bank branch. TD Securities, part of the Canada-based TD Bank Group, is contributing $365 million to the pipeline project, according to the Food & Water Watch report.

The activists drafted a letter to deliver to the bank’s branch manager. “Your bank may be one of the ‘most convenient’ for customers in Washington, D.C., but TD Securities’ funding of the Dakota Access pipeline is not ‘convenient’ for the members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe through whose land it passes, and whose water source — the Missouri River — is threatened,” the letter, dated Sept. 14, said.

Sign depicts dogs deployed by Dakota Access security attacking Native Americans near a pipeline construction site./Photo by Elisabeth Hoffman

In an emailed statement, TD Bank said it supports “responsible energy development” and that it employs “due diligence in our leading and investing activities relating to energy production.”

“We work with our customers, community and environment groups, and energy clients to better understand key issues of concern, and to promote informed dialogue,” TD Bank said in the Sept. 14 statement. “We also respect the rights of people to voice their opinions and protest in a peaceful way. Our oil and gas sector lending represents less than 1% of our total lending portfolio.”

The Dakota Access Pipeline project is a proposed 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline designed to connect the Bakken production area in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline would transport approximately 470,000 barrels of oil per day with a capacity as high as 570,000 barrels per day or more, which could represent approximately half of Bakken current daily crude oil production.

At the Aug. 13 rally at the White House, May Boeve, executive director of environmental group 350.org, compared the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline to the years-long anti-Keystone XL battle. During the fight against Keystone XL, “People said, ‘You may as well give up. They may as well go home. Pick another fight. You’re too late. You’re too weak as a movement,’” Boeve recalled. “Well, guess what. We didn’t take no for an answer. We organized. We rallied, we went to jail. And last November, President Obama stood at a podium at the White House and cancelled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.”

In July, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved many of the final permits necessary to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline. On Sept. 9, the U.S. government issued a statement stating it would temporarily not allow construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline underneath a section of the Missouri River that has become the main battleground of dispute over the project. The statement came on the same day that a federal judge denied a request by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to halt construction of the pipeline in North Dakota.

Earlier this week, ETP CEO Kelcy Warren issued a letter defending the safety of the pipeline and insisting the company is committed to finishing the job over the objections of Native Americans.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont told the hundreds of people gathered at the Sept. 13 rally that “it’s vitally important that we show our solidarity with the Native American people.” Sanders criticized ETP for its refusal to hold off on construction of the pipeline. “In absence of the pipeline company’s compliance, further administration action is needed. That is why I am calling on President Obama today to ensure that this pipeline gets a full environmental and cultural impact analysis,” Sanders said. “When that analysis takes place, this pipeline will not continue.”

This article was originally published in Counterpunch.

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Home was not a sanctuary for Cecily McMillan. It was a conflict zone. Her parents were constantly at war, with an end to hostilities only coming when they finally divorced.

Following the breakup, McMillan and her little brother James went to live with their mother, who moved from one low-paying job to the next, and from one hapless boyfriend to the next. Every new man who McMillan’s mother brought home eventually would seek to exert his power over the family through the use of violence.

One of her mother’s failed relationships was a marriage to a much older man named Jesse who slapped McMillan with the back of his hand for “getting mouthy” and grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise it. McMillan’s father was the same way. She endured beatings from him, including one time when he pinned the 17-year-old McMillan to the wall by the neck, with her feet dangling midair, and told her “how things are going to be.”

“It wasn’t the first time he or the many men I’d called ‘father’ had gotten physical, but it had to be the last time,” McMillan writes in her new autobiography, The Emancipation of Cecily McMillan: An American Memoir, published by Nation Books. “I couldn’t take it anymore — I thought I really might kill the next man that laid a hand on me.”

Unfortunately, the violence continued into McMillan’s young adulthood. In March 2012, at the age of 23, a man accosted her in a park in New York City. This time the man wasn’t someone she called “father.”

In a just world, McMillan would have been given a medal of courage for attempting to protect herself against an attacker and surviving to tell a story about it. But the man happened to be a police officer with the New York City Police Department (NYPD). He was part of a larger NYPD gang tasked with shutting down a peaceful gathering in Zuccotti Park, a paved-over piece of land near the southern tip of Manhattan made famous by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.

New York City officials chose to prosecute McMillan, who was arrested for throwing an elbow at the police officer. Two years later, after a four-week trial, McMillan was convicted of felony second-degree assault and sent to Rikers Island to serve her sentence.

McMillan describes her time at Rikers Island and the bonds she built with her fellow prisoners. Upon her release, McMillan gave a speech in which she listed demands that her fellow prisoners had drawn up, including adequate, safe and timely health care at all times. “I have learned that the only difference between the people we call ‘citizens’ and those we call ‘criminals’ is vastly unequal access to resources,” McMillan said in her speech.

In the book’s introduction, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot, focus on McMillan’s transformation in jail and how she left captivity wanting to work for the emancipation of the other women incarcerated on Rikers Island. “While those in power want to silence undesirable voices, it is Cecily’s goal to return those voices to the people who have been deprived of them,” wrote Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, who visited McMillan at Rikers Island.

The Emancipation of Cecily McMillan is a gripping story of years of rebellion and discovery that preceded the well-chronicled confrontation in Zuccotti Park. The story is organized chronologically, with the early years of her life — before she became one of the best-known OWS activists — proving more compelling at times than her brief period as an adult, much of which she has spent in the spotlight after her arrest. The reader gets a strong hint of her wild childhood in the first chapter when McMillan states she and her mother were perfect for each because her mother never wanted to be a parent and McMillan never wanted to be a child.

Cecily McMillan/Photo courtesy of Nation Books

McMillan demonstrates a gift for storytelling throughout the book. She always had a knack for public speaking, although her parents and teachers often gritted their teeth when she vocalized her thoughts in the form of diatribes and tantrums. She also relished the spotlight when working in theater groups as a teenager. However, not every successful orator or actor can write a compelling story, and vice versa. But McMillan proves in the book she is adept at both forms of self-expression. Growing up, McMillan traveled between Texas and Atlanta, Georgia, depending on whether she was living with her Mexican-American mother, her Irish-American father or her grandparents. McMillan was fortunate that other people stepped up to offer support and guidance.

Facing homelessness as a teenager, McMillan contacted her theater instructor in Atlanta, a woman named Nyrobi who welcomed McMillan into her home and treated her like a member of the family. It was one of the first times that McMillan sensed she was at home, a feeling that helped her stay out of a trouble and start enjoying school.

Prior to finding a taste of peace with Nyrobi, McMillan encountered a system that embraced conformity and sought to quash dissent. In the town of Lumberton, Texas, she chose not to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at school because she objected, on religious freedom grounds, to the “under God” portion of the pledge. The school principal warned McMillan she would get a “taste of hell” if she ever again refused to stand. McMillan stuck to her principles, and the next day, the school’s softball coach was selected to mete out justice, assaulting her with a paddle. McMillan remembers how she “choked back a cry” each time the paddle hit her backside.

McMillan always championed the underdog and wasn’t afraid to confront bullies in school, whether they were fellow students or school administrators. She hoped her political evolution would gain momentum while attending college at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, and yet her first impressions were not promising: a virtually all-white, apolitical student body. But during her college years, McMillan’s politics ultimately did take a turn when she finally learned about the political leanings of her step-grandfather, Harlon Joye, who had been involved in left-wing politics for decades.

Joye, who was her father’s step-dad, invited McMillan to attend the 2010 United States Social Forum in Detroit, where she became acquainted with the Democratic Socialists of America. Joye had been active in groups that were precursors to the Students for a Democratic Society, working closely in the 1960s with high-profile activists like Tom Hayden and John Lewis.

“Whether it was as a Democrat in Texas or a Socialist in college, I’d always been the most radical person wherever I was — that is, until I moved to New York City and joined Occupy Wall Street,” McMillan, who is 27-years-old today, writes in the book. “Most of my fellow ‘Occupiers’ shrugged me off as some sort of moderate.”

Despite the less-than-warm reception, McMillan became a committed OWS activist — an “Occupy diehard,” as she called herself — from the start of the movement in August 2011. She continued to attend meetings and actions in the months after the police evicted the encampment from Zuccotti Park in November 2011. At OWS planning meetings and general assemblies, McMillan pushed the other activists to adopt a pledge of nonviolence. Other activists preferred to keep the “diversity-of-tactics” door open. They agreed to disagree.

On the six-month anniversary of OWS, McMillan wasn’t planning to attend the protest gathering in Zuccotti Park. She entered the park simply to retrieve her friend Jake so they could go to nearby Irish bars to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Instead, she was caught in a police vortex after the NYPD unilaterally declared the park closed. “I’m snatched from behind, pulled up by the breast, and flung backward then face forward into the ground,” she recalls.

Government prosecutors accused McMillan of intentionally elbowing a police officer. McMillan claimed she was defending herself against someone who had grabbed her breast. A video of the incident shows someone, purportedly McMillan, using her right elbow to strike someone, purportedly New York City police officer named Grantley Bovell.

After police tackled her, McMillan suffered seizures, but wasn’t given medical attention until hours later when she was taken to Beekman Hospital and then to Bellevue Hospital. At Bellevue, she was handcuffed to a hospital bed and wheeled into small, windowless room.

“It was starting to feel like a horror flick, especially when I realized that that same tiny room doubled as the cellphone charging station for all the cops forced to work the nightshift with sick criminals,” she remembers. The police officers apparently knew who she was. One of the police officers said “fuckin’ Occupy cunt” as he looked between McMillan’s opened legs on the hospital bed. Another police officer came into the room and joked to his buddies about McMillan’s “Occu-pussy.”

McMillan was eventually driven to a Manhattan County courthouse at 100 Centre Street, where she was allowed to meet with a lawyer for the first time — 40 hours after her arrest. She was then brought before a judge who announced McMillan was facing a charge of felony assault in the second degree. She was then released without bail.

More than two years later, in April 2014, McMillan’s trial finally began. Martin Stolar, McMillan’s attorney, “discovered a laundry list of alleged abuse and corruption” by the police officer who McMillan allegedly assaulted. McMillan writes that, “in our view Bovel had a habit of losing his temper then blaming the victim and lying to justify his actions.” But Judge Ronald Zweibel ruled against Stolar’s motion and refused to allow any of Bovell’s record into the trial.

McMillan doesn’t pull any punches in the book, a promise she had to make when she decided to write her memoirs about the trauma-filled life of a 27-year-old. Revealing the truth, though, would mean potentially alienating her father with stories about how he treated her and letting the world know her little brother had turned to a life of drugs. A commitment to honesty also meant reliving the frightening night in Zuccotti Park.

Readers who think they know everything about McMillan’s post-Zuccotti Park life will still be riveted by her detailed look back at trial preparation and the trial itself, which was filled with surprises, including a witness who may have wanted to redeem himself by testifying on behalf of McMillan. In the end, the jury issued a guilty verdict. On May 19, 2014, McMillan was sentenced to three months in jail with five years of probation and 500 hours of community service to follow, plus a $5,000 fine and mandatory anger management therapy. McMillan served 58 days of her jail sentence at Rikers Island.

Two years after the jail doors opened, McMillan claims in Emancipation that her experience at Rikers helped her escape from the constraints she had placed upon herself about who she should be and what she should do. She credits her fellow prisoners with forcing her to face, live and test the person she already was. By letting her voice their demands, the women at Rikers, according to McMillan, gave her the voice that she had been searching for, one that understood both the language of power and the ability to share it equally. It was a dynamic that was missing from her life from childhood into early adulthood.

“The guards didn’t free me that day, the women did,” she writes.

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