Above photo: From Midwest Unrest.
Update: After more than four hours of holding their space, the DC police moved in to make arrests. More than 20 people were arrested at the blockade of Kerry’s Georgetown home. Here’s a video that summarizes the protest.
Washington, DC – Responding to what they believe to be an illegal backroom deal between John Kerry’s State Department and pipeline company Enbridge activist’s have staged at protest at the home of Secretary of State John Kerry. Protesters argue that the pipeline deal would allow the Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline expansion to proceed without any federal environmental review.
Protesters appear to have there arms linked in plastic tubes in order to stage a sit in and risk arrest.
100+ outside @JohnKerry‘s house. 20+ risking arrest on his porch! #MidwestUnrest pic.twitter.com/e4Ftt4Yz4f
— Oil Change Intl (@PriceofOil) August 25, 2015
#MidwestUnrest in front of John Kerry’s house in Georgetown, reject Alberta Clipper Pipeline pic.twitter.com/2QL4ahZauY — Jeff Ordower (@moredower) August 25, 2015
Earlier in the week Native American Leaders spoke against the pipeline at a hearing at Rice Lake community Center.
According to MPR:
“Most, like White Earth member Leonard Thompson, are vehemently against the Sandpiper line, which was recently granted a certificate of need by the PUC, and don’t want another line pumping tar sand oil alongside it.
“Eventually something is going to go wrong with a pipeline,” Thomson said, “and then our land is ruined.”
Thompson grew up in a tar-paper shack a few miles from the where the hearing was held. As a child, he gathered wild rice and his father fished for bullheads to feed the family. Even a small leak from a pipeline, he said, could damage the natural resources that fed him.”
Furthermore:
“The proposed line would run close to Lower Rice Lake, a body of water that produces 200,000 pounds of finished wild rice every year. Just about everyone on White Earth rices that lake, Dahl said, knocking the grains into the bottom of canoes. They sell the rice and eat the rice. It figures into legends and ceremonies.
A spill, Dahl said, wouldn’t just dirty the landscape, it would bankrupt the spiritual and physical resources of the community.”
Follow #MidwestUnrest on Twitter.