Northern MN – Construction on the tar sands pipeline expansion project for Line 3 continues in Anishinaabe territory in below zero temperatures. Enbridge’s contracted companies, like Precision Pipeline, carve out the line’s pathway, fell any trees in the way, and lay the pipe in the ground. However because of the persistent resistance movement, work stoppages, or at least work interruptions, are common.
On February 10, 2021, two people, including Dylan Bremner, locked down to a digger on a work site. Bremner told us that the digger they were on was successfully halted for three hours, however after thirty minutes into the lockdown, the foreman told the other workers they could continue.
“It was this kind of bizarre moment of just sort of having this great vantage point to watch this awful pipeline being created . . . but it was also disheartening to be like, do they really just not give a shit about our security at all and our safety? Cause’ we had no hardhat, no goggles, none of that.”
Dylan Bremner
Bremner shared that he was motivated to participate in a direct action because “there’s so much that makes [him] so angry.”
“The fact that it’s been fucking hundreds of years since white settlers came and violently displaced Indigenous people in this country and we still haven’t fucking learned from that—those tragedies. We continue to break treaties, we continue to violate land which is sacred, and you know, that is a cycle of oppression which remains unbroken.”
Dylan Bremner
In addition to Bremner and the other person who locked down, four others were arrested.
February 10 was also the arraignment hearing for 3 other Line 3 resisters, out of about 120, who were arrested during direct actions since MN approved the final permit (a construction storm water permit) for the expansion project on November 30, 2020.