Louisiana

Activists Charged With Felonies After Delivering Formosa Plastic Pollution To Lobbyists

June 28, 2020 Julie Dermansky and Sharon Kelly, Desmog Blog. Resist! Corporate polluter, Louisiana, Oceans, Plastic

Two Louisiana environmental activists, Anne Rolfes and Kate McIntosh, were taken in handcuffs and leg irons from a Baton Rouge police station to jail after they voluntarily surrendered themselves on felony charges after months' earlier delivering plastic pollution pulled from Texas waters to fossil fuel lobbyists' homes. The two posted bond and were released later the same day. “The women are accused of terrorizing oil and gas lobbyists by giving them a file box full of plastic pellets found in Texas bays near a plastic manufacturing facility owned by Formosa Plastics,” NOLA.com reports. Rolfes and McIntosh are being charged with felony “terrorizing” under Louisiana Revised Statute 14:40.1, according to their attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pam Spees. The charges carry sentences of up to 15 years imprisonment.

Louisiana Tribes File Complaint With United Nations Over U.S. Inaction On Climate Change

January 21, 2020 Sara Sneath, Nola.com Resist! Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Louisiana, United Nations

Four coastal Louisiana tribes that claim the U.S. government has violated their human rights by failing to take action on climate change submitted a formal complaint Wednesday to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Sea-level rise and coastal erosion are drowning tribal burial sites in South Louisiana, according to the complaint. Continued land loss further threatens the tribes' source of food, said Shirell Parfait-Dardar, chief of the Grand Caillou and Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians.

I Spent 16 Months In Solitary Confinement And Now I’m Fighting To End It

July 9, 2019 By Kiana Calloway, Nationofchange.org Organize! ACLU, Louisiana, Prisons, Solitary Confinement

I was just 17 years old when I was sent to solitary confinement in “Camp J,” one of the most severe lockdown units at one of America’s most brutal prisons, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. I languished in solitary for 16 months. Back then I didn’t know that Louisiana was the solitary confinement capital of the world. All I knew was that I’d been convicted of a crime I didn’t commit, and I had to maintain my humanity in one of the most dehumanizing places on earth. It’s called “23 and 1” because you spend 23 hours alone in your cell, with one hour to take a shower or make a phone call, if allowed.

Judge Denies Cancer Alley Marchers’ Request To Cross Louisiana Bridges

June 11, 2019 Staff, Ccrjustice.org Resist! Black Working Class, Courts, Louisiana, Repression, Toxic Chemicals

May 31, 2019, Baton Rouge, Louisiana – Today, a judge in Louisiana denied an emergency request by community leaders to march across two Mississippi river bridges as part of a five-day march through Cancer Alley. During the hearing, an attorney for the state police said that such marches are against the law and subject to felony charges, citing a law that carries up to 15 years imprisonment. The march, organized by the Coalition Against Death Alley, seeks to bring attention to the poisoning of Black communities in Louisiana’s Mississippi River parishes by hundreds of petrochemical companies.

Environmental Justice March Hits Road Block In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley

June 1, 2019 By Julie Dermansky, Desmogblog.com Resist! Environment, Louisiana, March

On May 30, around 100 people took part on the first day of a planned five-day march for environmental justice in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. Amid sweltering heat, the march kicked off in St. John the Baptist Parish, but extreme obstacles have developed on their route to Baton Rouge, about 50 miles away. Today a judge ruled that the organizers did not have permission to cross two bridges along the route. Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, an 80-mile stretch along the Mississippi River, is also known as the “Petrochemical Corridor,” where there are over 100 petrochemical plants and refineries.

Louisiana Law Turning Pipeline Protests Into Felonies Violates Constitution, New Lawsuit Alleges

May 27, 2019 By Sharon Kelly, Desmogblog.com Resist! Lawsuit, Louisiana, Pipelines, Protests, Repression

A lawsuit filed today in federal court in Louisiana challenges the state’s “critical infrastructure” law, used to press felony charges against fossil fuel pipeline construction opponents, as unconstitutional. Louisiana’s critical infrastructure law is unconstitutionally vague and broad, the suit alleges, because it lets “any authorized person” exclude people from public places like sidewalks and roads if the state’s 125,000 miles of mostly unmarked pipelines cross there. The law could even be used to bring felony charges against a landowner for being on their own land, the lawsuit alleges.

Asylum Seekers Are Being “Disappeared” in Private Louisiana Jails

May 18, 2019 Mike Ludwig, Truthout Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Louisiana

(Some names in this story have been changed to protect those criminalized for migration.) There isn’t much to see around

Petrochemical Giants Are Slowly Killing Black Louisiana Communities

March 13, 2019 Mike Ludwig, Truthout.org Educate! Black Working Class, Louisiana, Toxic Chemicals

Milton Cayette Jr. has just returned from a birthday party at the senior center in Welcome, one of the unincorporated hamlets nestled beside the earthen levee running along the east bank of the Mississippi River in the 5th District of Louisiana’s St. James Parish. Sitting in the kitchen of his home, Cayette begins listing the petrochemical facilities in the area, starting about five miles upriver near the Sunshine Bridge, where a chemical plant run by the company Mosaic produces diammonium phosphate and ammonia. Next door another plant produces styrene, a chemical used to make rubbers and plastics.

Court: Non-Unanimous Jury Verdict Unconstitutional Based On Racism

October 23, 2018 Kevin Gosztola and Brian Sonenstein, Shadowproof.com Create! Courts, Louisiana, Racism

A district court in Louisiana ruled the state’s use of non-unanimous juries is unconstitutional and violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The court found the “non-unanimous jury verdict scheme in Louisiana was motivated by invidious racial discrimination.” “All cases that are currently pending trial and all cases on direct review must now be adjudicated subject ot a unanimous jury requirement,” the court ordered. However, prior cases and convictions may not be challenged. According to the state’s constitution and a section of the state’s criminal code, cases involving capital punishment require a unanimous decision by jurors.

‘Major Victory’: Legal Challenge Halts Construction Of Bayou Bridge Pipeline

September 12, 2018 By Jessica Corbett, Mintpressnews.com Resist! Louisiana, Pipelines

While celebrating the win, activists noted that “construction of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline continues in other parts of the Atchafalaya Basin” and vowed to keep fighting to completely shut down the project. In a “major victory” for local landowners and pipeline activists who are fighting to block the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana, the company behind the project agreed to halt construction on a patch of private property just ahead of a court hearing that was scheduled for Monday morning. The path of the 163-mile pipeline runs through Atchafalaya Basin, the nation’s largest wetland and swamp. Local landowners and activists have raised alarm about the threat the pipeline poses to regional water resources, wildlife, and communities.

Forcible Arrest Of Water Protectors At Illegal Pipeline Construction Site In Louisiana

September 8, 2018 By Emma Fiala, Mintpressnews.com Resist! Louisiana, Pipelines, Protesters Arrested, Water Protectors

Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) is the same company responsible for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which was met with significant resistance from the local indigenous population in North Dakota as well as from their allies from across the country. ETP and its hired security frequently engaged in violent tactics against peaceful Water Protectors on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, with the help of both local police and police from surrounding states. If completed, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline (BBP) will connect with the DAPL system. The BBP is slated to transport crude oil originating from the Bakken Oil fields of North Dakota. The pipeline is to run 162 miles from southeast Texas to St. James, Louisiana. The oil transported would enter international markets.

Louisiana Law Enforcement Officers Are Moonlighting For A Controversial Pipeline Company

August 29, 2018 Karen Savage, Theappeal.org Educate! Law Enforcement, Louisiana, Pipelines

Pipeline protester Cindy Spoon was trying to stop Energy Transfer Partners’ heavy tree-cutting equipment from coming onto a pristine cypress forest-covered island in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin. As she paddled in the bayou on Aug. 9, fan boats roared around her, blowing her canoe backward and kettling her in a smaller bayou. Within minutes, Spoon and fellow activist Sophia Cook-Phillips were handcuffed and yanked out of the canoe by armed officers who refused to fully identify themselves. “What law enforcement agency are you with and where are you taking me?” Spoon asked repeatedly, her voice cracking and growing increasingly frantic as she was pulled up a steep embankment and dragged onto Energy Transfer Partners’ Bayou Bridge pipeline easement.

Pipeline Protest Arrests Raise Questions About Controversial Louisiana Law

August 28, 2018 Nicholas Kusnetz, Insideclimatenews.org Resist! Legislation, Louisiana, Pipelines, Protests

An oil pipeline developer and local authorities in Louisiana are using a controversial new law to crack down on protests there, with at least nine people arrested this month within weeks of the law's entry into force. So far, none of the protesters has been formally charged with a crime, and their arrests are raising questions about the ambiguity of the law. The arrests include three separate incidents. In the first, three activists were pulled off a canoe and a kayak in a bayou on Aug. 9. Four more people, including a journalist, were detained on Aug. 18 on private property. Two more were arrested the following day at the same location. Louisiana law requires that anyone arrested go before a judge within 72 hours for a hearing where bond can be set.

[Act Out! 170] – #RiseTogether Against Dirty Energy + How To Hack Apathy

July 26, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com Resistance Report Energy, Louisiana, Pipelines

This week on Act Out! The #RiseTogether weeks of action against dirty energy projects and their financiers continue, and I share what I witnessed in the swamps of Louisiana as the fight against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline escalates. Next, Dr. Kristin Laurin joins us to talk rationalization and the power of human psychology in addressing – and indeed, not addressing the greatest socio-political problems of our time.

Years After EPA Cited Health Risks From Chemical Plant, Is Enough Being Done To Protect Its Louisiana Neighbors?

July 24, 2018 By Julie Dermansky, Desmogblog.com Educate! Chemicals, EPA, Louisiana

What should be done about a chemical plant in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish that releases chloroprene — a chemical so toxic that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined nearby residents face the highest risk in the country of developing cancer from air pollution? The answer is simple, according to Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré: “Fix it, move it, or shut it down.” Honoré is founder of the Green Army, a coalition of environmental groups and concerned citizens fighting against pollution in their communities. But local, state, and federal regulators haven’t resolved issues swirling around emissions released by the Denka Performance Elastomer plant, located in LaPlace, Louisiana. The plant is next to the Mississippi River, on a stretch of land between New Orleans and Baton Rouge known as Cancer Alley.

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