Nebraska

Northrup Grumman Protest: Three Charges Dropped

January 30, 2016 Lauren Scott, www.ketv.com Resist! Nebraska, Protesters Arrested

By Lauren Scott for KE TV - BELLEVUE, Neb. —New details have been released in the trial against four people accused of damaging the Northrop Grumman Building in Bellevue. The charges against all three co-defendants were dismissed in court Tuesday. However, the self-proclaimed hammer of justice, Jessica Rezniceck, remains behind bars and loyal to her cause. Before the hearing, several supporters of Reznicek stood outside of the Sarpy County Courthouse, demanding peace and justice.

Peace Activists Arrested On Grounds Of Neb. Defense Contractor

January 2, 2016 Patrick O'Neill, www.ncronline.org Resist! Anti-War, Nebraska, Peace

By Patrick O'Neill for NCR Online - A security guard's encounter with an anti-war protester who was holding a sledgehammer in one hand and baseball bat in the other led to the arrests of four peace activists Sunday night on the grounds of defense contractor Northrop Grumman in Bellevue, Neb. At their first court appearance Tuesday, large bonds were set for Michele Naar-Obed, Jessica Reznicek, Frank Cordaro and Mauro Heck. The four were each charged with felony burglary and felony criminal mischief after police encountered them on Northrop Grumman property. Some windows were broken, and the damage was estimated at $8,000. Reznicek, 34, who was holding the bat and sledgehammer, told television station KETV that she alone did the damage.

Lakota Women & Ranchers Lead Charge Against Uranium Mine

October 6, 2015 Suree Towfighnia, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Mining, Nebraska

By Suree Towfighnia for Waging Nonviolence - With a population of around 1,000 people, the rural town of Crawford, Nebraska was an unlikely setting for a federal hearing, but it became the site of one in late August thanks to the dogged determination of a group of Lakota and environmental activists, as well as geologists, hydrologists and lawyers — all of whom have been fighting the permit renewal of a uranium mine located in town. The region is ripe with stories from the brutal Indian wars, when Lakota and neighboring tribes fought over western expansion. Today, this intersection of frontier America and Native resistance is a battleground in the war between environmental advocates and energy corporations, only this time allies from all sides are joining forces in the effort to protect their water.

Bold Nebraska Victory On Eminent Domain Over TransCanada

September 30, 2015 Bold Nebraska, www.boldnebraska.org Resist! Nebraska, Oil & Gas

By Bold Nebraska - This afternoon, TransCanada announced that the company will pull out of the lawsuit filed by over 100 Nebraska landowners challenging their right to use eminent domain to seize land for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Facing mounting legal expenses and a likely loss in court, the company will instead go through the Public Service Commission (PSC) review process it had originally hoped to avoid. The PSC process will take at least a year, and cannot move forward if and when President Obama rejects the federal permit for the pipeline. “This is a major victory for Nebraska landowners who refused to back down in the face of bullying by a foreign oil company,” said Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska.

Cops Hold Tasers To Lakota Protesters Stopping Beer Trucks

July 11, 2015 Sarah Burris, www.alternet.org Resist! Indigenous People, Mass Incarceration, Nebraska, police brutality

By Sarah Burris in Alternet - The town sells approximately 5 million cans of beer annually. Protesters have been camping around the clock for weeks holding vigils and doing blockades of the liquor store's delivery trucks. Last week, following a training and workshop, Lakota people took their civil disobedience to a new level with a greater presence and protest of the beer distributors. Bryan V. Brewer, Sr., president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, joined the crowd marching down the road toward White Clay as the beer trucks arrived. "As leaders we should be ahead of the people," he said. "We need to support our activists who are stepping up and confronting this issue." He was quickly arrested by Sheridan County Sheriff Terry Robbins.

Nebraska Becomes First State To Abolish Death Penalty Since 1973

May 28, 2015 Kim Bellware, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Death Penalty, Law, Nebraska

The days of the death penalty in Nebraska are ending. Lawmakers repealed the death penalty on Wednesday with a 30-19 vote that overrodethe veto Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts signed on Tuesday. One week earlier,lawmakers voted 32-15 to pass LB 268, which would replace the death penalty with life without parole as the state's highest penalty. The number of death penalty states in the U.S. stands at 31 following Nebraska's repeal. "We're just thrilled that these legislators studied this issue so carefully and so intently and ultimately came to the conclusion that repealing the death penalty is the best thing for the state," Stacy Anderson, executive director of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday.

Nebraska Judge Rules “No Eminent Domain For Keystone”

February 13, 2015 Chip Northrup, www.nofrackingway.us Educate! Keystone XL, Land Rights, Law, Nebraska

Nebraska judge issues temporary injunction, halts eminent domain against landowners while case proceeds back to NE Supreme Court. TransCanada agrees to halt all eminent domain cases in the state. Nebraska judge rules in favor of landowners on Keystone XL eminent domain. A Nebraska district court judge has temporarily halted the ability of a Canadian company to acquire right-of-way for the Keystone XL pipeline. Holt County District Judge Mark Kozisek granted a temporary injunction Thursday to landowners who challenged the ability of TransCanada to use eminent domain to acquire land for the controversial pipeline.

Bold Nebraska Promises To Fight Trans Canada Eminent Domain

January 21, 2015 Mark Hefflinger, www.boldnebraska.org Resist! Energy, Land Rights, Nebraska, Oil & Gas

On the same day a Montana community is trucking in clean drinking water after a pipeline leak spilled tens of thousands of gallons of oil into their water supply, Canadian oil company TransCanada has served Nebraska families with eminent domain papers to take their land and put Nebraska’s water supply at risk of even worse tar sands spills with the construction of its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Eminent domain was never intended to be used for private gain, yet that is what Nebraska lawmakers are letting TransCanada do to landowners today. Nebraska’s eminent domain law sides with oil companies over the farmers and ranchers who are the backbone of our state’s economy.

Marijuana Prohibition Is The Real Nuisance

December 24, 2014 Bill Piper, www.truth-out.org Educate! Law, Marijuana, Nebraska, Oklahoma

The attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma have launched a lawsuit againstColorado claiming the state's 2012 voter initiative legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana is causing marijuana to come into their states, creating a public nuisance and consuming law enforcement resources. Leaving aside the fact that states, and for that matter the federal government, cannot force states to criminalize marijuana, the lawsuit gets things backwards – it is Nebraska, Oklahoma and other states with marijuana prohibition that are creating a public nuisance. As anyone who has ever taken an economics class knows, demand drives supply. If people want something, someone somewhere will make it and sell it to them. The U.S. has spent decades trying to stop marijuana and other drugs but the demand for them, like the demand for alcohol during Prohibition, ensures that they are widely available.

Willie Nelson, Neil Young To Play Anti-KXL Concert

August 21, 2014 Nicholas Bergin, www.westcoastnativenews.com Create! Music, Nebraska, Pipeline

Music legends Neil Young and Willie Nelson will perform a benefit concert Saturday, Sept. 27 on a farm near Neligh that is on the route of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and also crosses the historic Ponca Tribe Trail of Tears. It’s the first time the two have performed together in Nebraska since Sept. 19, 1987, when fans packed Memorial Stadium for Farm Aid III, the biggest concert in state history. That show, which also included performances by artists like John Mellencamp, Kris Kristofferson and John Denver, drew 29,000 people and raised about $1.6 million. Organizers hope the duo will bring a little of that magic with them to what is being called the “Harvest the Hope” concert. Proceeds from the Neligh event will go to Bold Nebraska and the Cowboy Indian Alliance to help pay for the ongoing fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, Bold Nebraska said in a news release. The daytime, outdoor concert will be in a field on a farm owned by the Tanderup family, part of a collective of Nebraska landowners refusing to sign an easement with TransCanada for the pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands of Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Jane Kleeb Vs. The Keystone Pipeline

May 20, 2014 Saul Elbein, www.nytimes.com Resist! Keystone XL, Nebraska, Organizing, Protest

Terry Van Housen had a question. What he wanted to know from the 30 or so other Nebraska farmers and ranchers gathered in February at the York Community Center was this: What do you do with 10,000 dead cows? That was the number of cattle Van Housen figured could be at risk if the Obama administration permitted the proposed 1,700-mile XL leg of the Keystone pipeline to cut across their state. Bulldozers would dig a trench not far from Van Housen’s feedlot, completing the final phase of the Keystone project and streamlining the current flow of oil from the bitumen mines of Northern Alberta toward refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. If the pipe were to leak, Van Housen said, his cattle could die. “Can we put [those cows] on trucks and send them to Canada?” suggested Max Nelson, a stooped retired rancher who raised his hand every 10 minutes to pose other hypothetical disasters: a spill polluting the water supply of West Omaha, say, or compromising the hydroelectric dams on the Platte River. TransCanada, the $48 billion Canadian company that owns the Keystone, has repeatedly said the XL will be “the safest pipeline ever built on U.S. soil,” a technological marvel with automatic shut-off valves and satellite monitoring.

Breaking: Judge Sides With Landowners On KXL Pipeline Path

February 19, 2014 Mark Hefflinger, www.boldnebraska.org Resist! Environment, Keystone XL, Nebraska, Pipelines, Tar Sands

Lancaster County District Court Judge Stephanie Stacy today sided with three Nebraska landowners and ruled that LB 1161 — the law passed by the Nebraska legislature in 2012 that granted the power of eminent domain to Gov. Dave Heineman, and in turn TransCanada for its Keystone XL pipeline — is declared unconstitutional and void. The ruling includes a permanent injunction preventing Gov. Dave Heineman, and the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality from taking any further action to authorize or advance the pipeline under the unconstitutional law. Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska said: "Citizens won today. We beat a corrupt bill that Gov. Heineman and the Nebraska Legislature passed in order to pave the way for a foreign corporation to run roughshod over American landowners.

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