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Water Protectors

Long-Awaited Win For Water Protectors

On Thursday, September 10, 2020, in a long-awaited ruling, United States District Court Judge Daniel Traynor (District of North Dakota) allowed a lawsuit challenging law enforcement’s 2016 use of fire hoses and munitions against water protectors opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to move forward with discovery. The case had been stalled for more than two years after Morton County and other defendants filed a motion asking the court to dismiss the case. Plaintiff Vanessa Dundon is a member of the Navajo/ Diné Nation who was shot in the eye with a teargas canister while attempting to aid another person.

Water Protectors Make Minnesota’s Line 3 Pipeline The Next Target Of Resistance

The fight for self-governance on White Earth: The Line 3 pipeline will bring tar sands oil — the worst kind of dirty fossil fuel — from Canada through the United States. It will pass through over 40 wild rice watersheds and at least eight waterways, which are a traditional source of food for the indigenous Ojibwe people. This pipeline entangles us even more in an energy system that is destroying the climate, at a time in history when we should shift to a carbon-neutral energy system and economy. LN3 is exactly the opposite of what is needed in a world challenged by a climate emergency. To me, it seems possible that White Earth will be one of the next major pipeline resistance campaigns, like Standing Rock in nearby North Dakota. The situation at White Earth is different than Standing Rock, but the struggle in Minnesota has the potential to bring different native communities together with allies in a broad mobilization of water protectors like the #NODAPL movement did.

Guatemalan Water Protectors Persist, Despite Mining Company Threats

Guatemala - The hard work of protecting water and land from the long-term harms associated with gold and silver mining takes place daily on the frontlines of tenacious struggles throughout Latin America and around the world. Indigenous people and affected communities face many reprisals for their resistance, including a mounting number of arbitration suits against their governments from mining companies suing over projects that people have managed to halt through direct action and in the courts. This month, in Guatemala, the Peaceful Resistance “La Puya” celebrates eight years of struggle against a gold mining project that threatens to pollute or dry up already scarce water supplies in an area just north of Guatemala City. Day after day, since March 2012, community members have rotated in shifts to keep 24-hour watch over the access gate to the “El Tambor” gold mining project.

Bemidji, MN: Water Protectors Lock To Enbridge Office Gates, Work Halted

Bemidji, MN — In the early morning, 6 water protectors locked to the gates of a key Enbridge office in Bemidji, MN in protest of proposed tar sands pipeline project Line 3. 2 chained their necks to the gate, risking personal safety for the hundreds of watersheds Enbridge proposes to send nearly 1M barrels of tar sands from Alberta through on its way to the shores of Lake Superior. Enbridge responded by closing its office for the day.

Water Protectors Protest At Enbridge Drill Site On Mississippi River

(Ball Bluff, MN) On March 22nd, members of the Ginew Collective supported by Northfield Against Line 3 exposed an Enbridge drilling worksite on the eastern shore of the Mississippi River on the proposed Line 3 route. Construction workers in Enbridge vests were engaged in what appeared to be core sampling for a Horizontal Directional Drill (HDD) to bore Line 3 under the Mississippi River. No work permits were posted or produced upon repeated inquiry of onsite workers.

Minnesota: Water Protectors Confront Enbridge About MMIW, Line 3

Enbridge, in its ongoing efforts to coerce the Fond du Lac band of Ojibwe with “economic incentives,” was holding a job fair and business development seminar at the band’s casino in Carlton, Minnesota, in the same county where the company is already illegally storing pipes for its as yet unpermitted project. Water protectors have been tirelessly seeking to draw attention to these pipeyards as well as to the threat of increased predation of indigenous women and relatives which always accompanies fossil fuel infrastructure projects.

The War For Survival

Well here it is, sorry to say, another year, and I’m still writing to you from a prison cell. I am still in pain from my illnesses with no knowledge of whether I will ever get treatments for them. But I’m alive and still breathing hoping, wishing, praying for not just my pains, but for all Native Nations and the People of the World who care and have positive feelings about what is happening to Mother Earth and against the evils committed by Wasi’chu in their greed for HER natural resources . It doesn’t seem as if any changes for the good or safety of Mother Earth will happen soon. But the good-hearted People are fighting back, and some good People are winning in the struggles to beat back some of this evil and to make THE Changes...

Water Protectors Lock-Down Dallas Mansion Of Kelcy Warren, CEO Of Energy Transfer Partners

DALLAS, TEXAS 10/19 – On Friday morning, Water Protectors locked themselves to gates at the entrance of the residence of Kelcy Warren, CEO and Chairman of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), demanding the company abided by a court-order mandating it provide an evacuation route for the African-American community of St. James, the terminus for their controversial Bayou Bridge pipeline and the end of their Dakota Access Pipeline. The community of St. James lies in the heart of what is dubbed, Cancer Alley, where cancer rates among residents is far higher than the average due to the toxic infrastructure of chemical plants, refineries and pipeline export facilities.

Energy Transfer Partners’ Security Team Sinks Water Protectors’ Boats

Monday morning, an Energy Transfer Partners security team sank two boats carrying approximately 15 water protectors and members of the media at a Bayou Bridge Pipeline construction site. A press release from the L’eau Est La Vie Camp of water protectors about the incident stated that the security boat “passed by at an aggressive speed” and “intentionally” caused a large wake that “swamped and eventually sunk the boats” carrying media and water protectors. While people could have easily drowned in the incident, they luckily managed to swim to shore, where they were assisted by a local fisherman. The water protectors and media members who were with them, including a documentary film crew...

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

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.

Red Fawn Fallis And The Felony Of Being Attacked By Cops

What happened to Standing Rock water protector Red Fawn Fallis is what has happened to many women political dissenters who go up against Big Government/Corporate power. After she was viciously tackled by several police officers (caught on video), she was brought up on serious charges of harming those who harmed her. Fallis, after months of intense corporate/military surveillance and handy informant reports, was targeted as a coordinator and a leader, a symbol and an inspiration.  For daring to make a stand for her people against the encroaching poison and destruction brought by the Dakota Access gas pipeline, she became a political prisoner. Native-American women suffering dire consequences because of the ever-expanding needs of capitalist/white rule is nothing new.

[Act Out! 169] – The Latest Water Protector Battles + Monsanto’s First Day In Court

Monsanto has avoided jury trials for years. Despite continuously mounting evidence to show that glyphosate, a main ingredient in many of their products, causes cancer, they’ve avoided having to answer for their cover-ups and crimes. Last week, one man got them in court. And the day after, hundreds of others got the green light to do the same. This is big. Also in the courts, hundreds of water protectors still face state and federal charges for their involvement in the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016. Leyola Cowboy and Terry Janis join us from the Water Protector Legal Collective to talk about ongoing trials, the crackdown on dissent and the human rights of protecting your community and your water.

Indigenous And Environmental Water Protectors Fight To Block Louisiana Pipeline

Half an hour outside of Lafayette, Louisiana — almost three hours west of New Orleans — the proposed route of the Bayou Bridge pipeline crosses the road. It’s a seemingly minor bend in the crooked path of a 162.5-mile pipeline that, if completed, would snake underground from Lake Charles near the Texas border to St. James in “Cancer Alley” — the dense stretch of refineries and other petrochemical facilities lining the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. But this bend matters to Cherri Foytlin, a Diné (Navajo) and Cherokee activist, journalist and mother, whose organization owns the small plot of land around which the pipeline’s route skirts. Here, a few small structures and a long line of tents make up the L’Eau Est La Vie (“Water Is Life”) resistance camp.

NoDAPL Water Protector Sentenced To Thirty-Six Months By Federal Judge

Little Feather has already served fifteen months that will count as time served. The federal sentencing comes as Red Fawn Fallis awaits sentencing on June 25th, 2018 and Michael “Rattler” Markus awaits sentencing on May 30th, 2018. Currently, Dion Ortiz and James “Angry Bird” White are preparing for federal trial. Brandon J Nastacio “Bravo One” and Brandon Aaron Miller-Castillo are also facing federal charges. The first federal sentencing comes alongside ongoing state-level trials. According to the Water Protector Legal Collective website, as of May 2 2018, there have been 835 state criminal cases connected to the #NoDAPL movement, of those: 328 have been dismissed, 24 acquitted at trial, 115 received a pretrial diversion, 127 have reached plea agreement and 16 have been convicted at trial.

Update NoDAPL Water Protector Court Cases

Of the 831 state arrests from Standing Rock, 578 have concluded so far. A large majority of those, (337), were won through dismissal or acquittal at trial. This is a huge success for Water Protectors and for the many attorneys and legal workers who have been working steadily for over a year and half and are continuing those efforts unabated. However these numbers are also clear evidence that these arrests should never have occurred in the first place. Below is some information about the most common ways that cases can be resolved if they are not dismissed and the Water Protector chooses not to take it to trial, as well as an update on the trials that are scheduled to happen throughout the spring. Everyone with pending criminal charges has an absolute right to fight their charges all the way through trial.

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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