Action alert from Akilah Sanders-Reed, Oil Free Organizer, Power Shift Network:
Last week, law enforcement came to Standing Rock with riot police and armored vehicles to evict the main Dakota Access Pipeline resistance camp. It was a painful reminder of this country’s long history of theft and violence against Native peoples, and of the lawless brutality still wielded by the oil companies and their purchased politicians.
But anyone who thinks that the fight against oil pipelines and the reckless corporations behind them is over is mistaken. In North Dakota, the water protectors’ first camp, Sacred Stone, remains—and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is continuing legal challenges to the project. And in every corner of the country, people are already standing up to fight many more pipelines in their communities.
Here are the details for Wednesday’s call:
What: National call to hear from Standing Rock organizers and learn about other pipeline fights near you
When: Wednesday, March 1 at 8:00 PM EST
Where: Sign up to attend here and you’ll receive the call-in info
Who: Indigenous Environmental Network, Honor the Earth, Native Organizer’s Alliance, and many more
The call will be a time to take an important pause to honor this special place where thousands came to stand in solidarity and put their bodies on the line to protect the land, water, and people who depend on it. The lessons and inspiration the fight at Standing Rock has given to our movement will live on forever.
It will also be a time to learn about powerful organizing happening to resist dirty oil and gas pipelines all over the country. We'll break out into regional groups, where you'll hear about a campaign to stop a fossil fuel project in your area and ways to get plugged in.
Ordinary people are fighting to protect their communities from the fossil fuel industry every day. Now is the time to join local and regional campaigns to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
In the powerful words of Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network: "The closing of the camp is not the end of a movement or fight, it is a new beginning. They cannot extinguish the fire that Standing Rock started.”
Talk to you on Wednesday,
Akilah Sanders-Reed
Oil Free Organizer
Power Shift Network