Goldtooth
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">main</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see IEN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx vid</font></p><p><a href="https://www.indianz.com/News/2019/04/04/native-sun-news-today-trump-once-again-p.asp">https://www.indianz.com/News/2019/04/04/native-sun-news-today-trump-once-again-p.asp</a></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Native Sun News Today: Trump once again pushes Keystone XL Pipeline on Indian Country</b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Thursday, April 4, 2019 </b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Holding on tight as Trump boosts KXL Pipeline</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">By Talli Nauman</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Native Sun News Today Health & Environment Editor</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">nativesunnews.today</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">MISSION - As the Rosebud Sioux Tribe celebrated the fifth anniversary March 29 of founding its spirit camp to protect nature from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, U.S. President Donald Trump advanced the Canadian tar-sands crude-oil slurry project by revoking its stalled State Department permit and issuing a fast-track executive proclamation.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Today we celebrate the day now recognized as a Rosebud Sioux Tribe Official Holiday and we continue the original prayer as we remain steadfast, Shielding the People - Oyate Wahancanka Woecun,” the Rosebud Spirit Camp announced, inviting the public here to a feast and dance “to give thanks for the continued success of the original prayer.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Just hours later, Trump signed a memorandum declaring: “By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States of America, I hereby grant permission … to TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P. to construct, connect, operate, and maintain pipeline facilities at the international border of the United States and Canada at Phillips County, Montana, for the import of oil from Canada to the United States.”</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>If unopposed, the order would allow construction to go forward despite a federal court suspension of the State Department Presidential Permit, requiring further study before approval.</b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">indianz.com</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">@indianz</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">President Trump is attempting to circumvent the judiciary by approving the Keystone XL Pipeline without a full environmental review of concerns raised by Indian Country. #NoKXL statement from the Indigenous Environmental Network:</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Indigenous Environmental Network responded by calling the order “an attempt by the President to bypass federal environmental laws.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“In defense of the sacred and the protection of indigenous peoples, we will continue to fight this pipeline, even if that means further legal action against the office of the President of the United States,” the Bemidji-based non-profit alliance said in a written statement.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump’s document professes to be an instrument that “supersedes” the State Department’s Presidential Permit issued March 23, 2017. However, the earlier permit applied to the full length of the segment of the pipeline that remains to be built through unceded 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty territory in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">If completed, the Keystone XL Pipeline would carry diluted bitumen, or dilbit, from the tar-sands mines of the Athabascan homelands in Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast refineries and export terminals.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The memorandum only covers construction at “border facilities,” consisting of a 36-inch diameter pipeline extending from Canada “to and including the first mainline shut-off valve in the United States,” located approximately 1.2 miles from the international boundary.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Oyate Wahacanka Woecun: #NoKXL #NoDAPL #WeAreProtectors</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The announcement came as tribal governments and ranchers along the route were struggling to survive monumental spring storm runoff that is creating mud plains and stranding residents for weeks.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“In the face of historic flooding in Nebraska and South Dakota, the Trump Administration issues another proclamation attempting to shove a risky tar-sands pipeline down the throats of farmers and ranchers currently facing devastation,” said Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska founder.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>The past Administration had denied the Presidential Permit to build into the United States and Trump overturned that with the flourish of a pen during his first week in office, as promised on the campaign trail.</b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Instead of helping the heartland, Trump is driving a stake through the hearts of family farmers and ranchers and tribal nations who are trying to protect the land and water from a foreign oil pipeline,” she said in a written statement.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The White House action followed the announcement one day earlier of a lawsuit against the state of South Dakota for Gov. Kristi Noem’s recently approved Riot Busting Act, so-called after she coined the phrase “riot busting” in drafting the measure she said was aimed at avoiding costs to the government for conflicts the Keystone XL project is anticipated to engender.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The act says that “anyone that contributes to a protest, whether through monetary donations, donations of supplies, or even through organizing a page on social media, can be held liable, and have civil and criminal penalties for supporting a protest that the state deems violent,” plaintiffs claimed.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Individuals or organizations that support a protest don’t even need to be on the ground or physically present at the protest to be held liable,” plaintiffs added. Also under the law, TransCanada Corp. could use money obtained from protesters and organizations to promote pipeline construction,” they alleged.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Gov. Kristi Noem's legislation is yet another way to promote Big Oil interests and prevent dissent by making protesters subject to legal action,” said Kim Pate, vice-president of NDN Collective. Cherokee and Choctaw, Pate is an attorney with 25 years of experience in civil rights litigation.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Protests and other forms of dissent are protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. If we don't fight this now, what's next? Silencing all speech to placate and enable corporate interests at all costs?” she asked. “Not on our watch.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Joining her organization in the lawsuit prepared by the ACLU are the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Sierra Club, and Dakota Rural Action, as well as Oglala Lakota’s<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> Dallas Goldtooth</b> of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of the NDN Collective.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 1em; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: baseline; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mdewakanton Dakota and Dine) – Dallas travels extensively across Turtle Island to help fossil fuel and hard rock mining impacted communities tell their stories thru social media, video, and other forms of communication. Dallas is an IEN media team lead, working with IEN staff, board, and organizational partners from a diverse group of climate justice networks. Along with his many tasks and duties with IEN, he is also a Dakota cultural/language teacher, non-violent direct action trainer, and was one of the outstanding Water Protectors at Standing Rock/Oceti Sakowin Camp fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. In addition, he is a co-founder of the Indigenous comedy group, The 1491s, a poet, journalist, traditional artist, powwow emcee, and comedian.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); vertical-align: baseline; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; background: 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-weight: 700;">Email:</span> dallas@ienearth.org</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">guk no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/08/wave-of-new-laws-aim-to-stifle-anti-pipeline-protests-activists-say</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nice 3 color map</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>'Protesters as terrorists': growing number of states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Conservative lawmakers have put forward laws criminalizing protests in at least 18 states since 2017 that civil liberties advocates say are unconstitutional</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Susie Cagle in San Francisco</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mon 8 Jul 2019 11.00 BST Last modified on Mon 8 Jul 2019 11.01 BST</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Seven US states have passed laws that ratchet up the penalties for activists protesting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From the Standing Rock camps in North Dakota to tree-sits in Texas, activists have attempted to stop pipeline construction with massive shows of civil disobedience. Now they could be forced to change those tactics, or face heavy penalties under a wave of new anti-protest laws that civil liberties advocates say violate the first amendment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservative lawmakers have put forward laws criminalizing protests that disrupt the construction and operation of pipelines in at least 18 states since 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Seven states have passed laws that ratchet up the penalties for activists protesting or even planning protests of oil and gas pipelines and other “critical infrastructure”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At least six more states are considering such laws</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In each case, misdemeanors are elevated to felonies, and criminal and civil punishments are escalated drastically</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights have mounted challenges against such laws in Louisiana and South Dakota.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is a trend that shows no sign of slowing, let alone stopping,” said Elly Page, who has been tracking anti-protest legislation for more than two years as a legal adviser for the International Center for Non-Profit Law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The laws purport to only criminalize violence and property damage in service of pipeline safety, but critics say their greater intent appears to be to deter nonviolent civil disobedience by framing it as potentially violent in itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bills have mostly found fertile legislative ground in places where gas and oil companies already wield significant political and economic power and where anti-fossil fuel protests have been especially successful. But watchdogs say there’s every reason to believe more of these types of laws will be passed, and that they will chill activism otherwise protected by the first amendment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is a miscasting of protesters as economic terrorists and saboteurs when in fact they’re going out and having their voices heard about why these pipelines are problematic for their communities and the environment,” said Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “Even if folks haven’t been charged, the fact that these laws are on the books can seriously chill people and make them fearful of getting their voices out,” she added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Native Americans and activists gathered outside Cannon Ball, North Dakota, to try to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A wave picking up speed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oklahoma was the first to pass pipeline-protecting legislation in 2017, with a pair of bills that ostensibly protected critical infrastructure from trespass and damage. By the end of the year, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a non-profit coalition of conservative politicians and industry representatives, had developed model Critical Infrastructure Protection legislation based on Oklahoma’s laws. Energy industry groups immediately sent a letter to legislators urging them to adopt the bill in their states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That effort has proven fruitful.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Louisiana passed a version into law in 2018, and the legislative wave picked up speed in 2019. Laws that would increase criminal and civil penalties for protesting against gas and oil pipelines specifically and “critical infrastructure” more broadly have passed this year in Tennessee, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas, and are currently pending in Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky. In each case, the laws provide for more extreme criminal charges and civil penalties for trespass and vandalism against pipelines.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Industry representatives insist these harsh penalties are necessary for pipeline security. “The intent of the critical infrastructure bill signed into law last year is to protect the safety of Louisiana’s people, environment and infrastructure,” the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association president and general counsel, Tyler Gray, said in a statement in May. “It is straightforward in its scope and application and does not infringe on an individual’s constitutional rights.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the Texas law goes into effect on 1 September, it will make “impairing or interrupting” pipeline construction a felony, punishable by up to two years in jail and a $10,000 fine. If an activist is alleged to have “intent to damage or destroy” a pipeline facility, they could face a third-degree felony on par with attempted murder, and up to 10 years in prison. And any organization found to be similarly culpable could face a $500,000 fine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’ll be more difficult to give underrepresented communities a voice now because of this,” said Frankie Orona, executive director of Society of Native Nations, which vigorously opposed the bill.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similar measures seem to have support at the federal level. The Trump administration, stacked with former fossil fuel industry lobbyists, attorneys and executives, has come out with its own proposals to protect fossil fuel infrastructure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A June proposal of the Department of Transportation for “Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act” included a provision to expressly strengthen criminal penalties for “impeding, disrupting, or inhibiting the operation of a pipeline facility”. The head of the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was formerly a vice-president of one of the country’s largest coal transporters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The department’s proposal used “some of the same language and ideas in terms of covering peaceful protest activity”, said Elly Page.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shutting down activist resources</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the anti-protest laws are highly specific in explicitly or implicitly targeting oil and gas infrastructure, they’re highly vague when it comes to defining what behaviour is prohibited. The laws define “critical infrastructure” as a range of private and public energy facilities, including those that are under construction, but what constitutes imposition, disruption, inhibition or conspiracy is left up to a court’s interpretation, as is what constitutes “intent” to damage property.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet if preserving infrastructure safety and fossil fuel company profits are the goal, there are already a variety of legal tools available to law enforcement. Trespassing and damaging private property are already crimes in every state. “States already criminalize most if not all of the conduct that’s covered by these laws,” said Page. “It seems to be part of a larger effort to stifle certain political speech and environmental groups.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The laws appear designed not just to deter individuals from protesting, but also to cut off material support from organizations by levying steep fines on organizations alleged to conspire with activists. South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, admitted as much about the law in her state in March and said that the law was intended in part to “shut down” activist resources – she named George Soros as the top “national offender”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>By a particularly cruel twist in South Dakota’s law, which flew through the state legislature in just one week, those fines could actually be used toward the construction of the pipelines activists protest against.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘An industry-created issue’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When off-duty police working as private pipeline security pulled Cindy Spoon off her canoe in southern Louisiana last August and handcuffed her, she didn’t yet know she would be one of the first activists in the country charged with a felony under this new spate of legislation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spoon was working with the L’eau Est La Vie camp protesting against the construction of the 163-mile Bayou Bridge pipeline, which carries crude oil through the vast wetlands of the Atchafalaya Basin. She was boating in navigable, public waters – the equivalent of being in the public road. But she was charged with felony trespassing, a little over a week after Louisiana’s protest law went into effect.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the district attorney pursues her case, Spoon could face up to five years in prison. Sixteen activists are currently facing felony charges under the Louisiana law for peaceful protest either in public waterways or on private land where they had the owner’s permission to be.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spoon remains determined to continue her work. “The risk involved to me personally is far outweighed by inaction,” she said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spoon’s pro bono attorney Bill Quigley and the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a federal suit challenging the law in Louisiana.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is not a problem that any private citizen has ever filed a complaint about. This is a total industry-created issue,” said Quigley, a law attorney at Loyola University New Orleans. “They are essentially passing these laws to give themselves enhanced protection.” When he attended the state senate comment session for the Louisiana law in 2018, Quigley said, he was joined by nearly two dozen fossil fuel industry representatives. “There were no private citizens.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In South Dakota, the ACLU has filed a suit challenging the law in South Dakota.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Dallas Goldtooth, who is Dakota and Diné, i</b>s a named plaintiff in that lawsuit. Goldtooth, a campaign organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, has been protesting pipelines since 2013, and using his substantial social media following to boost activist efforts – speech that could now be considered “riot-boosting” in South Dakota.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Goldtooth is ready to take that chance. But he worries that even if communities on the frontlines whose lands are being carved up by pipeline construction are willing to take on the increased risk of protest, others won’t. “The fear is that our allies are going to be intimidated and too afraid to come out and stand in solidarity,” said Goldtooth. And in sparsely populated rural America, numbers are everything.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While some communities may successfully push pipeline construction to the next, less-fortunate community over, these projects are rarely if ever shelved. There are few places in America that remain untouched by an oil or gas route. Pipelines touch every state in the US except Hawaii.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They’re just picking the low-hanging fruit right now, the places where oil and gas have outsized influence. But oil and gas pipelines are everywhere. It’s not just Louisiana and Oklahoma and South Dakota,” said Quigley.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I guarantee a law like this is coming to your state.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div>