Texans like Julia Trigg Crawford are rebelling against a toxic combo of ignorance and arrogance.
Arrogance is an unpleasant trait. When overlaid with ignorance, it really gets ugly.
Meet Arrogance: TransCanada Corporation. The Calgary-based $1.3 billion pipeline giant is now demanding a U.S. permit to run its Keystone XL pipeline right down our country’s center to move toxic tar sands sludge some 1,700 miles from northern Canada to export facilities on the Texas Gulf Coast.
The environmental threat of the XL pipeline — which would cross thousands of farms, suburbs, and water sources — has been widely reported. Less widely known is the fact that this foreign corporation is crudely bullying American farm families and anyone else who dares to oppose its poisonous pursuit of profit.
Now, meet Ignorance: The Texas Railroad Commission. This state agency is already infamous for a tail-wagging acceptance of any scam put forth by the corporations it’s supposed to regulate. Texas law meekly hands the public’s power of eminent domain to certain pipeline companies, allowing them to grab people’s land, usually at a low-ball price.
To get this extraordinary power, however, the grabsters must be “common carriers,” meaning their pipelines are essentially public, available to all users. TransCanada’s line, however, exists solely for its own private gain. Clearly, it’s not qualified to use eminent domain.
Nonetheless, the high-handed Canadian outfit is using it. “Sell your property at our price,” TransCanada tells landowners, “or we’ll just take it.” How can it get away with this arrogance? Because the Texas Railroad Commission, supposedly a watchdog agency, accepts any pipeline corporation’s word that it is a “common carrier.” No questions asked.
The good news is that Texans such as Julia Trigg Crawford are rebelling against this toxic combo of ignorance and arrogance. To learn about her gutsy fight, go to www.StandWithJulia.com.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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