On Tuesday, Feb. 7, the US Army Corps announced that it plans to allow the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross the Missouri River. I had previously critiqued the language of the original Army Corps memorandum for the Environmental Impact Statement, fearing that in spite of the tearful appreciation for the victory and our positive hopes for it to be sustained, the language was not strong enough to challenge the autocracy and its attorneys who prefer personal “security” to rule-of-law.
The Army Corps of Engineers is now saying they will ignore the requirement for the Environmental Impact Statement and give permission for DAPL to drill. The Indigenous Coalition of Standing Rock is calling on us to rally the world today in an international day of emergency actions to “disrupt business as usual and unleash a global intersectional resistance to fossil fuels and fascism.”
Immediately call your local legislator. Leave a million messages. Call the number for Army Corps of Engineers. Donate to the legal defense of Water Protectors. If you have been thinking about going to Standing Rock in person, this is the last chance, most likely. Visit everydayofaction.org to find an action near where you live. Check out the #NoDAPL world action map to join a mass action.
Even such efforts may be a long shot for stopping DAPL, but what we do can make a difference at least for all the assaults to our planet that are happening elsewhere or are just around the corner. We cannot allow this to be easy for the Trump administration. If it gets away with this and the oil starts to flow under the Missouri without significant rebuke, things will go downhill fast in many other places. If DAPL does goes forward as it now seems it will, then our next tactic is to focus on breaking Energy Transfer Partners by making sure every bank in the country divests from it. We must delay other pipeline efforts so as to cost stockholders more money and get them to start investing in alternative energy.
We can break Energy Transfer Partners. We can and make the oil industry think twice about its future, in spite of the pro-oil presidency. We can find a way to stand strong against the new anti-environment administration via the courage, generosity, love and respect for all life that has been and is being modeled by all those who have been positively involved with the Standing Rock water protection movement.
Standing Rock must become a battle cry for civil disobedience and peaceful protests. “Remember Standing Rock!” Mni Wiconi!
Most important of all, and I mean this, is to send your thought and visualization vibrations into the universe so the Spirits know you are meeting them halfway. In other words, Pray!
Mitakuye Oyasin. We are all related.