Make History: Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline

Keystone XL Pipeline Compilation by Earth First! Journal Collective

Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance shoot an Oklahoma native up a monopole!

Today, Monday, April 22, is the deadline for the last official public comment period on the Obama administration’s review on the Keystone XL Pipeline. It also happens to be Earth Day – a day that is celebrated worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. Wouldn’t today be a great day to stop TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline from further construction, destruction and future eruptions!?!?!

The clock is ticking on our last chance to officially weigh in on the “game over for the climate,” the Tar Sands pipeline, before the president makes his decision later this year. There are many ways you can make your voice of opposition to this pipeline heard – break the silence and make a ruckus! There are also countless petitions circulating the internet that need as many signers as possible! Cross-post the news to your family and friends, have conversations with people in your office and ask them – are you familiar with the Keystone XL pipeline and the Alberta tar sands? Because today is the day to read all about it and do something about it!

The State Department’s latest sham review of the Keystone pipeline – the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that is the subject of this comment period – ignored the pipeline’s significant risk for toxic spills, ignored its catastrophic impacts on our climate,¹ and ignored the clear consensus among financial analysts and oil executives who agree Keystone XL will make the difference in tar sands development.

We need a response that will make clear to the Obama administration that Americans oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.

13 Spills in 30 Days

From TckTckTck

Moving oil is a dirty business, and never has that been more clear than this past month. Since March 11, the global oil industry has had 13 spills on three continents. In North and South America alone, they’ve spilled more than a million gallons of oil and toxic chemicals – enough to fill two olympic-sized swimming pools.

Deutsche Bags, the Keylime XL Pipeline and a Week of Eco-Action to Remember

“…It was later learned that the group’s actions relate to their protest against the construction of the Keylime XL pipeline and finances for the project emanating from Deutsche Bank.”

—Officer Rodriguez, Palm Beach Police Probable Cause Affidavit

No Officer, that ain’t Keylime emanating from Deutsche Bank.

Today kicks off a Week of Action to Stop Tar Sands Profiteers. As you may have heard, the good folks on the front lines of the tar sands resistance have called for solidarity with their ongoing effort of blockades along the route of Keystone XL construction.

What we have below are some lessons learned from an action in Florida last November, where amidst a call for solidarity with Tar Sands Blockaders fighting the Keystone XL pipeline, four people were arrested at Deutsche Bank (one of KXL’s many financiers). The protest took place on Palm Beach Island, a bastion of obscene wealth and elitism in south Florida.

What a buncha Deutsche Bags! Click here to read document

About two weeks ago, the final case of the four folks who got popped on “the Island” was resolved, resulting in a handful of community service hours and a few measly months of probation. More importantly though, arrestees gained access to police records from the action during the pre-trial process (available to you by clicking the images on the right) and they have the freedom to talk more easily now that a few sketchy charges are no longer hanging over their heads. 

We hope some of these seven lessons may come in handy for the folks, both newbies and well-seasoned, who are planning to have an action-packed week: 

Anarchy in New Orleans, Justice in the Gulf, Direct Action in Texas…

As EF! Journal editors arrive in  New Orleans to speak at the 2013 North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference, a story of justice for the Gulf BP spill, albeit too-little-too-late, covers headlines in newspapers across town. [Re-posted below]

     Meanwhile  along the Texas Gulf Coast, the need for yet another Tar Sands Blockade action camp proves that our struggle against a global energy empire is far from over. As of this morning, at least six people have been arrested in a tree sit blockade erected yesterday.

Treesit in Diboll, TX

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According to NBC News: The Transocean settlement in the 2010 Gulf spill unveiled by the Department of Justice includes $1 billion in civil penalties and $400 million in criminal penalties. The company had set aside a total of $1.95 billion in potential losses related to the spill, including $1.5 billion for its anticipated settlement with the DoJ.

Shares of Transocean were up 7 percent at $49.50 on midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

BP’s Gulf disaster, 2012

“The bottom line to me is they now can put away the big black cloud that has been hanging over them,” said Phil Weiss, an oil analyst at Argus. “I take this as a positive, even if the number is a little higher than I expected.”

Switzerland-based Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon rig that was drilling a mile-deep well when a surge of methane gas sparked an explosion on April 20, 2010. The explosion killed 11 men and led to one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history.

Tar Sands Blockaders still in jail, and on hunger strike

Today hunger strikers in Houston hit day 20 without food and the three activists who locked down inside the Keystone XL pipe on Dec 3rd are still in jail, facing exorbitant bail.

While jail is oppressive, dehumanizing, and boring, your messages of love and support will help lift their spirits. Please send a letter today… And start making your plans to get out to Texas next month for the TSB Mass Action camp, Jan 3rd – 8th.

For mail to Matt and Glen:

Inmate’s Full Name (1 per letter: Matt Almonte, or Glen Collins)
C/O Smith County Jail
206 E. Elm
Tyler, Texas 75701

*Note: Letters cannot exceed 12” by 15”. Return address with full name is required. Be mindful that the authorities will likely read your letter. Keep it positive and avoid inflammatory language – otherwise it might not be delivered. As a general rule: if in doubt, leave it out.

To write Isabel:

Isabel Brooks
PO Box 849
Kaufman, TX 75142

Click here to see news coverage from the Dec 3rd action

People Barricade Themselves Inside Keystone XL Pipe To Halt Construction

[Continue reading this post, or check here, for updates throughout the day. Join the fight against Keystone XL by coming to our next Mass Action Camp starting on January 3, one month from today!]

For more photos of today’s action, visit Tar Sands Blockade‘s Flickr page.

WINONA, TX – MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012 7:30 AM – Several protestors with Tar Sands Blockade sealed themselves inside a section of pipe destined for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to stop construction of the dangerous project. Using a blockading technique never implemented before, Matt Almonte and Glen Collins locked themselves between two barrels of concrete weighing over six hundred pounds each. Located twenty-five feet into a pipe segment waiting to be laid in the ground, the outer barrel is barricading the pipe’s opening and neither barrel can be moved without risking serious injury to the blockaders.

The barricaded section of the pipeline passes through a residential neighborhood in Winona, TX. If TransCanada moves ahead with the trenching and burying of this particular section of pipe, it would run less than a hundred feet from neighboring homes. Tar sands pipelines threaten East Texas communities with their highly toxic contents, which pose a greater risk to human health than conventional crude oil. TransCanada’s existing tar sands pipeline, Keystone XL’s predecessor, has an atrocious safety record, leaking twelve times in its first year of operation.

Tar Sands Blockaders Lock Themselves to Trucks Outside Valero’s Houston Refinery

Activists Begin Sustained Hunger Strike, Demand That Valero Divest from Keystone XL Pipeline

HOUSTON, TX – THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 8:00AM –-Longtime Gulf Coast activists Diane Wilson and Bob Lindsey Jr. have locked their necks to oil tanker trucks destined for Valero’s Houston Refinery in solidarity with Tar Sands Blockade’s protests of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. Valero Energy Corp. is among the largest investors in TransCanada’s toxic tar sands pipeline that will terminate near the community of Manchester, located in the shadow of Valero’s refinery. Not only are Wilson and Lindsey blockading the Valero refinery, the two lifelong friends have also vowed to begin a sustained hunger strike demanding that Valero divest from Keystone XL and invest that money into the health and well-being of the people of Manchester.

With a 90% Latino population, Manchester’s relationship with the Valero refinery is a textbook case of environmental racism. Residents there have suffered through decades of premature deaths, cancers, asthma and other diseases attributable to the refinery emissions. With little financial support for lawsuits and without the political agency necessary to legislatively reign-in criminal polluters like Valero, the community suffers while Valero posts record profits.

Anti-KXL Solidarity Action Targets Deutsche Bank on Palm Beach Island

Four arrested as concerned Florida residents demonstrate opposition to investments in Transcanada/ Keystone XL Pipeline

See corporate media coverage from Palm Beach Daily News here.

An activist is taken into custody by Palm Beach police during a protest on Royal Palm Way.

West Palm Beach, FL – Monday, November 19, 2012 – Dozens of protesters with Everglades Earth First! and supporters of the Tar Sands Blockade in East Texas are rallied today on Palm Beach island, demonstrating opposition to the construction of the Gulf Coast portion of the Keystone XL Pipeline. As the nation rebounds from life-threatening droughts, raging wildfires, devastating hurricanes and ever rising temperatures, we wish to draw attention to investors financially responsible for the construction of a pipeline supporting the world’s most devastating fossil fuels project, TransCanada’s Alberta tar sands.

Tar Sands Blockade Calls For Solidarity Actions November 19th

Alright, eco-warriors, consider yourselves on notice. Tar Sands Blockade is stepping our game up, and we’re calling on you to do the same.

We’ll be throwing down in a big way next Monday, November 19^th, somewhere near Nacogdoches, Texas, the heart of outlaw territory in this region for hundreds of years, and we want you to do the same. If you’re close enough or able to travel, of course we’d love to have you here with us, but we also want to see communities rising up and defending their homes from the wanton destruction of extractive industry everywhere.

Obama’s real birth certificate found in Earth First! Journal office…

Yeah, that’s right, we caught Donald Trump snooping around in our stuff, again. He claims he found the certificate hiding under Uncle Ted’s crusty ol’ tighty-whitees that we won in the government auction last year, but never got around to framing on the office wall.

Straying from the Tea Party rhetoric, Trump is now alleging that Obama’s father was not a Marxist organizer or Kenyan goat-herder but an eco-terrorist who actually birthed the original-original ELF (contrary to the claims of wingnut-sell-out “ELF founder” John Hanna). Sadly, both prized items—the unabomber’s undies and proof that Obama was not born to reptilian shape shifters—were found, by the collective’s new short-termer, decomposing in one of the office’s many broken filing cabinets…

Here’s a sneak peak at the cover (tar sands blockade mono-pod!), hot off the press.. Just waiting for the funds to make it out into the mail.

Really though, We were actually just hoping that this absurdity would loosen you up a little in preparation for our desperate plea that you to make a big ‘ol donation to help get the newest (albeit belated) issue of the Earth First! Journal, Lughnasadh 2012, out into the streets and backwoods.

The issue features: Pictures from the front lines of the Texas tar sands blockades; stories of East Coast anti-fracking resistance, the history of mid-west mining struggles; All-out eco-assault on coal extraction in Scotland; and the world-wide Luddite revival!