Tag: direct action

SF and NYC: Climate Fighters Disrupt Private Equity Event Demanding End to Fossil Finance!!

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cross-posted from Oil and Gas Action Network

Climate fighters in the Bay Area crashed the “Responsible Investment Forum” in San Francisco – demanding that Private Equity and ESG stop funding the Climate Crisis.

In New York City, more climate and social justice fighters showed up at private equity conference demanding that retirement funds for teachers, nurses and firefighters NOT be used to fund fossil fuel projects.

 

From the Private Equity Stakeholder Project:

“Private equity is buying up excessive amounts of fossil fuel assets – oil wells, pipelines, power plants, operating them out of the public eye and exploiting gaps and loopholes in regulation.

The billions of dollars private equity firms are spending to drill, frack, and burn fossil fuels stand in stark contrast to what scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. The health and well-being of communities of color are particularly affected by the environmental harms of their polluting fossil fuel assets right now.

To make matters worse, private equity is investing in climate chaos using the retirement money of millions of workers – including teachers, nurses, and firefighters in public service jobs – putting the retirement savings of ordinary people at risk as society seeks to move beyond fossil fuels to a clean energy economy.

As other financial actors like banks, insurance companies or utilities attempt to shed polluting assets, private equity asset managers have bought them and operated these fossil fuel assets out of the public eye and beyond the oversight of financial regulators.”

Victory! Court Rules MN Sheriff’s Blockade of Line 3 Water Protector Camp Was Illegal and Bars Ongoing Efforts to Obstruct Access+

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cross-posted from Center for Protest Law and Litigation

Today, a Minnesota court issued a ruling protecting an Indigenous-led camp of Line 3 opponents from Hubbard County’s unlawful blockades and targeted harassment. This victory on the part of steadfast frontline climate justice activists is part of the crucial legal fight-back against oppressive police tactics as they place their bodies on the line to defend the planet.

The ruling comes after months of litigation on behalf of Indigenous water protectors, including Tara Houska and Winona LaDuke, and a successful temporary restraining order against Hubbard County, Sheriff Cory Aukes, and the local land commissioner in northern Minnesota for unlawfully blocking access to Giniw Collective’s Line 3 Camp Namewag in 2021.

The Center for Protest Law and Litigation, EarthRights International, and local counsel Jason Steck represent the plaintiffs.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, constitutional rights lawyer and Director of the Center for Protest Law & Litigation at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund stated:

“Today David beat Goliath in a legal victory for people protecting the climate from rapacious corporate destruction. The outrageous blockade and repression of an Indigenous-led water protector camp was fueled by massive sums of money flowing from the Enbridge corporation to the Sheriff’s department as it acted against water protectors challenging Enbridge’s destruction of Native lands.”

“Today’s decision finds that the paramilitarized blockade was illegal and orders the Sheriff and Hubbard County to desist from any ongoing effort to obstruct access. This has been a hard-fought case as Hubbard County and its Sheriff have perpetuated the history of efforts to deprive Native people of access to land. Today’s victory sends a message to the next police force that might consider similar tactics that activists will not back down and will fight to assert their rights.”

Plaintiff Tara Houska, Founder of the Giniw Collective, stated:

“15 months ago, I was woken up at 6am and walked down my driveway to a grinning sheriff holding a notice to vacate my years-long home. That day turned into 50 squad cars on a dirt road and a riot line blocking my driveway. 12 people, guests from all over who came to protect the rivers and wild rice from Line 3 tar sands, were arrested and thrown into the dirt.”

“Today’s ruling is a testament to the lengths Hubbard County was willing to go to criminalize and harass Native women, land defenders, and anyone associated with us — spending unknown amounts of taxpayer dollars and countless hours trying to convince the court that the driveway to Namewag camp wasn’t a driveway,” Houska continued. “It’s also a testament to steadfast commitment to resisting oppression. This is a piece in the long game and we aren’t afraid. We haven’t forgotten the harms to us and the harms to the earth. Onward.”

Plaintiff Winona LaDuke, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Honor the Earth, stated:

“We are grateful to Judge Austad for recognizing how Hubbard County exceeded its authority and violated our rights. Today’s ruling shows that Hubbard County cannot repress Native people for the benefit of Enbridge by circumventing the law. This is also an important victory for all people of the North reinforcing that a repressive police force should not be able to stop you from accessing your land upon which you hunt or live.”

Marco Simons, General Counsel of EarthRights, stated: 

“The court’s ruling is a major rebuke to police efforts to unlawfully target water protectors and to interfere with their activities protesting the Line 3 pipeline. Blocking access to the Namewag camp exemplifies a pattern of unlawful and discriminatory police conduct incentivized by an Enbridge-funded account from which the police can seek reimbursement for Line 3-related activities.

“Police forces should protect the public interest, not private companies. Cases like this highlight the dangers of allowing the police to act as a private security arm for pipeline companies.”

Read the opinion here. 

BACKGROUND

The Hubbard County Sheriff unlawfully blockaded access to a camp serving as a convergence space and home for Indigenous-led organizing, decolonization and treaty rights trainings, and religious activities by water protectors seeking to defend the untouched wetlands and the treaty territory of Anishinaabe peoples. Activists attempting to access the property were harassed by Hubbard County police, issued unlawful citations for driving upon the property’s driveway, and threatened with arrest for coming to and from the camp.

The Sheriffs’ departments in the region received funds from the Enbridge pipeline corporation for their time spent acting against the pipeline’s opponents through a “Public Safety Escrow Fund.” Enbridge paid more than $8 million to “reimburse” law enforcement, effectively privatizing Minnesota’s public police forces in service to efforts to repress opposition to the pipeline.

Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline runs through hundreds of miles of Northern Minnesota land, including the lands of the Anishinaabe people and the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Enbridge is already responsible for the largest inland oil spill in the United States.

THE PLAINTIFFS

Tara Houska is an environmental and Indigenous rights attorney and advocate, land defender, founder of the Giniw Collective and a leader of the efforts to  stop Line 3. She is a citizen of Couchiching First Nation.

Winona LaDuke is a renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development, renewable energy, and food systems. She is the co-founder and executive  director of Honor the Earth. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg.

NorCal: Urgent Call for Statewide Support for Threatened Coastal Forests & Tribal Sovereignty

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cross-posted from Save Jackson Forest

Urgent Call for Statewide Support for Threatened Coastal Forests & Tribal Sovereignty

Please join The Coalition to Save Jackson at a  “30×30” Kick Off Rally on September 28th, 2022! The rally begins at 11 am, outside of the California Natural Resources Agency’s 30×30 Kick Off Event at 715 P St, Sacramento, CA 95814.

Our Coalition is supporting the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians as they negotiate co-management of the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) in their Pomo homelands. Establishing co-management and ending commercial logging in Jackson, the largest state-owned forest, are necessary if California is to enact the goals of reconciliation with Tribal people and reach its 30×30 goal of preserving lands to slow climate change. Governor Newsom established the 30×30 goal of protecting 30% of the state’s lands and waters by 2030. Scientists have advocated a similar global goal, in the face of accelerating climate change and declines in global biodiversity.

Supporting this campaign has statewide impacts because the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians is negotiating with the State based on Governor Newsom’s little-publicized directive to state agencies to co-manage lands with the Tribes of California. What happens in Pomo Homelands can affect Tribal co-management in all of California. Please join us!

Tribal Chairman Michael Hunter said “For co-management to succeed, it must be a government to government relationship that creates equal decision making powers. I worry that the State does not understand the importance of the words they are using. We must ensure that co-management creates an equal relationship between the State and the Tribes with equal decision making authority.” At the rally we are going to amplify Tribal Elder Priscilla Hunter’s call for “No More Broken Promises” because, after halting logging, road building, and pesticide operations for seven months during negotiations with the Tribe, CalFire and CNRA are attempting to resume these operations before negotiations with the Tribe are complete.

The Tribe and Coalition protest that the State is desecrating Pomo and Coast Yuki Sacred Sites and cultural resources with their logging operations in JDSF. Furthermore, the State is squandering one of its best tools for fighting climate change by logging mature coast redwoods. “Redwood forests have amazing climate mitigation potential and management needs to maximize that potential,” said Sara Rose, a youth activist with Mendocino County Youth for Climate and member of the Coalition. “My generation will have to live with what the planet becomes if we don’t save it. We have to face the reality of climate change.”

Please join us in Sacramento, please share this call for support, and please send us your organization’s  logo if you support the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and the Coalition to Save Jackson in this campaign. If your organization can write a letter supporting our campaign, thank you. Please click here to sign a petition to shame CAL FIRE’s deception and protest logging in Jackson Demonstration State Forest! For more on this campaign read this background info, check out Savejackson.org, follow @savejacksoncoalition on Instagram, and like Coalition to Save Jackson The People’s Forest on Facebook!

Logos, questions and RSVPs can be emailed to Showing Up for Racial Justice Mendo Coast chapter, a member of the Coalition to Save Jackson: surjmendocoast@gmail.com

You can register for the State’s 30×30 event for free here if you would like to go inside the event and make your presence known.  Our rally will be outside the event.

 

Water Protectors Blockade Enbridge Line 3 Man Camp During MMIWG2S Awareness Week

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cross-posted from Giniw Collective

May 6, 2021
(Backus, MN) This morning, 11 protectors locked to each other in front of both entrances to Enbridge’s Backus, MN, man camp location to stop destruction of the sacred and stand against the community harms fossil fuels bring. Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2-Spirit relatives is an epidemic throughout Indian Country. Many of the water protectors this morning are grandparents.
Thousands of out-of-state workers have poured into northern Minnesota, despite Enbridge’s promises to employ mostly in-state. It asserted 75% would be Minnesotans, the number of locals actually employed by the company sits at 33%.
The violence committed on our land becomes the violence committed on our people. A MMIW-sensitivity training session for workers here to destroy Indigenous land will never be enough. 3 Ojibwe nations are suing against approval of Enbridge’s Line 3 project. The Line 3 project should’ve never been approved and the unnecessary risks to local communities never experienced.
Alex Chatfield, a father and social worker from Massachusetts, said, “Together with other members of my Episcopal Church, I have been fighting to protect the Earth’s climate for my children and vulnerable people on the front lines of the climate emergency.”
Marla Marcum, a (co)Founder of the Climate Disobedience Center and a person of faith who lives on Cherokee lands in Knoxville’s, Tennessee, said, “I feel called to take this action in solidarity with the Indigenous leaders who defend the lands and waters that are most directly impacted by Line 3 and the communities who search for and mourn the missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two spirit relatives taken from them by pipeline construction man camps like this one.”
Rachel Wyon, a mother and climate justice advocate from Massachusetts, said, “I answered the call to stand with Indigenous mothers and grandmothers here fighting to Stop Line 3, demanding respect for their sovereign treaties and telling the world to wake up and stop the destruction of our sacred Mother Earth by fossil fuel extraction — Resist Line 3 and Keep it in the Ground for all living beings and future generations.”
Melinda Tuhus, a climate activist and grandmother from New Haven Connecticut, said, “I came to fight line 3 in support of indigenous sovereignty and a livable planet for everyone.”
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