Rabble.Ca: Rail blockades are proving to be an effective non-violent response to state violence

cross-posted from Rabble.ca

via Rabble.ca

Rail blockades are proving to be an effective non-violent response to state violence

by Brent Patterson

In the early hours of February 6, militarized Canadian police began a five-day long assault on the unceded and sovereign territory of the Wet’suwet’en people in northern British Columbia to facilitate the construction of a fracked gas pipeline that lacks that nation’s consent.

Nine days later, Wet’suwet’en land defender Dinize Ste ohn tsiy tweeted that a heavy RCMP presence on Wet’suwet’en territory continues.

In response to this violation of the rule of law (notably the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), Indigenous peoples and allies took to the rails to demand that the RCMP and TC Energy Coastal GasLink, the company behind the controversial pipeline, remove themselves from Wet’suwet’en territory.

Hours after the invasion began, the Mohawks established a blockade on the railway tracks near Belleville, Ontario. By Saturday, February 8, the Gitxsan had established a blockade on the railway line near New Hazelton, British Columbia.

Several other railway blockades were also soon established across the country by Indigenous peoples and allies including near Montreal, Quebec; Listuguj, Quebec; Headingley, Manitoba; Port Coquitlam, British Columbia; and Toronto, Ontario.

And this morning (Saturday, February 15), Climate Justice Toronto tweeted that the “2nd Largest Rail Classification Yard in Canada Blockaded” adding, “Folks have blockaded US-bound CN rail tracks in North York in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en!” That means that all trains going west to Hamilton, London, New York and Michigan are now blocked.

The impacts?

The Gitxsan blockade effectively shut down all activity at the Port of Prince Rupert, with more than 150 freight trains unable to move in or out of that port. Furthermore, 18 container ships in Prince Rupert and 48 ships in Vancouver could neither pick up or unload their shipments.

The Mohawk blockade resulted in the cancellation of all passenger travel between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal and CN shutting down its operations in eastern Canada.

Mainstream media reports have highlighted some of the numbers: CN Rail said it transports more than $250 billion worth of goods annually; VIA Rail said it transported 5 million passengers across Canada in 2019; and that an eight-day CN Rail strike last year cost the economy between $1 billion and $2.2 billion, and CN $100 million in lost earnings.

Less reported in the news is that the railway system also transports about 300,000 barrels of oil (bitumen) everyday in this country and between 30-40 million tonnes of coal each year. And now mainstream media reports have focused on how municipal water systems may run out of chlorine to treat drinking water (without much, if any, contextualization about ongoing boil water advisories in Indigenous communities).

The reaction?

British Columbia’s NDP Premier John Horgan commented: “I respect everyone’s right to lawful protest but when you’re interfering with the operation of the economy at the ports and through the city here in the Lower Mainland, that becomes a challenge…”

Outgoing Conservative party Leader Andrew Scheer exclaimed: “These protesters, these activists, may have the luxury of spending days at a time at a blockade, but they need to check their privilege, they need to check their privilege and let people whose job depends on the railway system — small business, farmers — do their job.”

Walking Eagle News (a satire news website) mocked Scheer by tweeting: “Career politician who lives in taxpayer-funded house and whose party paid for his kid’s private school says Indigenous people blocking rail lines need to check their privilege.”

And Scheer’s possible successor as party leader Erin O’Toole released a video in which he said he “will fight to take back Canada” along with a tweet in which he said, “I will enforce the law and push back against eco-extremists.”

The theory of change

Do you remember politicians, transnational corporations and their lobby groups responding in this way to online petitions, letters to the editor, leafleting or rallies? No, not likely.  Is it instructive (and patronizing) to be told by politicians the acceptable ways to protest? Most definitely.

In April 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from a jail cell: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

We have a long way to go, perhaps, before the RCMP and Coastal GasLink are removed from Wet’suwet’en territories as the blockaders demand.

It is notable, however, that the Trudeau government has dispatched Minister of Indigenous Services Marc Miller to meet with the Mohawks this weekend and Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Carolyn Bennett to meet with the Gitxsan.

Political crisis/revolutionary moment?

A political crisis is created when there is no apparent answer to the situation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated: “We are not the kind of country where politicians get to tell the police what to do in operational matters.”

And Transport Minister Marc Garneau said: “When injunctions are obtained by the train companies, it is up to the provinces. They are the ones who have the jurisdiction to act with respect to those injunctions. It is not the federal government.”

That said, police raids and injunctions aren’t likely to stop the exposure of blockades on the 49,422 kilometres of rail lines in this country.

The government’s hypocrisy about the rule of law (legal experts highlight that government actions have been in violation of Canada’s binding international law obligations and therefore illegal) or the opposition leader’s comment about “privilege” (when wealth accumulation in this country has been based on the dispossession of Indigenous people from their land and their continued immiseration) only serve to underscore the crisis.

Furthermore, Vancouver Island-based Mohawk scholar Gerald Taiaiake Alfred suggested this could even be a revolutionary moment.

He said: “I can remember saying 15, 20 years ago, that if we ever had a development in our movement where the power of Indigenous nationhood and Indigenous rights could be melded and brought together with the power of young Canadians who are committed to the environment and social justice, it would be revolutionary.”

It remains to be seen how this will all develop, but it is clear that an impactful non-violent strategy is now being employed to counter the state violence of both the police repression of unarmed Wet’suwet’en land defenders and the continued imposition of fossil fuel infrastructure that only deepens the global climate crisis.

Brent Patterson is a political activist and writer.

Unistoten.Camp: Six Land Defenders Violently Arrested on Wet’suwet’en Territories

cross-posted from Unistoten.camp

[Breaking story, info incoming] February 6, 2020:

Six people have been arrested and several others, including members of the press, have been detained and removed from Wet’suwet’en territories in an aggressive pre-dawn raid by RCMP on behalf of Coastal GasLink (TC Energy). Reports and footage are coming in from the siege. Dogs were used, media was banned from filming arrests. Militarized police with night vision and automatic weapons raided the camp in the dead of night.

Legal Fund 

Supporter Toolkit 

All photos by Jesse Winter @jwints

All photos by Jesse Winter @jwints

Water Protector Blockades Enbridge Great Lakes Office, Crowds Rally Across Minnesota on Day of Enbridge Shareholders Meeting

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: ginew@protonmail.com
laurel@ran.org

Water Protector Locks Down to Tripod Blocking Enbridge Great Lakes Office, Crowds Rally Across Minnesota on Day of Enbridge Shareholders Meeting

(Superior, MN) This morning, water protectors erected a tripod in front of the Enbridge Great Lakes office in Superior, at the terminus of the proposed Line 3 tar sands pipeline. One water protector locked down to the top of the tripod, with a message for the Enbridge shareholders: Line 3 will never be built in Minnesota.

Across northern Minnesota, water protectors gathered in Duluth and Bemidji, in solidarity against Enbridge’s promises to its shareholders that Line 3 will be fully operational by the second half of 2020. Enbridge lacks state permitting

Resistance against new tar sands pipeline expansion projects has been fierce. Delays or cancellations of the Energy East pipeline, Keystone XL pipeline, TransMountain pipeline, and Line 3 pipeline resulted in an announcement by the Alberta Premiere that tar sands production would be reduced by 8.7% for 2019.

When asked why they would take such a personal risk to their own safety, Anthony Graham (Chumash) said, “I stand in solidarity with my relatives up north and across Turtle Island. This is for the future. We have to be brave and fight. The oil industry is trying to grow when we know climate change is killing us. No more tar sands.”

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Statement of Solidarity with the Red Warrior and Sacred Stone Camps in North Dakota

dakota_access_pipelineStatement of Solidarity with the Red Warrior and Sacred Stone Camps in North Dakota

Pittsburgh, PA: Rising Tide North America released this statement in solidarity with the continuing resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota:

For months, the Standing Rock Sioux nation and Indigenous communities from across the continent against have captured the imagination of the world with a bold stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the energy companies, the politicians and police that are determined to build it. The actions of literally thousands have delayed the pipeline’s construction and brought its construction to a standstill.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,170-mile long oil pipeline that originates in the Bakken oilfields of western North Dakota. It will carry 470,000 barrels of crude a day to Pakota, Illinois where it will link with other pipelines and be carried to refineries around the country. If built, the pipeline will be a cultural and environmental threat to the Standing Rock Sioux. The pipeline crosses the nation’s traditional hunting, fishing and burial territory as well as directly crossing under the Missouri River, the Sioux’s main source of water.

Police have responded with heavy handed arrests of Indigenous activists and removed free access to the Red Warrior and Sacred Stone camps near the pipeline construction site. Politicians in North Dakota have declared a state of emergency to discredit the protest camps. Corporations seeking to profit from the pipeline have filed civil litigation against hundreds of protesters to silence the dissent of communities facing a future of poisoned land, water and air.

We believe that the extraction of fossil fuels like Bakken oil, and the expansion of pipelines and other transportation infrastructure, is a dangerous threat to our communities, our wild places and the climate. We further believe that these practices gravely threaten the health, safety and traditional land rights of Indigenous communities.

If we are determined to prevent the pursuit of extreme energy from destroying our communities, natural systems and climate, then peaceful, but confrontational, protests like the Red Warrior and Sacred Stone camps are necessary actions for change.

For over a decade, there has been an unprecedented show of unity from environmental and social justice communities for those fighting for justice and ecology and this time is no different. There is not an inch of daylight between us and those blocking construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. We stand with them as we’ve stood with those fighting mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, those that fought the Keystone XL Pipeline from Alberta to Texas, those challenging fighting fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure across this country and those that continue to fight for Indigenous rights.

We stand in solidarity with those who stand up for us all.

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