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Everyone has a role to play in stopping the Line 3 pipeline
Everyone has a role to play in stopping the Line 3 pipeline
On Monday, July 19, in a red shirt and long black skirt, Sasha Beaulieu strode toward the Middle River in northwestern Minnesota to fulfill her official role as the Red Lake Nation Tribal Monitor. The water was incredibly low from the drought, and in parts the river bed was completely dry — all of which she would report to the Army Corps of Engineers with the hope of stopping the Canadian corporation Enbridge from drilling under Middle River to install the controversial Line 3 pipeline. Enbridge had already polluted the Willow River while trying to install the pipeline, an accident discovered by water protectors and reported to regulators. Beaulieu explained on Facebook Live that the company is supposed to stop pumping water when the river level is below a foot and a half, but Enbridge was not complying.
As Beaulieu recorded her findings, 40 people from the Red Lake Treaty Camp took up positions on the bridge, chanting and holding signs, the largest of which said, “Honor the Old Crossing Treaty of 1863,” which gives people of the Red Lake Nation the right to sustain themselves through fishing on the region’s rivers, as well as hunting and performing ceremony there. Meanwhile, at the Shell River, two hours to the southeast, a different tactic was being deployed, as famed Indigenous rights activist Winona LaDuke and six other elder women sat in lawn chairs, blocking Enbridge construction in defiant civil disobedience.
What role were you born to play in social change?
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‘Divest The Globe’ protests urge banks to cut ties with fossil fuels
‘Divest The Globe’ protests urge banks to cut ties with fossil fuels
On Monday, activists in Washington, D.C. demonstrated outside the John A. Wilson Building — home to both the mayor and city council. (350 DC)
While banking executives from over 90 of the world’s largest financial institutions gathered in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Monday for the start of a three-day meeting on the environmental and social impacts of their infrastructure investments, activists in at least 15 U.S. states and several other countries staged protests under the banner of “Divest The Globe.” Their message to the banks was simple: cut ties with fossil fuel companies, or face major divestment campaigns.
The demonstrations unfolded in over 50 cities — including Seattle, where at least six people were arrested during a protest at a Chase bank — and are being called the largest ever protest against banks’ investments in fossil fuels. As the meeting continues in Sao Paolo over the next two days, solidarity protests are expected in more cities across Europe, Asia and Africa.
The group largely responsible for organizing these Divest The Globe actions is the Seattle-based, indigenous-led divestment campaign Mazaska Talks, which means “money talks” in Lakota. They chose this gathering of bankers as their target because it’s the annual meeting of the Equator Principles Association, which provides guidelines, or so-called Equator Principles, “for determining, assessing and managing environmental and social risk in projects.”
According to organizer Jackie Fielder, activists want to ensure the association gets its “Equator Principles in line with the Paris Agreement, as well as internationally-recognized standards on indigenous rights upheld in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.” Fielder went on to cite “the spirit of the Standing Rock resistance camps” as inspiration for the Divest The Globe protests, saying it “really raised the consciousness of people to think about where their money has been going when it’s sitting in a bank.”
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