By Amanda Follett Osgood, The Tyee
“Jail me for being a loving grandma who cares about her yintah,” says Brenda Michell. Yintah is the Wet’suwet’en word for land. Michell issues her challenge from the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre, where she is a teacher. The centre is last in a string of outposts on Wet’suwet’en land the RCMP are expected to clear, today or in coming days.
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) audit highlights what can go wrong when state and local regulators are unprepared for the arrival of a powerful industry, illustrating the pressures when once-unobtrusive offices suddenly take on outsized importance amid a push to promote rapid development.
By Tracy L. Barnett, Esperanza Project
What do I want to be called? Water Protector. Spiritual Activist. Unci. In reality, I’m just one person who stood up with thousands of others when the water called them.
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
But in the swamps of the Atchafalaya Basin, roughly a million acres of bayous, lakes, and wetlands that span upwards from the Gulf of Mexico for 140 miles into Louisiana, there’s one thing that hasn’t responded as it should to the rising waters: construction of Energy Transfer’s Bayou Bridge pipeline.
By Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog
Battles over new shale gas and oil pipelines involving Energy Transfer, formerly known as Energy Transfer Partners, have heated up in recent weeks — an escalation that carries a tilt, as one side stands accused of acts of violence.
By Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence
Saturday’s rally was only the latest manifestation of the indigenous-led resistance to the Trans Mountain project, which has grown in size and boldness this year.
By Julie Dermansky, DeSmog Blog
Sharon Lavigne and Geraldine Mayho took me to meet some of the most vulnerable members of their community, handicapped residents of St. James, Louisiana, who live near a terminal where the Bayou Bridge pipeline will end. “These people have no way of getting out if there is a spill or explosion,” Lavigne told me.
By Janice Canteri, YES! magazine
Since the fall, indigenous women of the Secwepemc Nation—calling themselves the Tiny House Warriors—have been constructing tiny houses that they plan to strategically place in the pathway of the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
By Theo LeQuesne, Climate Justice Project
The next Standing Rock probably won’t look like Standing Rock, it will have learned and adapted from Standing Rock successes and failures and will be contextualized in a different political landscape. If May 31st does not resolve the conflict, I think that’s what we might be about to see here in Coast Salish Territory.
By Natasha Geiling, Climate Progress
The preliminary injunction against construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline — which would stretch 162 miles across Louisiana — was cheered as a major victory by environmental groups, who challenged the Army Corps of Engineers’ initial approval of the project.
By Julie Dermansky, DeSmog Blog
On December 16 anti-pipeline activists calling themselves water protectors gathered in Rayne, Louisiana, on land located along the proposed route of the Bayou Bridge pipeline. The gathering occurred two days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality granted Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) the last permit needed to build the pipeline.
By Chris Paulus, Occupy.com
Yet even amid the companies' growing use of scare tactics and secret maneuvers, citizens are ramping up direct action. People have braved the elements and matched the energy giants with their own brand of force, as residents nationwide turn to a mix of creative and traditional tactics to halt as many projects as they can.