October, 11 2021, 12:51pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Cassidy DiPaola, cassidy@stgresults.com
Megan Rufty, seventhgen@allisonpr.com
Water Protectors to Deliver 1 Million Petitions to Stop Line 3 Oil Pipeline
Indigenous leaders from Northern Minnesota to deliver petitions to the Biden Administration at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers HQ.
WASHINGTON
On Tuesday, October 12th, more than 100 Indigenous leaders and supporters who have been resisting the construction of the expanded Line 3 tar sands pipeline will deliver one million petitions asking the Biden Administration to stop the project pending a full environmental review.
The group of 100+ water protectors will rally, hold ceremony with Anishinaabe drummers, and speak outside the headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, calling on Jamie Pinkham, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works to conduct a full federal environmental impact statement to assess the Line 3 pipeline's threats to human rights, water, and climate.
WHAT: Stop Line 3 Petition Delivery, Rally and Press Conference
WHEN: 1:30-2:30 PM ET, Tuesday, October 12, 2021.
1:30 Rally begins with music and ceremony, press availability
2:00 Speeches and delivery of petitions
WHERE: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters (front of building)
441 G St. NW Washington, DC 20314
WHO: The event will feature speakers from the Indigenous-led struggle to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, known as water protectors.
Taysha Martineau (Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Anishinaabe) - Founder of Camp Migizi
Ron Turney (White Earth Nation), Traditional Artist, Photographer, IEN Media
Sasha Beaulieu (Red Lake), founder Red Lake Treaty Camp and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa to Line 3 Construction Monitor
Silas Neeland (White Earth Nation), youth leader
Guests who will attend the rally in support of the Water Protectors will include:
Alison Whritenour, CEO, Seventh Generation
Bill McKibben, author, co-founder of 350.org
John Miller, former Navy diver who returned medals in protest of Line 3
Media Information: Speakers and experts will be available for interviews during and after the rally. Photographs, videography and interviews welcomed. B-roll is available upon request. The event will be live streamed on the Honor the Earth Facebook Page.
Visuals: Drummers, 2 large water puppets, aerial photos of pipeline damage, 1 million petition signatures
Background:
Speakers will demand action from elected officials to consider the disastrous impacts of Line 3 and stop its oil from flowing. For seven years, Indigenous community members in Northern Minnesota, climate activists, landowners and allies have resisted the Enbridge Corporation's expanded Line 3 tar sands pipeline as a danger to the climate, water and land, and to the human beings in its path. The pipeline undermines the Indigenous treaty rights of the Anishinaabe people, crossing the 1854 and 1855 treaty territory where Anishinaabe people retain the right to hunt, fish, gather medicines, and harvest wild rice.
With the carbon emissions equivalent of 50 coal-powered plants and crossing more than 227 lakes and rivers, Line 3 threatens the drinking water of 18 million people and the health and wellness of many more.
Tribal governments, state legislators and members of Congress, and hundreds of community, environmental and racial justice organizations have all called for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete a full Environmental Impact Statement before the pipeline is allowed to operate.
About 900 people have been arrested in peaceful actions resisting pipeline construction.
With the announcement that pipeline construction is "substantially complete," the call for a full environmental review has become more urgent because of ongoing damage to waterways along the construction route. Earlier this year, Army Corps Secretary Jamie Pinkham visited Minnesota and saw the impacts of Line 3 first-hand. He met with tribal officials and some of the water protectors who will present the petitions but has failed to follow up on commitments to address their concerns.
The 1 million+ signatures being delivered are addressed to President Biden, White House Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy and Army Corps Secretary Jamie Pinkham, and were collected by a wide range of community, environmental, and racial justice groups including Braided Justice Collective, Daily Kos, Friends of the Earth, Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate, Honor The Earth, Lakota Law Project, MoveOn, 198 methods, Rainforest Action Network, Seventh Generation, Sierra Club, Stand.Earth, and 350.org.
The event is hosted by Honor The Earth, an Indigenous-led environmental justice organization based in Northern Minnesota, with support from Seventh Generation, Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), and the People versus Fossil Fuels coalition. The delivery is part of the "People vs. Fossil Fuels" mobilization, a week of protests and civil disobedience a
The Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International is a solutions-based organization established to engage women worldwide in policy advocacy, on-the-ground projects, direct action, trainings, and movement building for global climate justice.
LATEST NEWS
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Environmental defenders on Tuesday ripped the company behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline for asking the federal government—on Earth Day—for permission to start sending methane gas through the 303-mile conduit despite a worsening climate emergency caused largely by burning fossil fuels.
Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC sent a letter Monday to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Acting Secretary Debbie-Anne Reese seeking final permission to begin operation on the MVP next month, even while acknowledging that much of the Virginia portion of the pipeline route remains unfinished and developers have yet to fully comply with safety requirements.
"In a manner typical of its ongoing disrespect for the environment, Mountain Valley Pipeline marked Earth Day by asking FERC for authorization to place its dangerous, unnecessary pipeline into service in late May," said Jessica Sims, the Virginia field coordinator for Appalachian Voices.
"MVP brazenly asks for this authorization while simultaneously notifying FERC that the company has completed less than two-thirds of the project to final restoration and with the mere promise that it will notify the commission when it fully complies with the requirements of a consent decree it entered into with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last fall," she continued.
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Russell Chisholm, co-director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition—which called MVP's request "reckless and impossible"—said in a statement that "we are watching our worst nightmare unfold in real-time: The reckless MVP is barreling towards completion."
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POWHR and activists representing frontline communities affected by the pipeline are set to take part in a May 8 demonstration outside project financier Bank of America's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Appalachian Voices noted that MVP's request comes days before pipeline developer Equitrans Midstream is set to release its 2024 first-quarter earnings information on April 30.
MVP is set to traverse much of Virginia and West Virginia, with the Southgate extension running into North Carolina. Outgoing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other pipeline proponents fought to include expedited construction of the project in the debt ceiling deal negotiated between President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans last year.
On Monday, climate and environmental defenders also petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, challenging FERC's approval of the MVP's planned Southgate extension, contending that the project is so different from original plans that the government's previous assent is now irrelevant.
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David Sligh, conservation director at Wild Virginia, said: "Approving the Southgate project is irresponsible. This project will pose the same kinds of threats of damage to the environment and the people along its path as we have seen caused by the Mountain Valley Pipeline during the last six years."
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Others renewed warnings about the dangers MVP poses to wildlife.
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U.S. workers' rights advocates and groups celebrated on Tuesday after the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to approve a ban on most noncompete clauses, which Democratic FTC Chair Lina Khansaid "keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism."
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Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, praised the FTC for "listening to the comments of thousands of entrepreneurs and workers of all income levels across industries" and finalizing a rule that "is a clear-cut win."
Demand Progress' Emily Peterson-Cassin similarly commended the commission "for taking a strong stance against this egregious use of corporate power, thereby empowering workers to switch jobs and launch new ventures, and unlocking billions of dollars in worker earnings."
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Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) executive director Mike Pierce pointed out that the FTC on Tuesday "recognized the harmful role debt plays in the workplace, including the growing use of training repayment agreement provisions, or TRAPs, and took action to outlaw TRAPs and all other employer-driven debt that serve the same functions as noncompete agreements."
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at Open Markets Institute, highlighted that the addition came after his group, SBPC, and others submitted comments on the "significant gap" in the commission's initial January 2023 proposal, and also welcomed that "the final rule prohibits both conventional noncompete clauses and newfangled versions like TRAPs."
Jonathan Harris, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and SBPC senior fellow, said that "by also banning functional noncompetes, the rule stays one step ahead of employers who use 'stay-or-pay' contracts as workarounds to existing restrictions on traditional noncompetes. The FTC has decided to try to avoid a game of whack-a-mole with employers and their creative attorneys, which worker advocates will applaud."
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Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, also cheered the effort to stop corporations from holding employees "hostage," saying that "this rule is a critical step for protecting our nation's workers and making labor markets fairer and more competitive."
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Democracy defenders on Tuesday hailed a ruling from a U.S. federal judge striking down a 19th-century North Carolina law criminalizing people who vote while on parole, probation, or post-release supervision due to a felony conviction.
In Monday's decision, U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs—an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama—sided with the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute and Action NC, who argued that the 1877 law discriminated against Black people.
"The challenged statute was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters," Biggs wrote in her 25-page ruling.
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Voting rights tracker Democracy Docket noted that Monday's ruling "does not have any bearing on North Carolina's strict felony disenfranchisement law, which denies the right to vote for those with felony convictions who remain on probation, parole, or a suspended sentence—often leaving individuals without voting rights for many years after release from incarceration."
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"It also makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society, specifically Black voters who were the target of this law," Brown added.
North Carolina officials have not said whether they will appeal Biggs' ruling. The state Department of Justice said it was reviewing the decision.
According to Forward Justice—a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South, "Although Black people constitute 21% of the voting-age population in North Carolina, they represent 42% of the people disenfranchised while on probation, parole, or post-release supervision."
The group notes that in 44 North Carolina counties, "the disenfranchisement rate for Black people is more than three times the rate of the white population."
"Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to re-engage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
In what one civil rights leader called "the largest expansion of voting rights in this state since the 1965 Voting Rights Act," a three-judge state court panel voted 2-1 in 2021 to restore voting rights to approximately 55,000 formerly incarcerated felons. The decision made North Carolina the only Southern state to automatically restore former felons' voting rights.
Republican state legislators appealed that ruling to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which in 2022 granted their request for a stay—but only temporarily, as the court allowed a previous injunction against any felony disenfranchisement based on fees or fines to stand.
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As similar battles play out in other states, Democratic U.S. lawmakers led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont in December introduced legislation to end former felon disenfranchisement in federal elections and guarantee incarcerated people the right to vote.
Currently, only Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia allow all incarcerated people to vote behind bars.
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