August, 31 2022, 02:12pm EDT
![Indigenous Environmental Network](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012615/origin.jpg)
Sept 8: Mass Resistance to Manchin's Dirty Pipeline Deal
On the heels of massive climate legislation passing in Congress, a dirty pipeline bill proposed by Senator Joe Manchin threatens to severely weaken the governmental safeguards in place to prevent community and environmental harm from many types of projects, and threatens to legislate extraordinary measures to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) a pet project of Senator Manchin.
WASHINGTON
On the heels of massive climate legislation passing in Congress, a dirty pipeline bill proposed by Senator Joe Manchin threatens to severely weaken the governmental safeguards in place to prevent community and environmental harm from many types of projects, and threatens to legislate extraordinary measures to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) a pet project of Senator Manchin.
REGISTER HERE
MVP is a proposed, unwanted, unnecessary 303-mile-long fracked gas pipeline that is steamrolling its way through Virginia and West Virginia.
On Thursday, September 8, 2022 the Stop MVP coalition and People vs. Fossil Fuels coalition will convene in Washington, D.C. for 'No Sacrifice Zones: Appalachian Resistance Comes to DC,' to stop the MVP, show massive public opposition to Manchin's dirty deal, unite the Appalachian frontlines and show how all sacrifice zones are connected so all of our voices and stories can be heard.
WHAT: No Sacrifice Zones: Appalachian Resistance Comes to DC - Lobby Day and Public Rally
WHEN & WHERE: Thursday, September 8, 2022, lobbying throughout the day, public rally at 5:00 PM ET at Robert A Taft Memorial Carillon (intersections New Jersey Ave and Constitution Ave)* 101 New Jersey Ave NW, Washington, DC 20510 US
WHO: The Stop MVP coalition and People vs. Fossil Fuels coalition. Community leaders on the frontlines of the fight for Appalachia's just future, and other frontline and environmental justice leaders fighting alongside us.
WHY: We are done being sacrifice zones, and we must stop this bill and MVP! We want to build community between intersectional Appalachian resistance organizations and have their voices heard! We must protect bedrock environmental laws and public input. We are in solidarity with all frontlines of the climate crisis.
###
SPEAKERS:
John Beard, Founder, Chairman, CEO of Port Arthur Community Action Network
After working in the oil industry for 38 years, Beard turned to holding the industry accountable and became a community advocate in his hometown of Port Arthur, Texas. He founded the Port Arthur Community Action Network to fight for health and safety protections in an area teeming with refineries, export terminals, petrochemical plants -- and cancer. In the past year Beard has emerged as an environmental justice leader on the national and world stage. He was one of the frontline leaders of October's historic People Vs. Fossil Fuels week of action in Washington, which saw thousands demanding that President Biden stop approvals of fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency.
Sharon Lavigne, Founder, Rise St. James
In September 2019, Sharon Lavigne, a special education teacher turned environmental justice advocate, successfully stopped the construction of a US$1.25 billion plastics manufacturing plant alongside the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Lavigne mobilized grassroots opposition to the project, educated community members, and organized peaceful protests to defend her predominantly African American community. The plant would have generated one million pounds of liquid hazardous waste annually, in a region already contending with known carcinogens and toxic air pollution.
Roishetta Ozane, Organizer, SW Louisiana, SE Texas, Healthy Gulf
Roishetta is Healthy Gulf's Community Organizer for Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas bringing communities together to stop the buildout of petrochemical and fracked gas export facilities in the region. She is serving as a She Leads Fellow for the Power Coalition where she empowers other women of color to go out into their communities and make positive change. She is the founder of The Vessel Project of Louisiana, a small mutual aid organization located in Southwest Louisiana that was founded in the aftermath of several federally declared natural disasters that ravaged Southwest Louisiana.
Russell Chisholm, Mountain Valley Watch Coordinator, Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition (POWHR)
Russell is a fierce opponent of the Mountain Valley Pipeline based out of Newport, Virginia. He currently serves as Co-Chair of the Protect Our Water, Heritage Rights Coalition. He began organizing against the MVP seven years ago when the pipeline was first proposed on his community's land. He has since emerged as a leading voice and key spokesperson in the fight to protect West Virginia and Virginia's land, water, rights, and committees.
Crystal Cavalier-Keck
Co-Founder, Seven Directions of Service
Crystal Cavalier-Keck is the co-founder of Seven Directions of Service with her husband. She is a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in Burlington, NC. She is the Chair of the Environmental Justice Committee for the NAACP, a board member of the Haw River Assembly and a member of the 2020 Fall Cohort of the Sierra Club's Gender Equity and Environment Program and Women's Earth Alliance (WEA) Accelerator for Grassroots Women Environmental Leaders.
Crystal is currently working on her Doctorate at the University of Dayton and dissertation on Social Justice of Missing Murdered Indigenous Women and Gas/Oil Pipelines in frontline communities. Crystal is also an expert in her field of Strategic Intelligence, Political Campaigns, and Public Administration. She has conducted training along and around the East Coast on Coordinated Tribal/Community Response for emergency management, through natural, cyber, or man-made disasters.
Joye Braun, Wanbli Wiyan Ka'win, National Pipelines Campaign Organizer, Indigenous Environmental Network
Eagle Feather Woman is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Joye was was one of the first campers at Sacred Stone Camp, moved to Oceti Sakowin Camp, and was at Blackhoop or Seven Generations Camp during eviction of the camps. Joye's history of community activism includes the long fought campaign against the Keystone XL the project resurrected at the same time DAPL was renewed and continues to threaten her homelands. She is also making stands to protect the Sacred Black Hills, her Ancestral sacred lands against Fracking, Uranium and Gold mining. Joye travels extensively and speaks throughout the northern plains and participates in Indigenous gatherings in the U.S. and Canada speaking about the negative impacts the extractive economy has on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the abuses taking place in the oil patch, pipeline work, and communities where man-camps bring drugs, human trafficking, and increase crime rates wherever they are located. She is a wife, mother and grandmother.
Katherine Ferguson, Interim Executive Director, Community Organizer, Our Future West Virginia
Kathy Ferguson is a community advocate from the unincorporated district of Institute; championing racial, social, environmental, economic and restorative justice causes. She brings 25 years of social service work experience within the criminal justice system to our organization. As an organizer she will continue to demonstrate a clear commitment to helping those who are in most need and giving voice to those who are disenfranchised. Kathy is a believer in social justice and equality for all, dedicating both her professional and personal time towards this end.
Anthony Rogers-Wright, Director of Environmental Justice, NYLPI
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright serves as NYLPI's Director of Environmental Justice. In this capacity, he guides and coordinates the organization's EJ strategy, litigation, organizing and advocacy initiatives. Prior to joining NYLPI, Anthony was the Policy Coordinator and Green New Deal Policy Lead with the Climate Justice Alliance, where he assisted with developing and promulgating local, State, and federal organizing and policy strategy for the alliance's 74 grassroots, frontline-led organizations across the country. A veteran of social justice campaigns, Anthony helped lead the effort to make the former Colorado Health Insurance Cooperative the first health insurance provider in the state's history to remove transgender exclusions from all of their policies in 2012. He has acted as a policy advisor for numerous candidates for elected office including Senator Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign in 2020, and Senator Bernie Sanders's presidential campaigns in 2020 and 2016 when he represented the campaign during testimony to the DNC Platform Committee. Anthony was selected as one of the Grist.org "50 Environmentalists You'll Be Talking About" in 2016.
Naadiya Hutchinson, Government Affairs Manager, WE ACT for Environmental Justice.
Based in WE ACT's Federal Policy Office in Washington, DC, she ensures that government agencies and elected officials learn about and are mobilized to act on environmental justice issues and concerns. Naadiya got her Masters of Health Science from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Environmental Health, where she focused on environmental justice and gentrification. She aims to decrease environmental inequities and ensure a just transition in legacy to her family and community that have suffered for decades.
Justin J. Pearson, President & Founder, Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP)
Justin J. Pearson is the fourth son of five boys born to teenage parents in Memphis, Tennessee. Justin J. graduated from Mitchell High School as Valedictorian and Bowdoin College in 2017 majoring in both Government & Legal Studies and Education Studies. Justin J. is also a leader of Memphis Community Against Pollution and co-founder of Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP) which is a Black-led environmental justice organization that successfully defeated a multi-billion dollar company's crude oil pipeline project. He is the Co-Lead and the Strategic Advisor for the Mid South Mobilization Committee of the Poor People's Campaign: National Call for Moral Revival. He currently lives in Memphis and also works at the headquarters of Year Up in Boston, Massachusetts. He is focused on social, racial, and economic justice as Special Assistant to the CEO of Year Up - a national program helping 18 - 24-year-olds gain training and entry-level jobs. Justin J. Pearson has an unwavering commitment to justice and dedicates his life to this endless pursuit.
James Hiatt, Southwest Louisiana Coordinator for the Louisiana Bucket Brigade
James has over a decade of experience working in the petrochemical industry - as a ship agent, a dock worker, a tank farm operator, and a laboratory analyst. He has seen and experienced the cognitive dissonance many workers feel between earning a living and the negative impacts on health and the environment that come from these industries. James has deep roots in Southwest Louisiana, having been born in Sulphur and raised in Lake Charles. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from McNeese State University. He completed a two-year Contemplative spirituality program in 2019 at the Living School for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His great joys in life include spending time with his family and friends, traveling, music, and working towards a more just and loving world.
Jeremiah Joseph, community member from a mining-impacted community in California
Jeremiah is 38 years of age, and was grown and ripened on the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation. He currently works as a Cultural Resource Protector and Land Restoration Specialist, protecting ancestral lands at Conglomerate Mesa from the impacts of gold mining.
Cheyenna Morgan, member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indian and a descendant of the Oglala Lakota Tribe
Cheyenna grew up in a small town in eastern Oklahoma on Tsalagi land, Stilwell, Oklahoma. Cheyenna is with Ikiya Collective, Ikiya Collective is a frontline-led group of femme, queer, two-spirit Black, Indigenous, and people of the global majority organizing in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico who believe through direct action another world is possible.
Established in 1990 within the United States, IEN was formed by grassroots Indigenous peoples and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues (EJ). IEN's activities include building the capacity of Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.
LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular