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"For the last seven years," writes Houska, "I have been fighting Line 3 with everything I have. If built, Line 3, a massive toxic tar sands pipeline, would destroy the sacred wild rice beds my people depend on for our food, our culture and our way of life. It would contribute as much to the climate crisis as 50 new coal-fired power plants. It would endanger 800 wetlands and 200 waterways." (Image: StoptheMoneyPipeline)
#DefundLine3: Because Stopping This Pipeline is a Matter of Justice
Over the next two months, we're going to make the financial companies that support Enbridge and its toxic tar sands project feel the heat. Here's the plan.
Feb 08, 2021
The fight to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline is about justice for the land. It's about justice for the water. Justice for Anishinaabe people whose culture and way of life it threatens. Justice for people all over the world who are being impacted by the climate crisis.
That's why I am excited to announce that, this week, we launched a major new campaign: #DefundLine3. You can click here to take the first action as part of this campaign.
Back in 2016, I helped to launch #DefundDAPL. As Indigenous Water Protectors were being brutalized by racist, militarized police--shot with rubber bullets, bitten by attack dogs and blasted with water cannons in the middle of winter--#DefundDAPL spread nationally.
"Together, I know that we can do this. Throughout history people-powered movements have changed the world. And they sure as hell can stop Line 3."
Protests erupted in cities around the country, close to a dozen city governments committed to breaking ties with the funders of DAPL and nearly $100 million in personal accounts were moved away from the funders of that colonial pipeline.
Now is the time for us to defund the White Supremacist, carbon bomb that is Line 3.
Over the next two months, we're going to make the financial companies that support Enbridge and its toxic Line 3 pipeline feel the heat. Here's the plan.
On March 31st, 18 banks have a $2.2 billion loan to Enbridge that is due for renewal. That is just 50 days from now. Between now and then, we're going to do everything in our power to make it loud and clear to the executives of those banks: They must walk away from Line 3--or there will be consequences.
Every week, we're going to ask you to take an action that helps put pressure on those 18 banks funding Line 3. We'll ask you to send direct emails to CEOs, call board members, take part in Covid-safe street protests, participate in projection actions, join online rallies and much more.
If enough of us take these actions together, we can make the companies funding Line 3 feel enough pressure that they will walk away from Enbridge.
For the last seven years, I have been fighting Line 3 with everything I have. If built, Line 3, a massive toxic tar sands pipeline, would destroy the sacred wild rice beds my people depend on for our food, our culture and our way of life. It would contribute as much to the climate crisis as 50 new coal-fired power plants. It would endanger 800 wetlands and 200 waterways.
Despite ongoing legal challenges from the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, and Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Minnesota's own Department of Commerce, environmental organizations, and 13 brave youth intervenors, construction of Line 3 continues--bringing thousands of out-of-state workers to northern Minnesota in the middle of a deadly pandemic, threatening already vulnerable rural, Indigenous communities with the virus even more.
As an Anishinaabe woman it is my duty to protect the water, the land, and my people. I am moved to act because I love the people, the four-legged, the winged, the finned, the land, the water.
It is my duty as an Anishinaabe woman that compels me to support people in taking direct action to stop the construction of Line 3. Direct action, like when Water Protectors recently locked themselves inside a section of pipe, blockaded the entrances to construction sites, and locked themselves to trucks being used to carry Line 3 pipeline materials.
It is from this sense of duty that I am asking you to join us in this campaign. Together, I know that we can do this. Throughout history people-powered movements have changed the world. And they sure as hell can stop Line 3.
Since the antiracist uprisings began last year, I have been proud to stand in solidarity with the demand of Black-led movements to defund the police. Indigenous people understand White Supremacist police brutality. Like Black folks of this country, we've faced it for centuries.
Now, just as racist police forces have brutalized Black and Indigenous bodies, Enbridge is brutalizing sacred Anishinaabe land--and is being protected by a militarized police force paid for by a Candian oil company as it does so.
Together, we are powerful.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
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Tara Houska
Tara Houska Tara Houska (Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe) is a tribal attorney, founder of Giniw Collective, and a former advisor on Native American affairs to Bernie Sanders. She spent six months on the frontlines fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, and is currently engaged in the movement to defund fossil fuels and a years-long struggle against Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline. She is a co-founder of Not Your Mascots, a group committed to positive representation of Native peoples.
The fight to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline is about justice for the land. It's about justice for the water. Justice for Anishinaabe people whose culture and way of life it threatens. Justice for people all over the world who are being impacted by the climate crisis.
That's why I am excited to announce that, this week, we launched a major new campaign: #DefundLine3. You can click here to take the first action as part of this campaign.
Back in 2016, I helped to launch #DefundDAPL. As Indigenous Water Protectors were being brutalized by racist, militarized police--shot with rubber bullets, bitten by attack dogs and blasted with water cannons in the middle of winter--#DefundDAPL spread nationally.
"Together, I know that we can do this. Throughout history people-powered movements have changed the world. And they sure as hell can stop Line 3."
Protests erupted in cities around the country, close to a dozen city governments committed to breaking ties with the funders of DAPL and nearly $100 million in personal accounts were moved away from the funders of that colonial pipeline.
Now is the time for us to defund the White Supremacist, carbon bomb that is Line 3.
Over the next two months, we're going to make the financial companies that support Enbridge and its toxic Line 3 pipeline feel the heat. Here's the plan.
On March 31st, 18 banks have a $2.2 billion loan to Enbridge that is due for renewal. That is just 50 days from now. Between now and then, we're going to do everything in our power to make it loud and clear to the executives of those banks: They must walk away from Line 3--or there will be consequences.
Every week, we're going to ask you to take an action that helps put pressure on those 18 banks funding Line 3. We'll ask you to send direct emails to CEOs, call board members, take part in Covid-safe street protests, participate in projection actions, join online rallies and much more.
If enough of us take these actions together, we can make the companies funding Line 3 feel enough pressure that they will walk away from Enbridge.
For the last seven years, I have been fighting Line 3 with everything I have. If built, Line 3, a massive toxic tar sands pipeline, would destroy the sacred wild rice beds my people depend on for our food, our culture and our way of life. It would contribute as much to the climate crisis as 50 new coal-fired power plants. It would endanger 800 wetlands and 200 waterways.
Despite ongoing legal challenges from the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, and Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Minnesota's own Department of Commerce, environmental organizations, and 13 brave youth intervenors, construction of Line 3 continues--bringing thousands of out-of-state workers to northern Minnesota in the middle of a deadly pandemic, threatening already vulnerable rural, Indigenous communities with the virus even more.
As an Anishinaabe woman it is my duty to protect the water, the land, and my people. I am moved to act because I love the people, the four-legged, the winged, the finned, the land, the water.
It is my duty as an Anishinaabe woman that compels me to support people in taking direct action to stop the construction of Line 3. Direct action, like when Water Protectors recently locked themselves inside a section of pipe, blockaded the entrances to construction sites, and locked themselves to trucks being used to carry Line 3 pipeline materials.
It is from this sense of duty that I am asking you to join us in this campaign. Together, I know that we can do this. Throughout history people-powered movements have changed the world. And they sure as hell can stop Line 3.
Since the antiracist uprisings began last year, I have been proud to stand in solidarity with the demand of Black-led movements to defund the police. Indigenous people understand White Supremacist police brutality. Like Black folks of this country, we've faced it for centuries.
Now, just as racist police forces have brutalized Black and Indigenous bodies, Enbridge is brutalizing sacred Anishinaabe land--and is being protected by a militarized police force paid for by a Candian oil company as it does so.
Together, we are powerful.
Tara Houska
Tara Houska Tara Houska (Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe) is a tribal attorney, founder of Giniw Collective, and a former advisor on Native American affairs to Bernie Sanders. She spent six months on the frontlines fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, and is currently engaged in the movement to defund fossil fuels and a years-long struggle against Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline. She is a co-founder of Not Your Mascots, a group committed to positive representation of Native peoples.
The fight to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline is about justice for the land. It's about justice for the water. Justice for Anishinaabe people whose culture and way of life it threatens. Justice for people all over the world who are being impacted by the climate crisis.
That's why I am excited to announce that, this week, we launched a major new campaign: #DefundLine3. You can click here to take the first action as part of this campaign.
Back in 2016, I helped to launch #DefundDAPL. As Indigenous Water Protectors were being brutalized by racist, militarized police--shot with rubber bullets, bitten by attack dogs and blasted with water cannons in the middle of winter--#DefundDAPL spread nationally.
"Together, I know that we can do this. Throughout history people-powered movements have changed the world. And they sure as hell can stop Line 3."
Protests erupted in cities around the country, close to a dozen city governments committed to breaking ties with the funders of DAPL and nearly $100 million in personal accounts were moved away from the funders of that colonial pipeline.
Now is the time for us to defund the White Supremacist, carbon bomb that is Line 3.
Over the next two months, we're going to make the financial companies that support Enbridge and its toxic Line 3 pipeline feel the heat. Here's the plan.
On March 31st, 18 banks have a $2.2 billion loan to Enbridge that is due for renewal. That is just 50 days from now. Between now and then, we're going to do everything in our power to make it loud and clear to the executives of those banks: They must walk away from Line 3--or there will be consequences.
Every week, we're going to ask you to take an action that helps put pressure on those 18 banks funding Line 3. We'll ask you to send direct emails to CEOs, call board members, take part in Covid-safe street protests, participate in projection actions, join online rallies and much more.
If enough of us take these actions together, we can make the companies funding Line 3 feel enough pressure that they will walk away from Enbridge.
For the last seven years, I have been fighting Line 3 with everything I have. If built, Line 3, a massive toxic tar sands pipeline, would destroy the sacred wild rice beds my people depend on for our food, our culture and our way of life. It would contribute as much to the climate crisis as 50 new coal-fired power plants. It would endanger 800 wetlands and 200 waterways.
Despite ongoing legal challenges from the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, and Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Minnesota's own Department of Commerce, environmental organizations, and 13 brave youth intervenors, construction of Line 3 continues--bringing thousands of out-of-state workers to northern Minnesota in the middle of a deadly pandemic, threatening already vulnerable rural, Indigenous communities with the virus even more.
As an Anishinaabe woman it is my duty to protect the water, the land, and my people. I am moved to act because I love the people, the four-legged, the winged, the finned, the land, the water.
It is my duty as an Anishinaabe woman that compels me to support people in taking direct action to stop the construction of Line 3. Direct action, like when Water Protectors recently locked themselves inside a section of pipe, blockaded the entrances to construction sites, and locked themselves to trucks being used to carry Line 3 pipeline materials.
It is from this sense of duty that I am asking you to join us in this campaign. Together, I know that we can do this. Throughout history people-powered movements have changed the world. And they sure as hell can stop Line 3.
Since the antiracist uprisings began last year, I have been proud to stand in solidarity with the demand of Black-led movements to defund the police. Indigenous people understand White Supremacist police brutality. Like Black folks of this country, we've faced it for centuries.
Now, just as racist police forces have brutalized Black and Indigenous bodies, Enbridge is brutalizing sacred Anishinaabe land--and is being protected by a militarized police force paid for by a Candian oil company as it does so.
Together, we are powerful.
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