Day 12

 

David Daniel lives with his wife and daughter in Winnsboro, Texas, about two hours east of Dallas and close to Texas A&M University. He is a homesteader with twenty acres who built his home with own bare hands. Today those calloused hands were cuffed behind his back with plastic zip-ties. He was arrested for unlawful assembly at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He was not alone. Hardly. One hundred ten others, including six members of Sustainable Living Roadshow, were frisked, photographed, and fined.

Today was Day 12 of the Tar Sands Action, a intelligently-organized protest against the Keystone XL Pipeline, which President Obama has the power to prevent. There is deep public distress about this project and it is the objective of this non-violent direct action to communicate that reality. As of this evening, 706 persons have been taken away in police vans. They'd traveled to the nation's capitol from every region of the United States, teenagers to octogenarians. Last night, SLR, under the covert nom de geurre Sustainable World Action Team, or SWAP, attended a mandatory, four-hour workshop held in St. Stephens and the Incarnation Episcopal Church, at the corner of Newton Street NW and 16^th Street NW, in the District of Columbia. Things pretty much went down today the way we were told they would. The police gave two unequivocal warnings and the chance to disperse. Yours truly handed off his protest sign and peeled away after the first. Arrests began after the third warning. In a show of chivalry, women were taken first, every one of them, before the first man was taken. From the barricades the SLR-peppered crowd cheered on Emma, Bridgette and Kelsey, then Tom, Daniel and David as they were put through the system. Fists were raised, songs were sung, cheers were chanted. It's important to keep the message clear, the energy high.

While there is widespread support from the Usual Suspects, The Tar Sands Action is spear-headed by Bill McKibben's 350.org, dedicated to reducing atmospheric CO2 to 350 parts per million (ppm); currently it's about 390 ppm. The Athabasca Oil Sands are located in Northeastern Alberta, Canada, and in a broad stroke and textbook example of Eminent Domain, the XL Pipeline would cut a swath from there, down across America, to processing plants along the Texas Gulf Coast, and smack dab through the middle of David Daniel's property. Along its route, the pipeline will pass over the Ogallala Aquifer, a 10,000 square mile subterranean body of water and a major source of water for the High Plains. Intensive farming has depleted nearly half of it, an amount equal to Lake Erie. After the ineptitude and debacle of the Deep Water Horizon Incident, we can't chance anything happening to this precious resource.

The Athabasca Oil Sands, as a precursor to petroleum, is one of the dirtiest energy sources around. It takes almost as much energy to produce as it will eventually yield. Only the high price of gasoline, the lure of job creation, and the politics of importation from a friendly, neighboring nation have made this extraction viable.

Last night's training in non-violent direct action and civil disobedience was one thing. Actually standing on the sidewalk in front of the White House tempting fate was quite another. “There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear.” Wrong! It is perfectly clear. What's happening here is that I've changed. They say total immersion is the surest way to master a language. By the same token, I have immersed myself in a circle of souls out to change the status quo. An adage espoused in AA proposes that if you hang around a barber shop long enough eventually you get a haircut. In this instance, I've gotten more than just a trim around the ears.

Martin Luther King, Jr. believed non-violent action is the sword that heals. If that's true, it's high-time for this citizen to break out his sharpening stone.