by Linda Rodriguez
You may not be aware of the fact that
over 3,000 people from over 50 Native tribes have been gathered at a
site on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in South Dakota where the
Dakota Access Pipeline was illegally trying to cross their land and
run an oil pipeline that will eventually be 1,000 miles long (just in
the United States) under the Missouri River, source of drinking water
for the Standing Rock Sioux and millions of other people (including
me and my family down in Kansas City, Missouri). One reason you may
not be aware of this, unless you are on my Facebook or Twitter feed,
is because the U.S. mainstream media has pretty much ignored this,
although it's been going on for weeks. The BBC, the British
newspapers, Reuters, al-Jazeera, and many other international news
sources have featured continuous coverage of it, but in this country,
it's been pretty much only Democracy Now, NPR, one article (late) in
the New York Times, and a brief mention on Laurence O'Donnell's TV
news show.
The #NoDAPL coalition has taken the
company behind the pipeline (owned in part by the Koch brothers) to
court, pointing out that there were sacred sites, burial sites, and
archaeological sites in the path to be dug up, and the pipeline and
state did not consult with the tribe, as they're legally required to
do, before going ahead with this dig. The court handed down an
injunction, forcing the digging to stop until after the case could be
heard in court later this week. Amnesty International, the ACLU, and
the UN have all weighed in on the side of the protesters—as have
four U.S. government agencies. Things looked good for some legal
redress.
Saturday, the company sent workers out
to start digging on a burial site with three bulldozers, against the
court's injunction. When the protesters told them this was not legal
and they must stop, private security contractors hired by the company
(not in any uniforms) and armed with Mace and attack dogs disrupted
all cell phone reception and attacked the peaceful protesters,
including pregnant women and children. Six people were bitten, one
hospitalized from being bitten in the face. Many were Maced and
needed medical treatment. The protesters stood firm, and finally the
workers and security people gave up and left (most likely because of
unexpected television cameras). The photo above shows one of the
security contractors and her attack dog with bloody mouth taken at
the scene. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman was on the scene interviewing
the protesters when these attacks took place and filmed it.
This whole scene reminded me of the
days of the robber barons when miners and other laborers were
organizing and striking against unsafe conditions, child labor, other
abuses of the time, and for the 40-hour week, paid holidays, and sick
leave. In those days, the billionaires who owned these companies
hired private armies of thugs to attack the workers—and in some
cases, kill them. So this whole event seemed appropriate, in a
bizarre way, for Labor Day weekend. Billionaire-owned companies with
private thugs (on the sly, behind the back and against the orders of
the court) attacking people defending their land and everyone's
water—this all sounded terribly familiar, in a way I would have
hoped not to see in 2016, as opposed to 1916.
Once again, however, the courage and
strength of ordinary people triumphed, as it did 100 years ago to
give us the labor laws we've come to rely on in this country—and
Labor Day. May it continue to be so.
