pipeline activists

Climate Movement Monday: Gaza + militarized response to peaceful protest

/ Tracy Abell / 10 Comments

Welcome back to Movement Mondays in which we discuss all things climate-related. I didn’t post the last two weeks due to “reality overwhelm,” but am back today to share some info and offer a few quick actions. Thank you for being here with me. 🙂

Embroidery by @hibstitches on Instagram

These actions are requested from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and I’m including them today because as I wrote earlier, in addition to Israel genociding Palestinians, the “emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have immense effect on climate catastrophe.” Everyone and everything on the planet is connected. The asks from JVP:

As always, personalized messages are the most powerful. These actions come from JVP’s article Rafah: The penultimate step in Israel’s march of genocide and you may read that here.

Thank you for taking action on behalf of Palestinians and the entire planet! ❤️💚

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Now, I’d like to share an illuminating article by Adam Federman which was produced in partnership with Grist and Type Investigations: How the US government began its decade-long campaign against the anti-pipeline movement. The subheading: Newly released documents show the FBI monitoring anti-Keystone protesters much earlier than previously known. Young Native activists were among its first targets.

I encourage you to read the entire article, but here are a few key paragraphs:

Environmental activists and attorneys who reviewed the new documents told Grist and Type Investigations that law enforcement’s approach to the Keystone XL campaign looked like a template for the increasingly militarized response to subsequent environmental and social justice campaigns — from efforts to block the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock to the ongoing protests against the police training center dubbed “Cop City” in Atlanta, Georgia, which would require razing at least 85 acres of urban forest. 

I’ve written about Cop City here, here, here, here, and connected the dots here.

Hundreds of pages of FBI and State Department files released through the Freedom of Information Act over the last decade highlight an increasingly close relationship between law enforcement agencies and the fossil fuel industry.

The police exist to protect capital and property, not the people or planet. And they don’t even feel the need to hide that connection between cops and capital, as pointed out in this paragraph:

“…starting in late 2012, TransCanada began delivering its own briefing to local law enforcement agencies along the proposed pipeline route. The PowerPoint presentations, which included profiles of organizers at 350.org, Rainforest Action Network, and Tar Sands Blockade, encouraged law enforcement to pursue federal anti-terrorism charges in conjunction with the FBI.”

And near the article’s end is this “…however, actions targeting fossil fuel infrastructure continue to pop up across the country.” 

Things will continue to escalate as the powerful elite try to ram more fossil fuel projects through. But, there are more of us than them and we’re on the right side in this fight to defend the wellbeing of people and planet.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Solidarity!