Some of the 12,000 peaceful protestors surrounding the White House
Last weekend, I returned to Washington DC with some of my jailbird girlfriends to take part in yet another peaceful protest in front of the White House about the Tar Sands and the Keystone XL pipeline. To our surprise, 12,000 other folks showed up too! We made a giant circle around the White House three times over on a beautiful sunny day.
Our job was to send a simple message to President Obama: NO to the pipeline!
Apparently, he got the message. Yesterday,the president sent the pipeline back to the State Department for a thorough re-review, which most analysts are saying will effectively kill the project. The president explicitly noted climate change, along with the pipeline route, as one of the factors that a new review would need to assess.
This victory is a huge step for the environmental movement and for everyone who cares about the health of their families and the planet. Six months ago, almost no one even knew about the Alberta Tar Sands or the Keystone Pipeline. This pipeline approval was considered a done deal by most oil industry insiders.
The done deal has become spectacularly undone, thanks to people showing up. Many from very far away. I met people from Nebraska, there were 2 busloads from VT, 3 buses filled from Ohio. I stood next to folks from Michigan, spoke with people from Virginia, the list goes on and on. Many native Americans were there, they have been in this fight for a long long time up in Canada and the northern US, I highly recommend you check out the Indigenous Environmental Network, they’re doing great work.
This video tells the story of our victory this week.
How did I ever end up involved with all this Tar Sands activism? Bill McKibben is the reason. I’ve read many of his books and saw him speak a few times this past year. He invited his audiences to come to DC and risk arrest because armchair activism was not doing the job. This soft spoken guy has a been a tireless leader of this movement. If you’re not yet familiar with Bill or his work, I highly recommend a few of his books to get you going.
The End of Nature, which was written back in 1989, is still a very worthwhile read. It was required reading for a course I took on Food & Capitalism a few years back. It blew me away to read this book, written 22 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child- I didn’t have any real awareness of the impact of global warming at that time, Bill sure did.
Eaarth
Also, Bill’s most recent book, Eaarth: A Guide to Living on a Fundamentally Altered Planet, has been one of my top book recommendations for over a year now.
Both of these would make great holiday gifts for those you love. Hint, hint!
