As part of a nationwide series of actions, hundreds of Seattleites will gather on Tuesday evening to protest last week’s House vote to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, and to demand that Obama reject the pipeline once and for all.
The protest happens Tuesday, January 13 at 5:30 p.m. at the Henry Jackson Federal Building, 915 2nd Ave., Seattle, WA.
The Seattle protest is organized by 350 Seattle, Rising Tide Seattle, and the Seattle Pledge of Resistance to Keystone XL.
Three and a half years after the first set of arrests organized to stop the controversial pipeline, activists said they believe that they have entered the endgame. Without committing to rejecting the pipeline, Obama has indicated that he’s likely to veto the current legislation. Activists said it’s not enough.
“To avoid the worst effects of global warming, we have to keep extreme energy like tar sands in the ground. We simply can’t keep building new fossil fuel infrastructure; we need to quickly transition into cleaner, renewable energy sources,” Rising Tide Seattle’s Carlo Voli said in a statement.
At the front lines of the fight have been Native Americans and midwest ranchers, who joined together in the “New CIA”, or Cowboy-Indian Alliance; both groups have a profound stake in the health of the land and waters through, over, and beside which the enormous pipeline would travel. In November, the Rosebud Sioux tribal president announced that the tribe considers authorization of the pipeline an act of war.
Local Lakota activist Matt Remle, the author of Seattle’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day resolution and recipient of Seattle’s 2014 Individual Human Rights Leader award, will speak at the Federal Building.
“It doesn’t matter how many times Congress puts forth legislation to approve the construction of the Black Snake pipeline [Keystone XL], it will never cross Lakota lands,” he says. “We stand ready to protect our lands and waters. Our interest is in the protection of all life, not that of some foreign multinational corporation.”
