Stand in solidarity with Native Americans and others fighting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The planned $3.8 billion pipeline would extend 1,134 miles through four states, connecting the Bakken shale oil fracking fields and Three Forks production areas in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The plan is to start construction at the Bakken site in May 2016, and have the pipeline up and running later this year, transporting. 450,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The pipeline would cross the Missouri River less than a mile away from the Standing Rock Reservation. News reports say plans are in the works to use the pipeline to transport oil from Canadian tar sands as well as North Dakota sites.
Lakota Sioux and other protesters along the route of the pipeline say the it will pollute their lands as well as the Missouri and Mississipi rivers. With their supporters, Sioux protesters created the Camp of the Sacred Stones, which blocked the construction of the pipeline for almost a week. Then on August 17 the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas, agreed to a temporary halt in construction. Work will stop at least until August 24, when a federal court in Washington, D.C., will hear a challenge by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which seeks an injunction against federal agencies that approved the pipeline.
By the time construction halted, Prairie Public Broadcasting reported that the number of protesters had swelled to over 1,500, noting: “Native Americans from Wyoming, Colorado and as far as Oklahoma are pulling up by the busload.” Tribes across the county expressed their solidarity, including a message from Mohawk people in upstate New York threatening to block an international bridge if any harm came to the protesters.
The blockade was the culmination of a months-long opposition campaign by Sioux activists. The campaign included pitching teepees on the lawn of the North Dakota capitol as well as a 2,000-mile relay run from North Dakota to Washington DC to deliver a petition to the US Army Corps of Engineers to stop the project.
The San Francisco demonstration in solidarity with the fight against the pipeline is called by Indigenous Women of the Americas Defending Mother Earth Treaty
RSVP here
Get more info and sign a petition against the pipeline here
WHEN
Wed Aug 24, 5:30 – 7:30 PM
WHERE
San Francisco Federal Building, 90 7th St, SF