The pipeline has been in operation now.
President Trump made it a big part of his
presidency to get it running.
What’s been the impact in the time that
it has been running, although the judge now
says within 30 days it must stop all flow
of oil?
I went out to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation
to stand with LaDonna Allard because I saw
her on Facebook and because I saw youth runners
that ran 2,000 miles,
from Cannon Ball out to Washington, D.C.
And I packed my things and went that way,
because I understood not only was this a moment
where people were taking a real stand and
saying, “We’re not going to accept this.
We’re not going to accept you running over
our rights yet again,” but it was also this
understanding that we are talking about the
bulldozing of sacred sites, of places that
can never be brought back, of the risk to
the drinking water
of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
Let’s not forget that this pipeline was
originally supposed to go through the drinking
water further upstream near Bismarck, but
instead it got rerouted right next to the reservation —
you know, clear, obvious environmental
racism and disregard for Indigenous lives.
So, you know, it’s been four years of knowing
that that pipeline is right next to — is
only a couple hundred yards from the water
intake of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation,
of knowing that a break could impact not only
that reservation, but the 17 million people
that live along the Missouri River, you know,
not to mention the continued extraction of
fossil fuels from the ground, the continued
impact to the environment, to greenhouse gas
emissions, to the climate crisis that we know
is happening all over the globe.
This is a project that was one of many, but
it’s one that I think people recognized
that it was time to take a stand, and it reached
the world.
And we continue to fight on.
