“Shot with Rubber Bullets, Hospitalized, Jailed: Line 3 Protester Tara Houska Decries Police Attack”, Aug 4, 2023, Amy Goodman interviews water protector and attorney Tara Houska, Democracy now!, Duration of the interview 8:44, transcript below video, at < https://www.democracynow.org/
“Enbridge Is the Guilty Party, Not Me: Meet the Pipeline Protester Facing 5 Years for Peaceful Action”, Sep 1, 2023, Amy Goodman interviews water protector Mylene Vialard and water protector and attorney Tara Houska, Democracy now!, Duration of the interview 13:46, transcript below video, at < https://www.democracynow.org/2023/9/1/enbridge_line_3_protestors_mylene_vialard
Introduction by dmorista: The struggle, and now the legal fight over the actions of the Water Protectors in Northern Minnesota is discussed in both Democracy Now! interviews. The two women worked to stop the Enbridge Pipeline Corporation from completing its Line 3 project, that is being built to move ever more of Alberta's Athabaskan Tar Sands. Both videos show the violent and vicious actions of police, (who were rented for attacking the protesters for several million dollars by Enbridge). In case any of our readers are confused as to the real function of the police these videos are important viewing. As Housaka pointed out a murderer was loose in the county at the very time the violent attacks on the Water Protectors occurred, yet the County Sheriff's Department was able to send 50 deputies to brutalize and remove non-violent Water Protectors protesting the ongoing construction of Line 3. So much for the phony issue of public safety when Capitalist Property needs to be guarded from non-violent protesters.
And let's make no mistake. Enbridge Pipeline Corporation is trying to get as much of its disastrous Athabaskan Tar Sands Bitumen out to foreign markets as quickly as possible, to maximize their profits and the wealth of their shareholders and corporate executives. They are very worried about the prospect of this becoming a "stranded resource" they cannot profit from.
This oil is probably the most polluting and dangerous oil on the face of the earth. Its Energy Return on Investment (ERI) is so bad that some analysts have written that it actually costs energy to mine, refine, transport and use than the oil contains. The Tar Sands, after preliminary refining near Fort MacMurray Alberta, has the consistency of peanut butter and still has a considerable amount of abrasive sand in it. It is diluted with a witch's brew of solvents (mostly deadly Benzene) producing Diluted Bitumen (Dilbit), heated and pushed through pipelines under much higher pressures and temperatures than ordinary crude oil needs.
Enbridge has a terrible safety record with dozens of pipeline leaks and spills along its pipelines. The biggest single spill by Enbridge was the Marshall, Michigan spill of Dilbit in 2011. The operators did not even turn the line off for over 18 hours, trying 3 times to push more Dilbit along thinking there was an “air bubble” in the line. Then the company did not even bother to alert the local authorities that they were not contending with a typical crude oil spill, but rather a Bitumen spill (Bitumen is much heavier and denser and the diluents evaporated off producing toxic fumes that grievously harmed several local people as well). The Marshall spill was in a nearly 50 year old pipe, not built to withstand the Dilbit pumping conditions. New purpose built pipeline have an appalling number of spills too.
Enbridge has cobbled together a series of pipelines, to move the material all the way from Alberta to Portland, Maine. Line 3 brings the Dilbit from Fort MacMurray, Alberta as far as Superior, Wisconsin (near the nearly pristine Lake Superior, the least damaged of the 5 Great Lakes). The Lines 6A and 6B carry the Dilbit as far as the place where this dangerous material passes under Lake Huron from Port Huron, Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario.
In the wake of the Marshall, Michigan spill Enbridge has replaced much of original pipelines with purpose built pipeline. Line 9 (that was built about 50 years ago to move crude oil into Canada and the U.S. has been repurposed to move Dilbit in the other direction). How much of that line has been replaced by purpose built Dilbit pipeline I do not know. Finally a WW 2 era pipeline, The Portland-Montreal Pipeline, was repurposed to move oil out of North America; and to be refined some more in Portland and loaded on oil tankers in the harbor of Portland, Maine. Again, I have no idea how much if any of that pipeline has been replaced with new purpose built Dilbit pipeline.
Below is a Map that shows the entire Enbridge Pipeline system that moves Dilbit from Alberta to Maine.
Line 3 Map
Shot with Rubber Bullets, Hospitalized, Jailed: Line 3 Protester Tara Houska Decries Police Attack
At least 20 water protectors were brutally arrested in Minnesota as resistance to the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline continues, and they say state and local police have escalated their use of excessive force, using tear gas, rubber and pepper bullets to repress opposition to Line 3, which, if completed, would carry Canadian tar sands oil across Indigenous land and fragile ecosystems. “The level of brutality that was unleashed on us was very extreme,” says Indigenous lawyer and activist Tara Houska, who suffered bloody welts after she was shot with rubber bullets, then arrested and held in Pennington County Jail over the weekend, where several water protectors say they were denied medical care for their injuries, denied proper food and some reportedly held in solitary confinement.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show in Minnesota, where at least 20 water protectors were brutally arrested over the weekend as resistance to the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline continues. Water protectors say state and local police have escalated their use of excessive force, using tear gas, rubber and pepper bullets to repress Line 3 protesters. On Sunday, Indigenous lawyer and activist Tara Houska published photos of herself on social media with bloodied welts on her arms after she was shot with rubber bullets during an action last week. Houska and 19 others were held in Pennington County Jail over the weekend, where several water protectors say they were denied medical care for their injuries, were denied proper food, and some were reportedly held in solitary confinement.
Well, Tara Houska joins us now for more from the Namewag Camp in Minnesota, founder of the Giniw Collective and is Ojibwe from Couchiching First Nation.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Tara. Can you describe what happened when you were arrested and the escalation of force that the police are using against you?
TARA HOUSKA: Good morning.
Yeah, so, in a situation in which there were a number of shutdowns of various drilling operations across several rivers here in northern Minnesota, this would have been the fifth drill shutdown in as many days. And the attempt by water protectors, including myself, to engage in those processes and attempt to protect the river was met with extreme force.
We were under smoky skies and a red sun due to the wildfires that are raging in Ontario, just north of us and west of us, and next to a drought-stricken river, so a very, very deeply harmed river, and a gigantic drill in the background drilling through, attempting to put in a tar sands pipeline through that drought-stricken river.
And the level of brutality that was unleashed on us was very extreme. People were shot in their faces, in their bodies, in their upper torsos. I saw a young woman’s head get split open right in front of me. It was a really, really brutal scene. And the arrests in person were also quite brutal, throwing people face down in the dirt and being extremely violent in a situation in which we were outnumbered by police at least two to one, and many, many, many counties present protecting this one place, and which also happens to be a county where a murderer, an actual murderer, is still on the loose, has not been caught, but there were somehow over 50 police officers in that one place watching water protectors.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tara, could you talk about this increasing cooperation and partnership between Minnesota state and local police and Enbridge?
TARA HOUSKA: When I was sitting on the side of a police vehicle with several others waiting to be brought to jail, I overheard several of the police officers talking about how they were going to get bonus time for this brutality they had unleashed upon us. It’s, at this point, a pretty known thing that police officers are reimbursed for any costs associated with Enbridge Line 3 protests, and it seems like they welcome the opportunity. One police officer was actually grinning and smiling and said he had a great time and couldn’t wait for us to come again.
They’ve billed over $1.7 million to the Public Safety Escrow Trust, in which Enbridge is dumping millions of dollars to incentivize and encourage police officers to repress, suppress and surveil, harass Indigenous people and our allies that are helping us try to stop this pipeline from happening in our treaty territory. It is a very clear pattern of aggression and of cooperation, that’s also being enabled by things like the Energy Security Act that has just passed through the House very recently. So, it’s a precedent that is very dangerous, and everyone should be afraid of this, regardless of whether or not they’re engaged in pipeline protest.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the latest protest on the Red River came as another spill was reported on the Mississippi River headwaters, where Enbridge has continued to drill despite a temporary halt buffer zone issued by White Earth Nation. What’s the latest on the construction of the pipeline and other actions?
TARA HOUSKA: Construction is 24 hours a day. Enbridge is working as fast as it possibly can. I’m guessing after police were harming Indigenous people, using rubber bullets paid for by the Enbridge company, that there’s probably even more of a push to get this done as quickly as possible, before the Army Corps intervenes, if that’s indeed what they choose to do. There is an ongoing call out to the Army Corps, to the Biden administration intervene before more people are hurt, before more frac-outs happen at the Mississippi River headwaters, the place where the Mississippi River, one of the biggest river systems in the world, begins. There have been a number of spills just in that one location and several others along the 200 water bodies that are proposed to be impacted by Line 3, the 800 wetlands that this project wants to go through.
AMY GOODMAN: Tara, we just showed the images that you put out, just even of yourself with the rubber bullet welts on your arms. If you could describe why you’re doing this? I mean, we’re seeing progressives in Congress. They’re fighting hard. You are putting your bodies on the line. And what message do you have for Washington now as they fight over this infrastructure bill, these two bills, what you’re doing, what you want them to know about Minnesota, about the Giniw Collective Camp, and how you’ve been blockaded there by the police?
TARA HOUSKA: I began my own professional career in Washington, D.C., and understand a lot of how the dynamics of Capitol Hill work. I worked in various offices, including the White House, when I was out there. And it is so clear to me and to the many young people who are part of not just this movement, but movements across the globe, the Indigenous people who are leading struggle to protect the last beautiful sacred places, that it is simply not working fast enough.
In the conversations and arguments, that are very based in status quo, in this idea that we will continue on in the way that we have always done things, and that it is simply a matter of transitioning into another form of energy economy, that is not reflective of what is actually happening. We should understand that, as the last time I spoke with you, there was an entire city that had been burned to the ground from wildfires that are directly related to climate crisis. The climate crisis is happening.
And for myself, if it takes seeing Indigenous bodies being brutalized to understand what is really occurring in real time, what is happening to the people as we are defending these last places, that’s what I’m willing to do. And that’s what many, many others are willing to do. I was just one of many people who were hurt. I was put in solitary confinement. I was denied medical care, after being hospitalized when I got brought in. We, as human beings, have to decide what we’re going to do. And some of us are pushing as hard as we can with everything that we can.
AMY GOODMAN: Tara Houska, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Indigenous lawyer and activist, founder of the Giniw Collective, Ojibwe from Couchiching First Nation, speaking to us from Minnesota, where she was just recently arrested, hospitalized, put in solitary confinement, and now out, brutalized with police shooting rubber bullets at her.
Water Protector Faces 5 Years for Peaceful Action Against Enbridge Pipeline
We speak with climate activist and water protector Mylene Vialard, whose trial for peacefully protesting the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline began this week in Minnesota. Vialard faces up to five years in prison for her 2021 protest, when she attached herself to a 25-foot bamboo tower erected to block a pumping station in Aitkin County. Vialard, who lives in Colorado, had come to Minnesota to take part in a wave of Indigenous-led acts of civil disobedience to stop the pipeline. Between December 2020 and September 2021, police in Minnesota made more than 1,000 arrests. Mylene Vialard is just the second water protector facing felony charges to go to trial. “We’re destroying our planet. We’re destroying our way of life,” says Vialard. We also speak with Indigenous lawyer and activist Tara Houska, who was also arrested in 2021 for participating in a nonviolent action against Line 3. She says police violence against environmental and Indigenous activists has gotten “exponentially worse” since the 2016 Dakota Access protests at Standing Rock. “The crackdown on environmental protests is nationwide,” says Houska.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We turn now to Minnesota, where a nonviolent water protector is facing up to five years in prison for taking part in an action against the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. Two years ago, in August of 2021, Mylene Vialard attached herself to a 25-foot bamboo tower erected to block a Line 3 pumping station in Aitkin County. Vialard, who lives in Colorado, had come to Minnesota to take part in a wave of Indigenous-led acts of civil disobedience to stop the pipeline. She was filmed during the action.
MYLENE VIALARD: I’m here for my daughter and my daughter’s daughter and all their children and grandchildren. I’m here because there is a real climate crisis, and nobody seems to care. I’m here because that’s the only thing I can do right now. I have to show up, and I have to defend this land and have to defend the rights of the people who have been on this land forever.
AMY GOODMAN: Between December 2020 and September 2021, police in Minnesota made more than a thousand arrests. Mylene Vialard is just the second water protector facing felony charges to go to trial. Her trial began this week.
Mylene is joining us along with Tara Houska, an Indigenous lawyer, activist and founder of the Giniw Collective. She’s Ojibwe from Couchiching First Nation. Tara Houska was also arrested in 2021 for participating in a nonviolent action against Line 3.
Mylene Vialard, talk about the trial this week. The prosecution has presented their case. Go back two years for us and talk more about why you came to Minnesota and exactly what you did and hoped to accomplish.
MYLENE VIALARD: Yes. Thank you, Amy. It’s an honor to be here with Tara today.
Two years ago, I heard the call from Indigenous women and two-spirit people to come to Minnesota to fight Line 3 and was really moved by their plight. It’s been a long fight for them. And so, my daughter decided to come here first, and then I followed her later to also participate in nonviolent protection.
On that day, on that particular day, August 26, there was a bamboo and wire tower that was erected, which I climbed to the top of and locked into with another water protector. And we were trying to stop the construction of this, with Tara, pumping station, which, by the way, just had an aquifer breach happening just exactly a month ago. So, we were trying to avoid just that. Enbridge has a really bad track record for oil spills, going back to the ’90s or ’80s, and so we were outraged that the permit had even been accepted and delivered.
And so, going there was really fighting for the people who had been fighting for seven years, alongside them, in solidarity with them, and fighting for the right to clean water, clean air, which the fossil fuel industry has destroyed, basically. So, we’re destroying our planet. We’re destroying our way of life. We’re destroying the water up here in Minnesota, where the headwaters of the Mississippi River are, where it’s the Land of a Thousand Lakes, and we’re destroying those lakes. Enbridge went under 200 bodies of water. And we were up there to say no, basically, no to destroying the land, destroying the water, destroying the air, destroying the way of life of everybody, but especially —
AMY GOODMAN: Mylene, I’m wondering how you feel the trial is going and why you refused to take a plea deal on the felony charge? You’re facing also a $10,000 fine?
MYLENE VIALARD: Right. I could not sign the paper saying that I was guilty, because I am not the guilty party here. Enbridge is destroying, is violent. The just destroying the land to put a pipeline that we know is going to leak is violence against the Earth, the water, the people who live on this land and depend on that. So, yeah, I could not take the plea deal. I am not guilty.
And if the state wants to prove me guilty, then they have to do that, which so far has not happened. And yet, I’m still here fighting. I’m still in court. I’m going to testify today. And even Sheriff Guida, who extracted us in the most careless manner, has not been able to prove or has not said that I was doing anything wrong up there. I’m a nonviolent activist. I believe in nonviolence. Everything I do that’s my daily life is nonviolent. So, you know, I was up there. I was not obstructing legal process, which is the charge I got. I was just up there protesting an abomination.
And so, I would say the trial is a farce right now at this point. My lawyer is at her end’s wit with reminding the court and the prosecution about procedures, about the law, about legalese 101 that everybody should respect in court. And it’s not happening. It’s not happening. There’s so many reasons that my case should have been dismissed by now. And I’m going to testify today.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you’re very brave to come on. And, you know, we’re talking amidst — well, after Lahaina was destroyed as a result of climate change in Hawaii, after the south of the United States, particularly Florida and the Carolinas, have been hit hard by Hurricane Idalia. Tara Houska, I wanted to bring you into this conversation, as an Indigenous lawyer and also a peaceful protester against Line 3. You joined us on Democracy Now! after you were released from jail in 2021. You had posted photos on social media with bloodied welts on your arms after you were shot with rubber bullets during your peaceful action. Can you talk about the escalation of police violence at the time and how you feel these cases are now going?
TARA HOUSKA: Since Standing Rock and the resistance against Dakota Access Pipeline, which you were also at and documented some of the police brutality that occurred there, the escalation of police both in the direct confrontations with nonviolent protesters and also just the prosecutorial system against specifically environmental activists has grown exponentially worse. I know that there’s been coverage on your program and others about the Atlanta Cop City protests. You know, you just had on someone talking about how they had added on a felony terrorism enhancement. That was upfront with the protesters down at Cop City, 42 people charged with domestic terrorism. I feel like the body of ALEC is around the entire state, all the state legislatures trying to push felony protest bills. That happened in Minnesota, too. They didn’t pass it successfully here, but they’ve passed it other places. The crackdown on environmental protest is nationwide, and it is, I think, a system in which you’re seeing everyone trying to push and see just what they can get away with.
AMY GOODMAN: There are several other Line 3 cases still open. Next month, three Anishinaabe women elders — Winona LaDuke, Tania Aubid, Dawn Goodwin — will go on trial together on gross misdemeanor critical infrastructure charges related to a January 2021 protest. If you can talk about what this all means, as the world becomes increasingly conscious of the climate catastrophe, and also the relationship between Enbridge security and Minnesota police and authorities?
TARA HOUSKA: We think about the words “critical infrastructure.” What is actually critical infrastructure to the survival of human beings and every other being on this Earth? It’s water, right?That is the actual critical infrastructure. Designating an oil pipeline for fossil fuels bound somewhere else, the active destruction of our own chance at survival, of my daughter’s chances of survival, at her, at her daughter, it is just an abomination of where we’re at as a species. You mentioned all those, you know, increasing signs of climate crisis that is occurring, talking about the global boiling. Right? We’re not even saying “global warming” anymore. It’s global boiling. And species extinction is just so painful to watch.
And then, you know, you have these attempts by human beings against other human beings who are trying to at least give nature a voice, at least trying to do something different, actively pushing against and trying to suppress that voice, where you see and hear in Minnesota, instead of the company behind closed doors paying off law enforcement to defend their pipeline and defend their project, it was an open agreement, overseen by the state of Minnesota, overseen by the Democratic government, overseen by Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan here in Minnesota. You know, that still stands. They paid them over $8 million, closing in on $9 million. The biggest acceptor — the biggest person that accepted the money, like, or the agency that accepted that money was the Department of Natural Resources. That’s the people who are tasked, actually, to defend the wetlands, which just got deregulated, right? Like, all the nation’s wetlands just got deregulated, because the EPA no longer has oversight. That’s what’s happening. And that’s the global picture that’s happening, not just here but around the world, where land defenders are not just criminalized, they’re killed, for defending the Earth.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with Mylene, who is speaking to us right before testifying in court. Are you afraid of the sentence you face, if you were found guilty, five years in prison? Or are you hopeful that perhaps you will go the route of the Montana youth, where a judge has ruled on their behalf around climate protests and climate activism in challenging the state for engaging in destruction of the planet?
MYLENE VIALARD: I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid. I entered this fully aware of the risk I was taking, and not really believing that the justice system in this court would be served, would be hearing me fully. So, I am aware of what I’m risking, and I’m going — I’m going there fully aware of the risk, but I’m not scared. I know where I stand. I know what my purpose is here. I am grateful for you for hearing us today.
AMY GOODMAN: What does your T-shirt say?
MYLENE VIALARD: My T-shirt says “Defend the Sacred.” This is the T-shirt I was wearing on that day. This is why I was there. The sacred is the Earth, the nature, the water, the people who live on this land, and all the animals and Earth, sky, you know, just [inaudible] the Anishinaabe people have been talking about and doing forever.
AMY GOODMAN: Mylene, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Mylene Vialard, water protector on trial in Minnesota for taking part in an action against the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. She will testify today in court. She faces five years in prison if convicted. Tara Houska, Indigenous lawyer, activist and founder of the Giniw Collective.
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