The Standing Rock Protests Are About the Constitution

By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News

09 November 16

he numbers of activists protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota continue to swell. The mainstream media continue to ignore it. National politicians continue to pretend that nothing is happening. And the local police continue to douse protestors in pepper spray, beat them, arrest them, and charge them with felonies for exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of speech.

The Standing Rock protests ought to be big news. We haven’t seen protests of this scale and intensity in the United States in years. And the issue is a compelling one: The Dakota Access Pipeline directly threatens the only water supply for the entire Standing Rock Reservation, an area of more than 3,500 square miles that is home to nearly 10,000 members of the Sioux Nation straddling North and South Dakota. It is designed to carry highly combustible oil from the Bakken field to refineries south. The pipeline also crosses sacred Sioux ground.

Last spring, a tribal elder and her grandchildren established a camp on their private land to protest the pipeline. At first, several hundred Native protestors showed up. The number quickly swelled to what are now several thousand, with as many as five or six thousand on weekends.

The protests were peaceful until September, when the company building the pipeline hired a private security firm because a spokesman said protests “have not been peaceful.” In conjunction with the local police, the rent-a-cops began harassing and even brutalizing protestors, hitting them with batons and spraying them with pepper spray. At least six protestors were treated for serious dog bites after being set upon by police dogs. It was the police and their partners in the district and state’s attorneys offices who upped the ante. And therein lies the Constitutional issue hanging over this protest.

Disrespecting the first amendment to the Constitution is one thing. Charging peaceful protestors with serious crimes for exercising their right to free speech is another. These aren’t misdemeanor counts of trespassing or disorderly conduct that we’re talking about. These are felony counts of resisting arrest and conspiracy.

And in the case of Democracy Now journalist and multiple-Emmy Award winner Amy Goodman, it’s a felony charge of “riot.” The riot charge came after Goodman initially had been charged with “criminal trespassing,” despite the fact that she is a working journalist covering a legitimate news story. Indeed, prosecutors even had the gall to say that Goodman was not entitled to any protections as a journalist because “Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions.” After prosecutors admitted that there were “legal issues with proving the notice of trespassing requirements in the statute,” meaning that they couldn’t prove their case, they dropped the criminal trespassing charge and filed a riot charge. Meanwhile, dozens of other felony cases against peaceful protestors continue.

This is the trend. Prosecutors at every level of government are increasingly engaging in something called charge stacking, and we’re seeing its use very clearly at Standing Rock. Let’s say, as an example, that a protestor is actually guilty of misdemeanor trespassing. Rather than charging that protestor with a single misdemeanor charge, prosecutors will charge him with multiple charges, including felonies. The protestor is forced to defend himself, to hire an attorney at enormous expense, and to prepare for trial. But once the protestor has run up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, the prosecutors will come back and offer to drop all the charges but one, a felony, in exchange for a guilty plea.

So does the protestor risk significant prison time and go to trial? After all, most juries would convict a baloney sandwich. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “Well, the cops wouldn’t have arrested them if they weren’t guilty.” Usually, a person wouldn’t take a risk. The protestor takes a plea to a felony, may or may not see a little jail time, pays a fine, and goes home.

But that felony record will last a lifetime. The protestor has just lost the right to vote. He will probably be on probation for at least a year. He’s lost the right to own a firearm for life. And in some cases, a felony conviction includes the loss of a federal or state pension. It also makes it far more difficult to get a job. It’s life-altering.

And it’s all for exercising our Constitutional rights.

The protests at Standing Rock are not going to end anytime soon. Indeed, we should all be there. The protests are not just about water, the environment, or Native rights. The protests are also about all of us and about government overreach. They’re about the Constitution. We have to keep up the fight.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

How Do I Tell My Daughter That America Elected a Racist, Sexist Bully?

By Jessica Valenti, Guardian UK

09 November 16

My six-year-old fell asleep thinking Hillary Clinton would be the first female president. Now I have to explain to her why Donald Trump was chosen instead

ast night, seated between my 68-year-old mother and six-year-old daughter, I expected to watch the first woman get elected president of the United States. We bought champagne and cake, and promised Layla that she could stay up as late as she wanted to watch. My daughter fell asleep on the couch, still wearing a shirt emblazoned with the word “feminist” and an “I voted” sticker.

This morning, I’ll have to tell Layla that Hillary Clinton< lost, that a woman won’t be president. Even more difficult, I’ll have to tell her that Donald Trump won. The man she knows as a bully who says terrible things about women, people with disabilities and immigrants – the man who brags about hurting people and separating families – will lead her nation.

Last night my heart broke for my country, this morning it breaks for her.

She woke up in a changed America today – one where a liar and a racist, a xenophobe and a serial harasser of women, will lead us. She woke up in a place that flatly rejected progress, a country where a man can admit to sexually assaulting women and win millions of votes because, not in spite, of it.

I have always been worried about the things I will pass down to my daughter; the burdens she inherits simply by living in a sexist world are the things I fear the most.

How will I explain to her about how many women have been hurt, badly, because of the sexism that surrounds them? How I will I keep her from being afraid that her fate to suffer the same is inevitable?

My mother got married when she was 17 and grew up during a time when birth control was illegal; she would be in her 20s before she could apply for credit without a man co-signing her application. I was born in 1978, five years after abortion was legalized. I was in high school when marital rape was finally outlawed.

I used to take solace in the idea that things were getting better. Things would be different for my daughter. I don’t have that hope any more. Not today, anyway.

Last night we let Layla sleep in our bed – more a comfort for us then her, I think. And before I closed my eyes I whispered to her that I was sorry. I was so very sorry, because I underestimated how sexist and racist this country really is. I let the powerful feminist moment of the last few years trick me into believing things had changed.

It was a seductive lie, but still so very false.

The truth is that this shameful election result was backlash, pure and simple – a reaction to women’s growing rights, racial progress and a cultural shift that no longer centers straight white men. They were votes based on fear, bigotry and ugliness.

There is no sugar-coating that reality. Not even for my six year-old.

I know that I’ll find the right words to relay the gravity of the election to my daughter without scaring her. I have confidence in that. Her father and I will tell her that sometimes people make bad decisions, and that the wrong people are chosen to lead. We’ll remind her of lessons she’s learned in school about times in her country’s history when we’ve done the wrong thing – horrible things. We’ll remind her of how good people organized and fought, loved each other and believed things could change.

We’ll tell her that we will have to be the good people who fight now. And soon, when we’ve had a chance to grieve and gather ourselves, we’ll remind our daughter that part of the reason this man was elected is because of how powerful we actually are. That our power scared him and others who are not ready to change and grow.

And that we owe it to ourselves and our country not to let fear stop us now. Not ever.