|
Official Stupidity Killed Keith Lamont Scott |
 |
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
|
|
Wednesday, 28 September 2016 08:39 |
|
Boardman writes: "The police clearly executed Keith Lamont Scott as he was slowly backing away from them, his hands at his sides, his body slack. The question that needs answering is: why did they execute this non-threatening, possibly unarmed black man?"
A man stands in front of a line of police officers on a roadway in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday night during a protest that broke out after police shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, 43, in the parking lot of a condominium complex. (photo: Jeff Siner/Charlotte Observer)
Official Stupidity Killed Keith Lamont Scott
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
28 September 16
Shooting a man slowly backing away is no way to preserve or protect
 ome reasonable people are weighing the available evidence and waiting for more definitive proof of various allegations before they decide whether or not they think the death of Keith Lamont Scott, 43, in broad daylight in a parking lot in a housing development in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the sunny afternoon of September 20 was a police execution.
Those reasonable people are being unreasonable: the police clearly executed Keith Lamont Scott as he was slowly backing away from them, his hands at his sides, his body slack. The question that needs answering is: why did they execute this non-threatening, possibly unarmed black man?
The most obvious answer, up and down the line, is official stupidity, official lethal stupidity, the same sort of official lethal stupidity that protects the powerful against the powerless everywhere.
As of September 25, the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Police Department (CMPD) had not made full disclosure of evidence in the shooting, but had posted a timeline (below, in bold, annotated) declared to be “Facts from the CMPD Investigation.” The most remarkable thing about these “facts” (maybe) is that they do not include any reference to the presence of Rakeyia Scott, Scott’s wife of 20 years, during the shooting. She was there, that’s a fact. She shot video that includes the shooting, that’s a fact. In the video she screams at the police not to shoot her husband (“Don’t shoot him”), she screams that he has no gun (“He has no weapon”), she screams that he has a book, she screams that he has a brain injury (“He has a TBI [traumatic brain injury], he is not going to do anything to you guys, he just took his medicine”), she screams for her husband to comply (“Keith, don’t let them break the windows. Come on out the car”), she screams, “Keith, don’t do it. Keith get out the car” (it’s not clear what “it” is), and she screams again, “Keith! Keith! Don’t you do it. Don’t you do it.” Interspersed with Mrs. Scott’s screams, police in the background are also screaming, mostly “Drop the gun.” Fifty seconds into this video a police officer executes Keith Lamont Scott with four quick shots (he will die later, at a hospital). There is no way to make sense of this shooting as anything but an execution without including this video in any honest assessment (even if it can be debunked). The CMPD “Facts” omits Mrs. Scott’s video, withheld two police videos for days, and reportedly is still withholding other videos. All this strongly suggests that the CMPD “investigation” is neither thorough nor honest.
But that’s not just on CMPD. The state of North Carolina has passed a law that requires dishonesty and cover-up, actually barring public police agencies from releasing police videos to the public. Other states have passed similar laws. Transparency is an enemy of the state. The CMPD stall in releasing video may have something to do with the North Carolina gag law that takes effect October 1, 2016. The CMPD timeline begins:
Facts from the CMPD Investigation
These are the facts as we know them right now based on statements from witnesses and evidence gathered from the scene:
- On Tuesday, September 20, 2016, at 3:54 p.m., officers from the Metro Division Crime Reduction Unit were searching for a suspect with an outstanding warrant at The Village at College Downs.
Keith Lamont Scott, apparently randomly, arrived soon after and parked his car beside the unmarked police car in a public parking lot. If he saw the police, what he saw was two men in civilian clothes, still sitting in their unmarked vehicle. The CMPD’s saying they “were searching for a suspect” is right at the edge of false. That’s what they should have been doing. Their job was to serve a warrant on some other person. For unexplained reasons, they stopped doing their job and turned their attention to Keith Lamont Scott, who was still sitting in his car. That seems stupid on its face, but might be justified under extraordinary circumstances (which don’t include a man sitting in his car minding his own business).
- Officers observed a subject, Mr. Keith Lamont Scott, inside a vehicle in the apartment complex. The subject exited the vehicle armed with a handgun. Officers observed the subject get back into the vehicle at which time they began to approach the subject.
If, in fact, “subject exited the vehicle armed with a handgun,” that might be an extraordinary circumstance – but arguably not, in a state where open carry is legal and the cops are in plain clothes. There is, as yet, no video showing the cops identifying themselves to Keith Lamont Scott. And how long was the subject outside the vehicle? What did he do while he was outside the vehicle? When he got back inside the vehicle, handgun or not, why wasn’t that the end of the episode? Why was there no presumption of innocence? Why did the officers approach the subject only after he was back in the car (if he ever actually got out)?
This is critical. A man in a car is not an overt threat to anyone. A man in a car with a handgun in his possession (not pointed at himself or anyone else) is not a threat to anyone. So what actually motivated the cops to move in for the kill?
- Officers gave loud and clear verbal commands, corroborated by witnesses, for the subject to drop the weapon.
These commands are, oddly, inaudible in the police body cam video, which is silent for 28 seconds, until after the shooting, which occurs roughly 23 seconds into the 71-second video. In Mrs. Scott’s video, the commands are audible and clear: “Hands up!” “Drop the gun,” [at least nine times] and “Drop the fucking gun.” There is also an unidentified voice, not Mrs. Scott, shouting “Don’t shoot” once. Otherwise this seems like typical, semi-hysterical police screaming – until one realizes that police were screaming at Keith Lamont Scott to put his hands up inside his car. That certainly seems stupid.
A website called “Bearing Arms” claims that the police body cam video clearly shows Keith Lamont Scott was wearing an ankle holster on his right leg. The website also says the video does not clearly show that Scott’s right hand is empty. The image is grainy, and both conclusions are uncertain. What the image shows more clearly is a police handgun pointed directly at Scott, who appears to be looking at the police officer holding it.
What the body cam video shows most clearly is the agitated state of the officer wearing it, as he scrambles about like a squirrel, reinforcing the sense of danger and crisis, when a calm, thoughtful demeanor might have saved a life.
- In spite of these verbal commands, Mr. Scott exited the vehicle still armed with the handgun as officers continued to tell him to drop his weapon.
This assertion is problematical, even if it’s true as stated (which seems unlikely). The police dash cam video shows Keith Lamont Scott getting out of his car – backwards – about six seconds into the video. He continues to walk slowly, backwards, in a half circle away from the visible cops, who continue to shout indistinctly. Keith Lamont Scott’s gait is slow and unsteady. There is nothing in his right hand. His left hand is obscured. He was right-handed. Roughly nine seconds of non-threatening behavior later, Scott is executed by four quick shots.
- The subject posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers and Officer Brentley Vinson subsequently fired his weapon striking the subject. The officers immediately requested Medic and began performing CPR.
There is nothing – absolutely nothing – in any of the videos to support the claim that “subject posed an imminent deadly threat” to anyone in the universe. Officer Vinson, 26, who is also black (as is CMPD police chief Kerr Putney), has been a police officer for two years. Vinson is also the son of one of the first black detectives in Charlotte. Vinson has not yet spoken publicly, but one of his friends told CNN that Vinson is “distraught, as well he might be for any number of reasons. Even if legally justified, his execution of Keith Lamont Scott looks wholly, unnecessarily stupid.
The remainder of the CMPD timeline deals with events after the shooting.
On September 24, four days after the shooting, according to the Charlotte Observer, the CMPD gave another, enhanced, but hardly more credible account of the event:
Two officers in plain clothes were in an unmarked car waiting to serve a warrant when Scott’s white SUV pulled in beside them.
They saw Scott roll what they believed to be “a marijuana ‘blunt.’” They returned to watching for their suspect, and then Vinson saw Scott hold up a gun.
They withdrew to a spot nearby and put on duty vests that said “Police” that would identify them as officers.
When they came back, Scott still had the gun. They identified themselves as police officers, the department said, and told him loudly and repeatedly to drop the weapon. Scott did not comply.
Then a uniformed officer in a marked SUV drove up to assist, and an officer started pounding on the front passenger window.
Scott then got out with the gun and backed away from the vehicle, police said, but did not drop the weapon.
This is the narrative pretty much accepted in mainstream media, including a New York Times “What We Know” article September 26. That “responsible” piece is full of responsible “experts” speculating about ways the cops could have been doing the right thing, even though the official narrative is patently flawed and raises questions that go unanswered.
Why does the “blunt” not appear in the initial account? How is it that cops sitting in one car can see what someone is doing in another car, even one relatively close? If they saw Scott “roll” a blunt and later produced a partly smoked blunt in evidence (as they did), why don’t they say they saw him smoking it? If Scott was rolling a blunt, why would he be “holding up a gun”? Why would he be holding up a gun at all? What does that even mean, “saw Scott hold up a gun”? When the cops decide to put on vests, what does that show about their state of mind? Here is where the timeline becomes important – how long does all this take? When Mrs. Scott’s video begins, the cops are already screaming at Keith Lamont Scott, who is still in his car.
Why do the cops pay no attention to Keith Lamont Scott’s wife, who is trying to get them to de-escalate? The man is still in the car and they’re threatening to break the windows. If you think a man in a car has a gun, why would you try to break his passenger side front window where you’d be a close target? Forcing such a man out of the car only makes the situation more dangerous. As long as he’s in the car, surrounded by police (at least four), there is minimal risk to pausing to talk to the wife, to learn who he is, what injury he has, what medication he’s on, and any other de-escalating information.
The cops didn’t do that. The cops acted like caricature cops. The cops were stupid, unnecessarily stupid. But they are trained to be stupid. Police training includes a certain amount of reflexive stupidity like this. The police hierarchy that requires this training is stupid. Police stupidity is protected by legislators who protect them from their own lethal stupidity by passing laws that conceal the evidence that reveals that stupidity. Legislators are protected from their stupidity by courts that stupidly accept the legality of withholding evidence of lawful stupidity. It’s culturally endless, but on the positive side, at least law enforcement isn’t as stupid as the prison system in America. But that’s another story.
For now, the Charlotte police are showing pictures of a gun and a holster and a blunt they say belonged to Keith Lamont Scott and asking you to believe that that justifies their executing him. But it’s still an open question whether the gun or the holster or the blunt – or all of them – were planted by cops whose behavior was too stupid to preserve his life.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
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.
 |
|
Donald Trump, Debate Loser, Makes Sad Attempt at Damage Control |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=37115"><span class="small">Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone</span></a>
|
|
Wednesday, 28 September 2016 08:31 |
|
Stuart writes: "In the hours since the debate, Trump has lied, back-peddled and doubled down on criticisms in mystifying ways."
Donald J. Trump at a town hall-style campaign event on Tuesday at Miami Dade College in Miami. (photo: Damon Winter/NYT)
Donald Trump, Debate Loser, Makes Sad Attempt at Damage Control
By Tessa Stuart, Rolling Stone
28 September 16
In the hours since the debate, Trump has lied, back-peddled and doubled down on criticisms in mystifying ways
 ou could tell Donald Trump knew the debate went badly by the way he barreled into the "spin room" and immediately began disavowing things he'd said in front of more than 80 million people just moments before.
When Clinton suggested during Monday's debate that Trump has evaded paying taxes, Trump confirmed, rather than challenged, the assertion. "That makes me smart," he said. When she brought the subject up a second time, suggesting part of the reason there isn't enough money for infrastructure spending is "because you haven't paid any federal income tax for a lot of years," he shot back, "It would be squandered too, believe me."
In the spin room Trump denied admitting that he doesn't pay federal taxes. "No, I didn't say that at all. I mean, if they say I didn't [pay any taxes] ... I mean, it doesn't matter. I will say this: I hate the way our government spends our taxes." He then added, "Of course I pay federal taxes."
It's rare to the point of unprecedented for a candidate to take part in the debate post-game. Typically, campaign surrogates are the ones peddling talking points to reporters anxious for an angle. One of the reasons that unwritten rule might exist is because it's smart to spend a little time getting your narrative straight. Trump learned that lesson firsthand. Asked Monday night about moderator Lester Holt's performance, Trump said, "I thought Lester did a great job. I thought – honestly? I thought he did a great job." The reporter even double checked: You thought the questions were fair? "Yeah, I thought it was great," Trump told him.
The Republican nominee was singing a different tune some six hours later on Fox & Friends. (By that time, he might have picked up on the fact that conservative pundits, and even his own advisors, were meticulously crafting a narrative that Holt had been biased toward Clinton.) Holt, Trump said Tuesday morning, "gave me very unfair questions at the end — the last three, four questions." And he revised his assessment of Holt's performance downward: "I give him a C, C+ — I thought he was OK," he said.
To his credit, at least Trump's instinct to spring immediately into damage control was the correct one. Almost every credible instant poll after the debate showed that Trump lost the debate by large margins. A CNN/ORC poll found 62 percent thought Clinton won, compared to just 27 percent who thought Trump did, while a CNN focus group of 20 undecided Florida voters found 18 of them believed Clinton came out on top. In a Public Policy Polling post-debate survey, 51 percent thought Clinton won, compared to 40 percent for Trump. And a focus group of 31 undecided Pennsylvania voters conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz found 16 believed Clinton won, while six thought Trump did.
On Twitter and Fox & Friends (the cable news equivalent of the GOP nominee's Twitter feed), Trump the unlicensed spin doctor boasted about the polls he "won," citing a CBS poll among them. One problem, according to CBS Chief White House Correspondent, Major Garrett: The network did not conduct a poll. Slate and Time, which Trump also cited, did post reader polls on their respective websites, each with disclaimers that they were "totally unscientific," "not statistically representative of likely voters" and "not predictive of how the debate outcome will affect the election."
The most outlandish of Trump's claims about the debate, though, was about the persistent sniffle that distracted so many viewers – including Howard Dean – that #sniffles trended on Twitter. According to Trump, those never happened. "No, no sniffles," he told Fox & Friends Tuesday. "You know, the mic was very bad, but maybe it was good enough to hear breathing. But no sniffles. No cold."
Ladies and gentlemen, let's go to the tape.
But for all his furious attempts to rewrite the narrative about the debate, there was one line of attack that Trump didn't even try to defend himself from: When Clinton noted that he insulted former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, calling her "Miss Piggy" after she gained weight and "Miss Housekeeping" because she's Latina. On Tuesday morning, Trump, somewhat mystifyingly, doubled down on both criticisms, which the Clinton camp clearly believes will hurt him with women and Hispanic voters.
Trump told Fox & Friends that Machado – who has spoken about the eating disorder she developed after Trump berated her – "was the worst we have had. The worst, the absolute worst .... She was the winner and, you know, she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem. We had a real problem."
|
|
|
Hardline US Border Policing Is a Failed Approach |
|
|
Wednesday, 28 September 2016 08:24 |
|
Dunn writes: "The most comprehensive study on Mexican migration yet demonstrates how the past two plus decades of increasing border enforcement have led to the opposite of intended outcomes."
Border Patrol agent Jerry Conlin stands on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border on October 3, 2013 at the San Ysidro port of entry into Mexico, California. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Hardline US Border Policing Is a Failed Approach
By Timothy Dunn, NACLA
28 September 16
The most comprehensive study on Mexican migration yet demonstrates how the past two plus decades of increasing border enforcement have led to the opposite of intended outcomes.
  his election is our last chance to secure the border, stop illegal immigration, and reform our laws to make your life better,” Donald Trump proclaimed in his August 30 “immigration policy” speech. Railing against “the Obama-Clinton open borders policies,” the Republican candidate for the White House pledged that “we will begin working on an impenetrable physical wall on the southern border” on his first day in office. He also promised to hire 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents—a roughly 25 percent increase over current staffing levels.
And yet, hardline U.S. border policing efforts—which have expanded drastically over the past two plus decades and which Trump wishes to drastically escalate even further—have utterly failed to realize their objectives and instead led to the opposite of intended outcomes. A spring 2016 article by immigration scholars Douglas Massey, Jorge Durand and Karen Pren is an antidote to bombast like Trump’s. Massey and Durand have been publishing their findings on the failure of US border immigration enforcement since their landmark 2002 book, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. The 2016 article is their most thorough updating of their work. It should force a fundamental rethinking of U.S. immigration and border control policies. Their work is echoed by many other scholars and activists.
Massey, Durand, and Pren’s study is based on data from one of the largest ongoing migrant databases in the world, and certainly the most comprehensive when it comes to studying Mexican migration. Known as the Mexican Migration project, the database began tracking migration in 1982 and has since interviewed some 151,000 people from migrant-sending households in twenty-four Mexican states. Massey and Durand have been publishing work on this massive project since 1987.
In their recent study, the authors take 1986, the year that the Immigration Reform and Control Act was enacted by the Reagan administration, as the starting point for escalated border immigration enforcement efforts, and examine data through 2010, allowing a detailed analysis of decades of long-term immigration trends. During this period, there was enormous growth in resources devoted to boundary enforcement. The U.S. Border Patrol, for example, saw an increase of 850 percent in its budget—reaching $3.8 billion per year in 2010 and a quintupling of the number of agents, to more than 20,000.
The dramatic growth in the border policing apparatus, Massey, Durand, and Pren propose, can be traced back to the mid-1970s. Since then, three connected groups of self-interested social actors—immigration control bureaucrats asking for larger budgets, politicians seeking more votes, and media pundits in search of bigger audiences—have produced a “moral panic” about undocumented immigration from Mexico by playing up images of a “Latino threat.” Trump’s infamous demonization of undocumented Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers is only a more extreme version of the outrageous and grossly misleading statements politicians have been making for decades. Such vilification has fueled much public fear and hostility toward undocumented Latino immigrants, resulting in a self-perpetuating cycle of public support for ever-escalating border enforcement.
Given that calls for such policies are based on outright falsehoods, according to the study, it’s little surprise they’ve been completely ineffective. The idea of increasing border enforcement and even building a wall ignores some of the key dynamics that historically underlie Mexican migration to the United States: a growing population and falling wages in Mexico, coupled with ongoing labor demand in the United States, whose dynamics have shifted significantly in recent years.
Such shifts help illuminate one of Massey, Durand, and Pren’s most striking findings: the huge increase in border enforcement spending had virtually no impact on the likelihood that a potential Mexican migrant would undertake a border crossing without documents for the first time. That is, immigration enforcement is not a deterring factor for this group. Though the number of migrants fluctuated from 1970 through 1999 (linked to trends in U.S. labor demand and Mexican wages), there was a clear drop-off after 1999 (through 2010) in first-time undocumented migrations. However, the researchers found this was not statistically related to increased border enforcement. Instead, it was tied to a dramatic reduction in the Mexican birth rate in prior decades, which resulted in fewer young workers in need of jobs; the prior out-migration of masses of young people, which left fewer individuals trying to migrate for a first time; and crucially, increased access to legal visas after 2005. They also cite a somewhat improved Mexican economy and social conditions. Projecting into the future, the authors predict that the era of mass migration from Mexico is probably over. However, the more than 500,000 Mexicans who have come to the U.S. with temporary worker visas per year suggest that is not certain.
Similarly confounding for policy makers, Massey and colleagues found that the massive increase in border enforcement spending had virtually no effect on the successful entry (after multiple attempts) of undocumented Mexican migrants from 1986 through 2008. (Each year they found a 95-100 percent success rate for entry.) The eventual successful entry rate did drop to 75 percent in 2010, but this was among a much smaller pool of unauthorized crossers by that time.
That said, the border build-up did have a host of negative consequences for migrants, many of which have impacted border communities. One of the most obvious was that it pushed unauthorized crossings out of urban areas, like San Diego and El Paso, where the vast majority of such crossings had long taken place, to non-traditional, rural crossing areas that are much more dangerous, particularly the Sonoran desert of Southern Arizona. In response, unauthorized migrants almost universally turned to using coyotes (smugglers) (up to 100 percent usage from 70 percent previously) and the cost of such guides increased by a factor of five (from $550 USD in 1989 to $2,700 USD in 2010), according to the study.
The dramatic increase in deaths of unauthorized border crossers is the most extreme example of tragedies that have resulted from the border build-up. Fatalities more than doubled from an approximate range of 75-150 deaths per year prior to 1995 to 300-500 annual deaths between 2000-2010. There were 477 recovered sets of remains in 2012, despite many fewer total crossers than in the years before the build-up. Overall, more than 7,500 bodies or sets of remains were recovered in the U.S.-Mexico border region from 1994 through 2015.
Although the drastic rise in migrant deaths should hardly be surprising given the strategic goal of pushing crossers into arduous terrain, it appears to have caught U.S. officials off-guard. In 2000, then Immigration and Naturalization Service (parent agency of the Border Patrol at that time) commissioner Doris Meissner explained in an interview with The Arizona Republic, “We did believe that geography would be an ally to us ... It was our sense that the number of people crossing the border through Arizona would go down to a trickle, once people realized what it’s like.” Despite the admission of faulty assumptions and intention of using border policy as a deterring factor, the strategy has remained steadfastly in place and has expanded since. And there has been no accountability for this human tragedy among border patrol, other immigration bureaucracy leaders or policymakers, but rather only braying calls for more border enforcement.
Meanwhile, it was not increased migration but rather perceived difficulties of being able to cross again that led those who made it across to stay longer, resulting in a huge leap in the U.S. undocumented immigrant population from approximately 3 million in 1992 to 11 million in 2010, half of whom are Mexican. Massey, Durand, and Pren found the rates of return migration within a year for first-time Mexican migrants fluctuated between 30 and 50 percent from 1970 to 1999, but dropped drastically after 2000, reaching zero by 2010. The more fortified border did not keep people out but rather kept unauthorized migrants “caged in” once here, thus interrupting the traditional pattern of back-and-forth migration that existed throughout most of the twentieth century.
Massey, Durand, and Pren argue that a more realistic policy option would be to accept that more open migration— or some degree of free movement of labor— is a “natural component” of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Migration could be better managed, they contend, via a more open border and increased investments in social infrastructure in Mexico (public health, education, transportation, credit access) to increase prosperity for more people. This was the model the European Union successfully followed in Spain and Portugal during the 1980s and 1990s, transforming those countries from migrant-sending to migrant-receiving countries. Fixing the legal status of the 11 million undocumented immigrant residents of the United States is the remaining policy issue for the research team.
Today, the U.S.-Mexico border is “secured,” as undocumented immigration from Mexico has dropped sharply, and Border Patrol apprehensions are down 60-70 percent since 2007. And as Todd Miller recently pointed out, the “border wall” called for by Trump is already largely built in various forms. Meanwhile, there has quietly been a remarkable increase in worker visa access—some 360,000 temporary worker visas were granted to Mexicans in 2008 (reaching more than 500,000 per year from 2010-2013, up from 27,000 in 1995). Thus, the key remaining part of “immigration reform” yet to be addressed, and so urgently needed, is the legalization of the undocumented immigrant residents—something the polls show the vast majority of the public has supported from 2006 through the present. Amazingly, recent data suggests that even a strong majority of Republicans support the idea.
For such reasons, Massey, Durand, and Pren maintain, “More border enforcement and a denial of social and economic rights to those currently out of status makes absolutely no sense in practical or moral terms.”
While the authors limit their analysis to Mexico, their prescriptions are useful for thinking more expansively so as to include Central America and the Caribbean. Together with Mexico, these regions are the sources of three-quarters of undocumented migrants in the United States. What they also share is that United States has played a large role—from disastrous neoliberal trade policies to “security assistance” programs, the war on drugs, and support for anti-democratic regimes—in producing the conditions for high rates of emigration. A more just foreign policy, coupled with more liberal immigration (legalization plus greater visa access) and scaled back border policies, would save billions of dollars wasted on border and immigrant policing. The United States would be much better served to instead use those billions to promote the well-being of people abroad and at home.
|
|
I Stand With the Standing Rock Sioux |
|
|
Tuesday, 27 September 2016 14:18 |
|
Redford writes: "Something all too familiar is happening in North Dakota right now: Once again, Native Americans are being asked to accept a raw deal."
Native American protestors wave a clan flag over land designated for the Dakota Access Pipeline near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, September 3, 2016. (photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
I Stand With the Standing Rock Sioux
By Robert Redford, TIME
27 September 16
In their protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will affect far more families than their own
omething all too familiar is happening in North Dakota right now: Once again, Native Americans are being asked to accept a raw deal.
The short version is this: a private energy company, Energy Transfer Partners, is building a pipeline that runs from North Dakota to Illinois like a 1,200-mile zipper that cuts across four states. If completed, the Dakota Access Pipeline will carry nearly half a million barrels of oil each day across the watersheds the Standing Rock Sioux tribe use for drinking water. Now, thousands of Native Americans have gathered at one of the most controversial sections of the proposed pipeline’s path and are staging a 24/7 protest. They’ve created a settlement in the middle of their North Dakota home to try to prevent the pipeline from being finished.
The pipeline’s existence and its proposed path are each “legal,” of course. Permits were filed. Proposals were considered. A previous route much closer to Bismarck—a primarily white city—was scrapped amid concerns for its citizens’ health and well-being, and a new “more acceptable” route was carved through the home of the Standing Rock Sioux. In short, it’s the business as usual that helps private corporations get what they want in most of the United States, often at the expense of Native Americans.
But if this is legal, one must seriously question the laws of the land. They are laws that prioritize the profits of energy companies over the rights of people who actually have to live on the land, drink its water and eat its food.
The net result is that yet another Native American tribe is being asked to suffer yet again for the “good” of the rest of the country.
But who is this deal good for? There is one winner (Energy Transfer Partners) and about 7 billion losers (everyone else). Climate change is altering how we think about resource use forever, because bad resource use now affects every single one of us. Once burned, the carbon that the proposed DPAL pipeline carried will continue warming our world for years.
We can’t go back in time. We can’t unburn the carbon we’ve burnt—just as we can’t go back in time and change how we as a nation treated Native Americans. But what we can do is try, with all of our might, to break from our country’s tradition of deception and dishonesty in its treatment of its native people, and our deception and dishonesty about the true costs of fossil fuels. Often times—as is the case with the DAPL pipeline—the two are intertwined.
The time has come to recognize and name the fossil fuel industry for what it is: a clear and present danger to the health, prosperity and national security of all of our nation’s people.
National Security? Yes. The American armed forces, the CIA and the FBI are all grappling with the impending consequences of climate change: increased refugee crises from food shortages, more frequent resource wars over scarce water and fertile land and even floodwater-inundated military bases. A recent article in the New York Times reveals that because of climate change many cities on our Eastern Seaboard—including Norfolk, Virginia, home of Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval base—are having to cope with regular floods that 100 years ago were unheard of.
The Standing Rock protest is trying to prevent a pipeline from being built in North Dakota. But what we need to ask ourselves sooner rather than later is this: Should new pipelines be built at all?
Thousands of people are actually going to North Dakota to support the Sioux. But anyone can help in other ways.
You can give money. You can contribute to the Sacred Stone Camp Legal Defense Fund or to the Sacred Stone Camp gofundme account.
You can give time by making phone calls. Call North Dakota governor Jack Dalrymple at 701-328-2200 and politely share your opinion, or call the White House at 202-456-1111 and politely tell President Obama to rescind the Army Corps of Engineers’ permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Though not all of us are able to go to North Dakota and actually stand with Standing Rock, we can stand united. We can be a sea of people, rising up together to prevent the seas from rising and our history of mistreatment of Native Americas from repeating. The Sioux people of North Dakota aren’t just fighting for their homes and their water. They’re fighting for our homes and water, our families and futures, our children’s chances for a habitable home.
|
|
oing into last night’s debate, polls showed Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump 
