[News] Olympia Train Blockade Again Hits the Achilles Heel of the Fracking Industry
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Nov 24 10:51:11 EST 2017
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/24/olympia-train-blockade-again-hits-the-achilles-heel-of-the-fracking-industry/
Olympia Train Blockade Again Hits the Achilles Heel of the Fracking
Industry
by Zoltan Grossman <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/frastu/> -
November 24, 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the second time in the past year, Washington activists blocked a
train carrying oil fracking supplies from leaving the Port of Olympia on
the Salish Sea. The blockade camp prevented a possible shipment
<https://janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com/2017/11/olympia-activists-block-railroad-port.html?m=1>
of ceramic proppants from being shipped to the Bakken oil shale basin in
North Dakota, and possibly other fracking operations. The proppants are
used to prop open bedrock cracks during the process of fracking (or
hydraulic fracturing) for Bakken oil.
The “Olympia Stand <https://www.facebook.com/groups/186889111769185/>”
assembly and other port resistance activists demanded that the Port of
Olympia cease all fossil fuel-related and military shipments. The
activists’ press release <https://www.facebook.com/olyassembly/>
demanded that “The Port of Olympia cease all fossil fuel and military
infrastructure shipments,” and accept “Horizontal and democratic control
of the Port of Olympia by the community” and accept “A “just transition”
for port and rail workers to good, green jobs, and for the economy of
Thurston County to a cooperative, sustainable and just economy.” It also
demanded “Consultation on all port issues and projects that could impact
the tribal treaty lands, traditional lands, and ceded lands of local
Medicine Creek Treaty Tribes. Also, consultation with local urban Indian
peoples who are often disproportionately negatively impacted by
governmental and industry actions.”
*Previous blockades*
The blockade was set up on November 17, exactly one year after police
broke up a similar blockade. The Port of Olympia has been the focus of
previous blockades related to oil wars at home and abroad. Intense
protests <http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/port.html> opposed
military shipments of Stryker armored vehicles to Iraq from nearby Joint
Base Lewis-McChord (then Fort Lewis) in 2006-07, resulting in multiple
arrests and injuries. A decade ago this week, in November 2007, Olympia
police cracked down on a women’s antiwar port action blocking trucks at
the port gates.
Starting in 2012, the Texas-based Rainbow Ceramics company began to
import proppants
<http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/article25323229.html> from China to
the Port of Olympia, where the 1.5-ton sacks of “fracking sands
<https://olympiapfr.wordpress.com/>” were loaded onto trains to the
Bakken oil shale basin of North Dakota. Local community organizers held
a series of protests
<http://olywip.org/rally-opposes-ports-oil-fracking-sands-shipments-stands-standing-rock-quinault/>
at the port gates, which picked up support
<http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article109968372.html> in Fall
2016 after Standing Rock water protectors challenged the Dakota Access
Pipeline carrying the same Bakken oil.
On November 10, 2016, just after the Trump election, Olympia Stand
activists mounted a week-long blockade
<http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article114460818.html> of a train
carrying fracking proppants from the Port of Olympia. They used banners
such as “Water is Life” and “Oil = Death” to dramatize their solidarity
with the Standing Rock and Quinault water protectors, and began to learn
from an Indigenous Caucus about respectful protocol to follow when
working with Native communities.
As hundreds of people joined the train blockade, negotiations were
opened with the City of Olympia. But Port Executive Director Ed Galligan
had been told that Rainbow Ceramics officials were concerned that if
they did not get a shipment to two companies doing business in North
Dakota and Wyoming, they “run the risk of losing their business
<http://www.theolympian.com/news/business/article114830478.html>.”
In the early morning hours of November 17, 2016, a combined force of
Washington State Patrol, Olympia Police Department, and Thurston County
Sheriff’s Department raided the encampment
<http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article115608473.html>, making 12
arrests. The forceful eviction left serious bruises on some activists,
even if Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts and City Manager Steve Hall
later claimed there were no injuries. Chief Roberts later criticized the
Port <http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article116606903.html> for
causing the civil conflict by accepting the proppant shipments.
*The Recent Blockade*
Olympia’s Stand’s 2017 blockade took place one year after the police
raid, one day after a Keystone oil pipeline spill in South Dakota, and
the same week as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change exhibited a lack of meaningful progress in Bonn. The water
protectors’ press release noted that in the year between the two
blockades has been “the hottest year to ever be recorded on earth, saw
the brutal, militarized repression of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and
their resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, as well as one of the
most destructive storm seasons in living memory, with thousands of lives
lost to climate change-amplified hurricanes, typhoons and floods, from
Houston, to Bangladesh to Puerto Rico”
According to the press release, “Olympia Stand and other participants
believe climate change can be stopped by engaging in non-violent direct
action and civil disobedience against fossil fuel infrastructure, from
train blockades and Port shutdowns to occupations of pipeline
construction sites. Policymakers can continue to take no action on this
issue, and doom future generations to an uninhabitable planet, or they
can follow the lead of people around the world fighting for a Just
Transition away from fossil fuels and extractive economies. Meanwhile,
we will continue to fight, whether they like it or not.”
The blockade also took place a day after incumbent Port commissioner
Bill McGregor, who has supported the fracking proppant shipments,
narrowly won re-election to the three-member Port Commission, as
incumbent commissioner and fracking opponent E.J. Zita handily won
re-election. Since the Progressive era, Washington port commissioners
have been elected to office, and recent port elections have become a key
forum for climate justice activism in the state, as the oppose the
complicity of their ports in fossil fuel extraction.
At a Port meeting <http://portofolympia.tctv.net/> on March 24, 2014,
McGregor said that he was “still not convinced” that climate change may
result in serious sea-level rise. He claimed to have read that “all
we’ve done to try to eliminate CO2 emissions, and that type of stuff,
are taken care of in four days when a volcano erupts.” When an audience
member challenged him to provide a citation on a claim that is “not
true,” McGregor replied “I only tell you what I read, and I’m not going
to get in a discussion.”
The fact is that sea-level rise will affect our ports in this century.
As early as 2008, a report
<https://archive.epa.gov/sectors/web/pdf/ports-planing-for-cci-white-paper.pdf>
from the EPA and American Association of Port Authorities asserted that
“Common sense suggests that ports are at particular risk from climate
change due to their geographical locations.” If McGregor claims that
climate change is caused by volcanoes, rather than burning fossil fuels,
it perhaps explains why he has no problem shipping supplies for oil
fracking, and risking sea-level rise that could one day inundate the
port itself.
*The Achilles Heel of the Fossil Fuel Industry*
The Port of Olympia train blockade is only one part of larger and
powerful regional climate justice movement, using the strategic location
of the Pacific Northwest as a “chokepoint
<https://sites.evergreen.edu/unlikelyalliances/wp-content/uploads/sites/284/2017/05/FossilFuelPorts.pdf>”
for the fossil fuel industry. The three most active fossil fuel basins
are in the interior of the continent—in the Alberta tar sands, Bakken
oil shale basin, and Powder River coal basin. The fossil fuel industry
needs new Pacific Northwest port terminals both to export its oil, coal,
and natural gas, and to import extraction equipment and supplies.
Shipping has become the vulnerable Achilles heel
<http://olywip.org/the-achilles-heel-of-the-fossil-fuels-monster/> of
the fossil fuel industry in the Pacific Northwest. The Seattle-based
Sightline Institute terms the region a “Thin Green Line”
<http://www.sightline.org/research/thin-green-line/>of climate-conscious
citizens who stand between the fossil fuel companies and the global
market. In the past decade, the industry has proposed 14 new oil or coal
terminals in Washington and Oregon, and all have been defeated or are
near defeat by water protector alliances.
Using their treaty rights (upheld by the 1974 Boldt court decision),
Northwest tribal nations have protected their fishery from oil and coal
spills, and led the way for the grassroots alliances. Since last year,
the Lummi Nation
<https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/tribes-prevail-kill-proposed-coal-terminal-at-cherry-point/>
and its allies defeated the Cherry Point proposed coal terminal (leading
to the cancellation of a coal mine at the other end of the coal train
route in Montana), and the Quinault Nation
<http://www.quinaultindiannation.com/crudeoil.htm> and allies defeated
three oil terminals that would have brought in in explosive Bakken oil
trains to the Washington coast.
In Washington state, just in the past week, a proposed coal terminal in
Longview and proposed Bakken oil terminal in Vancouver appear to be on
their last legs. The Puyallup Tribe
<https://lrinspire.com/2017/03/13/puyallup-tribes-treaty-right-to-fish-threatened-by-proposed-liquefied-natural-gas-plant/>
is currently leading the opposition to a proposed Liquified Natural Gas
(LNG) terminal in Tacoma. These tribally led alliances not only have
included environmentalists, but some of the white fishing communities
and local governments
<http://olywip.org/quinault-nation-builds-bridges-stop-grays-harbor-oil-terminal/>
that once opposed treaty rights and environmental regulations.
Over the weekend, the blockade encampment has become a scene of
meetings, assemblies, cooking, singing, and drumming. Even if the
Olympia train blockaders are again removed by police in coming hours or
days, they are part of a larger regional movement taking responsibility
to act in the face of the climate crisis
<https://sites.evergreen.edu/indigenousclimate>, and using their strong
geographical position to literally stand in the way of the fossil fuel
industry.
/For updates, see Olympia Stand’s facebook page
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/186889111769185/> or contact
olyportresistance at gmail.com <mailto:olyportresistance at gmail.com>/
Zoltán Grossman <http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz> is a
Professor of Geography and Native Studies at The Evergreen State College
in Olympia, Washington. He is author of /Unlikely Alliances: Native
Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands/
<https://sites.evergreen.edu/unlikelyalliances> (University of
Washington Press, 2017), and co-editor of /Asserting Native Resilience:
Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis/
<http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/asserting-native-resilience>
(Oregon State University Press, 2012).
/*Zoltan Grossman* is a professor of Geography and Native Studies at The
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, who has been a warm body
in peace, justice, and environmental movements for the past 35 years.
His website is http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz and email is
grossmaz at evergreen.edu <mailto:grossmaz at evergreen.edu>/
--
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