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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/24/olympia-train-blockade-again-hits-the-achilles-heel-of-the-fracking-industry/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/24/olympia-train-blockade-again-hits-the-achilles-heel-of-the-fracking-industry/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Olympia Train Blockade Again Hits the
Achilles Heel of the Fracking Industry</h1>
<p class="post_meta"> <span class="post_author_intro">by</span>
<span class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/frastu/"
rel="nofollow">Zoltan Grossman</a></span> - November 24,
2017<br>
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<p>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 <a
href="https://janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com/2017/11/olympia-activists-block-railroad-port.html?m=1">prevented
a possible shipment</a> 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.</p>
<p>The “<a
href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/186889111769185/">Olympia
Stand</a>” assembly and other port resistance
activists demanded that the Port of Olympia cease all
fossil fuel-related and military shipments. The
activists’ <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/olyassembly/">press
release</a> 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.”</p>
<p><strong>Previous blockades</strong></p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/port.html">protests</a>
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.</p>
<p>Starting in 2012, the Texas-based Rainbow Ceramics
company began to <a
href="http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/article25323229.html">import
proppants</a> from China to the Port of Olympia, where
the 1.5-ton sacks of “<a
href="https://olympiapfr.wordpress.com/">fracking
sands</a>” were loaded onto trains to the Bakken oil
shale basin of North Dakota. Local community organizers
held a series of <a
href="http://olywip.org/rally-opposes-ports-oil-fracking-sands-shipments-stands-standing-rock-quinault/">protests</a>
at the port gates, which <a
href="http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article109968372.html">picked
up support</a> in Fall 2016 after Standing Rock water
protectors challenged the Dakota Access Pipeline
carrying the same Bakken oil.</p>
<p>On November 10, 2016, just after the Trump election,
Olympia Stand activists mounted a <a
href="http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article114460818.html">week-long
blockade</a> 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.</p>
<p>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 “<a
href="http://www.theolympian.com/news/business/article114830478.html">run
the risk of losing their business</a>.”</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article115608473.html">raided
the encampment</a>, 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 <a
href="http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article116606903.html">criticized
the Port</a> for causing the civil conflict by
accepting the proppant shipments.</p>
<p><strong>The Recent Blockade</strong></p>
<p>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”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>At a <a href="http://portofolympia.tctv.net/">Port
meeting</a> 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.”</p>
<p>The fact is that sea-level rise will affect our ports
in this century. As early as 2008, a <a
href="https://archive.epa.gov/sectors/web/pdf/ports-planing-for-cci-white-paper.pdf">report</a>
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.</p>
<p><strong>The Achilles Heel of the Fossil Fuel Industry</strong></p>
<p>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 “<a
href="https://sites.evergreen.edu/unlikelyalliances/wp-content/uploads/sites/284/2017/05/FossilFuelPorts.pdf">chokepoint</a>”
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.</p>
<p>Shipping has become the vulnerable <a
href="http://olywip.org/the-achilles-heel-of-the-fossil-fuels-monster/">Achilles
heel</a> of the fossil fuel industry in the Pacific
Northwest. The Seattle-based Sightline Institute terms
the region a “<a
href="http://www.sightline.org/research/thin-green-line/">Thin
Green Line” </a>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/tribes-prevail-kill-proposed-coal-terminal-at-cherry-point/">Lummi
Nation</a> 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 <a
href="http://www.quinaultindiannation.com/crudeoil.htm">Quinault
Nation</a> and allies defeated three oil terminals
that would have brought in in explosive Bakken oil
trains to the Washington coast.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://lrinspire.com/2017/03/13/puyallup-tribes-treaty-right-to-fish-threatened-by-proposed-liquefied-natural-gas-plant/">Puyallup
Tribe</a> 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 <a
href="http://olywip.org/quinault-nation-builds-bridges-stop-grays-harbor-oil-terminal/">white
fishing communities and local governments</a> that
once opposed treaty rights and environmental
regulations.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://sites.evergreen.edu/indigenousclimate">act
in the face of the climate crisis</a>, and using their
strong geographical position to literally stand in the
way of the fossil fuel industry.</p>
<p><em>For updates, see <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/186889111769185/">Olympia
Stand’s facebook page</a> or contact <a
href="mailto:olyportresistance@gmail.com">olyportresistance@gmail.com</a></em></p>
<p><a href="http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz">Zoltán
Grossman</a> is a Professor of Geography and Native
Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia,
Washington. He is author of <a
href="https://sites.evergreen.edu/unlikelyalliances"><em>Unlikely
Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join
to Defend Rural Lands</em></a> (University of
Washington Press, 2017), and co-editor of <a
href="http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/asserting-native-resilience"><em>Asserting
Native Resilience: Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations
Face the Climate Crisis</em></a> (Oregon State
University Press, 2012).</p>
</div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Zoltan Grossman</strong>
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 <a
href="http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz">http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz</a>
and email is <a href="mailto:grossmaz@evergreen.edu">grossmaz@evergreen.edu</a></em>
</p>
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