Road resistance round-up from the Midwest US

Indi­ana June 24- Resis­tance to I‑69 has been rapid­ly heat­ing up in the past month. While the first protest camp set up was qui­et­ly evict­ed in ear­ly May, a tree-sit and occu­pa­tion cre­at­ed in the path of a pro­posed onramp lat­er that month last­ed five weeks.

Dur­ing that time, par­tic­i­pants also built an elab­o­rate ground camp, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly car­ry­ing on inten­sive orga­niz­ing with local fam­i­lies threat­ed by the road, cul­mi­nat­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty pic­nic in Oak­land City attend­ed joint­ly by landown­ers and eco-activists. Excit­ing demon­stra­tions and sol­i­dar­i­ty actions hap­pened through­out the month — in Bloom­ing­ton, Louisville, Mary­land, and beyond.

Dubbed B‑Rad Camp (after Brad Will, an Earth First!er and Indy­media jour­nal­ist mur­dered by the Mex­i­can state), the occu­pa­tion was evict­ed last Fri­day, June 20. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed around the camp, with the two treesit­ters being exposed to extreme dan­ger and bru­tal­i­ty by the state climbers. Three addi­tion­al pro­test­ers were arrest­ed at a police check­point on their way to sup­port those fac­ing evic­tion.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty actions were launched almost imme­di­ate­ly, and one per­son was arrest­ed that after­noon at an I‑69 plan­ning office in Bloom­ing­ton. Since then, demos have been called across Indi­ana, at offices belong­ing to the Indi­ana Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, con­trac­tors, and the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources, who were respon­si­ble for lend­ing climbers to INDOT. Near­ly 100 peo­ple joined a torch march in Bloom­ing­ton the fol­low­ing night, lead­ing police to scram­ble to pro­tect the down­town plan­ning office while peo­ple chant­ed, drummed and shot off fire­works.

A few chants from this demo and oth­ers: “They wreck dreams — we wreck roads” “I‑69 Shut it down, dri­ve INDOT out of town” “No more roads, no more jails” and “Sol­i­dar­i­ty means attack — against the road we will fight back” and at the end of the torch march “We will win!”

Since then, local orga­niz­ers have worked to put togeth­er legal sup­port for those now fac­ing charges (none extreme­ly seri­ous), while oth­ers have con­tin­ued to act in response to the evic­tion. A mil­i­tant office inva­sion against Bernardin Lochmueller and Asso­ciates (a deeply com­plic­it con­trac­tor) in Evans­ville today end­ed in con­fronta­tions with man­agers and bro­ken win­dows.

This account is only a brief sum­ma­ry of some of the more vis­i­ble actions that have occurred in the past weeks against I‑69. Mean­while, many peo­ple have con­tin­ued with oth­er kinds of excit­ing oppo­si­tion efforts, includ­ing the Road­block Report (avail­able on the web­site), the I‑69 Lis­ten­ing Project (a push to cre­ate more space to dia­logue and share sto­ries across the spec­trum of farm­ers and oth­ers resist­ing), and gar­den­ing with landown­ers along the route, among oth­er exper­i­ments to spread and deep­en the strug­gle.

More details and pic­tures can be found at
www.stopi69.wordpress.com . Pic­tures at http://stopi69.wordpress.com/photos/

BAA’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Fer­rovial, is respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing much of the fund­ing being used to cur­rent­ly build I‑69, through its pur­chase of the Indi­ana Toll Road.