(USA) Tar Sands update: Blockader Locks to Underground Capsule to Protect a Family Farm

WINNSBORO, TEXAS – Mon­day, Octo­ber 1, 2012 8:00AM – A Tar Sands Block­ade pro­test­er has stopped the destruc­tion of a small fam­i­ly farm in East Texas by lock­ing him­self in front of oncom­ing Key­stone XL clear­ing equip­ment. Hous­ton res­i­dent, Ale­jan­dro de la Torre, 28, is tak­ing action to stop the Key­stone XL pipeline from destroy­ing the home of yet anoth­er Texas fam­i­ly threat­ened by TransCanada’s poi­so­nous tar sands slur­ry.

In a pow­er­ful dis­play of con­vic­tion, De la Torre locked his arm into a con­crete cap­sule buried direct­ly in the pro­posed path of the tox­ic pipeline. This coura­geous act is pre­vent­ing TransCanada’s unwel­comed onslaught of machines from dev­as­tat­ing prop­er­ty cap­tured through emi­nent domain abuse. Fol­low live updates on face­book and twit­ter.

“I was raised in New Orleans, so I’ve seen how local com­mu­ni­ties suf­fer at the hands of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions,” attests de la Torre. “I’m will­ing to risk arrest today to stop this tar sands pipeline because I have the priv­i­lege to help pro­tect the safe­ty of those most affect­ed. Key­stone XL endan­gers the health and safe­ty of every­one from the landown­ers and their fam­i­lies now threat­ened by can­cer caus­ing leaks, to the refin­ery com­mu­ni­ties in Hous­ton that have to breathe the dirty air, as well as peo­ple of col­or around the world who are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by cli­mate change.”

In a sep­a­rate protest just miles away on the oth­er side of Winns­boro, Tar Sands Blockade’s aer­i­al tree protest enters into its sec­ond week. Sit­ters in plat­forms near­ly 100 feet in the air are not deterred by reck­less behav­ior on the part of TransCanada’s work crews. Despite repeat­ed warn­ing of the dan­gers on the part of the pro­test­ers, the com­pa­ny is encour­ag­ing the use of dan­ger­ous tree clear­ing equip­ment with­in feet of pro­test­ers’ trees, endan­ger­ing their lives.

Today’s block­ade comes less than a week after Tran­sCana­da super­vi­sors encour­aged law enforce­ment to bru­tal­ize two peace­ful pro­test­ers who were act­ing in defense of the largest tree block­ade in Texas his­to­ry. One of the abused pro­test­ers, Ben­jamin Franklin, explained why peace­ful civ­il dis­obe­di­ence must con­tin­ue despite the vio­lence orches­trat­ed by Tran­sCana­da, “I encour­age every­one to per­se­vere in the face of this type of sheer bru­tal­i­ty. To fol­low one’s moral com­pass in spite of extreme chal­lenges is the way we move for­ward towards a more humane, tar sands-free plan­et.”

Below is a pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed video of the landown­er, Susan Scott whose land stands to be clear-cut today, con­fronting TransCanada’s sur­vey­ors.

“Tran­sCana­da doesn’t have any local com­mu­ni­ty ties, it lies about the safe­ty of its pipeline because it cares more about mon­ey than about peo­ple,” claims Ron Seifert, spokesper­son for Tar Sands Block­ade.  “If this multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion had any com­pas­sion for East Texan’s homes, it would respect our con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed prop­er­ty rights instead of con­demn­ing the land and using it for its own pri­vate gain.”

UPDATE: 9:30AM – Police Arrive and Begin to Calm­ly Access the Sit­u­a­tion

UPDATE: 10:30AM – Tran­sCana­da Work­ers Bring­ing Shov­els and Threat­en­ing to Dig Ale­jan­dro Out

UPDATE: 11:00AM – Police Baf­fled About How to Respond – Tran­sCana­da Heli­copter Cir­cling Over­head

UPDATE: 11:30AM – Fire and Res­cue Crews Arrive With More Plain Clothes Police

UPDATE: 1:00PM – Police Steal Cam­era From Observers Stand­ing Near­by on Pri­vate Prop­er­ty

After the the tor­ture tac­tics used on our block­aders last week at the encour­age­ment of Tran­sCana­da super­vi­sors we’ve made ever effort to ensure we have observers on the scene care­ful­ly watch­ing with a video cam­era. Observers were stand­ing near­by on pri­vate prop­er­ty when police con­fis­cat­ed their cam­era! For­tu­nate­ly, TV crews are arriv­ing on the scene and hope­ful­ly they wouldn’t be sub­ject­ed to this same obstruc­tion of civ­il lib­er­ties.

UPDATE: 1:15PM – Police Attach Hand-Cuffs to Alejandro’s Ankles – Unde­terred He Holds Strong

UPDATE: 1:25PM – Police Put a Screen Around Ale­jan­dro So Observers Can’t Watch and Pro­tect Him

Since the police stole our main cam­era right now we only have pho­to of the screen tak­en far away with a cell phone cam­era. A back­up pho­tog­ra­ph­er arrived on the scene lat­er and took high def­i­n­i­tion pho­tos that we’ll upload on our flickr stream tonight.

UPDATE: 3:00PM – Police Chis­el­ing Away at the Under­ground Cap­sule That Ale­jan­dro is Locked Into

UPDATE: 3:45PM – Ale­jan­dro Has Been Arrest­ed For Help­ing Save a Fam­i­ly Farm From Key­stone XL

After delay­ing con­struc­tion for almost an entire day Ale­jan­dro has been extract­ed from the under­ground cap­sule and arrest­ed. Through his brave actions he was able to bring to light the dis­re­spect that local landown­ers have suf­fered at the hands of TransCanada’s emi­nent domain abuse and tram­pling of landown­er rights.

Sup­port Alejandro’s legal fees with a gen­er­ous dona­tion.

UPDATE: 4:00PM – Bull­doz­er Has Moved in to Lev­el More of the Fam­i­ly Farm 

After being delayed almost an entire work-day by Alejandro’s actions Key­stone XL con­struc­tion crews quick­ly moved in with machin­ery to get in at least one hour of work bull­doz­ing a local landown­ers beloved fam­i­ly farm before the end of the work day.

To per­ma­nent­ly stop this tox­ic pipeline we need more peo­ple to join us. Sign up to attend our Direct Action Train­ing Oct. 12–14th.

UPDATE: 6:00PM – Read Alejandro’s Sto­ry of How His Pas­sion For Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Moti­vates Him

“I’m will­ing to risk arrest because I have a cer­tain amount of per­son­al priv­i­lege that allows me to par­tic­i­pate. I don’t live near a Gulf refin­ery, or on land that’s at risk from a dev­as­tat­ing tar sands spill, so I’m able to play a small part in an action that will real­ly help people’s lives.  I’m here to stand up for peo­ple on the front lines because they’re being tram­pled to make way for cor­po­rate prof­its.

I’m sick of see­ing these dev­as­tat­ing affects on a per­son­al and com­mu­ni­ty lev­el and on a grand glob­al scale in which cor­po­ra­tions and their prof­its call all the shots.”

Read more of Alejandro’s sto­ry here.

UPDATE: 8:00PM – Excel­lent Cov­er­age From KLTV Chan­nel 7 – Tyler

KLTV.com-Tyler, Longview, Jack­sonville, Texas | ETX News

UPDATE: OCTOBER 2nd, 9:00AM – Alejandro’s Bail Set at $10,000

Yes­ter­day Hous­ton res­i­dent Ale­jan­dro de la Torre delayed Key­stone XL clear cut­ting oper­a­tions on a fam­i­ly farm out­side Winns­boro, Texas for almost an entire day. De la Torre locked him­self to an under­ground cap­sule in the path­way of Key­stone XL to pro­tect the farm, say­ing sim­ply that “I’m here to stand up for peo­ple on the front lines because they’re being tram­pled to make way for cor­po­rate prof­its.” After Wood Coun­ty Sher­iff Depart­ment con­fis­cat­ed peace­ful observers camera’s they arrest­ed him for his coura­geous action.

De la Torre is cur­rent­ly being held on trumped up charges and a bail set at $10,000, an out­ra­geous sum for a non­vi­o­lent peace­ful pro­test­er. As a sup­port­er of Ale­jan­dro and the block­ade please demon­strate your sup­port with a gen­er­ous dona­tion to his bail. 

UPDATE: OCTOBER 2nd, 10:0AM- Ale­jan­dro Released!

Ale­jan­dro de la Torre has been released from Wood Coun­ty Jail. When more infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able we will update. For now, check out what Ale­jan­dro said before he was arrest­ed on our blog.