Construction of KXL Pump Station Shut Down in Oklahoma

[UPDATE: Nine peo­ple have been arrest­ed. You can donate to their bail fund at http://gptarsandsresistance.org/donate/ and share this around. They man­aged to shut down the site until a vol­un­teer fire­fight­er report­ed­ly injured one of the lock­down­ers, who is in the ambu­lance cur­rent­ly and whose injuries are unknown to us. Folks soon­after unlocked out of con­cerns for their safe­ty.]

Semi­nole, OK - Ear­ly this morn­ing, eight indi­vid­u­als blocked con­struc­tion of a pump sta­tion for TransCanada’s con­tro­ver­sial Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline on Semi­nole land-by-treaty by lock­ing on to equip­ment in the largest action yet by the Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance. The group took action today, phys­i­cal­ly halt­ing the con­struc­tion process, as a part of an effort to pre­vent the Great Plains from being poi­soned by inher­ent­ly dan­ger­ous tar sands infra­struc­ture, as well as demon­strate the neces­si­ty for direct con­fronta­tion with indus­tries that prof­it off of con­tin­ued eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion and the poi­son­ing of count­less com­mu­ni­ties from “Alber­ta, CA” to the Gulf. This action comes dur­ing the first day of a nation­wide week of coor­di­nat­ed anti-extrac­tion action under the ban­ner of Fear­less Sum­mer.

“As a part of a direct action coali­tion work­ing and liv­ing in an area that has been his­tor­i­cal­ly sac­ri­ficed for the ben­e­fit of petro­le­um infra­struc­ture and indus­try, we believe that build­ing a move­ment that can resist all infra­struc­ture expan­sion at the point of con­struc­tion is a neces­si­ty. In this coun­try, over half of all pipeline spills hap­pen in Texas, Louisiana, and Okla­homa. Look­ing at the main­stream key­stone oppo­si­tion, this fact is invisible—just like the com­mu­ni­ties affect­ed by tox­ic refin­ing and tox­ic extrac­tion,” said Eric Whe­lan, spokesper­son for Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance. “We’re through with appeal­ing to a bro­ken polit­i­cal sys­tem that has con­sis­tent­ly sac­ri­ficed human and non­hu­man com­mu­ni­ties for the ben­e­fit of indus­try and cap­i­tal.”

“The pipelines that poi­soned the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er and Mayflower, Arkansas, were not the Key­stone XL. Tar sands infra­struc­ture is tox­ic regard­less of the cor­po­ra­tion or pipeline. For that rea­son we are opposed not only to the Key­stone XL, but all tar sands infra­struc­ture that threat­ens the land and her prog­e­ny,” said Fitzger­ald Scott, who was arrest­ed in April for lock­ing his arm inside a con­crete-filled hole on the Key­stone XL ease­ment, and locked to an exca­va­tor today. “While KXL oppo­nents wait with bait­ed breath for Obama’s final deci­sion regard­ing this par­tic­u­lar pipeline, oth­er cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Enbridge, will be lay­ing sev­er­al tar sands pipelines across the con­ti­nent. The Enbridge pipelines will car­ry the same vol­umes of the same nox­ious sub­stance; there­fore, Enbridge should get ready for the same resis­tance.”

The Tar Sands megapro­ject is the largest indus­tri­al project in the his­to­ry of humankind, destroy­ing an area of pris­tine bore­al for­est which, if ful­ly real­ized, will leave behind a tox­ic waste­land the size of Flori­da. The Tar Sands megapro­ject con­tin­ues to endan­ger the health and way of life of the First Nations com­mu­ni­ties that live near­by by poi­son­ing the water­ways which life in the area depends on. This pipeline promis­es to deliv­er tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men to the nox­ious Valero Refin­ery at the front door of the fence-line com­mu­ni­ty of Man­ches­ter in Hous­ton.

There is staunch resis­tance to the expan­sion of Tar sands min­ing and infra­struc­ture grow­ing across the heart­land of “North Amer­i­ca,” in areas long con­sid­ered sac­ri­fice zones. Cur­rent­ly activists are occu­py­ing an Enbridge pump sta­tion in so-called “Ontario” to pre­vent the rever­sal of the Line9 pipeline. The rise of Idle No More in defense of indige­nous sov­er­eign­ty across Tur­tle Island is in large part to pro­tect lands and waters from tox­ic indus­tries, and peo­ples of the Great Sioux Nation and trib­al gov­ern­ments across “South Dako­ta” are avow­ing their oppo­si­tion to the north­ern seg­ment of the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline.