Lockdown Continues in the “Red River Showdown” 25th April

A pro­test­er with the group Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance has stopped con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL pipeline by lock­ing his arm into a con­crete cap­sule buried direct­ly in the pipeline’s pro­posed path. Fitzger­ald Scott, 42, is the first African Amer­i­can to risk arrest while phys­i­cal­ly blockad­ing TransCanada’s dan­ger­ous tar sands pipeline, and the sec­ond per­son to take action this week. On Mon­day a 61 year old man locked him­self to a piece of con­struc­tion equip­ment effec­tive­ly shut­ting down anoth­er Okla­homa pipeline con­struc­tion site. This week of action, called the “Red Riv­er Show­down,” is intend­ed to pro­tect the Red Riv­er, which marks the bor­der between Okla­homa and Texas and is a major trib­u­tary of the Mis­sis­sip­pi.

The site Scott has block­ad­ed is a wet­land area where crews are attempt­ing to lay sec­tions of the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline direct­ly into the marshy waters. An unde­tect­ed pin­hole leak at this loca­tion would cause can­cer caus­ing chem­i­cals to mix direct­ly into the local com­mu­ni­ty water table.

Scott, who has a master’s degree in urban plan­ning from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, Chica­go, is a long­time activist for social and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. While orga­niz­ing against Key­stone over the past five months, Scott has met many peo­ple strug­gling to pro­tect their homes from TransCanada’s abuse of emi­nent domain.

“I am doing this for the peo­ple who don’t have the finan­cial resources to pro­tect them­selves from a bul­ly like Tran­sCana­da,” explained Scott. “Imag­ine how much worse it is for them – like the most­ly African Amer­i­can neigh­bor­hood in Winona, TX, where pro­test­ers with the Tar Sands Block­ade found holes in welds of the pipeline sec­tion that runs right behind a children’s play­ground, and nei­ther Tran­sCana­da nor the gov­ern­ment will do any­thing about it!”

As con­struc­tion on the south­ern por­tion of Key­stone XL nears two thirds com­ple­tion, no reg­u­la­tors or politi­cians show any will­ing­ness to halt the project or even inspect those faulty welds. Accord­ing to George Daniel, spokesper­son for Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance, “Scott’s action sends a clear mes­sage: because every oth­er avenue has failed to stop this dead­ly project, we will block­ade – all sum­mer and on into the fall, if that’s what it takes.”

Today’s action comes just a few weeks after the dev­as­tat­ing tar sands spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, which has left com­mu­ni­ties across Okla­homa and Texas ter­ri­fied that they may be the next vic­tims of reck­less indus­try prac­tices. Sur­vivors of the spill in Mayflower have report­ed nau­sea, blurred vision, vom­it­ing, and black outs caused by the same blend of raw tar and poi­so­nous chem­i­cal sol­vents that will be trans­port­ed through Key­stone XL.

UPDATE 9:30 AM Work is still stopped on the ease­ment due to the large amount of police and emer­gency equip­ment need­ed for extrac­tion!  Show your sup­port for Fitzger­ald here!

UPDATE 9:10 AM: Fire­fight­ers have extract­ed Fitzger­ald and he’s now in police cus­tody. Please show your sup­port with a gen­er­ous dona­tion to his legal fund.

UPDATE 8:49 AM: Anoth­er fire res­cue vehi­cle on scene, offi­cer just com­mand­ed “every­one not involved in emer­gency ser­vices, back off now!” and work­ers retreat­ed slight­ly.

UPDATE 8:30 AM: Half a dozen work trucks, four police cars (3 sher­iffs and 1 state troop­er), four cops, four fire­fight­ers, 2 EMTs, one fire truck and a fire res­cue truck on scene. Spe­cial fire depart­ment equip­ment truck just arrived; large group of offi­cials crowd­ed around Fitzger­ald.

UPDATE 7:42 AM: Sher­iff on scene.