Activists shut down Spec­tra Energy’s Waltham office after deploy­ing

a 24-foot tall tri­pod.

Feb­ru­ary 4th, 2015

While a gag­gle of con­fused police tried to unseat Shane Capra from his perch atop a 24-foot tri­pod inside Spec­tra Energy’s Waltham, Mass., office on the morn­ing of Decem­ber 17, and oth­ers tried to snare a bal­loon ban­ner float­ing near the office ceil­ing — all while accom­pa­nied by a brass band pro­vid­ing the rous­ing sound­track — one Spec­tra employ­ee was over­heard mut­ter­ing to anoth­er, “This is extreme­ly dis­rup­tive.”

Of course, that was the point.

The action in Waltham was part of the Week of Respect and Resis­tance, a series of demon­stra­tions, sit-ins, and lock-downs aimed at Spec­tra Ener­gy, their investors, and the politi­cians who sup­port them in their plan to expand a fracked gas pipeline — the so-called Algo­nquin, a name which many activists describe as insult­ing to the indige­nous speak­ers of the Algo­nquian lan­guage — through New Eng­land. With FERC poised to present its final Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment any day, and with New Eng­land politi­cians and Big Greens voic­ing their unwa­ver­ing sup­port for their favorite “bridge fuel,” cli­mate jus­tice orga­niz­ers and pipeline fight­ers in New York, Con­necti­cut, Mass­a­chu­setts, and Rhode Island knew they had to esca­late their already long-run­ning cam­paign against Spec­tra.

For Nick Katke­vitch of Fight­ing Against Nat­ur­al Gas, or FANG, this sense of urgency was fueled by a recent trip to Fer­gu­son, MO, where he saw first-hand the pow­er of the con­fronta­tion­al direct action tac­tics that had yet to be seen in the cam­paign against Spec­tra. “A lot of times in the cli­mate move­ment, espe­cial­ly in New Eng­land, there’s a ten­den­cy to fol­low the polit­i­cal process, to not dis­turb things too quick­ly, to take it slow,” Katke­vitch said. “When I went to Fer­gu­son, it was a total learn­ing expe­ri­ence. I learned to be tena­cious, to be fear­less, and to just say it like it is. I learned the true mean­ing of speak­ing truth to pow­er.”

Dur­ing the week of Decem­ber 13–19, activists brought that tena­cious­ness and fear­less­ness to a vari­ety tar­gets, from Dan­bury, Conn., where Spec­tra plans to expand the already-exist­ing gas pipeline to accom­mo­date the high­er vol­ume of gas flow­ing from the Mar­cel­lus Shale, to the gas com­pres­sor sta­tion in Cromwell, Conn., to the offices of some of the most pow­er­ful indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties involved in the so-called Algo­nquin Incre­men­tal Mar­ket project — includ­ing Spec­tra them­selves.

Sher­rie Andre of FANG, who gave the week of action its name, stress­es that while many of the actions car­ried out against Spec­tra and their finan­cial and polit­i­cal sup­port­ers involved acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, “We need to respect those who have been orga­niz­ing before us and have their own way of doing things. We need to show that we know how to pay homage to dif­fer­ent types of non­vi­o­lent direct action.” She added, “I recent­ly bumped into a friend who’s become inter­est­ed in what we’re doing, but said, ‘I can’t climb a tri­pod.’ It’s real­ly dis­heart­en­ing if that’s all they’re see­ing because there are so many oth­er play­ers and parts involved that make that hap­pen.”

For Noga Hey­man of Flood Boston, the suc­cess of the cam­paign against Spec­tra — and the broad­er cli­mate jus­tice move­ment — hinges on mak­ing activism as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble for a wide vari­ety of peo­ple. “Maybe lock-downs don’t always draw peo­ple in, but giv­ing some­one a zine to read, or get­ting a song stuck in their head, might engage them more.”

A bridge to nowhere

This empha­sis on engage­ment and cre­ativ­i­ty was cru­cial to one of the goals for the week: to not only dis­rupt busi­ness as usu­al at the loca­tions of the protests, but to dis­rupt the nar­ra­tive about fracked gas per­pet­u­at­ed by the ener­gy indus­try, fos­sil fuel-friend­ly politi­cians, and main­stream envi­ron­men­tal groups alike.

In addi­tion to block­ing the dri­ve­way to the Cromwell gas com­pres­sor sta­tion, Dan Fis­ch­er explained, he and fel­low Cap­i­tal­ism vs the Cli­mate mem­ber Vic Lan­cia “were also try­ing to block the for­ma­tion of mis­lead­ing assump­tions. Peo­ple dri­ve by the com­pres­sor sta­tion every day, and either don’t know about it or false­ly assume it’s part of the clean ener­gy process. So we felt it was impor­tant to take direct action at the point of assump­tion and say this is a dirty fuel, and there are plen­ty of clean, renew­able alter­na­tives that make frack­ing unnec­es­sary.” To help make this point, Fis­ch­er and Lan­cia locked them­selves to a mas­sive wood­en “bridge to nowhere” built in the days lead­ing up to the action.

Mem­bers of Flood Boston and oth­er groups fight­ing pipeline expan­sion in Mass­a­chu­setts echoed this sen­ti­ment at their action at the Boston office of the State Street Cor­po­ra­tion, one of Spectra’s biggest finan­cial back­ers, lat­er in the week. For Hey­man, the action was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to use art, the­ater and music to “dis­man­tle the myths sur­round­ing nat­ur­al gas” and advo­cate for com­mu­ni­ty-con­trolled renew­ables. To this end, activists con­struct­ed a giant pair of lips “spew­ing myths” about fracked gas which pro­test­ers chal­lenged with facts about the health and safe­ty impacts of the pipeline project.

“The peo­ple of West Rox­bury are trau­ma­tized,” said David Lud­low, a 72 year-old orga­niz­er in the Boston area, cit­ing the 2010 explo­sion of a gas pipeline in San Bruno, Calif., which killed eight peo­ple and which looms large in the minds of local res­i­dents brac­ing them­selves for the con­struc­tion of the West Rox­bury Lat­er­al pipeline and a new, high-pres­sure Meter­ing and Reg­u­lat­ing Sta­tion, both of which would be built dan­ger­ous­ly close to an active quar­ry and res­i­den­tial areas.

Activists and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers expressed these con­cerns in songs, chants and can­tas­to­rias that rang out in State Street’s office and con­tin­ued to Boston’s South Sta­tion after pro­test­ers deliv­ered a let­ter urg­ing State Street to divest from Spec­tra Ener­gy and oth­er sim­i­lar­ly destruc­tive cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Kinder Mor­gan, whose gas pipeline projects also threat­en Mass­a­chu­setts com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems.

In Rhode Island, activists drew atten­tion to the hypocrisy of the politi­cians and gov­ern­ment agen­cies sup­port­ing Spectra’s plan, with Bur­ril­lville Against Spec­tra Expan­sion hold­ing a protest at the Rhode Island Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment and FANG orga­niz­ing a sit-in at Sen. Shel­don Whitehouse’s office. Ten pro­test­ers joined Uni­ver­si­ty of Rhode Island physics pro­fes­sor Peter Nightin­gale, a mem­ber of Fos­sil Free Rhode Island, in the sit-in, and cheered for Nightin­gale as he was even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed for refus­ing to leave the office. White­house, who Nightin­gale calls a “wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing,” has long been a focal point in the Rhode Island fight against Spectra’s pipeline projects: in August, mem­bers of Bur­ril­lville Against Spec­tra Expan­sion held a sit-in at Whitehouse’s office which led to a meet­ing with the sen­a­tor.

Despite Bur­ril­lville res­i­dents express­ing their con­cerns about the health and safe­ty impacts of Spectra’s plans to expand the gas com­pres­sor sta­tion in their town, how­ev­er, Whitehouse’s sup­port for the pipeline expan­sion has not changed; in light of Whitehouse’s cli­mate-friend­ly rhetoric from the Sen­ate floor, Nightin­gale finds this inex­cus­able. “Com­pared to any of the oth­er cli­mate zom­bies, [White­house] may be a ‘cli­mate cham­pi­on,’” Nightin­gale explained. “But at the same time he sup­ports this plan out of Wash­ing­ton and Wall Street that wants to push nat­ur­al gas and gets in the way of devel­op­ing the green pow­er sec­tor.”

Blocka­dia and beyond

The actions dur­ing the Week of Respect and Resis­tance gar­nered sig­nif­i­cant local media atten­tion and, some spec­u­late, may have played a role in FERC delay­ing the release of their final Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment on the AIM project — not to men­tion Spectra’s stock hit­ting a 52-week low. Still, orga­niz­ers know that the fight against Spec­tra — and the fight for cli­mate jus­tice — is far from over.

“Before this week, the fight against Spec­tra had been most­ly polite and play­ing by the rules,” Fis­ch­er said. “We’re still going to keep using the old tac­tics, but this was the week where peo­ple in four dif­fer­ent states said that they’ve had enough with Spectra’s mis­lead­ing claims and with the white­wash advanced by the gov­ern­ment and busi­ness-friend­ly envi­ron­men­tal groups. This is the week where we entered a more com­mit­ted resis­tance, and hope­ful­ly a more suc­cess­ful resis­tance.”

As many of those involved in this week of action think about what that resis­tance will look like, one word seems to be on many of their minds: “Blocka­dia,” a name giv­en to the grow­ing net­work of groups dis­rupt­ing the extrac­tion and trans­porta­tion of fos­sil fuels with elab­o­rate and long­stand­ing protest camps. “We see Blocka­dia as an impor­tant way of achiev­ing vic­to­ry against not only this project, but extreme ener­gy in gen­er­al,” Fis­ch­er explained. “Spec­tra Ener­gy can keep its eyes peeled for the con­struc­tion of Blocka­dia in more and more places.”

How­ev­er, even as the resis­tance to Spec­tra and the fos­sil fuel ener­gy indus­try mounts, many orga­niz­ers also rec­og­nize that there is still sig­nif­i­cant work that needs to be done with­in the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment itself, a fact that was high­light­ed by the Week of Respect and Resis­tance coin­cid­ing with an esca­la­tion of the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment fol­low­ing the non-indict­ment of the police offi­cers respon­si­ble for the chok­ing death of Eric Gar­ner. Andre explained that as FANG shared Black Lives Mat­ter memes and arti­cles on their social media plat­forms, “there was a lot of back­lash from envi­ron­men­tal orga­niz­ers who fol­low the FANG page and who want­ed us just to focus on pipelines. But life is not just about pipelines. Our strug­gles are not siloed.” Indeed, FANG mem­bers under­scored this point by block­ing a com­muter train car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers to a New Eng­land Patri­ots game for four and half min­utes ear­li­er this month to sig­ni­fy the four and a half hours Mike Brown’s dead body remained in the streets of Fer­gu­son after he was shot by offi­cer Dar­ren Wil­son.

For Andre and many of the oth­er orga­niz­ers involved in the Week of Respect and Resis­tance, the fight against Spec­tra has to be seen as part of a larg­er fight for jus­tice that begins with rec­og­niz­ing that the land mem­bers of the pre­dom­i­nant­ly white envi­ron­men­tal move­ment live on and strug­gle to pro­tect “is not theirs. It was stolen. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists need to under­stand the his­to­ry of col­o­niza­tion and what it’s done to indige­nous peo­ple before they can even begin to talk about pipelines. Pipelines are just a new form of col­o­niza­tion. They’re a new trau­ma.”

Lud­low, who stress­es the impli­ca­tions of the cli­mate cri­sis for indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties in the Unit­ed States and around the world, also empha­sizes the need to rec­og­nize the con­nec­tions between the cli­mate jus­tice move­ment and move­ments fight­ing mil­i­tarism and eco­nom­ic injus­tice. “The U.S. makes more wars to pro­tect its resources and gob­ble up more of the world’s exist­ing resources. We’re not going to stop this by being nice. We’re not going to stop it by just talk­ing to our local areas about safe­ty. We need to make alliances to build a broad-based move­ment.”

For all the work that needs to be done to stop Spec­tra and com­bat the oppres­sive ten­den­cies with­in the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment, the activists involved in the Week of Respect and Resis­tance all agree that the week of action marked a turn­ing point in their cam­paign against Spec­tra. As Katke­vitch reflect­ed on the week’s impacts, his mind turns to one of the oth­er great pas­sions of his life besides orga­niz­ing: bas­ket­ball.

“When the team you’re play­ing is much bet­ter, they don’t respect you and they think it’s going to be an easy game,” he said. “But if you start play­ing aggres­sive­ly and assertive­ly and real­ly con­fi­dent­ly, at first they’ll think it’s kin­da fun­ny, like, ‘look at these kids try­ing so hard.’ But there’s a cer­tain moment in the game when all of a sud­den the ener­gy switch­es and the oppo­nent is actu­al­ly afraid, because they’re rec­og­niz­ing that your con­fi­dence and your aggres­sion is actu­al­ly com­ing from a real place — that you could actu­al­ly win. In Spectra’s office, it def­i­nite­ly felt like one of those moments of turn­ing the ener­gy. Now they have to respect us.”