Hi, everyone. I've taken a couple of days to soak in the much-needed good news that the Army Corps of Engineers declined an easement, effectively halting DAPL work, at least temporarily - make no mistake, this is a significant victory, but not a long-term one. I've just heard that tribal leader Dave Archambault III has asked non-Sioux protesters to leave for the winter, as tribe elders and representatives meet with the Corps of Engineers and (hopefully) Sunoco and ETP.
There is still a lot of work for us in the Standing Rock diaspora to do. ETP/Sunoco has pledged to ignore the COE and in fact are indicating that they will merge into one conglomerate, pipeline investor and fossil fuel advocate Donald Trump is assuming the presidency, and Senate Majority Leader Paul Ryan has made it clear he's just biding his time until Trump is elected so he can instate a fossil fuel-centric infrastructure plan.
Bearing all this in mind, I'm pushing forward with the documentation project with a renewed sense of mission and urgency. This week, as I continue adding material, I'll make pages specifically for:
- Ways to Donate - Please don't think the war is won - that's the easiest way to lose it. The indigenous tribes will still be camping through the winter, many people currently processing through the Morton County legal system will still need help, and the many media projects documenting the struggle will still need to be funded. I'm currently digging up as many as I can find and encouraging you to give as you can afford this winter.
- Online Collective Presences - These will include camp resources, legal support groups, and other collective action groups.
- First-Person Accounts - This will be perhaps the most personally rewarding work for me. I hope to eventually get a patchwork quilt of voices, drawn from social media, collectives, and my own interviews.
- Journalistic Accounts, by Source - This is another important function I'd like to work toward: sorting and analyzing editorial stances and biases in covering the development of the Sanding Rock movement this year. This will of course be a long with worthy process.
I'm currently assembling a team to help me out, as this will obviously be a lot of work. Feel free to share this post with anyone you think might be interested, and I'll continue to update as we progress.