Dennis Ward
APTN National News
The arrest of an American actress who is protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline project is creating a new awareness for those opposing the project.
Shailene Woodley, who plays Edward Snowden’s girlfriend in Oliver Stone’s movie “Snowden” recorded her arrest near Standing Rock, North Dakota Monday.
It comes amid another legal defeat for the Sioux Tribe and a beefing up of law enforcement.
See related stories: Standing Rock
Does everyone else hear the similarities of the rhetoric the cop who’s defending the arrests uses and that of Donald Trump? Repetitive vagaries like “that many people behaving in that way”, “not a prayerful, not a peaceful crowd” are what Trump’s speeches have relied on to (try and fail to) make it sound like he is actually saying something, like he knows what he’s talking about. This tape doesn’t tell us anything other than what we already know. Trump is not a one off, he’s the norm. Why not tell us exactly what was happening that these people were arrested? Because every thing he described sounded totally reasonable to me. Would you feel peaceful and prayerful if you were surrounded by people with guns in armour? Really, I mean it. Put yourself there. Someone comes to your neighborhood and starts digging up your graveyard. You ask them to stop and they don’t so you involve the law, the media, you ask the government to stop them not realizing that the same company who’s trying to dig up your families’ graves is also paying for the presidential campaign, getting promises and favours all the way. You keep praying and planning, trying to figure out who might help. You call friends, you post online. People come. It’s a miracle, people are coming, thousands of them! And still this company keeps telling you they’re going to do it anyway. They’re just going to wait you out, or somehow get the government to force you out. They’re gonna just dig through the graveyard, through your backyard, your water supply, and they don’t care that you’ve lived here forever and that you need water to drink. You keep praying, you keep organizing, cause nothing else is working. Suddenly law enforcement comes and you realize they are somehow in league with this company. They must be in league with the government too! They don’t seem to care what is right. They don’t seem to care if you live or die. You can tell they want you dead, they just know it might incite further awareness of the injustice of your situation. But you can tell they want to. And then there’s a loud talk one night and some of your friends and family are arrested. They’re not doing anything; just venting their anger, fear and disbelief at the situation! This crazy (from craze “full of cracks”) situation that you found yourself in. It’s unbelievable abd yet here you are. What would you do? When they use every tiny thing against you? I’m so horribly frustrated with this situation. All law enforcement, government, people in your jobs who feel that something is wrong or in just, please listen to your guts, your hearts, and do what is right. Join the resistance. Don’t worry about your job. Together we can grow enough food, build enough natural homes for everyone. We need nothing but the material around us. We can remediate the water and stop shitting in it. We don’t need these jobs that stress us, depress us, make us hate ourselves. We don’t need this food that makes us feel eternally empty and eternally full. Bloated and nutritionless all at once. Choose to live. Do what makes you come alive.