For weeks, the members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and many other Native Americans have been protesting the construction of an oil pipeline that would stretch from the northwest corner of North Dakota all the way down to South Central Illinois, crossing the Mississippi River multiple times. The Tribes were fighting the construction as it risked their water supply and would be cutting straight through their ancestral lands, destroying many ancestral burial grounds and sacred sights. The Tribe claimed in a lawsuit that they were not properly consulted before the government approved the plans.
In the past two weeks, the protest gained a lot of traction. Many celebrities and influential politicians began pointing towards the protests as what they really are: a peaceful demonstration of frustration. There are no riots, there's no yelling, there is no sign of violence.
And yet at first, the media was painting the protests as a nuisance, as a crowd of unruly, annoying people upset that things didn't go their way. They saw this group of people who for 500 years have been stepped on, slandered, pushed off their ancestral lands, slaughtered and betrayed by European and American forces and they said that they were being unreasonable.
Later, the protest gained favorability in the public eye through social media. The people were behind the Native protesters entirely. However, a Federal Judge ruled that the Tribe had no grounds to stop the pipeline, and the oil company building it let loose attack dogs on the crowd.
Let that sink in:
They sent out attack dogs on a group of peaceful minority protesters.
And the media reported it as though this happened in a far off country we don't care about.
Where have we seen this before?
That's right: we are officially reliving the 60's.
Music is being revolutionized, there is a huge wave of technological innovations, our politics are a mess, and the people are protesting for the rights of women, minorities, and LGBT people as well as environmental protection in massive waves.
And the response from the powers that be is extreme shows of power: releasing attack dogs, tear gas, and pepper spray. They discredit and undermine the groups protesting for equality. They fight against people begging for renewable energy, they fight against people begging for livable wages, they fight against people begging to be treated equally to the white man in our society.
This is the country we live in. A nation in which not wanting a powerful company to build a dangerous pipeline carrying pollution through your drinking supply warrants being mauled by attack dogs. A nation in which being a black man means you're likely not to live a free man beyond 25. A nation in which being a woman means objectification and being told how to dress, act, have fun, and that women are objects for sex and motherhood and nothing else. We live in a nation that would gladly sacrifice the lives of anyone and everyone if it meant making more money.
But this weekend, those powers lost again, as they always do eventually.
Washington has declared a halt to the Dakota Access Pipeline. They've asked for a halt on construction while the reconsider the plans to avoid construction over the Sitting Rock Reservation and avoid potential environmental damage.
The little guys have won once again. We the people may not win every battle against the powers that be, but we surely win the war every time.
