How Big Oil is Buying our Representatives to Criminalize Environmental
Protests
BASAV SEN
12/05/2020
( Otherwords.org) - More communities are standing up to pipelines. The
fossil fuel industry wants to make that a felony. By Basav Sen | December 2,
2020
A few years ago, massive protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at
Standing Rock changed the popular narrative about what climate activism
looked like. The protests made clear that ramming dangerous pipelines
through vulnerable communities wasn't going to be easy anymore.
But since then, rather than scaling back their attacks on these communities,
the fossil fuel industry decided to attack them even more fiercely.
Indigenous water protectors at Standing Rock were subject to a violent law
enforcement response. They were blasted with water cannons in the freezing
cold and faced down by heavily armed police in military vehicles.
Now the industry wants to criminalize anti-fossil fuel protests altogether,
pushing new laws that turn routine acts of civil disobedience into serious
felonies. They've found willing partners in the American Legislative Action
Council (ALEC). Industry and ALEC efforts have passed such laws in 13
states.
My colleague Gabrielle Colchete and I studied these anti-protest laws in our
recent report, "Muzzling Dissent: How Corporate Influence Over Politics Has
Fueled Anti-Protest Laws."
We focused on three states: Louisiana and West Virginia, where these laws
have been passed, and Minnesota, where bills have been introduced numerous
times (one even passed the legislature, but was vetoed by the governor).
In all three states, controversial fossil fuel infrastructure has faced
significant resistance from affected communities. And in every case, the
fossil fuel industry has been a major source of campaign money for the
legislators who introduced these bills.
For example, in Louisiana, the lead sponsor of the anti-protest bill
received $6,600 from oil and gas interests, the third highest of 40 industry
sectors he received campaign contributions from. And in West Virginia, the
lead sponsor of the anti-protest bill received substantial contributions
from Dominion Energy, owner of the failed Atlantic Coast Pipeline project
that passed through the state.
All three states had something else in common, too: Their controversial
infrastructure projects have a disproportionate impact on marginalized
communities.
Black communities in the path of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana, for
example, suffer a poverty rate twice the national average. For Indigenous
communities in the path of the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota, the poverty
rate is three times the national average.
Many of the poorer white communities in the path of the Mountain Valley
Pipeline in West Virginia have a life expectancy below the national average.
The same is true of the majority-Black communities at the end of the Bayou
Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana, especially in the "Cancer Alley" area.
The underlying story? Corporate interests fund the campaigns of elected
officials, who return the favor - often at the expense of their most
vulnerable constituents. In this case, politicians are criminalizing efforts
by their own voters to roll back the harms fossil fuel interests are doing
to their communities.
There is much work to be done to reverse these unjust laws - and the
systemic inequalities that drive them.
We need to push for "Protesters' Bills of Rights" in state legislatures to
codify the right to protest without fear of criminalization and repression,
a core democratic right that's particularly relevant today.
We also need to restore key provisions of the National Environmental Policy
Act that protect communities and ecosystems from harmful projects. We should
also add another layer of review, a National Environmental Justice
Assessment, to evaluate the impacts of new infrastructure projects on
marginalized communities.
Finally, we need to clean up systemic corruption. We must push for a ban on
hiring or appointing industry lobbyists in regulatory agencies and set up a
robust system of public financing of elections as an alternative to our
current system of legalized bribery.
These will all be hard political fights, but they're fights worth having.
Our health, our democracy, and our planet depend on it.
Via Otherwords.org
