https://truthout.org/articles/police-are-using-private-security-firms-to-target-anti-pipeline-organizers/
[links and images in online article]
Police Are Using Private Security Firms to Target Anti-Pipeline Organizers
By
Jessica Corbett,
Common Dreams
Published
January 31, 2019
Minnesota police, according to records obtained by The Intercept, have
spent more than a year gearing up for a militarized standoff with those
opposed to Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline, even borrowing from the
playbook of North Dakota law enforcement, which launched a brutal
response to the Indigenous-led demonstrations against the Dakota Access
pipeline in 2016.
The documents detail preparations for what Minnesota police expect could
compare to the massive anti-pipeline mobilization at Standing Rock Sioux
reservation in North Dakota, where law enforcement unleashed concussion
grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons on protesters.
The Line 3 project, which Calgary-based Enbridge says is its largest
ever, would replace a cracked and corroded crude oil pipeline installed
in the 1960s with a 1,031-mile pipeline that would run from Canada’s
Alberta tar sands to a Wisconsin shipping hub. If constructed, it would
cut through Native American reservations and treaty lands in Northern
Minnesota, jeopardizing fresh water resources and wild rice beds that
local Indigenous peoples consider their “primary economic, nutritional,
and cultural resource.”
Minnesota police, according to records obtained by The Intercept, have
spent more than a year gearing up for a militarized standoff with those
opposed to Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline, even borrowing from the
playbook of North Dakota law enforcement, which launched a brutal
response to the Indigenous-led demonstrations against the Dakota Access
pipeline in 2016.
The documents detail preparations for what Minnesota police expect could
compare to the massive anti-pipeline mobilization at Standing Rock Sioux
reservation in North Dakota, where law enforcement unleashed concussion
grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons on protesters.
The Line 3 project, which Calgary-based Enbridge says is its largest
ever, would replace a cracked and corroded crude oil pipeline installed
in the 1960s with a 1,031-mile pipeline that would run from Canada’s
Alberta tar sands to a Wisconsin shipping hub. If constructed, it would
cut through Native American reservations and treaty lands in Northern
Minnesota, jeopardizing fresh water resources and wild rice beds that
local Indigenous peoples consider their “primary economic, nutritional,
and cultural resource.”
