Dear Friends,
Our battle to stop the Dakota Access/Bakken Pipeline has gone from regional to national, and now to international. Yesterday in Laos, a student actually asked President Obama about the pipeline. Click here to see the exchange.
Also this week, I received a letter from the President in response to two letters I and others wrote to him in April and May. The first letter, signed by Jane Kleeb, Dallas Goldtooth, Frank James and me, commends the President for rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline. Our specific request reads, “{W}e ask you in the strongest possible terms to exert the same clarion leadership with regards to the proposed Bakken Pipeline.”
His response (included here) is disappointing.
Click here to view the two letters we sent to the President.
Let’s help President Obama do the right thing here. So much is happening right now, including direct action organized by Bold Iowa and Iowa CCI this Saturday, September 10th. For details about that, visit the invitation posted on Facebook:
Direct Action to Stop the Dakota Access/Bakken Pipeline
Between what’s happening in North Dakota with our Native allies, the continued efforts of landowners and environmentalists in Iowa, and now students in Laos, momentum continues to build to stop this pipeline. That said, it saddens me to hear reports from landowners who continue to have their property rights trampled by Dakota Access. One landowner told me that after four inches of rain, the bulldozers still showed up and worked his soaking-wet topsoil.
Another landowner told me pipeline workers failed to put up a fence to keep her cattle away from construction. Her cattle broke out on several occasions and got into her corn. One cow even fell into the pipeline trench and died.
Along the Des Moines River in Boone County, vigilant pipeline fighters monitoring construction noticed construction crews actually working in the rain. They called local law enforcement, who came to the site and ordered the construction crew to stop.
The bottom line is this: Everything we continue to do to fight this pipeline is a small victory, a step forward, another reason why President Obama will eventually have to weigh in, like he did with Keystone. So please, keep at it folks. Do everything you can, within the parameters of nonviolence, to help stop this pipeline. We are gaining momentum, and we will win!
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Listen to the Fallon Forum:
– Live Mondays, 11:00-12:00 noon CT on La Reina KDLF 1260 AM (Des Moines, IA)
– Outside of central Iowa, listen live here: FALLON FORUM LIVE-STREAM
– KHOI 89.1 FM (Ames, IA)
– KICI.LP 105.3 FM (Iowa City, IA)
– WHIV 102.3 FM (New Orleans, LA)
– KPIP-LP, 94.7 FM (Fayette, MO)
Thanks! – Ed Fallon
I would like to hear more about the President’s opinion about the Fallen pipeline, which I oppose. However I am furious about those who wish to diminish our first dipliplomatic visit to Laos. We have thousands of citizens originally from Laos in Iowa and throughout the US who escaped the war, thousands who died. Now they have the limelight for the first time since the war, for the first time since the Cambodian Holocaust. I am so upset that some people would take away from our SE Asian brothers and sisters opportunities to tell their stories and repair some of what was destroyed during the war.
I totally am against the pipeline,but this was not the day.