Dear Friends,
I hate being confined, trapped, imprisoned. I’d rather beat myself to a pulp walking across continents than spend time behind bars.
But the hour has come in the fight to stop the Bakken Pipeline when mass civil disobedience is needed. If you haven’t yet signed the Pledge of Resistance, please read it over and sign today.
If you have signed, please share the Pledge with your networks, as we need 1,000 people committed to risking arrest if our show of force is to be credible and effective.
We no longer have a lot of time or options in this fight. Other strategies have delayed the pipeline and deepened public opposition. Hundreds of patriotic Iowans who value life, liberty and our land have fought this battle through every available venue. Ten brave holdout landowners continue to pursue legal redress through the courts.
But even that won’t stop Dakota Access from tearing up Iowans’ farmground, forests and river bottoms. A ruling on the lawsuit will work its way through the legal system slowly. In the meantime, Dakota Access is poised to push forward with construction.
We need President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers to step forward to do what’s right, to put an end to the madness of this unprecedented expansion of fossil-fuel infrastructure, enabled by an abuse of eminent domain that violates the very heart of the U.S. Constitution.
We need the President and the Corps to make the right policy decision, and we need them to do it NOW.
Important policy changes often come only after a dramatic show of force by large groups of committed people defiantly and nonviolently breaking the law. That’s why YOU signing the Pledge of Resistance is so important.
It’s a tough decision, and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. As you weigh the decision of whether or not to sign, consider this:
– The large protests at farm foreclosure auctions in the 1980s inspired broader public empathy for family farmers and led to Congress adopting Chapter 12 of the Bankruptcy Code in 1986, which “brought some helpful and much-needed relief to many financially-distressed farmers,” according to Donald Swanson in The 1980s Farm Crisis: Some Lessons Learned.
– The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed only after mass mobilizations and thousands of arrests by African Americans and others in the 1960s.
– The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote passed after years of protest, agitation and nonviolent civil disobedience by brave women and their enlightened male allies.
We’re at that point in the battle to stop Big Oil from running roughshod over farmers, landowners, tribal communities, our water and our land. In Iowa and across the country, patriotic Americans are fighting back against pipelines, fracking and drilling.
The tide is turning in our favor, as pipelines were recently stopped in Georgia, New England, New York and elsewhere. With enough of us standing side by side with landowners who continue to resist, we can stop Bakken!
So please, sign the Pledge today!
*******
This week’s Fallon Forum is a pair-of-docs, as doctors Charles Goldman and David Drake fill in for me while I’m speaking in Atlanta at the Rockefeller Fund Strategy Session on Pipelines and Eminent Domain.
Call-in to the show on Monday from 11:00 – 12:00 noon with your own thoughts and comments at (515) 528-8122. Writes Charles about the intended conversation: “In an era where the Republicans believe that a primary qualification to ‘lead the Free World’ is who has the biggest ‘hands’ and presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton continues to channel the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, (or is it Dick Cheney?) in regards to foreign policy, is there room to give peace a chance? We’ll speak with co-host Dr. David Drake about his greater than two decades involvement in the peace and anti-nuclear movement.”
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