A Broken System Beyond Repair

Rally Against Enbridge and Line 3 - St. Paul, Minnesota State Capitol, August 25, 2021

In 80-something hot sunlight, more than 2,000 people rallied against the further construction of Line 3 across northern Minnesota on Wednesday.  However, the line is already 90% completed.  Clouds of smoke darken the Arrowhead from the growing Greenwood fire, while smoke from fires in Manitoba slant across Minnesota too.  Minnesota itself has been in a severe drought for months.  As climate change happens, the State regulators in the Public Utilities Commission, the Department of Natural Resources and MPCA, the courts, the Democratic Party establishment and the Republican Party in toto have all supported the large Line 3 pipeline from the Canadian Alberta tar sands to Superior, Wisconsin.  Yet 80% of Minnesotans oppose the line in survey after survey.

This line is 337 miles long in Minnesota.  It is close to or crosses several native reservations – Red Lake, Fond du Lac and White Earth.  It crosses the watersheds of the St. Louis River, which flows into Lake Superior, and the watershed of the Mississippi River, along with ricing areas and many lakes and streams.  Enbridge, the piratical pipeline oil firm from Canada, pays the overtime and extra costs of guarding the pipeline for hundreds of local police, sheriffs, Fond du Lac reservation cops, helicopter pilots and assorted private contractors. Millions of gallons of water have been stolen from small cities, lakes and water-tables in northern Minnesota to service the project, enabled by local mayors.  Enbridge has already been cited by the MPCA for 28 drilling fluid spills.  Most of the temporary jobs are sourced out of a hiring-hall in Superior mostly to Wisconsinites, not Minnesotans.

SPEAKERS

The state capitol grounds were dotted with teepees and booths.  A fence had been set up (once again) between the crowd and the Capitol by Democratic Governor Walz.  A crowd of mostly young people, indigenous activists and older ex-hippies – the usual suspects – filled the grassy area in front of the steps, with many coming or going.  Brown-shirted, Yogi-Bear hatted state troopers patrolled on the edges of the crowd.  An indigenous Anishinabe Ojibwe speaker, who had come down from northern Minnesota, focused on how Line 3 breaks treaties again.  A Tibetan SEIU officer spoke, denouncing the line, who eventually talked about Tibet and China.  Several state representatives spoke in support, while still being members of the Democratic Party. Winona LaDuke, the leader of the protest from the White Earth Reservation, spoke, aiming most of her anger at Walz. She decried the fact that the whole bi-partisan power system in the State had become a handmaiden to a foreign Canadian corporation, whose ultimate aim is to destroy the environment for profit.

LaDuke pointed out that Line 3 will carry enough heavy tar sands to equal 50 coal-burning power plants.  As such, Line 3 is a large threat in climate change.  It is also a direct threat to the precious waters of Minnesota which flow east and south.  The operational point of the rally was to pressure Biden and Walz to cancel Line 3’s permit to operate.

The problem is all pretty obvious.  The real problem is that even with 800 arrests for civil disobedience, construction has moved along.  At most perhaps several hundred people have attempted to flood construction, which only slowed things down for a time.  Right now there has not been enough ‘people’ power to shut down this monstrosity.  Some are frustrated with this and are dreaming of sabotage.  Others, socialism.

What is clear is that corporate rights trump the ‘democratic’ opinion of the majority of Minnesotans, including the majority of unions, who do oppose Line 3.  The capitalist system is hell-bent on heating the world, and no overly-obvious issue like Line 3 will stop them from driving us over a cliff.  The criminals in the board-room of Enbridge are funded by the banking industry, including banks like Royal Bank of Canada, which claims to care about ‘blue water.’  Or Wells Fargo, the leader in evictions in the city as well.  Several unions like the Laborers or Teamsters would build gas-chambers if it got their members jobs, and in a way, Line 3 will help produce a world-wide 'gas' chamber.  The Democratic Party power centers, funded by capital, are a cabal of dangerous hypocrites, while the Republicans are pure vipers.  The bourgeois ‘regulators’ and the ‘law’ are in bed with the corporations – figuratively ‘bought and paid for.’

The PUC - Suits in League With Enbridge

It is enough to make one cry.  It is clear appeals to Joe Biden or morality or common sense are inadequate.  Laughingly so. So is the effectiveness of civil disobedience in this situation.  Even lawsuits are a bust. The system is broken beyond repair.  That is the stark truth the rally in St. Paul yesterday proved.

No socialist spoke from the platform.  No revolutionary.  Not a red flag was seen. This is unfortunate, as things have clearly gone beyond civil disobedience or lawsuits.  The Democratic leadership think that anyone who can’t stomach Republican reaction HAS to vote for them, so they don’t really care.  Protest all you want!  Individuals in the audience may move a bit more to the left, in anger at this travesty, but right now that does not threaten Democratic Party or corporate hegemony.  But perhaps in the future…

Walz, in a later interview on MPR, said the only way to stop pipelines was to "change the permitting process" through the legislature.  As if the state legislature will change anything that dramatic.

As our food gets impacted, our air and water quality, our health, our dwellings, our lives – there will come a time when arresting the leadership of the criminal corporations responsible for this fiasco; removing the ‘leaders’ who don’t lead; changing the rhetoric from hypocritical to confrontational; building organizations that understand the endpoint of this corporate system - will seem necessary and obvious, not the rantings of those on the edge.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left: "Stop Tar Sands Oil "Straw" From Going Through Minnesota," "Klobuchar A Hot Dish Neo-Liberal," "AntiTrust" (Klobuchar), "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers Again," "Climate Emergency," "Sulfuric Acid and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area," "This Changes Everything" (Klein).

The Ranter, Red Frog

August 27, 2021