The first day of arrests has happened, with a few dozen people now in police custody. It was all very orderly, with protestors sitting or standing in rows while they were arrested one or two at a time.
There is a training session for tomorrow’s participants happening in three hours.
70 People Arrested in Opening Day of Tar Sands Action
70 people from across the US and Canada were arrested at the White House this morning for the first day of a two week sit-in aimed at pressuring President Obama to deny the permit for a massive new oil pipeline. Over 2,000 more people are expected to join the daily civil disobedience over the coming days.
One of the first arrests
Photos I have been taking on my dSLR are appearing in the Tar Sands Action photostream.
Oilsands pipeline protesters arrested near White House
Calgary-based TransCanada’s Keystone XL up for approval in U.S.
CBC News Posted: Aug 20, 2011 6:46 AM MT
Tar Sands Action Solidarity Photos:Â http://www.flickr.com/photos/350org/sets/72157627346811329/
Thank you for sharing this history and your experience. Your photos provide an eye into what is happening.
These protests are effective in providing support to those within government who have the power or at least the influence to help minimize damage to the environment.
I saw the people who got arrested on the 20th get released today. They were all in excellent spirits, despite a weekend in crowded cells.
Arrests so far:
Day 1 – August 20 – 65 arrests
Day 2 – August 21 – 45 arrests
Day 3 – August 22 – 51 arrests
Day 4 – August 23 – 59 arrests
Proposed Tar Sands Pipeline Sparks Civil Disobedience
Lois Parshley | 3:27 PM ET
As the memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. opens on the Mall this week, environmentalists stage a 1960s style sit-in
Washington’s burly SWAT team, with every imaginable crime fighting gizmo dripping from their 35 pound belts, are an odd deployment of force, when you think about it, to send in to arrest the likes of us.
On my right, as we stood in suits and ties, in front of the White House refusing to move on that hot sunny day in August, was Gus Speth. Gus, now in his seventies, had headed up the President’s Council on Environmental Quality under Carter, and from there ran the UN’s Development Agency and later Yale’s School of Forestry and the Environment. On my left was Rev. Jim Anthol, who is the equivalent to a bishop in the United Church of Christ.
Myself, and the 65 others who stood with them that first day, came in answer to Bill McKibben’s call a month earlier. With lobbying on Capitol Hill hitting a brick wall, Bill’s thrust was to open a new front in the form of civil disobedience against the proposed 1,700 mile Keystone pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the refineries at Port Arthur, Texas. A pipeline that would result in massive increases of carbon into the atmosphere, crippling any chance to stabilize the planet’s climate.