In Minnesota, police arrested a water protector Monday after she successfully delayed construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline in an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. Emma Harrison spent several hours dangling from a 20-foot-tall tripod, blocking access to an Enbridge pipe storage yard, before police were finally able to remove her. Indigenous activist and lawyer Tara Houska live-streamed the protest.
Tara Houska: “Police officers are threatening to cut down the young person who is suspended about 30 feet up in the air, risking her safety, risking her life. She could get really, really hurt. They just said that there’s an ambulance standing by. That’s their plan. Rather than pulling her out more safely, they do not seem to care, and they want to do it the quickest, fastest, cheapest way possible. Obvious disregard for human life, as Enbridge has already shown their obvious disregard for human life when they paused work for just a couple hours last week when one of their own workers was killed. That’s who we’re dealing with. That’s the kind of concern for human life that we’re dealing with.”
On Friday, a contractor working on the Line 3 pipeline was killed in an accident at an Enbridge construction yard. If completed, Line 3 would pump more than 750,000 barrels of tar sands crude oil each day across wetlands and fragile ecosystems in Canada, Minnesota and Wisconsin.