Anti-Dakota Access Pipeline Actions in Iowa, Part 2

From Where The River Frowns

After having participated in a non-violent direct action to confront Bakken’s boring under the Mississippi River for the Dakota Access Pipeline (read more here), I was arrested and assigned an arraignment date for mid-October. While in Keokuk, I stayed at what was the Mississippi Stand action camp for several days. This reflection touches on some of most poignant moments for me.

Arraignment

About 20 people who had been arrested with me had arraignments scheduled for October 19. We were shuffled in the judge’s room a handful at a time, along with others from Keokuk who were appearing in front of the judge for whatever random things cops had arrested them for.

I had decided to plead guilty because I didn’t want to have to return to Iowa for a trial later, even though the burden would be on the state to prove that what I did constituted a “trespass” conviction—that I was on a specific property at a particular time without a justifiable reason.

About half of the protesters plead guilty to their trespass charges and half plead not guilty. Of those who plead not guilty, all but one requested jury trials. I learned afterward that many people were hoping that if enough people plead not guilty, the Lee County courthouse wouldn’t be able to handle all of the requests for jury trials, and the charges would be dropped. When I heard that, I wished I would have pleaded not guilty.

I later talked with a friend who suggested that clogging up the Lee County court system could lead to some people being further oppressed and trapped in the system. Resources are already strained for public defenders and the court system in general, and when those resources get stretched even further, the people who most suffer most aren’t the protesters choosing to get arrested and take it to trial but are instead others caught up in the “justice” system who have no viable alternatives—people who are poor, can’t navigate the complicated system, and a disproportionate number of people who are black or brown.

I think this friend made valuable point. There were two people I watched go in front of the judge that day who were not connected to the protest. One was an elderly man who had shown up to the wrong courthouse twice, and this time he either had the wrong day or the court didn’t have record that he was coming. This person had to sit through an hour and half of protester bullshit to find out that, once again, he’d shown up at the wrong time or place. Another person who waited through the protesters’ arraignments was a father of five who had several traffic violations. He knew some of them weren’t legitimate, but he couldn’t spare the time away from his family and work and couldn’t risk harsher fines and fees that could result from taking the charges to trial, so he pleaded guilty, again after an hour a half of sitting patiently while protesters took their turns in front of the judge.

I want to be careful that thinking of issues such as these inconveniences for non-protesters (which could be much more severe than the example here) does not lead me to inaction but rather helps me to understand some of the effects of taking particular actions and leads me to more creative and effective confrontations.

Another takeaway from the arraignment was that, as a group, we could have been more strategic. For the tactic of flooding the court system with jury trials to work most effectively, it would have been advantageous for us to discuss the option and its potential results and consequences beforehand as a group, so that some of the people who pleaded guilty might have instead pleaded not guilty and requested a jury trial.

We could have also attempted to negotiate with the judge more. One of the last people to go before the judge asked, “Since I’m a water protector and am protecting the water for future generations, could you consider giving me the minimum penalty for trespass?” The judge seemed to be caught off guard and seemed to really consider the request. In the end, he gave the same $250 fine he’d given to everyone, saying he wanted to be consistent. I wonder what would have happened if this question were asked by the first person from our group who stood in front of the judge. Perhaps we could have saved ourselves some money.

Direct Action Workshop

At the first direct action workshop I’d gone to in September at Mississippi Stand, someone spoke of nonviolent direct action as the way to create change and specifically suggested and prepared people for an action involving intentional trespass with a high risk of arrest. I was excited to see the ways in which this second NVDA workshop I attended was different.

At this workshop, a fellow camper and experienced activist emphasized the importance of diverse tactics within a movement and stressed that infighting about appropriate tactics kills movements. One speaker mentioned a recent instance of $2 million of property damage to Bakken construction equipment. The speaker stated that the Mississippi Stand action camp had specifically developed for people interested in nonviolent forms of action and that actions planned for the camp would be nonviolent and would not include sabotage. However, the speaker encouraged, too, that people recognize a common enemy and support that various groups are attacking in various ways.

At another point in the workshop, people were encouraged to talk about creative nonviolent tactics they had heard of or had used. Someone mentioned an instance were hundreds of people gave the same false name to authorities after being arrested; people told stories of tree-sits, barricades, sit-ins, occupations, lock-downs, mass marches and other forms of direct action. This part of the workshop was inspiring for me and reminded me that, while we have countless successful examples to draw from, the possibilities for direct action are limitless and not confined to a list or to what’s been done before.

The workshop concluded with a game to demonstrate swarm theory, or the idea that mimicking the swarming behavior of a school of fish or beehive–through decentralized control, response to local clues, and simple rules of thumb—creates a situation that is difficult for cops to repress or combat. In the game, three “cops” guarded a pole. The goal for everyone else was to get two people to “lock down” to the pole. The cops could tag people to “arrest” them. Once arrested, a person had to sit down. Someone could be “un-arrested” if another person tagged them. If a cop stayed with the arrested person, three people had to tag that person for an un-arrest. Meanwhile, people ran in various patterns looking for opportunities to make a move toward the pole or unarrest people.

The game was fun, and it helped me to understand the concept of swarming and how it might be effective. I was really excited, several days later, to find a video in which three people used similar tactics to un-arrest a fellow protester.

The Camp

The camp was on property about 10 miles from the Mississippi River in the backyard of a family who had successfully worked with Bakken to route the pipeline around their land. The yard was filled with a sacred fire, an outdoor kitchen, a campfire with seating, a security/welcome table, about 50 tents for sleeping, and five tents for storing food, clothing and other donations.

Each morning, a crew woke early to cook breakfast, and when the food was nearly ready, someone would walk among the tents singing songs with lyrics like, “Rise up, sweet family dear. It’s the time of the sun and of remembering. Rise up, if you’re awake. Rise up right away…” People would trickle out of their tents and toward the warm food and fire.

During or after breakfast, we’d have a morning meeting. People could sign up for various tasks at camp—cooking, building a yurt, security shifts, tending the sacred fire, etc.—and could make plans for the day to support people going to court, go down to the ditch next to construction for a protest presence there, meet for direct action training, or participate in other protest opportunities.

I liked having so many ways to plug in and feel like I was doing something that mattered. I was happy to be in a place with people experimenting with non-hierarchical structures. I liked that everyone could choose how they wanted to participate day-by-day or moment-by-moment. I enjoyed the slow pace of cooking by fire for hours before a meal while hanging out and getting to know others at camp. I had fun with the urgency and excitement of the direct action side of things. I appreciated the sense of comfort and safety I felt with the camp’s few rules: no pictures, videos, weapons, or drugs. I soaked up being outdoors for a week in the chilly Fall weather and ended up liking that, too. I appreciated the spirituality of the camp, too; I felt comfortable accepting an open invitation from a Native person at camp to participate in a peace pipe ceremony that was new to me, and I felt open to exploring prayer as something other than the Judeo-Christian prayer I grew up with. I also liked to spend time singing and drumming at the ditch where the DAPL private security would guard the access road to a construction site.

As with most attempts at communal living, the Mississippi Stand camp had its difficulties, too. A few people consistently volunteered for long or overnight shifts on security duty or keeping the sacred fire going, which left them frustrated and wishing others would volunteer. The camp structure had evolved to include committees for some areas (such as media, security, and infrastructure), but sometimes it was difficult, especially for short-term campers, to connect with the committees, even when the committee could use the help and the person was eager to give it. At times, there was tension about where to focus effort and energy—at the camp for winterization, comfort and well-being, or in protest at the pipeline. Sometimes people crossed one another’s personal boundaries (once, this led to a discussion at the morning meeting on “consent culture”). Sometimes various misunderstanding arose.

At one point, a group of Native folks came to Mississippi Stand after someone had gone to Standing Rock to try to recruit people. The Native people who came from Standing Rock said they felt unwelcome because the sacred fire at camp had died down to embers when they arrived in the middle of the night; they explained that the fire needed to be kept going so that the ancestors would stay nearby and be warm. In our morning meeting, one of the Native people explained several ways that the spirituality of the camp could be improved and asked to say a prayer before people left to protest at the ditch. In the prayer, the person fervently asked Creator to not allow anyone to be arrested. To me, the petition seemed out of place since many at the camp viewed risking arrest as one of the available strategies for drawing attention to the pipeline, challenging the law, and ultimately stopping construction.

It seemed that the newly-arrived Native spiritual leaders did not understand the strategies of the mostly white group that started and occupied the camp, and the campers didn’t understand the Native spiritual practices and customs that were being recommended. These moments were confusing and difficult to navigate. On one hand, the camp was, in part, standing in solidarity with Standing Rock, and a few Native people as well as non-Native people there were carrying out Native spiritual practices. Perhaps the small contingent of Natives in the camp was happy to have the increased support of the group that came (despite the accompanying criticisms of the status quo), and perhaps the group of Natives would have offered more fullness to practices that were potentially appropriated for use at the camp. On the other hand, the camp was started by white people whose personal and ancestral histories likely did not include such practices; how appropriate was it to incorporate Native practices into the camp? To add to the complexity of the situation, the land where the pipeline passes through, like all land in the so-called U.S., was once used and cared for by Natives but has been white-occupied and white-“owned” for centuries, after forcibly pushing Natives out of it; when bringing cultures together doesn’t happen easily and seamlessly, how do the cultures co-exist and remain respectful of one another?

I’m still mulling over these questions. I was thankful to have the short visit from the group of Natives from Standing Rock, and I’ll continue to think about my brief interactions with them. I’ll cherish my memories of staying at the Mississippi Stand camp and connecting with people there and will carry the experience and lessons learned to whatever attempt at communal living I try next.

Goodbye, For Now

On my last day at Mississippi Stand, we organized a mock funeral in honor of all human and non-human life lost to big oil, inspired by a protester’s son, David John Badie, who was murdered in Afganistan, while under military orders to protect an oil-related project “at all costs.”

We met at a Walmart parking lot and decorated our cars with funeral flags and painted our cars with slogans like “mni wiconi, water is life” and “time to act.”

After a tearful ceremony where everyone had an opportunity to state lives lost related to oil, we slowly drove out of town and down a highway to a dumpsite that Bakken had been using to deposit the “toxic sludge” waste product from their boring operation under the Mississippi River.

As soon as we arrived at the site, some people who had planned to set up a road blockade on the access road leading to the dumpsite immediately deployed. Others grabbed banners and signs and began marching around the area.

That day, authorities all decided to do nothing. The protesters took this as an opportunity to set up camp at the site, complete with an R.V. donated to the cause. The following day, Bakken security, the sheriff’s department, the volunteer fire department, the department of transportation, the Iowa state police, and a towing company were all out in full force, but the protesters managed to stand their ground.

A few days later, Mississippi Stand got word that the pipeline had been completed under the Mississippi River. Protesters cleaned up camp and determined what to do next. Some protesters went home or joined efforts at Standing Rock; others started a traveling protest caravan that targets weak points throughout the pipeline. Since I left, actions have included an occupation of the pipeline itself, an ongoing (10 days as of November 30th) fast at the Iowa Utilities Board, and various lockdowns to equipment. Information about Mississippi Stand’s latest actions can be found on their Facebook page.

On the Home Front