Hamilton, ON: Shutdown at TransCanada Facility in Solidarity with Wet’suwet’en Peoples

As of approximately 9am on Monday January 14th, a group entered and shut down a TransCanada (now TC-Energy) facility in what is Dish with One Spoon Territory, known as Hamilton, ON.

The facility, located at 1020 Rymal Road East, is a compressor station for the “Chippewa” line, which imports natural gas from the Appalachia region and directs it East beyond Tkaronto, as well as West toward the Empress connection which fuels tarsands operations in Northern Alberta.

The action is being done in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en peoples at Unist’ot’en & the Gidumt’en checkpoint, who were violently attacked and arrested on their own unceded homelands by police one week ago. In response to the armed violence and fourteen arrests, Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs have temporarily allowed TC-Energy workers onto the territory to begin field survey work, but assert there will be no pipelines built.

The group taking actions acknowledges itself as a mostly-settler and white-passing group; one that sees silence and inaction in these moments as complicity, and who see their responsibility as settlers to challenge and dismantle the harmful systems their ancestors have enacted.

They also want to remind our allies and comrades that compliance under duress is not consent.

As allies, settlers, or visitors we don’t get to pass judgement on the decisions of hereditary chiefs because we like to think or pretend that we would do otherwise; we only get to decide what our response will be.

Will we bare silent witness and allow it to happen? Or will we direct our anger and grief towards those responsible, and help shut this project down?

The state happens to think we’ll do the former: that we’re not highly functional. And we’re not, so long as we’re enacting our displaced disappointment onto those facing down armed violence.

But we say otherwise: shut it all down.

Organize. Mobilize. Show up.

You want something to happen – get out there and make it happen.

We’ve had the roads, the ports, the highways. Today we have the infrastructure.

What tomorrow is, only you know.

#WetsuwetenStrong #TheTimeIsNow #ShutDownCanada