North Dakota––An armed white man drove his truck through a crowd of Native American demonstrators, running over and injuring one woman and then firing live bullets into the air during a demonstration on Saturday at a worksite near Mandan. There are no reports of this criminal being apprehended.
Indigenous people are resisting the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline in heavy protests. This attack from a white vigilante on our Indigenous brothers and sisters follows the arrest of 37 people on Friday, as demonstrators maintained multiple highway blockades.
After much anticipation, the Army Corps of Engineers stated in a letter late yesterday that more analysis and discussion with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe is needed before construction can take place under the Missouri River. This is a strategy of the State to buy time without making any real commitment to halting the pipeline construction, especially with planned worldwide protests.
Worldwide actions against the pipeline construction
Actions are planned for today at dozens of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offices and other State buildings in more than 100 cities around the world to demand that the Obama administration stop the Dakota Access pipeline.
The head of Energy Transfer Partners and parasitic capitalist, Kelcy Warren, has said he’s “100 percent” confident Trump will support the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Warren donated more than $100,000 to Trump’s campaign, and Trump has between $500,000 and $1 million invested in Energy Transfer Partners.
The struggle against settler colonialism
This land belongs to the Indigenous people. This is a fact that the African People’s Socialist Party is clear on and expresses continuously.
What is evident here is that the construction of the pipeline is a reflection of settler colonialism. Still, the Indigenous people of this land have no self-determination and exist at the whim and mercy of the colonizer––foreigners.
The struggle against colonialism must be made. All attempts for the struggle to be co-opted by the white left and turned into an environmentalist struggle must be struggled against. We see plenty white activists, celebrities and politicians infiltrating the struggle, lamenting on how we need to save the Earth.
In reality, it is the system of parasitic capitalism, created and upheld by these same white people, which is responsible for the damage of our planet. Parasitic capitalism sacrifices the Earth’s natural resources and well-being of its inhabitants for the monetary gain of the white ruling class and capitalist corporations. We should not lose sight of this.
The African People’s Socialist Party, stands in solidarity with our Indigenous sisters and brothers. We, too, demand “No Dakota Access Pipeline”!
Smash colonialism
Smash Parasitic Capitalism
This land belongs to the Indigenous people!
