We speak with climate activist and water protector Mylene Vialard, whose trial for peacefully protesting the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline began this week in Minnesota. Vialard faces up to five years in prison for her 2021 protest, when she attached herself to a 25-foot bamboo tower erected to block a pumping station in Aitkin County. Vialard, who lives in Colorado, had come to Minnesota to take part in a wave of Indigenous-led acts of civil disobedience to stop the pipeline. Between December 2020 and September 2021, police in Minnesota made more than 1,000 arrests. Mylene Vialard is just the second water protector facing felony charges to go to trial. “We’re destroying our planet. We’re destroying our way of life,” says Vialard. We also speak with Indigenous lawyer and activist Tara Houska, who was also arrested in 2021 for participating in a nonviolent action against Line 3. She says police violence against environmental and Indigenous activists has gotten “exponentially worse” since the 2016 Dakota Access protests at Standing Rock. “The crackdown on environmental protests is nationwide,” says Houska.
Transcript: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/9/1/enbridge_line_3_protestors_mylene_vialard
Not to mention that they’re frivolously arresting peaceful protesters for “domestic terrorism” and then just not indicting them so they won’t have to prove the charge.
Meanwhile, the arrest alone is enough to legally bar someone from being anywhere near a protest as well as making it nearly impossible to find gainful employment, in spite of never being convicted of anything.
And they call it a justice system.
Not to mention that they’re frivolously arresting peaceful protesters for “domestic terrorism” and then just not indicting them so they won’t have to prove the charge.
Or just straight-up murdering them, in the case of Tortuguita.
Yeah, true.
