More than 100 protesters stormed the lobby of TransCanada's Keystone XL [8] office in Houston the morning of Jan. 7, dancing, releasing a cascade of black balloons to represent tar sands oil, and hanging neon orange hazard tape. After being forced out of the lobby by police, the protesters gathered on the sidewalk and performed street theatre in which a "pipe dragon" puppet destroyed homes and poisoned water until being slain by knights representing the grassroots coalition of the Tar Sands Blockade [9], Idle No More [10], Earth First [11] and others. The protest was the first held in Houston to oppose the pipeline project, which follows a campaign of tree-sits to actually block pipeline construction in rural areas of Texas. "From the Texas backwoods to the corporate boardrooms, the fight to defend our homes from toxic tar sands will not be ignored," said Ramsey Sprague, a Tar Sands Blockade spokesperson. "We're here today to directly confront the TransCanada executives who’re continuing on with business as usual while making our communities sacrifice zones." (Your Houston News [12], Jan. 7)
A new tree-sit occupation was established Jan. 3 in the town of Diboll, with the support of local land-owners who oppose the pipeline project. This new tree blockade comes just a couple weeks after the end of Tar Sands Blockade's 85-day tree-sit near Winnsboro, TX. TransCanada rerouted the tar sands pipeline to go around the Winnsboro tree-sit, despite having told countless landowners that the route was set in stone and could not be altered to avoid bulldozing their cropland.
"Institutional methods of addressing climate change have failed us," said Ron Seifert, a Tar Sands Blockade spokesperon. "Rising up to defend our homes against corporate exploitation is our best and only hope to preserve life on this planet. We must normalize and embrace direct, organized resistance to the death machine of industrial extraction and stand with those like Idle No More who take extraordinary risk to defend their families and livelihoods." (ENews Park Forest [13], Jan. 3)
