UPDATE: action cancelled; Spectra stopped construction.
It’s Erin here from BC. By now you have likely received an email (or a couple) regarding direct actions taking place at the construction site of the West Roxbury lateral extension of Spectra Corporation’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) project. Despite massive resistance from the region, Spectra sued the City of Boston, won the suit, and has begun construction on the pipeline extension.
But people aren’t backing down- in the past month, waves of civil disobedience have been able to stall construction. Before construction closes for the winter, we aim to escalate resistance by bringing a large group of students together for an action that will have both arrestable and non-arrestable roles next Saturday morning.
On our respective campuses, we are doing the imperative and arduous work of building a student power movement and pressuring our universities to divest from fossil fuels. At the same time, fossil fuel corporations are continuing to trump our political processes. These are the same corporations like Spectra are continuing our extractive economy’s legacy of putting profit over people, furthering climate chaos, and taking advantaged of oppressed communities- particularly indigenous communities, communities of color, and poor communities. This is unacceptable.
We as young people and members of higher-educational communities are responding to a call to action and are uniting to fight against this infrastructure as it embodies the sacrifice of our future for the fossil fuel industry’s profit, and also as it perpetuates the systems of oppression in which we live. Through the last few months we have seen the power and the necessity of aligning the climate movement with fights against oppression throughout the current business-as-usual system. We aim to bring that narrative to this local fight.
LOGISTICAL INFO:
Action: Saturday, 21 November at the pipeline construction site (exact street TBD)
- meet at 7:30AM
- action begins around 8:30AM
- for those who are risking arrest, it usually takes an hour for police to arrest those blocking construction from taking place
- those who are arrested are not being held by police currently (more details at the training!
- the action will consist of people blocking construction equipment, in addition to people rallying around those risking arrest
Non-violent Civil Disobedience training:
Friday, 20 November 6:00-9:00pm
Theodore Parker Unitarian Church
1859 Centre St, West Roxbury, Massachusetts 02132
There will also be a pre-planning meeting early next week in the Boston area; I will follow up tomorrow with more details.
I will be checking in with folks throughout the weekend to discuss the action, recruitment throughout the next week, and any questions that you may have. (Including the legal process, transportation and lodging, etc.)
With love,
Erin
erincsutton(AT)gmail.com
—
http://floodboston.wordpress.com
—