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Admired by fellow activists for “making sacrifices for all of us,” two Indigenous water protectors were arrested in Dallas on Thursday for demonstrating at a shareholder meeting of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), which is responsible for several contentious fossil fuel projects including the Dakota Access, Bayou Bridge, and Mariner East 2 pipelines.
Waniya Locke and Cherri Foytlin are reportedly facing charges of disorderly conduct for disrupting the meeting to protest the 163-mile Bayou Bridge Pipeline—which, if completed, would haul 480,000 barrels of crude oil daily through Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, the largest wetland and swamp in the country. Alarmed by the threat to water resources, wildlife, and local communities, landowners and water protectors are battling construction efforts in court and on the ground.
After disrupting the meeting, Locke and Foytlin were detained by police and brought out a back exit. While handcuffed, the pair led a crowd of supporters in a call-and-response chant—”What do you do when your water is under attack? Stand up, fight back!”—before they were forced into the back of a police car.
Watch (footage of the arrests begins at 32:00):
“They’ve shackled grandmothers, used attack dogs on people, lied, stole, bribed, maimed, and poisoned, all over the lands,” Foytlin of the L’eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life) camp in south Louisiana said about the company’s behavior and tactics . “From my perspective, [CEO Kelcy] Warren and ETP have well-earned every bit of bad karma that the universe can muster.”
Opponents of the Bayou Bridge project have decried the actions of ETP’s private security, alleging that in Louisiana, they have “abducted” water protectors to unlawfully deliver them to local police—so they can be charged under a newly enacted state law that criminalizes peaceful protests that interfere with energy infrastructure—and even intentionally sunk boats carrying activists and journalists.
“This is the continued genocide of Indigenous peoples—destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life.”
—Waniya Locke, water protector
In addition to his company’s hostile response to anti-pipeline activists and contributions to the global climate crisis, Warren has been sharply criticized for his own behavior, including his suggestion at an industry conference earlier this year that anyone who damaged the Dakota Access Pipeline “needs to be removed from the gene pool.”
Denouncing the company’s dirty energy construction on Indigenous lands, Locke, who also participated in the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline charged, “This is the continued genocide of Indigenous peoples—destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life.”
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