Standing Rock and Dakota Access pipeline Redux

"The Dakota Sioux’s struggle to defend land and water rights at Standing Rock against government assault and the intrusion of profit-hungry Dakota Access Pipeline bosses deserves the solidarity of workers and farmers everywhere."

Since President Trump says he is going ahead with the Keystone and Dakota Access pipeline projects, it's a good time to reacquaint ourselves with the Marxist position on the projects.

Keystone XL pipeline analysis can be found here

Dakota Access has been rich discussion, as it impacts the national question in the U.S.

These two articles from the pages of The Militant stand out.


SWP: Defend sovereign rights of Dakota Sioux
November 14, 2016

The following solidarity letter to Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chief Dave Archambault II and other tribal elders in the Dakotas was sent by Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. vice president, Nov. 2.

On behalf of the Socialist Workers Party, I join you in protesting the Oct. 27 brutal cop assault on members and supporters of the Standing Rock Sioux defending their sovereignty. It was an honor to sit down with you when I visited Standing Rock two weeks earlier.

The Dakota Sioux’s struggle to defend land and water rights at Standing Rock against government assault and the intrusion of profit-hungry Dakota Access Pipeline bosses deserves the solidarity of workers and farmers everywhere.

Socialist Workers Party members explain and champion your fight as we talk with workers on their doorsteps, at strike picket lines and protest actions. We all face growing attacks from the bosses and the government as they try to make us pay for the deepening crisis of their dog-eat-dog capitalist system. Our answer must be growing solidarity against their attacks.

Instead of using the federal Emergency Management Assistance Compact to mobilize armed police power against you, we demand a federally funded public works program to provide jobs at union wages, building schools, medical facilities, child care centers and other necessities — something sorely needed at Standing Rock where unemployment approaches 90 percent.

The SWP backs your fight to defend your sovereignty and treaty rights. We demand immediate withdrawal of all the cops arrayed against you. We call for all the charges brought against protesters there to be dropped. And we demand an immediate halt to efforts to push the pipeline over your sacred ground and threaten your drinking water. 

http://www.themilitant.com/2016/8043/804358.html




SWP: ‘Standing Rock part of working-class resistance’

BY TONY LANE
October 31, 2016

CANNON BALL, N.D. — “They’re trampling on your treaty rights,” Socialist Workers Party vice presidential candidate Osborne Hart told those gathered around the fire at the Oceti Sakowin camp, part of the Standing Rock encampment near here, Oct. 15. “What you’re doing here is part of the resistance of working people taking place in the U.S. and around the world in the face of the crisis of capitalism,” Hart added as he explained that he had come “to bring solidarity and learn about your struggle.”

Thousands of people from many Native American nations have camped here to protest the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which is being built just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, passing under the Missouri River and threatening the water supply.

Hart sat down with two of the leaders in the camp, J.R. American Horse of the Standing Rock Sioux and Robert Dunsmore from the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota. American Horse said they’ve been receiving solidarity worldwide, including “from New Zealand and Paris, France.” Hart described his experience taking part in protests against the police killing of Keith Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they discussed the actions of FBI and local police in both struggles.

Hart also met with Chauncey Peltier, who came to the camp to win support for the fight to free his father, Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 40 years in jail for his participation in the fight for Native American rights.

Peltier described how Native Americans are incarcerated at grossly disproportionate rates in South Dakota. The Wall St Journal reported in 2015 that the number of Native Americans in the federal prison system has jumped 27 percent in the past five years. In South Dakota Native Americans make up 60 percent of those facing federal charges, but only 9 percent of the population.

Peltier spoke of the lack of jobs, and the conditions he had experienced as a union laborer in Portland, Oregon. And it’s worse on the reservations. “One of my brothers lives on Pine Ridge [in South Dakota], and if you get a job, you have to hang on to it.

“Why don’t they make jobs?” Peltier said. “They’re trying to starve us out. Can’t they put a factory on the reservation?”

Peltier agreed with Hart that while the energy needs of working people have to be met, the oil barons don’t care if their projects violate treaties or contaminate land and water. “All they think about is money,” Peltier said.

“Yes, they make everything a commodity to be bought and sold,” Hart said. “That’s why working people need to take power and build a new society based on human solidarity.”

Hart and supporters also went door to door in this town, which is on the reservation. “We met people who were closely following the struggle, including a high school student who said he would take our campaign material to his journalism class,” Hart said.

“Another worker we met told us he was half Mexican and half Native. He had worked for the pipeline company for three months and had just got laid off along with 90 others when the company moved its base to work on the pipeline in Iowa.” 

http://www.themilitant.com/2016/8041/804155.html