Standing with Standing Rock – Update

An auction to benefit the tribes gathered at Standing Rock—also called Sacred Rock—may not have raised a lot of cash, but it did help us in the audience to have a clearer sense of what is happening.

As they continue to protect the waters of the Missouri River, and ultimately, of the Mississippi, into which it flows, the people at Standing Rock are no longer permitted to leave the encampment to go and offer prayers where the digging for the pipeline is continuing, nearby,

Amy Goodman, who went to witness, was arrested for criminal trespass, later changed to “rioting,” and went to court Monday. There has been no press coverage here of the outcome although Amy may have described it on “Democracy Now.”

A young teacher who has been helping at Standing Rock by walking the children back and forth to school—they have set up their own school, as well as a clinic—described the bunch of rowdy little boys and quiet girls tramping through the mud. Their parents were facing security guards—the teacher described the women running toward these men, followed by the children; one of the on-site security companies has been criticized for employing the shooter of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

She described the itinerant laborers’ camps that grow up around pipeline excavations as around fracking sites: man camps where sex trafficking, rape, and other forms of violence inevitably increase.

Tables outside the auditorium held small paintings contributed by the children; the two I bought help me to feel a little less helpless.

[Fore more, please see part 1 of Standing with Standing Rock.]

[Note: The Judge has rejected the charges against Amy Goodman, please see this New York Times article for more.]

In New Mexico, Politics Standing Rock