Standing Rock: Camp Story, Part 3.

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Standing Rock had filed an for an emergency TRO, after the desecration and destruction the construction company did over the holiday weekend. (See here and here). The decision came in early afternoon, around 2 p.m. At that time, spirits were high, people were happy. The judge denied the order. There was a crushing wave of disappointment, but not much surprise. We were reminded of our gathered strength, of how government has always been allied against Indians, how we never stopped, never backed down, continued to fight for our rights, and for what was right. Dennis Banks spoke of the early days of AIM, when he and Russel Means were sued, and they looked at the court papers, where it read:  The United States of America vs Dennis Banks and Russel Means. They won that fight. The judge was appalled by the actions of The United States of America, and said so, in scathing terms. Dennis reminded us that this fight is not impossible, and it is not over. We need to stand, we need to stand together, we need to be an unbreakable chain. Others began to speak, when we were interrupted by the often heard “wave to the plane, everyone!”

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Everyone waved at the latest surveillance plane. They even fly over in the middle of the night, as if they’ll unearth nefarious schemes being plotted. The plane disappeared, and everyone settled in to listen to Arvol Looking Horse, the 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, and always a voice for our earth.

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Standing Rock: Camp Story, Part 2.

Right after where we left off, the Fort Mojave delegation came into camp, led by their veterans and elder singer. They came carrying a massive banner, with all the signatures of those who wished to come, and could not. They spoke of their own fight against the government for their land, and the sanctity of it. They sang and danced, gave gifts, and a check for 10,000 dollars. There was singing back, in great gratitude, and everyone lined up to thank them for their presence, strength, and generosity. This was an emotional time, a feeling like the universe, for one blink of time, decided to hug you. This is how people should be, standing together, standing as one.

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Standing Rock: Camp Story.

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Oh, I wish I was a writer. Where to start? Right now, I’m back home in Almont for a day, and it feels wrong, I’m homesick. For camp. Tuesday morning, we tossed some supplies in our van, made sure all the critters had access to food and water and took off. The first photo here is about an hour into the journey. Like everyone else, we avoided the barricaded 1806, taking 21 then 6 straight into the No DAPL camp. The sight as we crested the hill was overwhelming, tents, tipis, people, cars, and horses everywhere, stretched as far as you could see. We turned in, and as it was our first time, had a brief security check (looking in the cooler, basically), because of people trying to bring in alcohol and drugs. No problems, and we were waved off to camp as we chose. Every other car had their windows covered with “Standing With Standing Rock!” or similar, and often tribal names. We were humbled, and in awe by the flags lining the main road into camp. There are over one hundred of them, and flags dot the landscape at campsites all over the land. There seems to be one posthole digger though, as calls for it to show to plant another flag were heard regularly. :D

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We parked in the Oglala camp, then made our way to the council area, the large communal area set up for all the camps:

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That isn’t a great photo of the area, it’s much larger than this, and the kitchen pictured in the previous post is to the other end of this area. Rick couldn’t wait to talk or see anything, he wanted to head to the kitchen to cook, and as soon as we walked up from our camp, the call was put out for volunteers to help cook frybread. Rick was off like a shot:

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He did a great job of it, too. Everyone did, and everyone working in the kitchen performed amazing service, and worked their butts off, too. First it was frybread, then hot dogs, hamburgers, corn, buffalo, squash and hominy stew, and wojapi. When the camps were smaller, Standing Rock had requested a water truck and a couple other necessities from the state health department, and they obliged. That didn’t last long, as the cops ordered those necessities removed. It’s a bit silly to try that strong arm tactic against a sovereign nation.

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There’s EMS, Rez security, two huge refrigerated trucks, water tanks, water washing stations, and ranks of port-a-loos. There are tents filled with donations from people, clothing, blankets, school supplies, and sundries. No one goes in need of anything. Children play all over the place, running and laughing, many of them clutching soccer-sized balls donated by the Nez Perce Tribe. As I was wandering about with a camera, I had to check in to the media tent, and get my pass. That done, I wandered back to the communal area, looking to settle in, and was in time to hear a description of one Rob, from KFYR, described, and that security was looking for him, and he was forever banned from Standing Rock. I still haven’t heard what that was about, maybe when I’m back, if I remember to ask. People were gathering to listen, talk, meet, take photos, and do all the things people do when gathered together.

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The council fire was always kept going, and there was always someone in the main administration tent, talking, telling stories, or relaying news. Much of the time, there was an open mic, for anyone who wanted to sing or tell a story. The representatives of the Episcopal diocese in Bismarck, who had signed on to the cause early on were in the camp, reaffirming their support, and bringing donations.

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As that was going on, the Quinault Tribe started rolling in with their canoes, they planned a 3 day paddle trip to Bismarck.

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I should explain that the main road is constantly busy, people coming, going, coming back, bringing in supplies, people walking to and from, the warriors on horseback going to the construction site and coming back, and so on. It’s never still. Kind of like water.

Dennis Banks was there! Eeeeeeeeeee. And, the day before, he had been in the hospital, having had a heart attack. He spoke frequently, and greeted people. He spoke strongly and eloquently after the disappointing decision came down.

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There was so much joy, unity. People from all over were at the camps, with one notable exception – North Dakotans. I kept talking to so many people who were excited than any Ndakotans were there at all. If I could say anything at this point, it would be to urge all Dakotans, if you can, to come to camps. You don’t have to settle in for the long term, you don’t even have to stay the night, just come, meet people, talk with them, listen. Okay, I’m barely into the first two, three hours at camp, so I’ll split this story up. I’ll grab some tea, and start the next part while you all look and read.

Click photos for full size. © C. Ford, all rights reserved.

Standing Rock: First Camp Photos!

Click for full size. Many more to come, first camp story tomorrow (Thursday). We’re going to run away from home. Or, more like run to home. Regular home on Thursday, Wacipi (Pow Wow) on Friday, then packing up ourselves and the monster dogs, and heading right back out to camp. There’s a solar pad charging tent, so I’ll be able to take the computing box me (the good one), and I’ll try very hard not to neglect you all so much. I just can’t describe. This is the best place on earth. More tomorrow!

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© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

Standing Rock Seeks TRO.

Tim Mentz.

Tim Mentz.

CANNON BALL, ND—The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed an emergency motion Sunday for a temporary restraining order to prevent further destruction of the Tribe’s sacred sites by Dakota Access Pipeline.

“On Saturday, Dakota Access Pipeline and Energy Transfer Partners brazenly used bulldozers to destroy our burial sites, prayer sites and culturally significant artifacts,” Tribal Chairman David Archambault II said. “They did this on a holiday weekend, one day after we filed court papers identifying these sacred sites. The desecration of these ancient places has already caused the Standing Rock Sioux irreparable harm. We’re asking the court to halt this path of destruction.”

After the initial destruction Saturday, Dakota Access Pipeline returned to the area and dug up additional grounds in the pre-dawn hours Sunday, Archambault said.

The motion seeks to prevent additional construction work on an area two miles west of North Dakota Highway 1806, and within 20 miles of Lake Oahe until a judge rules on the Tribe’s previous motion to stop construction.

That motion is based on the Standing Rock Sioux’s assertion that it was not properly consulted before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fast-tracked approval of the pipeline project.

A decision on the case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is expected by Sept. 9.

“Destroying the Tribe’s sacred places over a holiday weekend, while the judge is considering whether to block the pipeline, shows a flagrant disregard for the legal process,” said Jan Hasselman, attorney for the Standing Rock Sioux. “The Tribe has been seeking to vindicate its rights peacefully through the courts. But Dakota Access Pipeline used evidence submitted to the Court as their roadmap for what to bulldoze. That’s just wrong.”

Via ICTMN.

The Whitestone Massacre.

LaDonna Bravebull Allard at Sacred Stones camp along the banks of the Cannonball River. Courtesy Kat Eng.

LaDonna Bravebull Allard at Sacred Stones camp along the banks of the Cannonball River. Courtesy Kat Eng.

On this day, [September 3rd] 153 years ago, my great-great-grandmother Nape Hote Win (Mary Big Moccasin) survived the bloodiest conflict between the Sioux Nations and the U.S. Army ever on North Dakota soil. An estimated 300 to 400 of our people were killed in the Inyan Ska (Whitestone) Massacre, far more than at Wounded Knee. But very few know the story.

As we struggle for our lives today against the Dakota Access pipeline, I remember her. We cannot forget our stories of survival.

Just 50 miles east of here, in 1863, nearly 4,000 Yanktonais, Isanti (Santee), and Hunkpapa gathered alongside a lake in southeastern North Dakota, near present-day Ellendale, for an intertribal buffalo hunt to prepare for winter. It was a time of celebration and ceremony—a time to pray for the coming year, meet relatives, arrange marriages, and make plans for winter camps. Many refugees from the 1862 uprising in Minnesota, mostly women and children, had been taken in as family. Mary’s father, Oyate Tawa, was one of the 38 Dah’kotah hung in Mankato, Minesota, less than a year earlier, in the largest mass execution in the country’s history. Brigadier General Alfred Sully and soldiers came to Dakota Territory looking for the Santee who had fled the uprising. This was part of a broader U.S. military expedition to promote white settlement in the eastern Dakotas and protect access to the Montana gold fields via the Missouri River.

As my great-great-grandmother Mary Big Moccasin told the story, the attack came the day after the big hunt, when spirits were high. The sun was setting and everyone was sharing an evening meal when Sully’s soldiers surrounded the camp on Whitestone Hill. In the chaos that ensued, people tied their children to their horses and dogs and fled. Mary was 9 years old. As she ran, she was shot in the hip and went down. She laid there until morning, when a soldier found her. As he loaded her into a wagon, she heard her relatives moaning and crying on the battlefield. She was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Crow Creek where she stayed until her release in 1870.

Where the Cannonball River joins the Missouri River, at the site of our camp today to stop the Dakota Access pipeline, there used to be a whirlpool that created large, spherical sandstone formations. The river’s true name is Inyan Wakangapi Wakpa, River that Makes the Sacred Stones, and we have named the site of our resistance on my family’s land the Sacred Stone Camp. The stones are not created anymore, ever since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the mouth of the Cannonball River and flooded the area in the late 1950s as they finished the Oahe dam. They killed a portion of our sacred river.

I was a young girl when the floods came and desecrated our burial sites and Sundance grounds. Our people are in that water.

This river holds the story of my entire life.

There is much more to this story, which you can read here.

Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition.

And Then the Dogs Came: Dakota Access Gets Violent.

Processed with VSCO with c1 preset

https://nodaplsolidarity.org/

We still need help, we need voices, we need people, we need all those willing to boost the signal in every way possible.

Red Warrior put out an all-call for “ALL water warriors around the world to come stand with us, inviting supporters to join us in prayer” during two Weeks of Global Solidarity Actions between September 3 and 17.

Why? Because this is what is happening in response to peaceful protesting:

Opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline, or "water protectors," were attacked with dogs, pepper spray on Saturday near the site of the pipeline route.

Opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline, or “water protectors,” were attacked with dogs, pepper spray on Saturday near the site of the pipeline route.

 

Video streamed live over Facebook showed Dakota Access LLC–employed security guards handling lunging dogs.

Video streamed live over Facebook showed Dakota Access LLC–employed security guards handling lunging dogs.

Courtesy Red Warrior Camp Water protectors reported a violent encounter between Dakota Access LLC security guards, who allegedly used attack dogs and pepper spray against them.

Courtesy Red Warrior Camp
Water protectors reported a violent encounter between Dakota Access LLC security guards, who allegedly used attack dogs and pepper spray against them.

 

Dakota Access pipeline security personnel used dogs to try and stop the water protectors in an action that was streamed live on Facebook. (Photo: Courtesy Red Warrior Camp).

Dakota Access pipeline security personnel used dogs to try and stop the water protectors in an action that was streamed live on Facebook. (Photo: Courtesy Red Warrior Camp).

In a statement released in a live-stream on Facebook, Red Warrior Camp leaders said that at about 3pm on Saturday September 3, “water protectors successfully stopped pipeline construction as it reached Hwy. 1806 through nonviolent direct action and mass assembly.”

As they did so, private security guards working for Dakota Access LLC “deployed vicious attack dogs, pepper spray and physical assault against the water protectors,” Red Warrior said. “According to the most recent update, six water protectors were bitten by dogs, a dozen or more pepper sprayed, while others were physically assaulted, including women. A helicopter was photographed flying over the area.

Full story here. Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition.

Sarah Sunshine Manning has an updated story about what is happening at the camps.

Harold Frazier, Cheyenne River Sioux Chair demands answers:

According to many witnesses at the scene, neither state nor county law enforcement officials were at the construction site during the incident. It is extremely suspicious to me that law enforcement became scarce at the exact time when DAPL’s hired guns were planning to attack the water defenders. A press release recently issued by the Morton County Sheriff’s Department insinuates that the peaceful protesters were the provokers of the incident because several individuals allegedly cut a fence and entered the work site. State and local law enforcement officials keep telling the media, without proof, that the protesters are committing unlawful acts. In my opinion unleashing vicious attack dogs on women and children, and spraying dozens of unarmed people simply because they are exercising their constitutional right to assemble, is unlawful.

I am calling on all members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe to avoid traveling to or doing business in the Mandan-Bismarck area until this crisis is resolved. I fear for my people’s safety. Today’s act of terrorism shows us how desperate DAPL and the State of North Dakota government are to keep things at a status quo. I am concerned about the escalating violence against Natives in that area.

When will Governor Dalrymple step up and meet with Tribal leadership in an open, good faith effort to resolve this conflict? The key to settling this situation is in the hands of North Dakota leadership. I requested a meeting with Governor Dalrymple last week, but as of today has received no response.

Matika Wilbur caught much of this on video (complete story here):

Sunday Camp Story.

Photo: Sara Lafleur-Vetter.

Photo: Sara Lafleur-Vetter.

Mark Sundeen at Outside Online has a long, in-depth, excellent story about the camps and the Standing Rock protest. I’m only going to include a small amount here, you should really click over and read, it’s great!

…I parked alongside a towering teepee on the riverbank, slept in the car, and in the morning met my neighbors, a delegation of Pawnee elders who had driven 18 hours from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The degree to which I didn’t know what I was getting myself into was made clear when Chief Morgan LittleSun, 58, a warm and affable welder and teepee builder, told me that his biggest concern coming up here wasn’t cops—it was the Sioux tribes.

“Pawnee and Sioux hated each other forever,” he said. Even though the tribes had signed a peace treaty, LittleSun had seen hostility at powwows, and even fights.

I asked when the Pawnee and Sioux tribes had made this uneasy peace.

“150 years ago.”

As far as LittleSun knew, this was the first time since then that Pawnee chiefs had traveled this far into Sioux territory. While dates of Indian wars and treaties are history-test minutiae that most white people (like me) tend to forget, LittleSun was one of many Native Americans I met for whom the past was not really dead, as the saying goes, not even past. They rattled off these 19th-century events like they happened yesterday, and this gathering at Standing Rock was occasion for a new round of history making. The site was called Seven Councils Camp, indicating the first time all bands of Lakota had gathered in one place in more than a century. That afternoon, the Crow Nation marched into camp in war bonnets, waving flags, singing and whooping, bearing a peace pipe and a load of buffalo meat, offering the first real reconciliation since 1876, when Crows were scouts for Custer at Little Bighorn, where the U.S Cavalry got its ever-loving ass kicked by the Lakota. At last count, representatives from more than 120 tribal nations had arrived from as far as Hawaii, Maine, California, and Mississippi.

But when I asked LittleSun, whose tribe historically had a proud tradition of stealing horses, if he’d felt uneasy here, he shook his head emphatically, and a smile spread over his face. “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. All day long, strangers walked into his camp and offered food and firewood and asked which tribe he belonged to, and when he told them, they didn’t flinch but embraced him as a brother, an uncle, an elder. “But when I raised the Pawnee flag on a pole,” LittleSun added with a laugh, “everyone moved their horses to the other side of camp!”

This is something most people don’t understand. For many Indigenous peoples, history is not old, dusty past, something to be discarded, forgotten with maybe a trip or two back for reference. History is living, it’s a thread of continuity, of stories, of life, of connectedness. Time is all one flow, and if you drop a big ol’ dam down, you lose so much, you cut yourself off, isolating yourself. And yes, of course, in these current times, there’s a need to chop time up into tiny compartments now and then, but if you’re not careful, you do that with all time, and it’s a painful loss, even if you aren’t terribly aware of that right now.

[Read more…]

Dakota Access: Stand Up!

(Photo: Melinda Lee)

(Photo: Melinda Lee)

Where Movements Meet: Black Lives Matter Organizers Visit #NoDAPL.

 

UN body says Sioux must have say in pipeline project.

 
Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition.

Washington State Natives: No DAPL.

Indian Nations from the Pacific Northwest came to support the Standing Rock Sioux. Courtesy Gyasi Ross.

Indian Nations from the Pacific Northwest came to support the Standing Rock Sioux. Courtesy Gyasi Ross.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II welcomed a delegation of eight Indian nations from Washington State on Tuesday August 30 who joined the growing opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline that threatens the tribe’s water supply and sacred places on Oceti Sakowin Treaty lands.

The Yakama Nation, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Lummi Nation, Puyallup Tribe, Nisqually Indian Tribe, Suquamish Tribe, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Hoh Tribe traveled with a large delegation from the Pacific Northwest with a sacred totem pole to demonstrate spiritual support. After a blessing at the Standing Rock camp near the river, the totem pole will be permanently raised at the Turtle Lodge on the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba next week.

“Yakama is humbled and honored to stand beside our brothers and sisters of the Standing Rock Sioux. We’re observing a peaceful and prayerful gathering to move an entire country. We stand united in solidarity with the natural laws of this land, advocating for responsible decision making and honorable communications,” said Yakama Chairman JoDe Goudy.

“Together, we express to the U.S. government that now, more than ever, is the time to fulfill the trust obligations laid out within the treaties and historical interactions with the Native peoples of this land. Until such things come to pass, the spirit and voice of all peoples shall unite with Standing Rock. One voice, one heart, and one spirit to speak for those things that cannot speak for themselves.”

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Swinomish Chairman Brian Cladoosby, who also serves as NCAI president, said, “We are a placed-based society. We live where our ancestors are buried. Our culture, laws, and values are tied to all that surrounds us, the place where our children’s future will be for years to come. We cannot ruin where our ancestors are buried and where our children will call home, uproot ourselves and move to another place. We cannot keep taking for granted the clean water, the salmon and buffalo, the roots and berries, and all that makes up the places that our First People have inhabited since time immemorial. Our futures are bound together.”

More than 150 tribes so far have sent resolutions and letters of support to show solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux and the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota’s efforts to stop the pipeline.

“Words can’t express how thankful we are for all of the prayers, support, letters and donations we have received,” said Archambault. “It inspires us every day on our mission to protect this area for future generations and all who use it.

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“I am here to stand with the Standing Rock people because my people are facing the same threats to bear the risk of development for the Puyallup Tribe,” said Councilman David Bean. “It’s an LNG terminal that will be built in the middle of our reservation and threaten our treaty protected resources.”

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“Everyone has heard that this pipeline would be more than 1,100 miles long and would transport more than half a million barrels of crude oil every day across our lands,” said Cedric Good House, a traditional leader for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

“What they don’t know are the irreplaceable sacred places across the landscape and the deep cultural and spiritual knowledge that is tied to them,” he said. “These are the places and the knowledge that make us who we are today as a tribe. I plan on telling my grandchildren about the time when tribes across the country stood up and fought for treaty, culture, and the future. And we fought for the future of safe drinking water for all Americans. No longer is the world watching us, the world is with us.”

Water protectors at Standing Rock. (Photo: Courtesy Steven Sitting Bear/Standing Rock Sioux Tribe).

Water protectors at Standing Rock. (Photo: Courtesy Steven Sitting Bear/Standing Rock Sioux Tribe).

Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition.

Dave Archambault Sr. has an excellent column up at ICTMN: Anti-DAPL: Are You a TRAITOR or PATRIOT? – Also, Navajo Nation Lends Support to Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Against Dakota Access.

Via ICTMN.

Council for National Policy.

Stephen Bannon.

Stephen Bannon.

If you’re like me, you went “who?” Yet another nasty group of people, who revel in extremism, and one I had not heard of before. As it turns out, two Trump henchpersons have not only heard of it, they are part of it. How surprising, right?

According to an SPLC statement, Breitbart.com CEO Stephen Bannon and pollster Kellyanne Conway — hired as Trump 2016’s CEO and campaign manager, respectively — are members of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a highly secretive group that includes a roster of controversial white supremacists and rightwing agitators.

“The CNP is not controversial so much for the conservatives who dominate it — activists of the religious right and the so-called ‘culture wars,’ along with a smattering of wealthy financiers, Congressional operatives, right-wing consultants and Tea Party operatives — as for the many real extremists who are included,” wrote SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok.

The SPLC was able to obtain the CNP’s closely-guarded 2014 membership directory and found that it included “people like Michael Peroutka, a neo-Confederate who for years was on the board of the white supremacist League of the South; Jerome Corsi, a strident Obama ‘birther’ and the propagandist hit man responsible for the ‘Swift boating’ of John Kerry; Joseph Farah, who runs the wildly conspiracist “news” operation known as WorldNetDaily; Mat Staver, the Liberty Counsel leader who has worked to re-criminalize gay sex; Philip Zodhaites, another anti-gay activist who is charged with helping a self-described former lesbian who kidnapped her daughter from her former partner and fled the country; and a large number of other similar characters.”

Conway and Bannon’s names both appear on the CNP’s 2014 membership roster. The SPLC was unable to determine their current membership status.

The Center noted that the CNP has every right to keep its membership secret, but the membership roster opens a window on how purportedly moderate Republicans meet and network with right-wing extremists in formulating their policy agenda and crafting legislation.

The CNP roster of members includes “real extremists, people who regularly defame LGBT people with utter falsehoods, describe Latino immigrants as a dangerous group of rapists and disease-carriers, engage in the kind of wild-eyed conspiracy theorizing for which the John Birch Society is famous, and even suggest that certain people should be stoned to death in line with Old Testament law,” the SPLC said.

Well. That’s terrifying. These are the people the so-called not completely batshit repubs are networking with, and we are now living in interesting times, with the rise of white nationalism and open bigotry. I think I could have lived without this particular knowledge, but it’s best to as knowledgeable as possible these days.

Via Raw Story.

Dakota Access: Indigenous Round Up.

DAP

As the number of water protectors continues to burgeon on the banks of the Cannonball River in protest of the Dakota Access oil pipeline’s route across Standing Rock Sioux ancestral, treaty-protected lands, national media outlets are starting to pick up the story.

Both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have run pieces, and The New York Times published an op-ed by Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman David Archambault II, as well as a detailed explanation of the issues. But Democracy Now! has been out in front with in-depth reports on more than one night. Last week we brought you the independent news show’s initial report.

Anchor Amy Goodman has since interviewed both Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II and Ojibwe activist, journalist, author and sometime vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke. Both reports aired last week, as support from Indian nations and people continued to grow to several thousand.

Watch Archambault and LaDuke below, and read the stories at Democracy Now!, including an August 30 report on the Black Lives Matter movement’s visit to the spirit camps..

Full Story.

[Read more…]

The Poor Get Everything Free. It’s A Disaster.

Donald Trump and Wayne Allen Root (YouTube/screen grab).

Donald Trump and Wayne Allen Root (YouTube/screen grab).

Wayne Allyn Root, a Donald Trump admirer who often claims to be in frequent contact with the GOP candidate has led campaign rallies for him in Nevada, said yesterday that people who receive federal benefits such as Medicaid, welfare and food stamps should lose their right to vote, as should women who use “free contraception” under the Affordable Care Act.

Root’s plan would cut a large swath of Americans from the voter rolls: Roughly one in five Americans benefit from means-tested benefit programs, while 67 percent of women with private health insurance use copay-free contraception through the Affordable Care Act (which, by the way, is paid for by insurance companies, not by the federal government).

Root told Virginia radio host Rob Schilling yesterday that much of the energy behind Trump’s campaign, as he discusses in his new book “Angry White Male,” is that the country is “evenly divided between the makers and the takers,” so “the middle class is basically paying, paying, paying and the poor get everything free, and it’s a disaster.”

One time, we needed to apply for help, because serious broke, no food, no anything. We sat in an office for over 8 hours only to see someone who wanted us drown in a swamp of red tape, when we explained that a new job was in the works, just needed help for two weeks. Much frowning, sighing, and grumbling. Then a pronouncement: if you have a job, you don’t qualify for aid. “We. have. no. food.” Frowning, sighing grumbling part II. Wanders off to talk to other people. Finally comes back with a “I really shouldn’t do this…” Okay, I can give you two food vouchers. We received paperwork for $80.00 worth of food to cover the two weeks. In return, we had to commit to 80 hours (each) of community service. Anyone who thinks poor people get anything for free needs to be most seriously smacked.

Root said that he had recently seen a map on the internet showing that if only “taxpayers” had been allowed to vote, the 2012 election would have been “a Republican sweep.”

“So if the people who payed the taxes were the only ones allowed to vote, we’d have landslide victories,” he said, “but you’re allowing people to vote. This explains everything! People with conflict of interest shouldn’t be allowed to vote. If you collect welfare, you have no right to vote. The day you get off welfare, you get your voting rights back. The reality is, why are you allowed to have this conflict of interest that you vote for the politician who wants to keep your welfare checks coming and your food stamps and your aid to dependent children and your free health care and your Medicaid, your Medicare and your Social Security and everything else?”

Root quickly amended his statement to say that receiving Social Security and Medicare shouldn’t disqualify someone from voting, but “in general most of the things I just rattled off should preclude you from voting.”

We could get landslide victories by denying Christian straight white conservative men from voting, too. Hmmm.

“Social Security should not, Medicare should not, because you paid into the system,” he said. “But all the other stuff, all the other goodies, free Obama phones, free contraception, you know what, you can get them but you shouldn’t be allowed to vote, it’s a conflict of interest. Take that away, we’d win every single election in this country.”

:chokes on tea: Free contraception? On what planet? Here’s a thought – you pick up the tab for 20 years of contraception for 5 women, plus the pink tax they have paid for those 20 years. Then tell me what you think about free contraception.

Via RWW.