It’s around midnight on the bus to Washington D.C. for the XL Pipeline Circle the White House action and I am so excited about protesting tomorrow—so ready. I have the fire in the belly burning and I still have 8 hours to go on this bus ride. I’m not the only one still awake; there’s a lot of talk going on in the back of the bus.
One discussion I had was with Ian, a fellow Unity Student. Some of the other students are asking me about the Tar Sands action because I’m working on a Tar Sands project for my New Media class this semester. We had an interesting discussion about our expectations for tomorrow—about how moving this nonviolent protest will be and about its effects. Some of the students, like Summer, are excited to protest—especially after going to protest occupy Augusta. Olivia said that she is very excited to see all the passion people are going to have to protect the environment. All the Unity Students are very excited to be joining thousands, who are passionate about the same cause, but one person stuck out to me who is not from Unity. His name was Julian.
Julian is a student who attends COA and is interested in environmental policy and effective nonviolent protesting in the United States. So we started to discuss about our passion why we are on this bus and why we are going to circle the White House tomorrow. This will be Julian’s first protest in the United States–he was telling me about protesting in Mexico and how he thinks it will be similar here. Julian feels that we the people are a piece of this puzzle.
It’s really cool to see how two different people from two different countries can come together and have a common passion and goal and be able to work for it. We are both very excited about the symbolism of circling The White House.
We all agree that it is hard to be heard alone but, being with 6000 people surrounding the White House we are optimistic and very excited about this great opportunity to have our voices be heard on such an issue at such a critical and strategic moment in history.
It appears your demonstration efforts created a significant voice that the State Dept has delayed their decision on the pipeline until after elections in 2012. I fear this may be a political maneuver to resurrect plans later without alienating the environmental base and any election consequences. While the resulting temporary reprieve deserves congratulations, please keep on the watch and continue your excellent work following this issue.
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