There's only one state this year that really has high profile pipeline protests going on. That's Minnesota.
Thirty years ago this week, the Line three pipeline and Northern Minnesota rupture, spilling one point seven million gallons of crude oil into a frozen river near Grand Rapids, Minnesota. If the river had not been frozen, the oil could have seeped into the Mississippi River and contaminated drinking water for millions downstream. Protests have been ongoing to stop construction rerouting a section of the Line three pipeline, which could impact indigenous communities and local waterways.
Hello and welcome to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelts. You might have heard recently about the Line three pipeline project in Minnesota. Some people are calling it the next Standing Rock because it's been at the center of protests for years, particularly from indigenous tribes in the area. Activist and Authorjanona La Duke has been involved in that fight for seven years. Here she is talking to PBS News about it earlier this month.
I'm a grandmother, you know, and we're standing out there. I have six charges against me for this pipeline, and there's a bunch of us that are facing charges for, you know, trying to be a water protector.
L Duke and others have been part of this seven year fight opposing the project throughout the state and federal review processes.
It is the largest tarzans pipeline in the world. This pipeline is the equivalent to fifty new coal fire power plants. So you know, if you're trying to save the planet, this is not the way to do it.
I couldn't get to Minnesota myself. I'm not vaccinated yet, so I don't want to impose myself on the community. Plus I have kids. But also this is one of those stories where I want to hear from local and particularly Native journalists. I did want to see, though, whether the evolving Line three story dovetailed it all with something else. I've been tracking fossil fuel backed anti protest bills. I've
written about this a few times. A bunch of other journalists have done some great reporting on it as well. There's some good stuff in huff Post and The Intercept. I'll drop some links in the show notes for those of you who want to read more. These bills have been passed in fourteen states now and proposed in about half the states in the country. They differ a little bit from state to state, but in general, they increase
the fines and jail time associated with trespassing dramatically. They often bump trespassing up from a misdemeanor to a felony, and they seem to be specifically targeting organizers and the organizations they work with, with steep penalties for organizing or training activists who then trespass, So even if the organizer isn't there at the protest, they can still be charged. And it turns out there are six six anti protest bills making their way through the Minnesota state legislature right now.
Some of them are bundled together, so it amounts to four different legislative packages, but still that's a lot. That's important because on top of cracking down on pipeline protests, there's growing concern that these bills will be used to quell other sorts of protests too, And remember, Minnesota was ground zero for last summer's Black Lives Matter protests. In the days after police murdered George Floyd. To talk about Minnesota's proposals, where these laws came from in general, and
how they're moving through the country right now. I asked researcher Connor Gibson to join me. He's been keeping tabs on these bills really since they started to pick up steam in the wake of the standing rock protests. That conversation coming up right after this quick break. It seems like all of a sudden, the piece has picked up again. But I don't know if that's just like a feeling or if that's actually what's happened. So I'm curious to see what you've seen on that front.
Yes, it is the case that these fossil fuel infrastructure anti protest bills are currently gaining steam in the twenty twenty one legislative sessions of many states. I think the main difference between this year and last year is last year the pandemic really just messed up the strategy. We still saw plenty of bills and laws passed in twenty twenty, but I think it was reduced by the impact of the pandemic, the confusion and cancelations and delays that caused
a state legislature. So I suspect what we're seeing in twenty twenty one is a lot of what companies intended to do last year. They just weren't able to do as much as quickly as they would have liked. But that said, bill's still passed in the law during the pandemic in West Virginia, in Kentucky, and this year we're seeing more states continue the trend, including some states that failed to pass bills last year, like Illinois, like Alabama. And there's only one state this year that really has
high profile pipeline protests going on. That's Minnesota. Line three revamp being done by Enbridge and being hastened along by many other players in the oil industry makes the situation a little bit more relevant and urgent in Minnesota than in other states. You know, I can't tell you why Arkansas cares so much to felamize pipeline protest. They're big pipeline resistance kind of happened a couple of years ago with the Diamond pipeline.
Right Connor, was that? Did that come into play in Oklahoma too? Was it the same pipeline, the Diamond pipeline.
I want to say, yes, yep.
It was. I checked.
So in early twenty seventeen, local newspapers in Arkansas and Oklahoma were reporting that tribes, mostly in Oklahoma did not approve of the diamond pipeline and that several indigenous activists planned to protest it. There was a lot of handringing about whether this would be the quote unquote next standing rock. Noticing a theme here, and in February twenty seventeen, Oklahoma Representative Scott Biggs proposed the anti protest bill that the rest would be based on. Here's a bit of tape
from that session. The person you'll hear pushing bigs for answers is Representative Corey Williams.
This issue has definitely risen to the level of concern here in Oklahoma, giving our state status as an oil producer energy producer, and what's going on in other states. So we took what happened or what bill we passed last year with the Critical Infrastructure Bill regarding flying drones over refineries or cushing or places like that, and we've now expanded that to provide some greater protection for those
critical infrastructures are necessary for the state to operate. So the proposed committee sub basically lines out trespassing, helps define what critical infrastructure is, and provides some for some enhanced penalties for damage caused by truspassing.
Thank you, mister Shire. When I was looking through some of the definitions on this, and a lot of them I can see, but a couple of them, I thought, well, that's pretty open ended if we wanted to prosecute it. I think it just says railroad tracks. That's pretty open ended thing to consider to be critical infrastructure that would have this enhanced penalty along with it. I mean, I understand like a power generation facility and substations and things
like that. I guess my question is twofold, do you think that a couple of these definitions might be a little bit open ended and allow some abusive prosecution? And then secondly, can you tell can you elaborate more on you said that this has risen to the level of a need. Can you describe the incident that there were incidents that have brought us to the forefront?
Answer your questions Number one, absolutely not. I do not believe if prosecutors are abusive in their discretion and their role and their function to protect the state. I know you disagree with me on that, and we have for four years, but no, they're not abusive in their discretion. No, I do not disagree. You know agree with you that these definitions are open ended. I believe that if you have an issue with the industry, I'm pretty sure the
rail industry could demonstrate how they're vital to Oklahoma. You know, they're in cushion just south of your district. Is extremely vital the oil gas industry for all the rail that's pumping in this crewde oil because the pipelines have been protested, the pipelines haven't been built, so now they're using rail to move that oil, to move those products into our state.
The Oklahoma bill was pointed to as the one that all the other bills were modeled after, but not without some help from the fossil fuel industry. In fact, industry reps were there the day Oklahoma's bill was introduced, ready to answer questions in.
Your last response, I didn't actually hear you elaborate on the incidents. It was it just the pipeline incident or I don't think they did damage to property, but obviously there.
I'm pretty sure they did a whole lot of damage to property in North Dakota, Okay.
Is that please?
Yes, please join if you if you want to learn more. We actually have a meeting here at four o'clock today with some individuals from North Dakota that are here to talk to us, talk to the industry about what they're having to deal with the aftermath of those protesters. Up there's four o'clock Gripson McBride is sponsoring that open meeting to the public. But yes, that is the main reason behind this.
So there's a bit of background on the origins of these bills. Now back to my conversation with Connor for more. Okay, so actually, maybe I'll have you back up a little bit and give folks a brief sort of history of these bills that you know, they sort of started to appear with the Oklahoma Bill shortly after Standing Rock and very much were a reaction to that protest.
Sure thing. I'm actually going to take us way back in time to September eleventh, two thousand and one, terrible day in world history, when the world trade centers went down and the Pentagon was attacked, and the country was in a state of fear and confusion and very much ready to accept so draconian government restrictions in the name of our national security and not having to live through
anything like that. Again, there were some industries that were starting to have this kind of conversation, and the first more coherent discussion that I saw about critical infrastructure and upping penalties for people that are trespassing on it or near it, or certainly damaging any of the equipment. Those conversations, as far as I can tell, we're starting to happen.
In two thousand and three, two thousand and four, there was a law that was passed in Louisiana, Act one fifty seven that set in motion the idea that there would be heightened penalties for trespassing on critical infrastructure sites. I don't think oil pipelines were included at first in that Louisiana law. They added that in twenty fifteen, but at that point some companies, including oil companies, started talking
about this. And there is a group that's similar to ALEC, but not nearly as captured and partisan, called the Council of State Governments. It is a bipartisan consortium of state legislators. They do produce some model legislation in a way that's similar to ALEC, but in addition to working in ways that are much more broad than ALEC does a bunch of different kinds of legislative trainings and working groups on
various issues. The Council of State Governments produced a report that was financed by BP and others that embellished upon some of this, And then I couldn't really tell you what happens between two thousand and six in twenty fifteen. As far as my research went, there didn't seem to be any major events. But twenty fifteen, and this is before Standing Rock and before the Dakota Access Pipeline was being hotly protested, Louisiana started updating that critical Infrastructure law
that it had passed in two thousand and four. Interesting, and it wasn't until two thousand and seventeen, the end of the year December, that the American Legislative Exchange Council ended out creating a model bill, Which is just to say that there were some states starting to field test different avenues with which to restrict oil and gas protesters,
specifically including Alabama, including Michigan, including Washington. They just hadn't taken coherent shape in terms of this play that we're seeing now, where it's felony level penalties for people who are committing nonviolent acts of trespass coupled with compounded fines and jail sentences often for organizations or individuals who are found to be affiliated with those protesters. They don't have to have trespass themselves, they don't have to have damaged
anything themselves. Afiliated with somebody that did, they wind up being charged. And the first state that passed both of those things in a pretty clear and coherent way with Oklahoma in twenty seventeen. And that's usually where this story starts in terms of people that are following and talking about the issue. But you know, I do think it's important to know that it didn't just explode randomly or
not so randomly, but in reaction to Standing Rock. There was activity happening in a lot of these states leading up to that point, and in twenty seventeen things really became codified into the strategy that we've seen. It was later that year the American Legislative Exchange Council passed its model bill internally within itself at a meeting in December of that year. And there's really there was some excellent reporting that was done that actually has really helped inform
and understand how this trend took off. There was a letter that was written to the Legis laders who participated in that specific ALEC meeting in December twenty seventeen. They had not yet approved this critical Infrastructure Felony law template
law yet. And the American Chemistry Council, which is chemical manufacturers lobbyists, and the Edison Electric Institute which is electric utility lobbyists, and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers which was the refinery companies, in addition to Marathon Petroleum and the American Gas Association which is gas utility companies. They all signed the letter to alex legislators and said, please make a model bill out of this, do it at
this meeting, do it in the next few days. And they listed a bunch of reasons justifying why a law was needed. One of the examples used with was the valve turners, a nonviolent protest that occurred in order to stop development of the Keystone Excel pipeline and the valves.
Hearner's example was the only example that was used by these lobbyists to justify these laws that didn't have to do actually with oil industry ex employees or people suffering from serious incidents of mental illness committing acts of sabotage against gas infrastructure, so much like we're seeing with the Capitol riots where George Floyd gets murdered by police, a bunch of time goes by Republicans theorize about ways to punish the people who are reacting in outrage to the
murder of black and brown people in this country by police officers. Then the Capitol riots happened, a bunch of white supremacists stormed the Capitol, and now we're going to be passing anti riot laws to go after black people, essentially for the sins committed by white nationalists. This trend in the oil and gas industry struck me as starkly similar.
They're justifying going after environmental protesters who are largely non violent, committing access civil disobedience in order to stop the fossil fuel bill out and blaming them with behavior that actually had nothing to do with environmental activism. Some of the tribal groups in Montana who protested the bill that is currently making its way through that legislature a terrible, terrible bill max sentence of thirty years in prison. MAX finds of one point five million dollars if you are found
linked to somebody who is arrested under those offenses. It's you know, an individual protester in Montana would be subject to a max five of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which is atrocious. That is way bigger than most of these states. The penalties in these states, which are draconian enough, tends to cap around like twenty or twenty five thousand dollars. Montana has upping it to one hundred and fifty thousand, but times ten if you are found to be a
supporter of a protest arrested. And of course Keystone xcit all cuts through at least one of the reservations in Montana, and I believe that's the Flathead Tribal Reservation. The wow.
The bill was protested and committee by a lot of different indigenous peoples from different tribal nations and different Native organizations nonprofits in Montana, and they were all concerned not only about the ongoing fight over Keystone EXCEL, but just once the law is on the books, who knows what it will be used to punish people for in regard to any future infrastructure project. You know that qualified for critical infrastructure.
And it's quite broad, right the definition of critical infrastructure.
Yes, and I would have to look at Montana's definitions again because all of the states are a little bit different, but roughly following the trend that was set forth by the State of Oklahoma and by the American Legislative Exchange Council's Model Bill. It includes utility infrastructure, electric transmission lines, It includes pipelines of all kinds. It includes water infrastructure.
Some of them include dams in Louisiana, levies was attempted to be added to the definitions last year, which failed. From you know, gas compressor stations, refineries, export terminals, pretty much everything you can think of that as dirty energy infrastructure qualifies as critical under this bill.
Right right. I do wonder how much some of these laws could be used to tamp down on various other types of protests, like the Black Lives Matter protests. Some new research done and I'm not sure if it's out there yet or not around some groups that have, you know, been looking at at what Gibson done has done in response both to indigenous tribes in Ecuador suing Chevron and to the Standing Rock protests against their client energy transfer
partners and using RICO. I definitely hear echoes of in these in these anti protest laws, especially the recent ones where they're going after the quote unquote organizers.
There's the plot thickens amy because in the bill that's currently being considered in Kansas, and it has already passed the Senate in Kansas, it actually has hearing in the House tomorrow, which is March seventeenth, that bill includes a RICO provision, and wow, I believe is the first overlap between corporations using racketeering anti mafia laws to go after their critics or attorneys or anything plaintiffs that inconvenience them
or whatever it might be at these anti protests. The fossil fuel anti protest laws specifically, I believe RICO is also starting to creep into the broader trend of riot redefinition anti protesting laws where you find the lowest common denominator way to accuse somebody of rioting and then you get to charge them with very very serious felonies. And if some of these states succeed, you know, potentially racketeering implication as well, you know, as if the civil disobedience is organized crime.
In very simple terms, that is the attempt that's underway is to redefine civil disobedience as organized crime, and people should know that the RICO laws were created to deal with the mob.
Yeah, I'm sorry, just like you know, even the more extreme and I I don't even want to use that word because there's no explosions or violence or threats involved. But like an activist cutting a fence or throwing a carpet over the razor wire and trespassing or even shutting off a pipeline valve, I'm sorry, that's not like walking into somebody's store and breaking their kneecaps for not paying their dues that Month's similar or even nearly as threatening about that?
Do you have an account of how many states have enacted these laws and then how many are sort of in play right now?
I do, Okay. There are a total of fourteen states that have so far passed the fossil Fuel Infrastructure anti protest bills since twenty seventeen. The most recent one was in twenty twenty one, but the fight actually started years previous, and that's Ohio. They just passed the law in January. That bill carried over from the previous year. After that, we've seen bills pop up in Minnesota for a grand total of six bill. I don't know, they're just really
disorganized or what. Some of them are concurrent, so it's really it's basically for legislative packages in Minnesota in the form of six.
Bills in MINESDA. That's really interesting to me in the context of the Line three protests right now. Is there any sense that, like the number of proposals or the movement on them it like recently, is connected to some sort of reaction to that protest.
That's a great question. I'm gonna say my gut tells me yes, because in twenty eighteen there was only one bill. In twenty nineteen there were two bills, and I believe they were they might have been concurrent. And in twenty twenty there were also two bills, and then suddenly this year there's six. There's also there's a little bit of
difference between some of them. Some of the bills are more focused on the felonies for the individuals, including the loophole that you're trespassing on a fossil fuel infrastructure facility with the intent to impede or inhibit or in another bill, with the intent to disrupt the operation. I'm going to go ahead and say a aggressive prosecutor would slap me with a felony charge if I was sitting in front of a road because that would impede or inhibit the
operation of the facility or disrupt the operation. So that's like, that's where the loophole is here, Right. They frame this as if it's about property damage, as if it's about violence. Guess what, All of that's are illegal everywhere it has been all of this nation's recent history and all of the state's recent history. You can't hurt people, you can't blow stuff up, you can't damage property, you can't trespass. There are laws on the books to deal with those things.
So what these bills really aim to change, and the Minnesota bills illustrate it well, is that there is a loophole put in there that if you're disrupting or interrupt the facility in some minor way, you're on the hook for the same level felony offense that is normally reserved for somebody who is abusing or hurting another human being.
Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it in. An important thing for people to understand that, Like, it's not like in the absence of these bills, there has just been you know, blanket permissiveness for trespassing and properties.
Protesting. You know, the people in Standing Rock in addition to getting blasted by the cops water cannons and freezing cold temperatures and attacked by dogs and having their arms blown off by concussion grenades and stuff like that. Like you know, the people who are arrested can like trespassing those situations, they do end out having to get charged with things, and they do end up having to fight
that out in court. And I know that for skeptics of like kind of protest culture and this like perhaps what's seen as a really self righteous liberalism stand up
for what's right, that really irks some people. But I don't think they think about how the people who engage in acts of civil different disobedience really have a lot of shit to deal with after that happens or all these myself as an example, right, Like, people are annoyed that somebody like me, this college educated white kid like goes and protest the Keystone Excel pipeline in two thousand and eleven at the White House, which I did. It was a mass civil disobedience. We all got arrested. We
went to jail. We didn't have to go to a cell. We just had to pay our one hundred dollars post and forfeit and we got to leave. You know, but in many of these situations, that is not what happens. You go to jail, you get held, you get out, you have to talk with lawyers, you have to show up for court hearings. You know, several months to several
years of your life is potentially disrupted. Even if you don't end out going to prison or paying thousands of dollars and fines, you lose a lot of time and you lose a lot of money in order to take that principal stand. So it's not just a bunch of spoiled kids that don't have to deal with any consequence. They're really abusing, you know, major loopholes in our legal system.
They are accepting those consequences, or the kind of higher calling of saying, no more fossil fuel infrastructure is not okay. More oil spills are not okay. More disruption to the sovereignty of indigenous nations whose treaties we have violated over and over and over again is not okay.
Okay, So you you were saying there's there's four different legislative packages that are kind of in play in Minnesota.
Right, and they're all aimed in differing ways that felonies for individual violators as well as going after people affiliated with them as well. So you don't even necessarily have
to commit the crimes. And this is you know, so if you're a Sierra Club or a Green Peace or any other organization maybe the American Civil Liberties Union, and you're you've like been on email threads with these activists, that raises the question, are you liable for the crimes commit Like a fool I met could go do something like spray paint a piece of equipment, and you know, that just strikes me as exceptionally unfair that I could possibly be held to account for that thing that I
didn't give permission to be affiliated with and I wouldn't have recommended in YadA YadA. So that's a big part of the problem with In Kansas, there is a similar bill, as I believe I said earlier, that has passed out of one of the legislative chambers and it has a hearing tomorrow. There are some groups locally opposing it. Kansas
Interfaith Action has testified against the bill. The Kansas SIRA Club has testified against the bill, and showing up against them, of course, is the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, as well as the Wichita Regional Chamber. I'm going to go ahead and guess pretty much means Coke Industries and SESNA.
I don't know who else in Wichita is a particularly large company, and I'm gonna go ahead and guess that CESSNA doesn't care about this law, so which is probably that the lobbyist did mention We've heard a lot from our members about this one, and I was like, yeah, I bet I can tell you which one the other bills are. In Montana, that law is being supported again by trade associations that represent many of the usual suspects trans Canada, Enbridge, Exon Mobile. It's the but it's being
done through groups that are not quite so obviously. So in Montana, one of the groups that is supporting the anti protest law is called the Treasure, State Resource Association of Montana and State Resource Association, it turns out, represents oil and gas companies, among amongst others. I saw the American Chemistry Council is in there, and Bridge and exce
on Mobile are members. And then Montana Petroleum Association also supporting the bill in Montana, and I believe it's pretty much the same oil companies that are the members of the Montana Petroleum Association as well the other states that are considering bills Alabama and Arkansas. And Alabama that bill has not yet moved. Arkansas's bill has passed in the House and is working its way through the Senate. I could not tell you in either of those states who
is advocating for it. If those states disclose that information, I haven't been able to find it. They certainly don't disclose it. And lobbying registrations, although I can't say that Coke has registered to lobby in both of those states I noticed. And then the kind of outlier, the state that I'm afraid will peak a little too much interest for some of the wrong reasons is Illinois. Because a Democrat is sponsoring the bill in Illinois, and that has
been the situation in Illinois since the beginning. So in Illinois as well as Wisconsin, there has been a different strategy than has been used in most other states, and that is the oil industry appeals to local trade unions and the messaging in their hands. This is exactly what
happened to Wisconsin. I'm not sure about Illinois. The American patrolluments to put messaging and talking points into the hands of the local trade unions, who then lobby Democrats in the legislature and championed the law that passed in Wisconsin. In Illinois, I suspect the trend is similar because just in the last thirty six hours, in addition to Enbridge and the American Patrollum Institute and some Illinois based lobbying organizations, there are a lot of trade unions that have just
signed on and support of the bill. In Illinois, they're supposed to be hearing today and I heard that this bill was taken out of the calendar for discussion. I don't know why. I don't have more details, but yeah, it means I have no idea of what direction the bill is heading towards. I don't know if that indicates there's some sort of conflict or stall or if you know, it's just there was some procedural reason why they delayed. But I would keep my eyes out for Illinois. They
tried to pass a lot in twenty nineteen. It went through one of the legislative chambers, but not the other. And I'm sure they're going to try and fight like hell again this year to get along in the books, because this is a third year in the row that they've they've tried pushing bills through Illinois.
That's interesting. Thank you so much for spending his time with me.
Yeah. Great, Thank you so much for taking the time to chat.
Okay, that's it for this time again. I will post links to other stories about these bills in the show notes. There will also be a story on the drillednews dot com website with more on these anti protests bills. We've covered this there a couple of other times in the past as well. If you know about something like this happening in your state, or you've heard interesting things about it, feel free to shoot me a line. You can reach me at Amy at drillednews dot com or on Twitter
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