The Most Righteous Janine Boneparth Takes on TransCanada with the Tar Sands Blockade

A little over a month ago, I had the real pleasure and honor of meeting Janine Boneparth and helping her get to a medical care center after her involvement with the second mass-action of the Tar Sands Blockade, an organization launched in a sustained non-violent direct action campaign to stop the Keystone XL. Why? Because while it is barely ever stated in press or politics, the "keystone" to this pipeline's market purpose is to carry oil sands dilbit (i.e. tar sands) from a "carbon bomb" development project on previously-forested, indigenous lands in Alberta, Canada--------- all the way across America to refinery communities in the Gulf of Mexico that already suffer high rates of severe health problems linked to petro-pollution. Let's not get into the "What if it spills?" quite yet.

Janine volunteered to be arrested in the fight against these climate and social injustices. A veteran peace activist, and member of Code Pink, Janine is most "known" in a media sense of the word for her dashing attempt to put Karl Rove into a civilian arrest for treason. She also has got quite a bit of environmentalist street-cred, having worked for years in Africa with Wangari Maathai-- the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

 Her luck with crooks and handcuffs has not quite improved, though. Janine was attempting to lock down to a piece of heavy machinery on the Keystone XL easement in Winnsboro, TX-- not too far from where the Tar Sands Blockade has had a tree-sit blockade up for more than two months now.

I say "blockade", but the reality of it is that TransCanada/Keystone has used many methods to gain privilege to bulldoze exactly around it, as forced and quickly as possible. This includes hiring a slew of off-duty local cops to work as "private security" to patrol the easement by daylight, campfire, flashlight and flood-light. All the while without identification and with the aid of their government-issued equipment and authority. Corporate/cop collusion is highly questionable, though of course they've already told the press otherwise. I'd start talking about TransCanada's "legal" bullying, but I really can't.




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 IMPORTANT SIDE-NOTE: If you're wondering "Isn't the KXL still waiting approval by Obama? Why is this happening?"--- it's because TransCanada's subsidiary company, "Keystone", has made the, in my opinion slippery, move of re-classifying this as the "Gulf Coast Expansion Project" (with a side-wink from Obama ;) to bypass the still-pending State Department approval... even though the pipe still has "Keystone XL" stamped right on it.

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 In Janine's involvement, a man in a typical construction outfit, claiming to be a cop, jumped at her and wrestled with her in an attempt to stop her from tying in to her lock-down device. She was determined to stop construction on this disguised tar sands development project for at least a morning, and kept trying to lock down because there were no obvious indicators that this man twisting her arm forcefully wasn't more than a bluffing and aggressive construction worker.

However, she was not able to accomplish her objective, and after a long wait and conversation with the private-security as more cops came, Janine walked away with the local sheriffs en route to the county jail, frustrated and covered in mud.

We first met upon her release from jail.

Bruises and swelling were already forming, and Janine was clearly in pain. It was a few hours before she was able to make it to an open health clinic. The doctor was absolutely appalled by the state of her arm, and he called in others at the clinic to see it because he just couldn't believe this had been done by a policeman.

The doctor determined that no bones were broken, but Janine's rotator cuff had been strained. Her wrist was also quite painful. I tried my best to photo-document how her bruises looked by the following night:

 no breakage, but a lot of pain and a sizable bruise 

 bruising throughout this whole left side of her hand

 Police responses in other counties in the weeks following Janine's encounter include: 

Using cherry-pickers to remove two additional tree-sits further south, attempting to impose the costs of the cherry-picker on the protestors in trumped up felony charges, withholding personal property,  shaking and cutting support lines for occupied tree-sit platforms, using flood lights to wait out subsequently stranded tree-sitters, arresting the Green Party presidential candidate for bringing food and halloween treats to the Winnsboro tree-sitters, using pepper spray on the skin and eyes of people locked down to machines, pepper spraying with little warning into the faces of protesters attempting to block the path of a truck carrying a cherry-picker --- the driver would not stop until he hit one protester and almost dragged him under the truck ---, and strip-searching and aggressively handling protesters after their arrests. 

It's an ugly, aggressive picture. Meanwhile, Keystone's contract workers continue to bulldoze a landowner's biofuel crops in the name of "crude oil" and "energy independence". The pipe will soon be in the ground, tracing smugly around the Winnsboro tree-sit blockade, but the non-violent  direct action will continue all along the pipe route for this "Gulf Expansion Project"--- until it is stopped or every motivated individual in its way is stopped. I don't know what else to say besides: it's a matter of peace, love and justice. 

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The photos, video and writing were done by Aly Tharp