Recent Pipeline Fight Victories & “Unfinished Business”: Pipeline Fighters Hub Briefing | Sept. 29

The second Pipeline Fighters Hub Briefing — Recent Pipeline Fight Victories & “Unfinished Business” — was held on Wednesday, Sept. 29 at 6:00 p.m. Central Time.

The discussion featured grassroots Pipeline Fighters who organized to defeat Big Oil and Gas projects in their communities, including Keystone XL, Atlantic Coast, Byhalia Connection, and Jordan Cove LNG.

Hear about how they won their fights, and the work they’re still doing on the unfinished business that remains after a pipeline is cancelled — including the charges facing Water Protectors and Land Defenders who put their bodies on the line during acts of nonviolent civil disobedience; relinquishing easements and restoring landowners’ property; enacting stronger protections for water and property rights at the local, county, and state levels; and, what happens to all that pipe?

PANELISTS:

• Joye Braun, Wanbli Wiyan Ka’win
  National Pipelines Campaign Organizer, Indigenous Environmental Network
  Joye is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, who was active at the camps during the movement at Standing Rock opposing the Dakota Access pipeline, and worked with grassroots organizers to monitor pre-construction activity on the Keystone XL pipeline in South Dakota.
• Art Tanderup
  Farmer & Landowner on Keystone XL pipeline route in Nebraska
  Art is a landowner on the Keystone XL route, who returned land to the Ponca Nation where the Tribe’s Sacred Corn was planted as medicine for the land and protection against the pipeline. The Tanderup farm has also played host to a Ponca Spiritual Camp; the 2014 “Harvest the Hope” NoKXL benefit concert feat. Willie Nelson & Neil Young; and four enormous NoKXL and #ActOnClimate-themed crop art installations. Art has also appeared on Fox Business Network and numerous other media as a NoKXL advocate.
• Justin J. Pearson
  Community organizer in Memphis, TN against Byhalia Connection pipeline
  Justin is a 26-year-old organizer from southwest Memphis, TN who forged a movement to stave off a major oil pipeline slated to run through his community. He is the co-founder of Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP), a Black-led environmental justice organization seeking to end the racism and injustices in Memphis, including the now-defunct Byhalia Connection pipeline project. Justin’s charisma and passion has thrust him into the spotlight, helping attract big names like former Vice President Al Gore to rally against the pipeline project and bring nationwide attention to their fight, and is now working to enact protections at the local level for the city’s water and aquifer.
• Allie Rosenbluth
  Campaigns Director, Rogue Climate, against the Jordan Cove LNG project in Oregon
  Allie has worked as a Community Organizer for Rogue Climate since 2016, organizing against the Jordan Cove LNG terminal and pipeline, mentoring and supporting environmental youth leaders, and organizing for energy justice throughout Southern Oregon.
  
• Richard Averitt
  Landowner and organizer against Atlantic Coast Pipeline route in Virginia
  Richard Averitt and his wife spent six years and more than six figures fighting to keep the Atlantic Coast Pipeline off their picturesque central Virginia property, and in all that time, Averitt said he couldn’t recall meeting a single person who thought they would succeed. The massive interstate natural gas pipeline designed to start in West Virginia and run at least through Virginia and North Carolina was being developed by some of the country’s biggest and most politically powerful energy companies with the support of lawmakers and governors from both parties, labor unions and the Trump administration. But in July 2020, Duke Energy and Dominion Energy announced they had pulled the plug on the $8 billion project, citing uncertainties about costs, permitting and litigation.
  
• Annie Plotkin-Madrigal
  Program Manager at the Equation Campaign
  The Equation Campaign is a funding initiative working to bring about a safe and just future by enhancing the power of movements to keep oil and gas in the ground, whose grantees include the Pipeline Fighters Hub, Giniw Collective, Memphis Community Against the Pipeline (MCAP), Indigenous Environmental Network, POWHR, Oil & Water Don’t Mix, Stop the Money Pipeline, and Native Roots Radio.
  
• Jane Kleeb
  President of Bold Alliance and founder of Bold Nebraska
  Jane helped organize the farmers, ranchers, Tribal Nations and environmental advocates who fought the Keystone XL pipeline for over a decade — and Jane also now serves as chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party.

MODERATOR:

• Mark Hefflinger
  Digital & Communications Director, Bold Alliance & Pipeline Fighters Hub

A Q&A will follow the panel discussion. (To submit a question for the panelists ahead of time, email to mark@boldnebraska.org)

Thanks to everyone who joined us for our first Pipeline Fighters Hub Briefing last month on “Carbon Capture & CO2 Pipelines.” A recording of the program is available here.