Sunday, October 1, 2017

In These Times October cover story: About Keystone XL pipeline resistance

The lede follows: 
OFFICIALLY, THE FATE OF ONE OF THE MOST HIGH-PROFILE CORPORATE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS IN A GENERATION now rests with an obscure regulatory body in one of this country’s most sparsely populated states: Nebraska’s Public Service Commission. Unofficially, the homegrown movement that blocked the Keystone XL pipeline once before is ready to stop it again—even if commissioners give it a green light. 
A ruling isn’t expected until November, but after the commission’s latest hearings adjourned August 10, Jane Kleeb, one of the pipeline’s highest-profile opponents and now the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party—flanked by landowners who live along its proposed route—made an unconditional pledge: “Standing Rock was a dress rehearsal compared to what this will be. We are not going to let an inch of foreign steel touch Nebraska soil.” 
A gauntlet had been thrown.
Oh, and the headline, the headline is "The Unlikely Alliance That Could Stop Keystone and Transform the Democratic Party" and the subhead is "Natives and ranchers are teaming up to save their water and land from corporate takeover."  Kate Aronoff reports.   She quotes Kleeb, who has worked hard for several years to organize farmer and rancher opposition to the pipeline.  Of those she's brought into Bold Nebraska to oppose the pipeline, Aronoff quotes Kleeb: 
Generally, they hate big.  That’s big government, but that’s also big corporations that want to take their land through eminent domain, or big agriculture.

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