[Black, Indigenous and Appalachian communities are fighting the
Mountain Valley Pipeline and other projects spurred as concessions to
last month’s landmark climate legislation. ]
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FRONTLINE ACTIVISTS GEAR UP FOR FIGHTS AGAINST CLIMATE BILL’S
FOSSIL FUEL CONCESSIONS  
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Sara Herschander
September 16, 2022
Waging Nonviolence
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_ Black, Indigenous and Appalachian communities are fighting the
Mountain Valley Pipeline and other projects spurred as concessions to
last month’s landmark climate legislation. _

Climate activists gathered outside of Sen. Diane Feinstein’s office
to protest Sens. Manchin and Schumer’s dirty pipeline deal that
would fast-track fossil fuel projects like the Mountain Valley
Pipeline. , Twitter/@FightFossils

 

Last Thursday, hundreds of protesters led by Indigenous, Appalachian
and Black environmental activists descended upon Washington, D.C. to
rally and protest against the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a
controversial $6.6 billion natural gas project with a planned route
from West Virginia to North Carolina. 

“No dirty deal!” protesters shouted, as they declared the area of
Appalachia most affected a “climate sacrifice zone.”

Last month’s landmark federal climate legislation, passed as part of
the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, represents the largest investment
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in climate action in U.S. history. Yet, fossil fuel-friendly Democrats
forced major concessions into the bill that mandate drilling and
pipeline deals like the Mountain Valley Pipeline across the country.
Frontline communities across the country, who have long taken a
leading role in the fight for environmental justice, aren’t backing
down.

“This new bill is genocide, there is no other way to put it. This is
a life or death situation and the longer we act as though the world
isn’t on fire around us, the worse our burns will be,” Siqiniq
Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic,
told _The Guardian_
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last month. “Biden has the power to prevent this, to mitigate the
damage.”

Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic is part of a national coalition
of more than 1,200 organizations called People vs. Fossil Fuels
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Thursday. 

The actions come as a slew of anti-protest bills take effect across
the country that aim to suppress Indigenous and environmental
activists’ opposition to oil and gas projects. A new report from the
non-profit Climate Cabinet [[link removed]]
found that the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council had
drafted anti-climate protest legislation in 24 states
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since 2018. The bills, which may charge protesters with felonies for
disrupting “critical infrastructure,” were passed in 17
Republican-led states, including West Virginia.

“Indigenous-led demonstrations opposing fossil-fuel projects have
been one of the most successful and effective forms of climate action
to date,” Jonathon Borja, co-author of the report, told _Mother
Jones_
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“In an affront to the protected freedoms of our Constitution, state
legislatures have found a new legislative mechanism to oppress
frontline communities and cause further harm and destruction to our
planet.”

Legislators that supported the bill in states like West Virginia
referenced the major 2016 protests against the Dakota Access pipeline
on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation as an example of the kind of
direct action the legislation aims to prevent.

Originally slated for completion in 2018, the Mountain Valley
Pipeline, or MVP, has faced widespread opposition and legal challenges
over environmental violations
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The MVP’s pipeline also crosses over 200 miles of land that’s
highly susceptible to landslides, which have caused five major gas
pipeline explosions
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the past four years.  

Referring to the federal climate bill, Russell Chisholm, Mountain
Valley watch coordinator for Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights
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the _Washington Post_: “Just the fact that something has passed has
given people some sense of optimism. There’s also a deep frustration
of how that came about and the compromises in there, and everyone is
really struggling with that right now.”

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Sara Herschander is a freelance journalist and audio producer based in
New York City. Her work has appeared in The American Prospect,
Documented NY, and Univision, among other publications.

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* People vs Fossil Fuel Bill; Mountain Valley Pipeline; Inflation
Reduction Act of 2022
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