Texas, December 19, 2012 – An Inside Climate News article and a Grist.org article were published yesterday, saying “the Keystone XL blockade may be over.”
Ron Seifert, spokesperson for Tar Sands Blockade, had the following statement in response to the articles:
“While it may be true that one blockade in Winnsboro, TX is drawing to a close, Tar Sands Blockade’s campaign to stop Keystone XL continues to escalate. TransCanada executives may have thought their holiday wishes came early, but let’s be clear: we’re not going anywhere and we’re only growing by the day.
“TransCanada’s maneuverings around the Winnsboro tree blockade is a textbook example of its pattern of lies. Even though TransCanada’s henchmen repeatedly told landowners that the route was set in stone, the company clearly changed the path of its pipeline to go around the tree blockade.
“Tar Sands Blockade continues to stand in solidarity with all those threatened by TransCanada’s dirty, dangerous pipeline. We stand with landowners like Mike Bishop in their David versus Goliath legal battle against this corporate behemoth’s seizing of land through eminent domain and fraud. We stand with the Manchester community in Houston being poisoned by Valero, one of Keystone XL’s biggest investors. We stand with indigenous communities in Canada who first sounded the alarm on tar sands and continue to bear the biggest brunt of extraction of the dirtiest fuel on Earth.
“We will continue to empower people at an upcoming training camp from January 3-8 with community organizing and direct action skills that they can use in their home communities to stop Keystone XL and all tar sands exploitation. We’re part of a growing national and transnational grassroots movement that will not rest until this pipeline and all extreme energy extraction is halted.”
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Tar Sands Blockade is a coalition of Texas and Oklahoma landowners and climate justice organizers using peaceful and sustained civil disobedience to stop the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.