The Benefit for Standing Rock, which featured over a dozen musical acts and speakers, raised $2,000 to provide cold weather gear for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protesters in North Dakota. Supporters of the movement, who worried that the North Dakota winter would drive protesters inside, gathered at The 5th Dimension on Saturday, Nov. 12. The event was organized by Charlotte Benedetto and Orlando Johnson.
The DAPL project has been the cause of significant controversy in recent months, as protestors led by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe began blocking construction sites in August. Protesters worry that the pipeline could contaminate the Missouri River and many are angered about the pipeline’s route, which disturbs the sacred burial grounds of neighboring Sioux tribes.
Gina Lofaro, a volunteer at the benefit, spoke about the solidarity that people outside the local community have shown in response to the DAPL protests.
“If you look at Flint, Michigan, you learn what contaminated water can do to a community. You just can’t be steamrolled, you just can’t have large corporations going around with no respect for people or the environment,” Lofaro said. “If you are able to speak out in masses, it shows that what’s going on here is bigger than those people who are being directly affected in that area.”
Benefit organizer Benedetto thinks that the protests also have to do with race.
“It’s important to remember that the primary reason this pipeline is being built in this location is because the predominantly white, middle class residents of Bismarck would not allow it [in their neighborhoods],” Benedetto wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “It is well established that corporations will target marginalized communities that cannot or will not be able to speak for themselves, or afford expensive litigation.”
Benedetto also believes that the best solution would be to halt construction.
“[We need] total de-escalation of the police and removal of both the government and private security presence, an earnest and even-handed attempt to honor the treaty concerning this land, calm and measured negotiations or a hiatus on all construction and surveying until further negotiation conditions can be met,” she wrote.
Lofaro, however, thinks that there could be a solution that benefits all parties involved, stressing the importance of collaboration.
“There has to be another way to divert the pipeline. I understand why they want to go this route: They’re just trying to save themselves some money,” Lofaro said. “[But] they should work with the Corps of Engineers, work with the community to find a way to reroute it, if at all possible, or find some other compromise in the trucking industry to make it cheaper to truck the oil down and make everybody happy.”
Over the past three weeks, law enforcement officials tasked with controlling the protests have been under scrutiny. Demonstrations have ended in arrests, tear gas and rubber bullets. Roughly 140 people were arrested on Oct. 27 during an operation that cleared a protest camp. Benedetto believes the police’s actions are an affront to constitutional rights.
“It’s disgusting and disheartening,” she wrote. “But it’s also understandable that people will be abused and/or arrested, I think, given the current climate. Our right to protest has been severely eroded. These sorts of things would have been considered barbaric in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but people consider it normal now. The police have been so heavily militarized, as well; It escalates every encounter. It’s arguable that all of these arrests at the anti-DAPL protests and acts of dispersive violence are fundamentally illegal and violate the right to peaceful protest.”
Lofaro hopes that both sides can remain peaceful in their roles, but she also believes that it is important for the protesters to stand their ground.
“I just hope the protesters continue to be strong and negotiate” she said. “I think that if you’re willing to come to a compromise while standing your ground, you can reach a solution that keeps everybody happy.”
Lofaro is enthusiastic about the support in all parts of the country, and she is glad that so many people find this issue important.
“I think taking action in masses, showing support, it gets things done, it brings focus, it brings people’s attention, because maybe not everyone would know about this if there wasn’t such a large group of protesters,” she said. “We’ve got to work with each other, otherwise we’re all just being bought out by a bunch of oil barons.”
