Standing With Standing Rock Blog Post: Created By Eliza Meketon

According to the Environmental Protection Agency “Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” There has been environmental injustice for as long as there has been people. In recent years however, there has been an explosion of environmental activism due to the ever growing popularity of social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Now people can just snap a picture of them holding a protest sign and people will understand the message they are trying to get across. Showing solidarity with a cause is just so much easier due to the introduction of hashtags. People can just type in the #standingwithstandingrock with a picture of a drop of oil and they have done their activists duty for the day. Also causes can go viral a whole lot easier than let's say fifty years ago. Back then if you wanted to get a cause off the ground and you wanted to organize a protest, the only way you could reach out to people is by word of mouth or by passing out flyers. Now you could just make a well worded post, and share it with family and friends, they then share it with their family and friends, and soon the cause has blown up everyone's feed. It is almost inescapable. Causes now have a following and communities dedicated to raising awareness. Before people could just throw away flyers or ignore the weirdos on the sidewalk yelling at them to save some endangered animal with a weird name. There is just too hefty of a price to pay if you don’t want to go on social media. You essentially have two choices, be bombarded with whatever people want you to be interested in or be completely in the dark on what is going on society and the thing people are most likely to be discussing at school or work the next day. While it may be annoying to have every little cause someone deems important constantly blowing up your feed, it is necessary to have people be so addicted to this staple in our current culture. Without it, people wouldn’t be given the opportunity to take a second, third, fourth, or fifth glance, at a cause because they dismissed the first time around. While this is not directly aimed at environmental justice, it has everything in the world to do with it. I am not going to lie, it is extremely hard to get people interested in something that may not directly have an effect on them, that is not a insulation on the lack of care people have for one another, but a comment on how people need a push when it comes to justice of any kind. We need to see other people getting involved in order to know it is the thing will make us more socially accepted in society, I think what it truly comes down to is we want to fit in, it is easier to see that all our friends have joined in with supporting a cause when all of them have the #NoDAPL as their profile picture rather than seeing the third person in a row throw out the Stand Rock flyer they just received.

How can we improve upon this strategy?

Frankly, I believe the number one problem with launching causes purely on social media, is that people look to improper sources for information. You could have a properly vetted source, someone who has been on the front-lines, is an organizer of events and protests, as well as done some personal research, and can be classified as an expert on the cause. Then you could have someone who just joined because yesterday, still has very little understanding of the deeper meaning behind the cause, is actually just doing it to get some pictures for Instagram, but takes great pictures, uses snappy phrases, and gets the group a lot followers on social media. Which person is worth more to the cause? Someone who knows all the facts and is truly dedicated to getting the cause off the ground, or someone who brings a lot of attention to the activist group, but under false pretenses, and incorrect facts? Social media has blurred the lines on what's ok and not ok to say, it is not only completely new, but pretty much unregulated territory. This makes it that much more difficult for people who are educated on the issues and are trying to deliver the facts for viewers trying to join the cause who are getting turned off by people spewing nothing but dishonesty and garbage.

                                    Summary and impression on the Democracy Now article

The article “Norway's Largest Bank Sells Assets in Dakota Access Pipeline Company” was about how a very important and large Norwegian bank is pulling 3.5 billion dollars worth of assets in the companies that are behind the North Dakota Access Pipeline. This comes as no surprise due to the the deadlines being missed by the Energy Transfer Partners and the new projected deadlines being nowhere near close to the original finish date. This has lead to some speculation on whether the oil companies will pull out on their contract with the pipeline companies.There is even talk of canceling the project entirely. I honestly believe this was all inevitable. You can’t have so much opposition to a project and not run into some snafus. With all the negative press the protesters have been getting, it is no wonder why being in cahoots with the pipeline company might not be the best image booster. With all the demonstrators doing whatever they can to delay the pipeline construction, it only makes sense that the builders would not meet deadlines.

I think the American people need to probe deeper into the situation going on and ask themselves if desecrating ancient burial grounds and possibly polluting an already marginalized group’s main water supply, is worth getting an outdated source of energy. Big surprise it is not! To be honest, if I have had no previous knowledge of this situation and someone handed me the story without mentioning to many specifics, I would instantly think this happened at the very most four decades ago, not in 2016! This is honestly disgusting and anyone who doesn't understand why, needs to retake some history classes because this exactly why we have them, to remind us of past events so we don’t repeat them.

Too many groups of people have been completely tossed aside by the American government especially Native Americans, who from day one have been massacred, robbed, and utterly deprived of human dignity and it absolutely needs to stop. Once you step foot onto American soil you deserve the rights that were fought and died for by our founding fathers, who understood what it felt like to be denied civil liberties by an oppressive government. I think our current government needs to update those rights to include environmentally centered ones that focus on laws that prevent things such as environmental racism. This would mean an update to the constitution and in turn amendments that would make it unconstitutional to commit environmental injustices. We really need the government to take environmental based crimes seriously, because the EPA and groups like the ACLU can only do so much. We need actual laws to come into play that specifically aimed at people getting taking advantage of by oil, lumber, energy, and other polluting companies. These heartless corporations look for the most vulnerable communities, usually targeting people from low income housing, only high school educated, or people of color, and they dig their teeth in. We need to let these companies know that every citizen deserves the right to clean air, water, and soil. Once these amendments become official, big corporations will have to think twice about dumping toxic sludge into a communities only water source or fracking for oil in your neighbor's backyard. The truth of the matter is we all should want to protect our planet and defend it against anyone who tries to poison it. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can get back on track and try to restore all the damage that has been done. We need to stand together, because regardless of you are or where you come from, we all have the same home, and that is earth.

Please enjoy my North Dakota Access Pipeline PSA