Water Protectors and Civil Rights
‘When asked by Amy Goodman, the presenter, why the struggle was important, the simple response from one protester, who had been maced twice and bitten said, “Because water is life … I wish they would open their eyes and have a heart.”
The violence by the contractors is deeply worrying on many levels.
Firstly, it is state-sanctioned violence against peaceful protesters. The police stood idly by and did nothing.
“The cops watched the whole thing from up on the hills,” said Marcus Frejo, Pawnee and Seminole, from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. “It felt like they were trying to provoke us into being violent when we’re peaceful.”
This is also sliding back into its America’s repressive past, something that you would think would appall President Obama.
As the New York Daily News reported recently about the height of the civil rights protests:
In May 1963, the “nation bore witness” as police in Birmingham, Alabama, aimed high-powered hoses and “snarling dogs on black men, women and even children who wanted just one thing — to be treated the same as white Americans.”
The paper said these days “tore at America’s conscience.”’
