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hen four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka dropped out of the French Open and Wimbledon because of anxiety and depression associated with compulsory press interviews, many fans were shocked at her bold confession. While most professional athletes rallied to support her “bravery,” some critics dismissed the player, who will represent Japan at the Tokyo Olympics, as a “diva” and “narcissistic.” The same thing happened in 2018 when NBA star Kevin Love wrote an essay in The Players’ Tribune about his anxiety and depression despite his fear that others, especially his teammates, would see it as a “form of weakness that could derail my success in sports.”
Within the past few years, dozens of celebrities and athletes — among them Adele, Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Emma Stone, DeMar DeRozan, Michael Phelps and Dwayne Johnson — have openly discussed their struggles with mental health. Richard Sherman, arrested July 14 after his family called 911 during a domestic incident where he threatened to harm himself, promised to get “the help I need” in an Instagram post.
Yet the stigma of somehow being damaged, tainted, a diva or unable to perform lingers because the public perception is that, unlike with a sprained ankle, people can’t heal from or cope with mental health issues. They forget that these people have been dealing with these challenges at the same time they’ve risen to elite athlete or star celebrity status. Rather than cautionary examples of weakness, they are often models of strength and perseverance.
Professional sports is basically a high-octane reality show. The Real Housewives/Bachelor/Big Brother-type reality shows derive entertainment by exploiting the neediness and neuroses of their cast so the audience can revel in and be judgmental about the human frailties we all share. However, the source of entertainment in sports is in exalting the athletes who perform at a higher level than the average person. They achieve this through self-discipline and sheer willpower, two of the most revered qualities of a human being. They are ideals of what the human body is capable of and they inspire many of us to try harder to be a better version of ourselves.
So, while we have low expectations of most reality castmembers, who are encouraged to be melodramatic and behave badly so that we can expect their failures, we hold athletes to a higher standard with no patience for faltering. They are expected to walk it off. Rub dirt in it. To always arise phoenix-like regardless of the adversity. Which is why so many athletes who suffer from mental health issues have had to hide their personal struggles from the public lest they are derided by fans and devalued by sponsors.
One reason for this misperception is that some athletes and artists burdened with chronic mental health problems seek to self-medicate through drugs and/or alcohol. This is a classic misdirection: We shame their bad choices, never aware of the real cause. Studies indicate that at least half of those with a mental illness will experience a substance abuse disorder. Part of the reason for this connection is the reluctance to seek help because of the stigma attached. For those in the public spotlight, the stigma can be much worse. They fear losing the success they have worked so hard and long to obtain.
Unfortunately, self-medication often leads to DUIs, drug arrests and bizarre, even violent, public behavior that can have even greater consequences. The recent fall from public grace of Armie Hammer — the allegations of abuse (the actor has denied the claims), the loss of several high-profile projects, his checking into an inpatient facility for alcohol, drug and sex issues — are part of a pattern in Hollywood. Add to that, Britney Spears’ legal battle to end the 13-year conservatorship forced on her after her 2008 mental health problems, and it’s easy to see the reluctance of celebrities to admit, even to themselves, that they have a problem.
Despite careers as public performers, many athletes and performing artists are by nature introverts. Performing can create debilitating stage fright, as attested by famous sufferers like Barbra Streisand, Ozzy Osbourne, Luciano Pavarotti, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Rod Stewart. Adele admitted she vomits before her shows. Eddie Van Halen turned to alcohol to dim his stage fright. Harold Owens, senior director of MusiCares, the Recording Academy’s health and human services organization, commented, “I’ve heard [performers] say repeatedly, ‘I’ve never played sober.’ It’s a huge issue.”
Professional athletes are bound by contract to speak to the press after games or matches. For introverts, this can be much worse than the actual competition. Reporters often look to elicit a dramatic, headline-grabbing quote by provoking the athlete, goading them about losing or about their public stances for social justice. When I was an active player, the repetition of these kinds of antagonistic “gotcha” questions game after game, year after year, was frustrating and sometimes infuriating. For all of us, it takes a toll. Fortunately, soon after Love’s public revelation, the NBA hired William Parham to be the league’s first director of mental health and wellness and create a comprehensive mental health policy.
The problem is the desire for the public to hold up performing artists and athletes as paragons of perfection and then punish them when they are anything less. They see mental health issues as a character issue — to suffer is to be weak. This despite the statistics: one in four adults and one in five teens experiences a diagnosable mental disorder. Rather, the public should admire public figures’ perseverance and character strength for all they’ve accomplished despite their challenges — and learn coping skills from them. Actually, it’s a reflection of our own character whether we choose to be supportive or derisive, because that reflects either our capacity for compassion — or the depth of our own personal fears.
U.S. representative Hank Johnson is arrested during a protest event on July 22, 2021. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
The 66-year-old Georgia congressman is the second House Democrat taken into custody for participating in a voting rights protest in the past week.
Johnson spoke at a rally organized by the group Black Voters Matter and aimed at pressuring Congress to pass two federal voting-rights bills, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
"Today, Congressman Hank Johnson (GA-04) was arrested along with a group of Black male voting rights activists protesting against Senate inaction on voting rights legislation and filibuster reform," Johnson's office said in a statement. Johnson's office said the congressman attended the rally as part of his effort to fight GOP voter suppression measures, in Georgia and other states, that target students, the elderly and people of color.
"In the spirit of his dear friend and mentor – the late Congressman John Lewis – Rep. Johnson was getting in 'good trouble' fighting for and protecting civil and voting rights for all Americans," his office said.
Eva Malecki, Capitol Police's communications director, told USA TODAY that 10 individuals were arrested for "unlawfully demonstrating" outside of the Hart building and that each was charged with crowding, obstructing or causing an inconvenience.
The For the People Act would expand voter registration and voting access, among other steps. The bill passed the House in March but has stalled amid GOP opposition in the Senate. The second measure, named after the late civil rights icon Georgia Rep. John Lewis, would restore voter protections included in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Democrats say the bills are vital to countering Republican-led efforts in state legislatures to enact new restrictions on voting that target minority voters and other Democratic-leaning constituencies. Republicans say the new restrictions are needed to guard against voter fraud.
Several other members of Congress appeared alongside Johnson at the rally, including Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), Rep. Troy A. Carter (D-LA), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) and Rep. Al Green (D-TX).
The group of protesters, including Johnson, marched to the Hart Senate Office Building, chanting “This is what democracy looks like,” according to an NBC News reporter on the ground.
Ohio Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty was arrested July 15, along with eight other protesters, after being warned three times to stop "illegal demonstration activity,” Capitol Police wrote in a Twitter statement that day.
"I stand in solidarity with Black women and allies across the country in defense of our constitutional right to vote," Beatty wrote in a statement posted to Twitter after her arrest. "We have come too far and fought too hard to see everything systematically dismantled and restricted by those who wish to silence us."
Demonstrators gather along Pennsylvania Avenue during a DACA demonstration in Washington, D.C., Sept. 5, 2017. (photo: Zach Gibson/Getty)
“I had so many [job] offers, but now that my application has been paused, I can’t even go to the interviews," said a Dreamer. "I want a permanent solution, because we deserve it."
or Ines Martinez, applying for DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, represented a glimmer of hope during the coronavirus pandemic.
Seven months into her application process, Martinez was looking forward to joining the federal program that has allowed over 600,000 teens and young adults who lack legal status after having been brought to the U.S. as children — also referred to as Dreamers — to study and work without fear of deportation.
“I was very confident that I would be approved, because I’m a good candidate. I qualify for the program,” said Martinez, 19. Her confidence grew last month when Citizenship and Immigration Services asked her to come in to get her biometrics done, one of the last steps in the application process, in which authorities take applicants’ photos and fingerprints.
The only thing standing between Martinez, who lives in California, and getting a job was an official letter of approval from the immigration agency. She was eager to work to finish paying for her car and save enough money to transfer out of community college to pursue a degree in communications and international studies at a four-year university.
But she never got her DACA acceptance letter. Instead, a federal judge in Texas deemed the program illegal last Friday. While DACA renewals will continue to move forward, the ruling blocked new applications from being approved, leaving Martinez and thousands of other applicants hanging.
After putting in so much time, money and effort, “for this to happen twice already, it’s just devastating,” Martinez said. The first time was when she was initially blocked from applying after President Donald Trump temporarily ended DACA in 2017.
Citizenship and Immigration Services received more than 50,000 DACA requests from January to March after it announced that it would start accepting first-time applicants in December. But most of the applications were never processed because pandemic-related hurdles limited capacity amid greater demand, the agency said.
Julian Cornejo, 21, one of the new DACA applicants, said he had “not really” heard back from the immigration agency since he submitted his DACA application in March. Following the Texas court decision, his immigration attorney told him that “all applicants for DACA may stay in limbo” indefinitely.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Texas and eight other Republican-led states. They claimed that the Obama administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act with the creation of DACA when it failed to first publish the proposal and to seek public comment before it tried to enforce it.
Cornejo, who lives in Florida, was looking forward to enrolling into college, working and getting a driver’s license once he had DACA status. “I was very frustrated, and I felt very disappointed,” he said.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., the first and only Latina in the Senate, blasted the Biden administration last month over extreme case backlogs affecting new DACA applicants like Cornejo. She also called on Citizenship and Immigration Services to reduce waiting times for DACA renewals, saying the delays were “a legacy of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies.”
On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris said she met with Dreamers and advocates to "discuss the path forward."
"Dreamers serve in the military and on the frontlines, earn degrees, and lead companies. They should not live with such uncertainty," she tweeted after the meeting.
Michelle Lainez, 19, called some of her friends on FaceTime and cried after the latest court decision.
Lainez, a rising sophomore at Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., who is a TheDream.US scholarship recipient, remembered standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol last summer waiting for the Supreme Court to rule in favor of DACA, saying the Trump administration failed to give an adequate reason for ending it.
“I’m kind of tired of being resilient. I protested, I organized so much for the Supreme Court decision. And now, I must do the same for this,” said Lainez, who lives in Maryland. “It keeps happening, so it’s kind of discouraging.”
After she sent her application in March and got her biometrics done two months later, Lainez felt as though her DACA approval was almost a done deal. So she started applying for her certified nursing assistant's license and was waiting for her work permit to start a job as a geriatric nursing assistant.
“I had so many offers, but now that my application has been paused, I can’t even go to the interviews,” Lainez said.
While the Justice Department plans to appeal the court decision, the ruling has reignited calls from immigration advocates to put new pressure on Congress and the Biden administration to come up with a permanent fix, not only for DACA-eligible youths but also for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
“We can’t make this about DACA anymore. It must be about everyone. This must be about a pathway to citizenship, not just fixing DACA,” Lainez said. “I want a permanent solution, because we deserve it. We’re not going to beg for it. We are demanding this, because we worked for it.”
Martinez agreed that recent court battles have come “to show how vulnerable and unstable DACA really is.”
“There needs to be something that provides permanent protection for all of us,” she said. “DACA is great, but what about our parents? What about the new generation of undocumented youth coming in? They don’t qualify for this program.”
Cortez Masto, who has long advocated for passage of legislation to put Dreamers on a path to full citizenship, said in a statement that she remains committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate.
“Dreamers play an integral role in our communities, and they deserve to stay in the only home they have ever known without fear of deportation,” she said. “Last week’s decision made it clear that we must take immediate action to protect DACA recipients.”
Lainez, Cornejo and Martinez, who are part of the national immigrant youth-led organization United We Dream, are advocating for Congress to create a pathway to citizenship through the budget and reconciliation package being debated in the Senate. Cortez Masto agrees.
“We should take this opportunity through reconciliation to finally get immigration reform done,” she said.
Harris echoed Cortez Masto's words tweeting, "Congress must create a pathway to citizenship through reconciliation or other means."
Following the devastating DACA news, Martinez began to wonder whether the program “was never meant for me.”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” she said in a hopeful tone. “And maybe that’s because there’s something better in store in the future. ... Ideally it would be a permanent protection and a pathway to citizenship, not just for me, but ideally for my parents, as well.”
Police remove encampment supporters as they clear Lamport Stadium Park encampment in Toronto, Wednesday, July 21, 2021. (photo: Chris Young/The Canadian Press)
oronto police violently destroyed a homeless encampment in a city park, at times hitting and shoving protesters, pepper spraying them, and arresting 26 people.
Dozens of officers and security guards showed up to Lamport Stadium park in the city’s west end Wednesday morning to take down a homeless encampment with an estimated 14 to 17 people. Activists showed up and created a makeshift barrier of wood, plastic, and other materials.
Video footage shows police moving in on the demonstrators, ripping apart the barriers, and at times charging people, shoving them and dragging them on the ground.
In one video, police shove a group of people who’d linked arms in front of a tent, destroying the tent. Officers could be seen ripping apart some of the tents on site.
One photo shows an officer using the “knee-on-neck” hold to a person on the ground; last year, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, former Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said the force does not use that tactic.
In a statement to VICE World News, Toronto police spokeswoman Connie Osborne said the photo was taken “during a dynamic response and captures one moment in time, but not any wider context.” She also said the officer’s knee was not on the person’s neck.
In response to one video showing cops violently picking someone up and using batons on people, one person tweeted that police gave them a concussion.
“The cops beat the shit out of me and threw my whole body on one final blow and knocked my head backwards onto a curb, giving me a concussion,” the person said.
In a news release, Toronto police said they arrested 26 people. They said their efforts to clear the crowds at the encampment were ignored and “the crowds became confrontational and hostile.” Police said they responded “proportionately and using minimal force. Objects were thrown at police, an officer was spat at, while an unknown noxious substance was also sprayed at police. As a result, three officers suffered injuries.”
Police also said they recovered a hatchet, knives, and syringes on site.
In a news release, the City of Toronto said two Lamport Stadium park encampment residents accepted referral to a shelter or hotel, five already had shelter spots, and three left of their own accord; one person declined an offer of permanent housing.
On Wednesday evening, a crowd gathered at a police station nearby and were pepper sprayed by police, video shows.
“I have been to many solidarity rallies at 14 (division) over the years and I have never witnessed the amount of violence on display today. Beating the shit out of ppl, pepper spraying, injuring ppl,” tweeted harm reduction worker Zoë Dodd.
Asked by a journalist if there was a better way to go about handling the situation, Toronto Police Staff Supt. Randy Carter said, “There is a better way, I guess. You just don't let them put a tent up. But we're not that type of city." Carter said police did a “tremendous job” handling the encampment.
On Thursday, Mayor John Tory defended the city and the police saying, “Yesterday the protesters decided they were going to have a confrontation with police and so they did… The result is what you see.”
Initially, the city was not going to allow any journalists on site, with one officer allegedly saying, “Imagine if someone posing as media came in here and stabbed a cop.” However, journalists were allowed in following an uproar from media, including an email sent to the city from the Toronto Star’s lawyer.
Osborne said she could not speak to the alleged comment about a fake journalist, but “the priority of our officers on site is ensuring the safety of those living in the encampment, those on site, the wider public and themselves.”
Police also claimed an officer was injured due to being sprayed with an “unknown substance.” However, a witness countered that claim, stating the officer accidentally sprayed himself. Osborne told VICE World News, “While I can’t speak to a specific person’s claims, I am aware that unknown liquids were also sprayed at officers and City staff during the enforcement. It was not solely one incident.”
Earlier in the week, the city and police dismantled an encampment at Alexandra Park in Toronto’s downtown; in June, a heavy contingent of police in riot gear and security guards took down two encampments at Trinity-Bellwoods Park.
Dodd noted that more than half of the Alexandra encampment residents were scattered with no place to go.
The city initially wanted the encampments dismantled in April. At the time, Simone Schmidt, a volunteer with the Encampment Support Network, told CBC News people were living in encampments because of COVID-19 outbreaks at shelters. She said some encampment residents did not want to move into shelter hotels that they’d be eventually removed from again, or settings that reminded them of being institutionalized.
The city says encampments are a fire hazard, and that it has opened 244 new affordable and supportive homes since December.
City council recently deferred making a decision to regulate rooming houses, a form of shared housing that’s dwindled in supply over the years.
Osborne said she wasn’t aware of complaints being filed about police conduct Wednesday but that anyone who “feels they were mistreated” can complain to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director.
The Austin Energy Decker Creek Power Station natural gas plant in East Austin on June 25. (photo: Gabriel C. Perez/KUT)
t had been 7 hours, 51 amendments and years of work. Lawmakers on the floor of the Texas Senate were tired, and state Sen. David Sibley was talking about a can of beans on St. Patrick’s Day 1999.
“Starting in 2002, people will be able to shop. If they don’t like the electric provider they’ve got, they can switch,” he said. “If the price of a can of beans goes up 10 cents, people shop somewhere else. If the price of electricity goes up, people for the first time will have a choice on what they’re going to do. It’s no more business as usual.”
Two decades ago, the Waco Republican led the charge to deregulate Texas’ electrical market — a move that would make the state’s system unlike any other in the United States.
It had been a slog. You could hear it in his firm but plaintive tenor ahead of the final approval of Senate Bill 7, the measure that deregulated the state's retail electrical market. It was, and is, unlike any other system in the country — one that, years later, would leave millions of Texans without power after a catastrophic freeze.
Deregulation was pitched as a way to lower Texans' electricity bills by spurring competition in a market that was dominated by regional monopolies. But it also built in new threats to the system by allowing energy providers and traders to shift the blame and avoid accountability whenever the power supply became unreliable.
SB 7 was a bill that had been years in the making but began in earnest in 1998 on a cocktail napkin.
A Plan Takes Form
Sibley was on a flight back to Texas with Democratic Dallas state Rep. Steve Wolens, his Texas House counterpart who was shepherding legislation to deregulate the electric market; and Pat Wood, the head of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the statewide agency that regulates utilities like electricity, water and telecommunications.
They had gone to California on a reconnaissance mission. After federal regulation paved the way for deregulated electrical markets in the 1990s, many states started crafting plans to do so. Texas and California, the two most populous and energy-rich states in the country, were both pushing to be the first state to successfully deregulate their markets.
California beat Texas to deregulating retail electricity, passing a bill in 1996. So Sibley, Wolens and Wood flew to California to scope out their market, jotting down their takeaways and concerns on a cocktail napkin on the flight back.
After Texas state lawmakers deregulated electricity for wholesale customers in 1995, many pushed for doing so on a retail scale, as it would, ideally, provide relief to Texas ratepayers every month on their electric bills.
Texas lawmakers tried in 1997, but failed. The bill ultimately took a backseat to then-Gov. George W. Bush’s plan to overhaul public school finance.
But Sibley was tapped to break up the electric utilities' regional monopolies, push competition into the market and get the least expensive electricity onto the grid.
Texas had unique advantages. For one, California relied heavily on energy imports. About a fifth of the state's energy comes from hydroelectricity that's imported from the Pacific Northwest. Texas was, and still is, the leading energy producer in the U.S.
On top of that, Sibley and his allies said they saw an opportunity to create a more efficient system and sell cheaper electricity than California.
California had set up a complicated system of selling and regulating energy trades on both the retail and wholesale market — and an equally complicated system to regulate trades. Sibley would have to find a more workable, less onerous system for Texas.
California also set up a system to cap its electrical rates if the market got too volatile. Sibley argued that could financially cripple investor-owned utilities like the Golden State's largest energy utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, under the right market conditions.
Similar utilities in Texas would be the largest opponents to deregulation, as they’d likely be broken up under the new system.
Alison Silverstein, a staffer for the Public Utility Commission of Texas in the 1990s who worked with Wood, said the political weight and sway of legacy utilities was undeniable.
“Utilities have always been large players, or at least until tech became so dominant in the economy,” she said. “Utilities used to be hugely politically influential in governor’s offices and legislative offices.”
Sibley knew this firsthand. He accepted thousands in political contributions from utilities in 1997.
Knowing they were headed for a confrontation with those utilities, Sibley, Wolens and Wood set about to shore up as much support ahead of Jan. 12, 1999, when lawmakers would gather again in Austin for the legislative session.
The Players
Ahead of the session, a tenuous alliance formed between industry groups, environmentalists and energy firms.
Industrial customers who used massive amounts of electricity (like factories, manufacturing plants and oil refineries) had been a loud voice in calling for deregulation in 1999, just as they had in 1995, when Texas deregulated its wholesale electrical market. Deregulation, for them, meant less overhead costs.
For environmental groups, the scheme was an opportunity to bust up the old, coal-fired utilities — while also getting in on the ground floor of a new system that could get more, cleaner power on the Texas grid.
Then there was Enron, whose founder Ken Lay was friends with Bush, donated thousands of dollars to his two campaigns for governor, and personally wrote him letters calling for Texas to deregulate its market — one in 1996 and another in 1998.
Aside from utility monopolies, the biggest obstacle in the way of Sibley’s way was, perhaps, Texas’ electrical cooperatives and its municipally-owned utilities.
Deregulation, for them, was an existential threat, as lawmakers could require those utilities to split their transmission, generation and marketing, as they planned to with investor-owned utilities.
Here’s The Deal
To gain the support of municipally-owned utilities and cooperatives, Sibley promised them exemptions from the bill.
Environmental groups were assured the new market would be one that spurred innovation — and clean energy like solar.
Energy traders were pretty much guaranteed a profit under the new system — one in which they would commoditize energy and sell it like a stock or bond on a financial market. That system would make them billions, and still does.
Prior to the legislative session in 1999, Sibley, Wolens and Wood had shored up consensus among the major players. Sibley recalls getting them to commit to a bill sight unseen.
“At that point, they didn't care really what else it did as long as they weren't in it. So, they pledged and nobody knew,” he said. I mean, we did this I remember it like during the Christmas holidays. Nobody was in the Capitol. So, they came to my office individually. I told them what the deal was.”
SB 7 was drafted in the basement of the Texas Senate, Sibley said. he didn’t even trust the Texas Legislative Council — the state’s legal counsel for lawmakers — to look over the drafts.
“I didn't trust them. I felt like if we used the Texas Legislative Council, it would be leaked to the various lobbyists,” he said. “And people would have a chance to start sniping at it before we ever even released.”
In his State of the State on the opening day of the session, Bush said he “look[ed] forward to working with Senator Sibley and Representative Wolens on an electric deregulation proposal that will cut costs for consumers while making sure electricity is available and reliable.”
Little did he know — or anyone, really — that Sibley had already drafted the plan.
Nine days later, the Waco Republican unveiled the bill on the Senate floor. As he tells it, lobbyists for the investor-owned utilities in attendance, didn’t know what hit them.
Sibley called a press conference on the Senate floor, flanked by a lobbyist representing cooperatives and another representing municipally-owned utilities.
“There were some shocked people,” Sibley joked, namely lobbyists representing investor-owned utilities — about 15 of whom were lined up in the back of the Senate chamber.
The day of the press conference, one lobbyist from Houston Lighting & Power told the Austin American-Statesman called the move “a masterful stroke of leadership;” another told the Houston Chronicle it “stings pretty good.”
Tom “Smitty” Smith, then a lobbyist for the environmentally minded consumer-protection nonprofit Public Citizen, said deregulation seemed less a possibility and more of a certainty after that.
“It was kind of like standing on a mountain and kicking a rock and watching it become an avalanche," he said.
Still, there was stiff opposition from large utilities.
Resistance
At the time, Dallas-based Texas Utilities and Houston Lighting & Power controlled 55% of energy generation in the state and stood to lose a lot under this new system.
The Association of Electric Companies of Texas, or AECT, represented the state’s seven largest utilities at the Texas Capitol. The companies had a combined worth of $70 billion in assets, and they spent a fortune in 1997 and 1999 to kill the deregulation efforts.
Tom Baker, who worked at Texas Utilities and spoke in committee on behalf of AECT, likened those large utilities' control of the market share to organic monopolies, arguing that sometimes there’s just dominance within any market.
“For an example, [in] the canned soup industry, the largest competitor has 73% of the market; lightbulbs, 66% of that market. We talked about electricity being a necessity, and I would just point out if we’re talking about necessities, the largest competitor in the beer industry is 48%,” he quipped.
Baker argued the state's plan would unfairly cap the market share of those utilities in a way that could cripple them. More importantly, he noted, the cap from the typically regulation-averse state of Texas would be more stringent than the federal government's limits on market power.
Despite their opposition, the utilities at the bargaining table were aware that SB 7 was going to pass — that the rock, as Smitty from Public Citizen said, had been kicked and the avalanche was coming.
And if the utilities were going to go along with the new market, they had to address so-called stranded costs. Under the new market, inefficient or outdated investments like coal-fired or nuclear power plants had to be paid off, as the utilities saw it. All told, that would cost about $4 billion in costs, according to legislative estimates.
Smitty likened that to “bailing out the big boys.” He called the bill a “Christmas tree” for the utilities — but said he'd ultimately support it if there were benchmarks to bring on more renewable energy.
The AARP and other advocates for older and low-income Texans also threw in their support after insisting that the state set up a plan to assist the poor with their bills.
Ultimately, Texas Utilities and Houston Lighting & Power cut a deal, too.
Still, there were last-minute concerns ahead of the final vote on St. Patrick's Day 1999. Mario Gallegos, the late state senator from Houston, asked Sibley if, under this bill, his constituents “would be receiving the same level of services … when [a] hurricane … or a storm comes in.”
“Senator, I think you can represent that to your constituents without doubt,” Sibley said.
State Sen. Drew Nixon from Carthage implored senators to ask themselves if there would be unintended consequences as a result of the deregulated market.
“Because we’re talking about changing something that every citizen of the state needs to have good, reliable, reasonable-priced access to,” he said. “And I question whether there’s such a big problem with our current system that we need to make that kind of change.”
Nixon’s concerns were not felt by the majority of the Senate, which easily passed Sibley’s bill on an unceremonious voice vote. The bill went on to get amended in the House 69 times and had just one committee hearing before it passed the lower chamber.
Senate Bill 7 became law when Bush signed it in June 1999.
Over the next few years, the state worked toward a transition to the new market. The deals Sibley cut came to fruition or died on the vine.
Utilities got state regulators to back their plan for stranded costs as they busted up their monopolies over the two years that followed.
Smitty and environmental groups saw the share of renewable energy rise in Texas’ grid, and Texas became the nation’s leading generator of solar power.
The state’s fund to help low-income Texans, known as System Benefit Fund, ramped up. Years later, however, it was used to prop up the state’s budget before eventually getting dismantled by lawmakers in 2016.
Enron & Deregulation
While the deregulatory fight in the Texas Capitol in 1999 may have started on Sibley’s cocktail napkin, the less public push for deregulating Texas’ energy market came years prior.
Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, had been personally lobbying Bush to deregulate Texas’ market for years. He first sent a letter the governor in 1996 ahead of Texas’ first attempt to deregulate.
He sent another letter in 1998 — one that came across Bush’s desk days after the then-governor won re-election and months before the legislative session.
“We hope that you will again actively support efforts to pass a bill restructuring the electric industry in Texas,” Enron CEO Kenneth Lay wrote. “By passing such a bill, your administration would be responsible for providing the citizens of Texas with the equivalent of a tax cut which could immediately amount to $1.7 billion or more annually.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d written Bush about deregulation. He did so in 1996 ahead of the state’s first failed foray, during the 1997 Texas Legislature, into restructuring its electric market.
Lay and Bush had known each other for years. Enron was the largest contributor to both of Bush’s successful gubernatorial bids and, later, his presidential run, donating more than $735,000 over his entire political career.
Enron and its executives spent tens of millions of dollars over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s during the push to deregulate Texas’ market. The Houston-based firm used to be typical oil, natural gas outfit.
The company moved into the energy markets in the early 1990s after federal regulation allowed them to get deregulated. They had the potential to make millions by essentially trading energy like a stock or a bond — and they did.
A major opportunity presented itself a year after Texas passed SB 7, when California’s deregulation plan started showing its cracks.
Those concerns that Sibley had outlined about California's market on a cocktail napkin wreaked havoc on that state's electrical grid over the summer of 2000.
Starting in May, much of the state saw rolling blackouts — 42 hours of outages, all told. A million homes lost power on the worst day.
A drought in Northwest California crippled its hydroelectric capacity, and market rules aimed at reducing pollution made it harder to bring new power plants online. On top of that, natural gas prices were higher than normal, putting energy traders like Enron in a particularly good position to make money off the scarcity.
Alison Silverstein, the former PUC staff member who helped craft Texas’ deregulation plan, said California’s market conditions allowed for Enron to exploit the crisis. After her days at the PUC, she moved on to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the Bush administration and help lead an investigation into energy price manipulation over California's crisis.
Silverstein said Enron gamed the market, plain and simple. Enron used strategies like withholding energy trades, creating false scarcity and selling the same energy multiple times, she said.
“I have done my best to black out many of the strategies,” she said, “but there was a bunch of very smart moves that ripped off a lot of people and created scarcity that was bogus and drove up prices and essentially almost cratered the Western market.”
Silverstein said there were plenty of other traders doing the same thing, but Enron's energy traders, she argued, "were the first people to pick up the gun and start firing it."
Ultimately, FERC staff working the investigation, which continued years after the company imploded and its top executives were indicted for fraud, called for Enron to forfeit its entire earnings across the western U.S. market from 1997 to 2003 — $1.6 billion, all told.
The scandal came to a head before Enron’s bankruptcy in December 2001, but the one-time energy giant limped along as it officially transitioned to Texas' deregulated market — and its market manipulation strategies continued.
In the first six months of Texas' retail electrical market, Enron was accused of inflating demand along North Texas transmission lines by pushing more electricity on lines than was needed. The PUC reported Enron exaggerated the demand for power by as much as 500,000% on North Texas lines and 1,000,000% along West Texas lines to inflate the price and manipulate the market.
Texas’ Public Utility Commission fined them $7 million, and, eventually, kicked them out of Texas’ market in January 2002.
Serra do Divisor National Park on Brazil's border with Peru is home to numerous endemic animals and more than a thousand plant species. (photo: Getty)
he Acre antshrike is known from only one place on Earth: in the highlands of Serra do Divisor National Park in Brazil’s Acre state. The habitat of this surly-looking, dark-plumaged bird, known locally as choca-do-acre and scientifically as Thamnophilus divisorius, is limited to shrubby woodlands, one of the 10 types of forests in this protected area on Brazil’s border with Peru.
The park is home to numerous endemic animals and at least 1,163 plant species, making it one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. It’s also the only comprehensive Brazilian protected area located within the transition zone between the Andes and the Amazon. Despite this, two projects have been proposed that would both build a highway to Peru bisecting the park, and allow for the privatization of the park’s territory, thereby opening the way for deforestation, cattle ranching, and mining.
The proposals have been promoted by two politicians from Acre who are allies of President Jair Bolsonaro. The Bolsonaro administration has already embraced the highway plan, taking the first steps toward the construction of the Brazilian portion of the road. But it has not yet made public its position on a bill pending in Congress that would put an end to Serra do Divisor National Park.
The existing BR-364 highway starts in the city of Limeira in São Paulo state, and runs more than 4,300 kilometers (nearly 2,700 miles) northwest to the town of Mâncio Lima in Acre. Successive Brazilian governments have weighed plans since the 1970s to extend it into Peru, giving Brazil a land route to the Pacific; the extension was even referred to in the decree establishing Serra do Divisor National Park in 1989, under the presidency of José Sarney. But when officials finally did inaugurate the Interoceanic Highway, in 2010, the link into Peru ran from Rio Branco, the Acre state capital, 670 km (415 mi) back down the BR-364 from Mâncio Lima.
When Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, the idea of running the extension from Mâncio Lima was revived once again. In 2020, three of his ministers visited Acre to discuss the issue. In June, Ricardo Salles, the environment minister, visited the area where the construction would begin. (Salles was ousted a year later after being named in two probes into alleged illegal exports of Amazon timber.) In September 2020, Ernesto Araújo, the foreign minister, and Rogério Marinho, the minister of regional development, visited Cruzeiro do Sul, the largest city in the Juruá Valley region, where the road would cross, and a 40-minute drive from Mâncio Lima. They met with local and Peruvian officials.
Also in September, Bolsonaro touted the project in a Facebook live address, confirming he planned to open a new route from Brazil to the Pacific, echoing the speech of former president Lula da Silva in the 2000s, who oversaw the completion of the first Interoceanic Highway with his then counterpart from Peru, Alejandro Toledo. Toledo is now a fugitive from justice for alleged corruption in the awarding of public works contracts, including for the Peruvian section of the highway.
Brazil’s National Transport Infrastructure Department (DNIT) published this May the call for bids on the project, budgeted at about 500 million reais ($95 million), according to official estimates. The department began analyzing the bids in June. It says there is still no detailed mapping of the federal highway, but that the Brazilian section will run about 120 km (75 mi), of which 21 km (13 mi), or 17%, will cut through Serra do Divisor National Park.
Divided opinions
Indigenous and riverine community leaders say they have not been consulted about the highway project, as required by law, and have expressed concerns about negative socioenvironmental impacts. “As of today, you were the first person to ask me about the highway,” Indigenous chief Joel Puyanawa told Folha in a conversation at his village’s cultural center.
The Poyanawa Indigenous Territory lies 10 km (6 mi) up a dirt road from the urban center of Mâncio Lima. It’s home to some 680 inhabitants, and lies in the area of direct influence of the highway. Salles was there on June 27, 2020, but Joel Puyanawa did not meet with him. The environment minister defended the road project when he met with Indigenous leaders, telling them that “it is time for integration.”
“The entire surroundings of our land are already compromised,” said Joel Puyanawa, who was elected in 2020 to the Mâncio Lima City Council. “We already know the damage caused by the invasions. The white [people] live by hunting on our land and the environmental institutions have no policy to prevent it. Imagine a highway. How many millions of people are going to travel along it? Will agribusiness increase? Yes, but our survival is not in agribusiness.”
He said he also fears the road will pass over a sacred zone, located outside the demarcated Indigenous land. It was in this region, around 1910, where the Puyanawa people were captured as slaves by the military colonel and rubber baron Mâncio Lima to work on his plantation. Despite this, Lima is today portrayed as a hero in Brazil’s official history, even having a city named after him.
“This road threatens 100% of our land, it destroys our sacred site,” Joel Puyanawa said. “The damage done by the colonel was enough. If the road is built, it exterminates the history of our people.”
Yet local officials and businesspeople are betting on the highway to put an end to the geographic isolation of this westernmost region of the country. The reelected mayor of Mâncio Lima, Isaac Lima (not related to the colonel), is a staunch supporter of the planned highway extension, to the point that he even cleared some 40 km (25 mi) of path along the likely route.
Lima is also a cattle rancher, and he says the connection with the Peruvian city of Pucallpa, 740 km (460 mi) from Mâncio Lima, would bring benefits to this town of 19,000 inhabitants, who live mainly from cattle ranching and farming. “The highway would connect the whole world and bring to our region, surely, development, growth, and Mâncio Lima would be the gateway,” Mayor Lima said.
On May 6, the Bolsonaro government renewed its promise to build and take BR-364 to the Peruvian border. That was the day Bolsonaro, with his minister of infrastructure, Tarcísio de Freitas, and a few thousand supporters, inaugurated a bridge over the Madeira River. The bridge lies on the highway, near the border between Acre and Rondônia states, 931 km (578 miles) from Cruzeiro do Sul. In his speech at the inauguration, de Freitas cited the expansion of the road to Pucallpa as one of the government’s road projects.
The person most responsible for reviving the highway extension plan is Márcio Bittar, a federal senator representing Acre and self-declared staunch ally of Bolsonaro. He holds a strategic position as rapporteur of the 2021 national budget, which gives him the power to direct funds for the highway, among other functions.
But the money for the project isn’t there just yet. Bittar included in this year’s budget an addendum of 40 million reais ($7.6 million) for “studies and projects” to expand the highway, but Bolsonaro vetoed this expense as part of wider cuts to balance the federal budget amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
When questioned by Folha on the cut during his inauguration, Bittar said there will be “the necessary money” of 18.5 billion reais ($3.5 billion) to build the road, without providing further details.
Another federal lawmaker, Mara Rocha of the lower house of congress, or Chamber of Deputies, sponsored a bill in November 2019 that would transform Serra do Divisor National Park into a so-called environmental protection area (APA). Paradoxically, such a change would strip the area of its existing protections, opening the way for land privatization, deforestation, logging, cattle ranching, mining, and shale gas extraction.
However, the governor of Acre, Gladson Cameli, said he’s against downgrading the national park to an APA, and has not appeared keen on the highway project either. He was not present at any of the ministerial visits to discuss the road. In a phone interview, he said the project is “medium to long term” and that the state has other priorities, such as increasing trade traffic through the existing Interoceanic Highway.
Cameli said his main concern about the highway is the possible increase in Peruvian cocaine smuggling in Cruzeiro do Sul, the largest municipality neighboring Mâncio Lima and the main entry route into Acre. “[The gangs] are dominating. Borders need a greater presence of the rule of law,” he said.
In light of how the highway project is being planned by the federal government and lawmakers, the Federal Public Ministry has initiated an investigation into irregularities in the project administration.
The Acre state prosecutor general, Lucas Costa Almeida Dias, said the objective is to ensure that “Indigenous communities are consulted in a free, prior and informed manner,” in accordance with Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization, to which Brazil is a signatory.
Dias said the route of the highway should consider the possible presence of isolated Indigenous communities and that the licensing should be done by the federal environmental regulator, IBAMA, with the participation of Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency, Funai, and not by the state environmental agency, which is more susceptible to political pressures.
Opposing the end of the park
Folha visited the northern region of Serra do Divisor National Park in late October and early November 2020, taking a nine-hour boat trip on the Moa River from Mâncio Lima to the Pé da Serra community, the westernmost town in Brazil.
With three inns maintained by local residents, Pé da Serra is a base for tourists in search of waterfalls, panoramic views and jungle trails. One of the most beautiful and impressive sites is the Moa River canyon. It’s a 40-minute boat ride amid green mountains, a scenery more often associated with the Peruvian Amazon yet within sight of the Andes.
Pé da Serra sits inside Serra do Divisor National Park, and is one of several settlements within the park that are home to a total of about 350 families. Legally they shouldn’t be living here, but most had already settled in the area when the park was created. More than three decades on, the federal government has still not concluded their resettlement. In Pé da Serra, they live off tourism, non-mechanized agriculture, hunting and fishing.
Their electricity comes from diesel-powered generators and solar panels. The houses distributed along the banks of the river are close to the first mountain range, which at dawn is shrouded in mist. They get around in canoes with small motors, piloted by adults and children alike. With no internet connection, a single public telephone is all their communication with the outside world.
Born and raised on the banks of the Moa River, 41-year-old peasant Eva Maria Lima da Silva said she opposes both the downgrading of the national park and the construction of the highway extension. Also a cook at the pioneering Pousada do Miro restaurant, she said the existence of the park is what prevented the expansion of cattle ranching here, and that tourism is still the best economic alternative.
“If the highway is built, our park will be affected. It would be good because of the speed, but, traveling along the river, our road, how many beauties do I not see? How many jungles are preserved?” she said.
Another long-time resident, 51-year-old farmer and artisan João Silva, said the road would be beneficial in reducing the community’s isolation: “Suddenly, if we need to go to the street, we would take the road, it’s faster.”
But he disagreed with the proposal to downgrade the park — a project that residents were unaware of until we raised it with them. “In a sense, I thought it was good, because people could find a job. But leaving it untapped would be better. We stay quiet, no one is going to bother us. If these people come in, they’re going to take a lot of people out of here. Farmers are going to come in, buy [land], and a lot of [residents] are going to have to leave,” Silva said.
Neighbors of the park and historical inhabitants of the Moa River and Serra do Divisor, the Indigenous Nukini reject both the highway and park downgrade plans, according to chieftain Paulo Nukini, 39. He said he was not consulted about the project, and his people have demanded that part of the park be annexed to the Indigenous territory, which was demarcated in 1991.
“We are against it because we know it is going to cause a strong impact, a lot of deforestation. It can increase access to contraband [cocaine trafficking]. And it will leave our sierra with a high risk of contamination. For us, Nukinis, the sierra is a sacred place,” Paulo Nukini said in front of his village on the riverbank. “Brazil has lived until today without needing that passage there.”
Researcher’s paradise
The rich biodiversity and large number of endemic species in Serra do Divisor is due mainly to the varied altitude, ranging from 200-640 meters (650-2,100 feet). It’s also home to three types of rivers that exist in the Amazon: white water (muddy), black water, and clear water (transparent). And it’s the only integral protected zone in Brazil that contains a branch of the Andes, including native flora and fauna.
“Since 1901, about 3,500 botanical collections have been made in the Serra do Divisor, with 1,163 species recorded,” says Federal University of Acre (Ufac) biologist Marcos Silveira, who has been studying the area for 24 years. “The number of vascular plant species [with sap-conducting vessels] represents 8.3% of the known diversity in the Amazon.”
This catalog of life continues to grow. Silveira is working with other researchers on a new paper that will show that the list of plant species recorded in the park has increased by 63% since 1997, when 720 of them were identified. On average, three species are found in Serra do Divisor every two months: species that are either new to the park, new to Acre, or even new to science.
It’s a similar story of the park’s fauna. “When we do inventories, we always have a great opportunity to collect new species. It’s impressive,” said Elder Morato, another Ufac biologist.
Two species of bees discovered in Serra do Divisor were named in his honor: Euglossa moratoi, one of about 30 species of orchid bees found in the park, and Dolichotrigona moratoi, one of about 60 native stingless honey bees.
Another stingless bee discovered in the park is Celetrigona euclydiana, named in tribute to Brazilian writer Euclides da Cunha, who, at the beginning of the 20th century, was in Acre to help establish Brazil’s border with Peru.
“For us biologists, the Serra do Divisor is emblematic. It is no exaggeration to say that everyone dreams of visiting it someday,” researchers Leandro Moraes (University of São Paulo), Tomaz Melo (Federal University of Amazonas) and Raíssa Rainha wrote in a commentary. All three are affiliated with the National Institute of Amazon Research, based in Manaus, in Amazonas state.
In November 2019, the three biologists participated in a research expedition for a vertebrate census to commemorate the park’s 30th anniversary. They found nearly 80 species of amphibians and 40 species of lizards and snakes.
In addition, they identified 326 bird species, of which at least five were new records for the park, which now has more than 500 cataloged bird species. One of them has become the mascot for the region: the choca-do-acre, found nowhere else on Earth.
“This wide-ranging diversity is only documented in other regions of the Amazon after decades of studies in the same place. In Serra do Divisor, we recorded it in less than 15 days of sampling. Many of these species are quite restricted to this region and are no longer found in the eastern direction of Acre,” the researchers wrote.
Such diversity prompted the Ministry of Environment to apply to UNESCO in 2017 to recognize Serra do Divisor National Park as a Natural World Heritage Site. This distinction has only been granted to two other Amazonian regions: Manú National Park in Peru, and the Central Amazon, a set of four conservation units in the state of Amazonas: Jaú, Anavilhanas, Mamirauá and Amanã.
The proposal, however, ended up being withdrawn days later due to pressure from Brazil’s National Defense Council, a military-led body, on the grounds that such a recognition posed a threat to national security.
Quarry in the park
In her bill seeking to downgrade Serra do Divisor into an APA, Federal Deputy Mara Rocha used just 213 words to justify the end of the national park. She didn’t cite any environmental or economic studies making the case for the downgrade.
Instead, she said the 846,300-hectare (2.1-million-acre) park, the ninth largest in Brazil, “meets the interests and needs of the people of Acre” because it is the “only region in the state that has rocks that can be extracted and used in construction to promote the economic development of the state.”
In a video released in January 2020, she said the goal is to allow human habitation inside the park, and that the “project is authored by Senator Márcio Bittar.”
In a phone interview, however, Bittar distanced himself from his ally’s initiative. He said he is not such an “idiot” that he would present legislation to get rid of the park, but still defended the bill’s content. “Germany, which finances NGOs linked to the national media, made an Itaipu and a half” — a reference to Brazil’s biggest hydropower plant — “in thermoelectric, digging hole in the ground for coal. Now, we, in poor Acre, miserable, in the miserable Amazon, have no stone,” he said.
“If inside the reserve there is a stone deposit of less than a square kilometer, you can’t take it out, because the law says you can’t take it out. If there is oil there, can you take it out? You can’t. And it will continue like that, because I am not an idiot and I know that if I present such a bill, it will not be approved,” he added.
Folha reached out to Rocha for comment, but she did not respond to the request for an interview.
First binational highway
Acre has had a road link to the Pacific via Peru since 2010. In Rio Branco, the BR-364 highway meets the smaller BR-317, which runs 340 km (210 mi) to the town of Assis Brazil. Here, at the point where the Brazilian, Peruvian and Bolivian borders meet, it meets the Peruvian stretch of the Interoceanic Highway, which later branches out, providing access to three Pacific seaports. But this link has failed to fulfill the promise of transforming Acre into an export hub or a corridor to Asia. In Peru, the highway caused an explosion of deforestation and illegal logging, and is at the center of a corruption scandal that has rocked the country’s politics.
The year the highway was inaugurated, exports accounted for 0.4% of Acre’s GDP, according to data from the Ministry of Economy and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. In 2018, the latest year for which data are available, they made up just 0.7%.
The other states that make up the northern region of Brazil saw their own exports grow much faster over the same period. Exports from the seven-state bloc in 2010, including Acre, made up 14% of GDP; in 2018, it was 17.4%.
“The highway has not changed Acre’s economic reality, except for driving to Lima, Cuzco,” said George Pinheiro, an Acre businessman who heads the Confederation of Commercial and Business Associations of Brazil.
“The expectation was that most of the transportation companies would make a cheaper route and go to China, to Japan. None of this happened,” he added.
Asked about the low economic impact of the highway a decade after it opened, Senator Bittar said the road is “not viable” because of its many turns and its high altitude through the Andes.
“The highway that goes through Assis Brasil has a serious problem. It exits in the high cordillera and is more than 16,000 feet [4,900 m] high. There is no truck that passes there, it has so many curves that it is not viable,” he said. “The most important exit is through [the] Juruá [River], because the cordillera has an altitude of 6,500 feet [2,000 m].”
Bolsonaro made the same point in September, but it omits the fact that the Peruvian section also has high-altitude sections: on the route from the border town of Pucallpa to the port of Callao in Lima, the road passes through Cerro de Pasco, one of the highest cities in the world, at an elevation of more than 4,300 m (14,200 ft).
Bittar said no official study has been completed on the economic impact of the highway, but proposed the creation of a binational committee to “gather all the documentation from both sides: what they have that interests us and what we have that interests them.”
Pinheiro, the businessman, said the new highway connecting between Cruzeiro do Sul to Pucallpa, a city of about 380,000 inhabitants, is a particularly local need. “In terms of Amazonian distances, it is very small [210 km, or 130 mi]. And it would be a connection to a Peruvian city with a large commercial and industrial movement,” he said.
He added there was political prestige attached to resuming the project. “There are new actors who want to build the highway,” Pinheiro said. “Everyone wants to have the stamp: ‘It was me who built the road.’”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
Winona LaDuke, director of the nonprofit group Honor the Earth, speaking out against the Line 3 decision in St. Paul, Minnesota. (photo: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/AP)
early 600 water protectors have been arrested during ongoing protests in Minnesota against the construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline at the Shell River, which the partially completed pipeline is set to cross in five places. On Monday, authorities arrested Indigenous leader Winona LaDuke and at least six others. She was just released from jail yesterday and joins us after three nights in jail. LaDuke describes how the Canadian multinational corporation Enbridge, which is building the pipeline, has funded more than 40 police squads from around the state to crack down on protests, saying, “It is a civil crisis when a Canadian multinational controls your police force.” LaDuke is executive director of Honor the Earth. She says Enbridge’s efforts to finish construction come as investors are increasingly pulling out of the fossil fuels sector. “Who wants to have the last tar sands pipeline? It’s the end of the party.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.
We look now at the ongoing resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota along the Shell River, which the partially completed pipeline is set to cross in five places. Nearly 600 water protectors have been arrested during protests against the pipeline so far.
On Monday, authorities arrested Indigenous leader Winona LaDuke and at least six others. She was just released from jail yesterday and joins us now after three nights in jail. She’s executive director of Honor the Earth, her latest book, To Be a Water Protector, joining us from her home on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota.
Winona, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why were you arrested?
WINONA LADUKE: I was arrested because I wanted to stop Enbridge’s Line 3 from crossing the Shell River. I’ve been appointed guardian ad litem for Shell River by the 1855 Treaty Commission and by my tribe. And Enbridge is trying to finish this line. And along with — it’s now 600 people have been arrested. But we stood there in front of the police for quite a while with our people and, you know, our horses and our children. And they arrested seven of us.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain who owns Enbridge Line 3 and why you want it shut down.
WINONA LADUKE: Well, Enbridge Line 3 is owned by the Enbridge Corporation, the Canadian multinational that also owns the pipe under the Straits of Mackinac. And, you know, it’s a really risky Canadian corporation, 225 subsidiaries, with all the money kept in Canada. And they’re shoving this pipeline down our throat.
And about a month ago, the Minnesota DNR, which is probably the most corrupt agency in the state of Minnesota, allocated 5 billion gallons of water to Enbridge in the middle of a drought. They knew about the appropriation request in November. In December, they began under — studying it. And they didn’t even notify the tribes until May. And then they issued the permit in June — 5 billion gallons in the worst drought in history. You know, our rivers are down 50%, 75%, and yet this pipeline is marching ahead in the middle of this drought.
And, you know, ironically, you’re looking here, and, like, more and more money is being divested from the tar sands. I mean, the Saudi sovereign fund, you know, divested like $3 billion from the tar sands. And Chevron and a New York pension fund and Royal Dutch Shell, they’re all looking at doing this. It’s like the last tar sands pipeline, and Enbridge wants to shove it down our throats. And our Anishinaabe people and water protectors have been standing strong. And you’ve got to say, like, “Who wants to be the last — have the last tar sands pipeline?” It’s the end of the party.
But the Enbridge way seems to be to keep pushing ahead. They’ve — I think it’s called regulatory capture, when they take over your regulatory system and your police, because I think, as you know, Amy, the majority of the — Enbridge has been required by law to pay for the police forces in northern Minnesota required to put in their pipeline. And, you know, one has to ask, “If it was such a good idea, why do you need so many police?” But many, many —
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about the police. The Intercept reported Thursday that Minnesota police expected the Line 3 pipeline to help boost their budget to fund new weapons. The article reveals that a few weeks before Line 3 was approved for construction, Aitkin County Sheriff’s Deputy Aaron Cook bought a new assault rifle that cost $725. In a November 2020 email, Cook wrote to the gun seller, quote, “Our budget took a hit last week, so that’s all we will be ordering for now. … I’m hoping the pipeline will give us an extra boost to next year’s budget, which should make it easy for me to propose an upgrade/trade to your rifles rather than a rebuild of our 8 Bushmasters” — referencing another assault rifle. Your response, Winona?
WINONA LADUKE: That’s exactly right. They’ve been bankrolling the northern police departments. Some of the police departments, like Aitkin County, were saddened by COVID, because they had to let people out of prison or out of jail there and losing money on their budgets in that dysfunctional system. And so, you know, at this point, Enbridge has been financing all these northern police departments. And so you’re seeing 40 different squads show up from counties throughout the state to repress water protectors, who are just trying to protect the water in northern Minnesota, and arrest hundreds of us.
And, you know, it begins — it’s a civil crisis when a Canadian multinational controls your police force. You know, I thought the police were supposed to work for the people and not for the Canadian multinational, but that’s not what’s happening up here. A Canadian multinational has taken our civil rights, clearly, you know, myself, among many, being put in jail. I mean, that’s the Enbridge way: control the police of the state of Minnesota and shove your pipeline through. You know, it’s so wrong from every aspect.
AMY GOODMAN: Winona, talk about this related to the climate emergency. We’re talking to you as there are some 80 massive wildfires burning, something larger than the city of Los Angeles, all through the West — Montana, Oregon, Washington, California. You’ve got Salt Lake, the Great Salt Lake, at its lowest level ever. You’ve got the fires raging. In China, you’ve got this massive flooding in central China, which forced to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people. How does that relate to your arrest?
WINONA LADUKE: Well, you know, Enbridge’s Line 3 is the equivalent of adding 50 new coal-fired power plants. You know, you don’t get a tiara for putting this one in. And, you know, so what’s happening is that every day now you see the haze from the Canadian wildfires. We see our rivers are parched. But yet we see Enbridge and the DNR, Minnesota DNR, guarding hoses as they suck millions of gallons of water out of our river to put in this Canadian tar sands pipeline, in the worst disaster of a drought, you know, and these massive fires that are to the north and west of us. It’s really a devastating time for all of us as climate chaos descends upon us. And then, yet you see Governor Walz decide to sell us all out, to sell out the Anishinaabe people and the people of Minnesota, so it could get 23 jobs, at the end of this, 23 jobs from a Canadian multinational. It’s really — you know, it’s so wrong. It’s so wrong.
And the Biden administration is just sitting by and watching it happen. I mean, I’m watching river after river get frac-outs on them in northern Minnesota. These are pristine river systems. You know, I’m watching things get destroyed as Enbridge ravages through our country. And then I’m watching hundreds of people get arrested trying to protect our water and to stop the climate disaster that Enbridge’s Line 3 represents.
You know, we’re looking for more divestment in that. You know, it’s a $9 billion pipeline right now, the most expensive tar sands pipeline in the world. And as I said, that’s like a great gamble at the end of the fossil fuel era, the most expensive tar sands pipeline in the world. And, you know, it’s brutal. It’s brutal out here. I didn’t like my three days in jail, but that’s the Enbridge way.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what a frac-out is. And have there been leaks?
WINONA LADUKE: You know, this is a new pipeline project going in, but they’re crossing like 69 rivers, and 22 of them with this thing called the HDD, which is a super phallic, horrible drill system, the high direction drill — horizontal direction drill. And so, what happens is that they’re drilling like underneath the rivers, and they hit an aquifer, and they shoot out into — or they hit a seam that shoots out into the river, in some spring that they didn’t know about, and all of a sudden you’ve got a bunch of, like, toxic bentonite, all kind of crazy stuff at the bottom of the river.
And, you know, the thing is, is like the Shell River is a pristine river, crossed five times by Enbridge, hit by industrial agriculture like R.D. Offutt. And it has the largest mussel population in the Upper Mississippi River. It has this huge and beautiful mussel river, hence the name Shell River. And those guys don’t last through frac-outs, you know? Just the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Interior, you know, all of these agencies are looking aside as Biden seems to approve the tar sands pipeline. And you can’t do both.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, that’s interesting you mention —
WINONA LADUKE: You can’t be a climate president and do this.
AMY GOODMAN: — Department of Interior, because it’s a Native American — first Native American secretary of the Department of Interior, Deb Haaland. She actually was at the protest in North Dakota against DAPL. About 200 major activists, celebrities, Democratic donors and environmentalists sent a letter demanding that President Biden stop Enbridge’s pipeline project, like he did with Keystone XL, and to firmly establish the principle, they said, that we will move forward toward real climate solutions. But the Biden administration has not done this. Has Deb Haaland weighed in — not only not done this for Enbridge, but not done it for DAPL, where she was there protesting the Dakota Access pipeline?
WINONA LADUKE: Yeah, sadly, Deb Haaland has not stepped up on this. And the Biden administration certainly has chained her to their position. You know, it’s tragic. You know, there’s no federal environmental impact statement on this project. It wouldn’t pass the climate test. It’s exactly — it’s even bigger than Keystone. So, if Keystone wouldn’t pass the climate test, why would this pipeline pass the climate test, let alone the water impact? This is a fifth of the world’s water. Enbridge is in the middle of the water wealth of our territory, you know, the heartland of the water. And the Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Interior, no agency has stepped up to protect the waters of the people of Minnesota, the Anishinaabe, trust responsibility, nor any of the waters of this territory.
And, you know, it’s so disappointing that the Biden administration is throwing Indigenous people under the bus, the water under the bus — you know, there’s no new water — and that everybody is tolerating more and more arrests, as if, you know, that’s how it goes these days — we just keep arresting people because we think our project’s a great thing. You know, I’m so disappointed in the Biden administration, in Deb Haaland, you know, in every agency. I’m so disappointed that they are destroying our planet so a Canadian multinational can make a buck at the end of the tar sands era.
AMY GOODMAN: Winona LaDuke, I want to thank you for being with us, longtime Anishinaabe activist who’s been organizing for years to block the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, executive director of Honor the Earth. Her latest book, To Be a Water Protector.
As we continue with these arrested developments, we’ll go to another woman who was arrested this week, in Washington, D.C., the Reverend Liz Theoharis of the Poor People’s Campaign. Stay with us.
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