Jobs With Justice stands in solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as they struggle to maintain the integrity of their sacred land. As part of our mission, we unite with working people and communities across the country and around the world to fight against corporate greed. We are uncompromising in our core belief that people take precedent over profit, which is why we oppose the Trump administration’s approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and Keystone XL Pipeline projects.
For 500 years, North America’s indigenous people have sought to retain their self-determination in response to settler-colonialism, genocide, and land dispossession. DAPL is in direct violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851 that established the area as sovereign First Nations territory.
We resist any limiting of democracy, self-determination, or clean water, land, and air to communities of color. Residents of Bismarck, who are overwhelmingly white, successfully diverted the Dakota Access Pipeline from their city because of the potential threat to their water supply. Yet, Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation building the project, and the Army Corps of Engineers both refused to give the people of Standing Rock sufficient transparency, involvement, or control in whether or not to build the pipeline through their reservation.
The continuation of this project ignores over two years of opposition by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and scores of others. While pursuing legal means to block DAPL, the Standing Rock Tribe and their allies have peacefully protested the construction. As news reports made alarmingly clear, a disproportionate number of North Dakota police and out-of-state law enforcement tried to repress and silence protesters with threats and violence.
America can create jobs that sustain families, communities, and our environment. Corporations and politicians who say otherwise only want to divide us. And by allowing them to profit from displacing the people of Standing Rock, we shortchange our future. Our field of vision allows us to see working people standing on all sides of this issue. There are men and women who have families to feed, who go to work every day or strive to do so, some of whom back the pipeline and some who do not. Today, we raise our voices with the frontline residents of Standing Rock in defending their basic human rights and dignity against corporate forces.
