Over 100 Hold a “Funeral For Our Future” at TransCanada Office Outside Boston

Our friends at Tar Sands Action in Massachusetts are at it again! This “Funeral For Our Future” comes just after a successful action on Jan 7th in which eight students were arrested for locking down in the TransCanada Westborough office outside Boston. Below is press release they sent out this morning. You can follow more on their website funeralforourfuture.wordpress.com . Today’s action helps kick off an upcoming Week of Action to Stop Tar Sands Profiteers, March 16-23.

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Update 7:40pm (EST) — arrestees are being released from jail!

Support these brave people by contributing for legal expenses! Better yet, support these people (and the rest of the planet) by getting involved! The first is needed, but the latter is priceless.

Update 6:43pm (EST) — check out this short video highlighting today’s no-KXL civil disobedience action!

Update 12:20pm (EST) — Protestors raise their fists in solidarity as arrestees are escorted out of the building and in to paddy wagons.

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Update 12:10pm (EST) — Protestors continue funeral procession out front of the TransCanada offices.

“We will lay down our bodies, we will lay down our souls, no, we won’t stand by and watch while they dig us a hole.”

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Update 12pm (EST) — all 26 who remained in the building have been arrested.

Arrestees at the "Funeral for Our Future" Tar Sands Action chanting while waiting on the first floor of the TransCanada office building to be processed.

Arrestees at the “Funeral for Our Future” Tar Sands Action chanting while waiting on the first floor of the TransCanada office building to be processed.

Update 11:17am (EST) — police have asked the protestors to leave. Most leave the building and continue chanting outside but 26 have handcuffed themselves to eachother and remain sitting. 

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Update 11:06am (EST) — police are gathered at the office lobby just beneath the protestors who are in front of TransCanada’s office on the third floor. Rue, from the Tar Sands Blockade, encourages protestors to stand their ground. Rue is wearing photographs of the children of Manchester in Houston’s toxic East End who will breathe the cancerous emissions of the tar sands.

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“As international corporations like TransCanada organize violent businesses around us, we must also organize effective and escalated campaigns of resistance in solidarity with frontline communities, from the indigenous communities at the point of tar sands extraction, to low income communities of color in Houston and Port Author where the tar sands will be refined. 

It is not enough to denounce this continuation of colonization and environmental racism. We must understand who propagates this and who benefits. We must think critically and ask ourselves why violence and deception are a constant, especially against indigenous communities and low income communities of color who have been systematically silenced by 500 plus years of colonization and genocide!”

Update 11am (EST) — police arriving at the TransCanada office building. Protestors are chanting “They are digging us a hole” and presenting a symbolic coffin carrying “Our Future”.

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Westborough, MA — Monday, March 11, 2013, 10:54am (EST) – over 100 students and community members have just marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office and held a funeral mourning the loss of their future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming. More than 25 protesters are risking arrest for refusing to leave the office in an act of civil disobedience.

Carrying a coffin emblazoned with the words “Our Future,” the protesters held flowers and sang an elegy as they marched in procession. Massachusetts Methodist clergy members and a group of mothers holding photographs of their children joined the youth in protest.

The action marked a sharp escalation of the protests in New England against the Keystone XL pipeline. In January, eight students locked and glued themselves at the same TransCanada office. Nationwide, the pipeline has already prompted civil disobedience outside the White House, direct blockades of construction, and the largest climate rally in US history. Todays action kicks off a week of solidarity actions being called for by our allies at the Tar Sands Blockade.  During the Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action, March 16th-24th protestors from across the country will target the offices of TransCanada and its investors.

Streaming live video by Ustream

The protesters staged the funeral a week after the US State Department released a widely criticized Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL pipeline. While admitting that rejecting the pipeline would have little effect on jobs, the document minimizes claims about the pipeline’s impact on climate change and on communities who would be at risk for devastating pipeline spills like the 2010 Kalamazoo spill, from which the affected communities are still recovering. The impact assessment also makes the assumption that the Alberta tar sands will be developed regardless of whether Keystone XL goes forward—an assumption not shared by today’s protesters and refuted by indigenous communities whose treaties the Canadian government is violating by allowing development of the tar sands.

“If the tar sands are extracted and burned, it will wipe out my future and the future of my entire generation,” said Will Pearl, a Tufts University freshman arrested in the action. “If President Obama will not reject the Keystone XL pipeline, we will stop it ourselves. We will rise up and resist—from the backwoods of Texas, to corporate offices in Massachusetts, to the steps of the White House.”

“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” said Isobel Arthen, a junior at Mount Holyoke who participated in Monday’s action. “The total carbon contained in Canada’s tar sands exceeds all the oil burned in human history. If we develop these incredibly dirty fossil fuels, my future will be marked by superstorms, untold numbers of climate refugees and climate-related deaths, and ultimately an uninhabitable planet. The planet is already the hottest it’s been in 4000 years. How hot will it be when the Keystone pipeline delivers over 800,000 barrels of tar sands a day? We must stop it. We will stop it.”

“President Obama and Secretary Kerry may not be able to stop climate change, but they have the opportunity to reject the pipeline that would make that change inevitable,” said Rachel Bishop, a senior at Brown University. “They have the power to stop investment in dirty fossil fuels and commit to developing clean and renewable energy sources as real alternatives, securing a legacy not of destruction, but of innovation and real leadership.” “I am standing with these courageous young people and with parents everywhere who are losing hope for their children’s futures,” said Susan Redlich, one of the mothers present at the action. “We are determined to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and preserve a livable future for all children.”

Contact: nokxl@riseup.net, 617-470-0371

Permanent link to this article: https://tarsandsblockade.org/funeralforourfuture/