Last night, Ed Schultz came out against the pipeline. Now, maybe at first glance that’s no big deal. Ed is a progressive radio and TV host on MSNBC. But just a few weeks ago, Ed was strongly for the pipeline citing the energy it would bring to America and his concerns with transporting oil via rail. What happened next
in order to get this reaction is a story of a beyond-partisan group of Cowboys and Indians who are taking a stand...
We are now asking you to sign this petition urging President Obama to come to Nebraska and get a pipeline “Ed”ucation.
We know once the President drinks some beer made from the Ogallala Aquifer water and a steak that is tarsands-free while visiting with neighbors from across our state we know the one word he will give when asked about the Keystone XL pipeline permit: REJECT.
Landowners know the risk first-hand. They work the land every day. Tribes know the risk first-hand. They protect the sacred water every day. That is why the new Cowboy and Indian Alliance is unstoppable and unbreakable.
This is not the first time Cowboys and Indians have come together to stop projects that risk our land and water. In the 80s, they protected water and the Black Hills from uranium mining and risky munitions testing.
In order to understand the will of all the pipeline fighters, I described a young rancher Meghan in a question the New York Times posed to me on why choosing this pipeline was the right fight.
Every morning Meghan wakes up to feed her cattle. And every morning she looks to the horizon and sees the barn equipped with clean, American-made energy that folks from all over the country built on her grandfather’s land directly in the path of the Keystone export pipeline. We are fighting TransCanada for one simple reason, we protect our neighbors.
Pundits and lobbyists can pontificate on why fighting this pipeline, at this moment, does not make political sense.
For us, it was never a question. There was never a pause. We witness how TransCanada treats our neighbors. TransCanada threatens eminent domain. TransCanada bullies farmers and ranchers with one-sided contracts that shift the economic liabilities of tar sands spills on to families’ shoulders. To see that we are in the right fight, all we have to do is look to our neighbors still cleaning up the tar sands spill in the Kalamazoo River or the oil in the backyards and basements of Mayflower, Ark.
On Monday, the Cowboy and Indian Alliance, along with groups like Sierra Club, 350.org and NRDC, will announce an action to take place in Washington, DC. We call upon each of you to stand with us to protect our neighbors.
Our call will be for President Obama to “Reject and Protect.” Reject the risky export pipeline carrying tarsands sludge and protect our sacred land, water and climate.
The Keystone XL pipeline is more than a pipeline, it’s more than a line on a map.
The pipeline is a direct threat to our neighbors and we stand strong and in unison to ask President Obama to “Reject and Protect.” We are ready to stand on our state border with our simple rallying call, “not in our land, not in our water, not in our country.” And we are ready to stand with President Obama and say thank you.
Also please check out this DailyKos blog from Nebraska rancher Randy Thompson (in the pic above), "Nebraska rancher fighting Keystone XL to protect land, water, and property rights": http://www.dailykos.com/...