Drop The Charges!

Hundreds of water protectors are currently facing criminal charges in Minnesota for standing in defense of the water, the climate, and the treaty rights of the Anishinaabeg people.

These individuals put their bodies on the line to stop Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline, a massive tar sands project that threatens the state’s lakes, rivers, aquifers and wild rice beds. Police forces - directly funded by Enbridge - have responded to this massive movement with surveillance, harassment, physical torture ("pain compliance"), and trumped-up charges, including felonies. In this time of climate catastrophe, governments must listen to water protectors instead of criminalizing and prosecuting them.

Water protectors have been doing the work that the State of Minnesota should be doing. Drop the charges!

Water Protectors Arrested Resisting Line 3 Pipeline Call on State Officials to "Drop the Charges"

Press Release

(Anishinaabe Akiing, Minnesota) -- 11-17-2021 -- Today, defendants arrested while opposing the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline launched a campaign calling on Minnesota’s elected leadership to drop all criminal charges against over 700 water protectors. A Drop the Charges petition to MN Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison has already garnered over 13,000 signatures. Organizers of the campaign describe the charges as unjust based on the brutal policing tactics that the Enbridge corporation directly funded, the violation of Anishinaabe treaty rights, and the project’s contribution to catastrophic climate change.

Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, said about the campaign launch, “It's entirely wrong that Enbridge—a foreign oil corporation— has committed egregious crimes against the water and people, yet it’s us who are being prosecuted. Every day that pipeline is in operation, Minnesotans are in danger. It must be shut down, and all charges against Water Protectors must be dropped. ”

Over 1,000 arrests were made during the nine months of construction, and over 100 water protectors have been charged with trumped up felonies, with most of the felonies being bogus “theft” charges. The Canadian energy transportation corporation, Enbridge, funded and collaborated with the police force in northern Minnesota, and has so far paid police nearly $3 million for costs associated with arresting and surveilling water protectors, including recent news of Aitkin County Sheriff billing 4,800 hours to Enbridge.

READ THE FULL NEWS RELEASE
Press Release

Drop The Charges

Line 3 101
The Charges
Social Media Toolkit
Sign the Petition
Donate

Center for Protest Law & Litigation EXPOSED

The Center for Protest Law & Litigation has obtained documents showing that the lead prosecutor in Hubbard County, Minnesota - who is seeking to jail hundreds of peaceful Line 3 water protectors - sought Enbridge pipeline company $$$ to fund his prosecutions.

We are releasing the documents on our website showing an initial bill - and outrage when he didn't get what he wanted. The expectation of $$ incentivized the wrongful charging of hundreds. Oil money & the corruption of justice.

The so-called Public Safety Escrow Trust has funneled millions of dollars of Enbridge money to law enforcement in Minnesota, incentivizing the repression of water protectors at Line 3.

Visit the link below for the full documents.

1. Document 1

2. Document 2

3. Document 3

Please visit this link to make a donation supporting the legal fight.

REPORTED BY THE INTERCEPT: PROSECUTORS HIT ANTI-PIPELINE PROTESTERS WITH FELONY CHARGES TO SEND A MESSAGE, DEFENSE SAYS

One county prosecutor asked oil company Enbridge for reimbursement to help with some of the prosecutions clogging up rural courts.

BY Alleen Brown, Sam Richards
January 8 2022

When the oil company Enbridge sought to build its Line 3 pipeline through northern Minnesota, it faced opposition from Indigenous-led water protectors. The company moved to coordinate with local police as they cracked down on the resistance.

MONTHS AFTER THE pipeline company Enbridge announced it had finished its Line 3 pipeline, hundreds of the project’s opponents have pending court cases for arrests made at protests during last year’s construction.

Defense attorneys for the water protectors, as the members of the Indigenous-led anti-pipeline movement are known, said many of the charges are overly aggressive and should be dismissed. Defense attorneys pointed to examples like felony theft charges for protesters who chained themselves to equipment and felony aiding attempted suicide for those who crawled into sections of nonfunctional pipe.

“These felony theft charges started coming out during the summer and it’s very clearly an abuse of the prosecutorial charging function,” said Joshua Preston, a lawyer for the water protectors. “It’s meant to send a message saying, ‘If you come to this property and chain yourself to something, we’re going to throw the book at you.’”

One of the county attorneys pursuing felony theft charges said the indictments were appropriate. “Criminal felony theft meets the elements of the offense,” Hubbard County, Minnesota, Attorney Jonathan Frieden told the Intercept.

The criminal trials are the coda to a years long fight over the pipeline in Minnesota between water protectors, on the one hand, and the pipeline company and police on the other. Tensions flared, with Minnesota community members pitted against each other — partly owing to what pipeline opponents said was a “corporate counterinsurgency” against their movement, a set of military-style tactics barred by the oil company’s permit.