S10, Ep13: Seven Years Later, an Environmental Impact Statement for the Dakota Access Pipeline

Amy: [00:00:00] We're continuing our series today on the increasing global criminalization of protest with a look at what's happening now with the protest that the fossil fuel industry, politicians, and police often cite as the reason that we need new laws against protest in the United States: Standing Rock. The protests on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota took place from April 2016 to February 2017.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and thousands of allies protested against a project called the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, a 1, 172 mile long pipeline running from the Bakken oil fields in western North Dakota to southern Illinois, crossing the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

Many members of the [00:01:00] Standing Rock Tribe and surrounding communities said the pipeline was a serious threat to the region's drinking water.

The construction also directly threatened burial grounds and cultural sites of historic importance. Although you'll hear in this episode that both the company in charge of the project, Energy Transfer, and the U. S. government have at various times claimed otherwise.

The DAPL fight has been a real roller coaster, and it might surprise some of you to hear that despite the fact that construction on the pipeline was completed in April 2017, the Army Corps of Engineers only just this year, in September 2023, six years later, [00:02:00] released its Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, on the project.

You might remember that back in 2016, December 2016 to be exact, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that they would deny the easement to drill under the Missouri River and would conduct an EIS. Energy transfer criticized the Obama administration when that came out, calling it political interference and saying that further delay in the consideration of this case would add millions of dollars more each month in costs that could not be recovered.

When former President Trump took office just a month later in January 2017, he issued an executive order overturning everything that the Army Corps had said and lifting all blocks to pipeline construction. [00:03:00] The tribe sued and in 2020 a US federal judge ruled with them.

They said the government had not studied the pipeline's effects on the quality of the human environment enough. They ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to go ahead with its environmental impact review. There was a lot of legal back and forth after that, but ultimately all the courts agreed on the need for an environmental review.

That includes the Supreme Court. Despite all of those rulings, the pipeline has remained operational this whole time, transporting over 500, 000 barrels per day.

After it released the draft EIS in September this year, the Army Corps of Engineers scheduled a public hearing on it in Bismarck, North Dakota, in November. Our senior editor for this series, Alleen Brown, who's been reporting on Standing Rock and DAPL since 2016, was there to hear what everyone had to say.

Today, she [00:04:00] brings us that story, and also a look at the impact that anti protest tactics used to shut down what was happening at Standing Rock, and lots of other protests since then, have had on communities. Whether we should start to think about those impacts as part of an environmental impact as well, particularly when we're looking at indigenous communities for whom these tactics really trigger historical, generational trauma.

The public comment period for this environmental impact statement closes next week, December 13th, 2023. Welcome back to Drilled, the Real Free Speech Threat.

I'm Amy Westervelt. After the break, Alleen Brown takes us to North Dakota.

[ambi from Ceremony, play a few seconds, then run under Alleen's VO]

Misc speakers: Thank you.[00:05:00]

Singers: He's

Misc speakers: my interpreter. I know it. Uh oh. I was like, we had it.

Singers: Almost though.

Alleen: I'm in North Dakota, on a hill overlooking the Cannonball River. I'm surrounded by rolling land, dusted with snow, under a gray sky. This land is unceded treaty territory, meaning it was never given up or ceded by the Oceti Sakowin people that have lived here for [00:06:00] generations.

I'm standing with a handful of water protectors from the tribal nation of Standing Rock over a small fire.

Waniya Locke: So it's going to be a single line in, and they're going to corral us in. There's going to be booths with curtains and a stenographer and a mic. It's not going to be like your typical hearing that we're used to.

Alleen: Today, water protectors are being invited by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers to a public hearing to share their comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Dakota Access Pipeline, known as DAPL..

The pipeline has been operating since 2017.

Waniya Locke: Make it as personal as possible. You talk about how or where you grew up and how the Missouri River is connected to you.

Alleen: For over seven years, the people gathered here have been fighting to stop the pipeline. Some of them camped on this very spot in 2016 in a resistance camp that was a jumping off point for direct action [00:07:00] protests meant to stop construction. Police and private security responded with dogs, tear gas, water hoses, aerial surveillance, infiltration of their movement spaces, radio eavesdropping, and mass arrests.

Waniya Locke: We do know and we did confirm that private security is, uh, there along with North Dakota law enforcement.

Alleen: After the pipeline was complete, the camps shut down and the cameras left. But Standing Rock and other tribes continued to fight in court. In 2020, a judge agreed with the tribes. He revoked the permit that allowed the pipeline to cross the Missouri River, and he ordered an environmental impact statement.

That report is seven years late, but it also represents one of the few pathways left to stop the pipeline.

Joe: I can't, I can't speak for any other elder, but I'm kind of [00:08:00] getting up there and I just want to say. I'm really proud of all of you. Really proud of all of you. And that's all I can say. I'm always proud of all of you. Hatchet.

Misc speakers: Go. Okay, car

Singers: count. [

[sound fx note: would be good to have some subtle car sounds — slow driving, indicators blinking — here] [here's some to pull from:

[00:09:00] [00:10:00]

Alleen: and we're off. I'm in a line of about one, two, three, four, five, six cars. Um, we've got our blinkers on and we're headed to the, uh, public hearings.

Right now our cars are crossing over the precise site where the Dakota access pipeline is buried. It's marked by the transmission line. At a certain point, there were encampments all the way up to, [00:11:00] that spot where the pipeline route is,

eventually that was pushed back, but the place where, you know, over 10, 000 people were camped at one point is right where folks had a fire and were praying.

music bed/pause to shift gears a bit

I had a chance to read the EIS before I came out here. After years of researching the environmental harms associated with pipelines like this one, I was pretty surprised to hear the Army Corps suggest that removing the pipeline would be more environmentally harmful than allowing the oil to continue pumping under one of Standing Rock's primary drinking water sources.

The EIS says that a major spill under the Missouri River is remote to unlikely. As for climate change, this document claims that allowing the pipeline to continue operating as it is would, quote, not generate any direct greenhouse gas emissions, with the exception of a minor amount of emissions [00:12:00] associated with pipeline maintenance activities.

That's because the Army Corps is only taking into account the emissions generated by the pipeline itself, not by the activity. It enables burning fossil fuels.

need to unpack this a bit for folks and put it in the context of ongoing debates about how to calculate pipeline emissions. Something along the lines of: "That's because the Army Corps is only taking into account the emissions generated by the pipeline itself, not by the activity it enables: burning fossil fuels. For years the U.S. government has been going back and forth on how to calculate the climate impact of pipelines. In 2016, the Obama Administration directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to incorporate climate impacts into its environmental impact assessments, but under president Trump the scope of that directive was narrowed to include only the emissions generated by building and maintaining pipelines. That's [00:13:00] the interpretation the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers is applying in this EIS." [this is prob too long, just up to the "…burning fossil fuels" part is probably enough!]

Finally, it claims there are simply no historic properties, like sacred sites, for example, in the area being studied. A couple of nights before the hearing, I sat down with Honorata Defender and Jonathan Edwards to talk about the EIS. We ate pizza at a Cenex gas station with a small table in the back.

Honorata is a journalist for the local Corson Sioux County News Messenger, and Jonathan works in emergency medicine. They're siblings, and both members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. And they organized some of the first grassroots meetings about the pipeline held in an unheated movie theater here in the reservation town of McLaughlin, South Dakota.

Um, have you guys had a chance to look at the draft [00:14:00] environmental impact statement? I have. You have. Um, what do you think about it?

Honorata: I think it's bulldoody. It's severely lacking in everything. It is not a real environmental impact statement.

Jonathan: To be honest, I haven't read it. So, um, but I would imagine this is something that's copied and pasted from, uh, another E.

The kind of oil in there that's going to go to the bottom of the river, [00:15:00] um, And so it's just going to sit down there.

Alleen: I was curious about another kind of impact that I knew the pipeline had had. I've spent years digging into reams of public records and leaked documents. Describing the way the pipeline company and its private security contractor, TigerSwan, worked with police to repress the movement. The EIS didn't mention the emotional and physical trauma of police repression.

It didn't mention the long running community divisions that a project like this can inflict.

Those kinds of long-term impacts are common around the world when corporations and governments forced through large polluting projects, and they typically go unacknowledged by regulatory processes.

I wondered like what kind of impact all that law enforcement presence and private security presence, like you know, the tear gas you're talking about, what kind of, you know, in a way that that is an extension of the pipeline.

So [00:16:00] what impact has that had on, continued impact has that had on people who were subject to it?

Honorata: Um, I know a number of people that's, you know, they have PTSD still, that suffer from PTSD still from, from what they went through because of how TigerSwan and the police handled everything.

Alleen: For Jonathan, fighting the pipeline deepened his distrust of public agencies that are supposed to keep people safe. For him, this was an intensified version of the everyday criminalization that he faced as a Lakota man in white communities bordering the reservation.

Jonathan: You know, I'm in a group that's most likely to be killed by police. Um, Native American males, you know, more so than African American males. So, um, I think it's just something that you expect, personally, that I expected, and um, It's just normal, I guess, [00:17:00] unfortunately

they gassed us, shot at us, um, beat people, you know, pointing loaded weapons at unarmed women and children, um, a lot of tear gas, um, I have asthma now.

Um, I've never had any breathing problems before, before I went out there, but um, But yeah, there's just a lot of tear gas, and uh, mind you, for standing on our own land.

Alleen: Well, and I guess what, you know, I'm kind of thinking about is like, if, um, resistance to a pipeline Under the conditions that we're, in the reality that we're living in, with climate change, with leaks, with all these things, if resistance is, um, inevitable, and if resistance means, like, this kind of police repression, then, like, isn't PTSD and the trauma that comes with those kinds [00:18:00] of police confrontations also, like, an impact of the pipeline?

Honorata: Oh, yeah. Yeah, most definitely. They are. Yeah, I've never thought of it that way, but now that you bring it up, yeah, it most definitely is. Um, because unfortunately, I mean, these people, I mean, they're gonna be haunted for the rest of their days. We're all gonna be haunted for the rest of our days on, on the travesties that were committed there.

Alleen: Honorata is clear on what she'd like to see happen.

Honorata: I would love, I would love to see them remove it. They say that there's going to be, it would be worse. That's what they say throughout the whole environmental impact statement basically is that it'd be worse for the wildlife, it'd be worse for the habitat, it'd be worse for the fish.

Um, for us. to remove the pipeline, and I believe that's so false, that's the untruthiest thing I've ever heard. I mean, they [00:19:00] already disrupted all of this by putting it in. So, why is it now a big deal to remove it? .

Alleen: She'S describing one of the strangest things about the document. Since the pipeline is already built, the EIS is backward. It describes the severe environmental harms that would come from removing the pipeline, which one has to assume are basically the same harms that would have come from putting the thing in.

music, scene shift

I figured Honorata and Jonathan would be at the EIS hearing, but Bismarck is an hour and a half away from the town where they helped start this movement. Honorata wasn't sure if she'd have gas money, and her van's heat was broken. It was 25 degrees outside.

car sfx again

Back on the road, our caravan eventually arrived at the [00:20:00] Radisson, where two days of public hearings were about to begin.

I catch up with Standing Rock Tribal Chair Janet Alkire in the lobby. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has already dropped out as a cooperating  agency on the EIS, and I want to understand why.

Janet: When this, when this pre draft came out, it showed on the cover of this book that we were a cooperating agency with our logo.

And when you open it up, you're like, hey, don't, you're not giving us anything. You're redacting everything. How is this cooperating? I don't want our logo on this document. I'm not supporting this document.

Alleen: The pAges on spill response are heavily redacted. Janet and others suspect it has to do with the independent contractor that drafted much of the EIS.[00:21:00]

Janet: When this came down in 2020, the tribes asked that, can we… Um, since we're in a cooperating agency, are we, are you going to, um, allow us to have some kind of say in who this independent company is going to be?

Alleen: Months later, with little fanfare, Army Corps announced that they'd hired Environmental Resources Management. Environmental Resources Management has been accused of conflicts of interest before, including when it was hired by the State Department to help draft the EIS for the controversial Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline in 2012.

reporters and environmental organizations uncovered a whole tangle of red flags, including that some of the environmental resources management experts who worked on the EIS had previously worked for the pipeline's parent company, TransCanada, and for other [00:22:00] companies with a stake in KX L'S construction.

There were so many red flags, in fact, that the State Department's Office of Inspector General investigated. Ultimately, they concluded that none of it amounted to a violation of the Department's Conflict of Interest policy.

To many critics, that was just an indication of how truly broken the system was.

Environmental Resources Management again came under fire in 2018, when another government agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, hired the company to monitor construction of Enbridge's Atlantic Bridge Natural Gas Project. Records obtained by DSMOG showed the agency was aware that Environmental Resources Management had a business relationship with Enbridge, but hired them anyway.

Environmental Resources Management is a member of the American Petroleum Institute, which has long been an ardent supporter of the pipeline.

It's also a member of the [00:23:00] American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an industry association that helped draft new anti protest laws, which swept the nation in the wake of the pipeline protests near the Standing Rock Reservation in 2016 and 2017.

Janet: We knew there was a conflict of interest. We all know what a conflict of interest is, you know. And, and so, but it, it, we were just disregarded. In, in that decision. Yeah. And just like we said today, everything is, the box has been checked off already. So.

Alleen: Um, and so it sounds like the option that the tribe prefers is sealing it off and leaving it in the riverbed.

Janet: Okay. Right. Sealing it off.

We, we chose that option basically not to destroy the riverbed, you know,

need to have you unpack what this means and why this is the preferred option, [00:24:00] esp since we just heard Honorata saying she wants them to take it out. Doesn't need to be super involved, just a couple sentences.

Alleen: As the hearing kicked off, the Army Corps laid out the possible outcomes this EIS process could have. At the end of the day, after the comment period closes on December 13th, the agency will have to decide again whether it's going to sign off on the pipeline's route, known as an easement under the Missouri River.

The  first

Army Corps lady: alternative is to not grant the easement, and would result in restoration, meaning that the existing pipeline would be stopped and, um, dug up. The second alternative would be to not grant the easement, but leave that pipeline in place so that the oil would stop, however there would be no excavation of the pipeline.

The third alternative, which is the applicant's Dakota Access LLC's identified alternative, is to [00:25:00] reissue the easement with the existing conditions the same as they were under the previous environmental assessment. The fourth alternative would be to grant the easement with additional mitigation measures. The last alternative as a result of public scoping comments was to look at an alternative that reroutes the pipeline.

Alleen: In the room is a microcosm of the movement. The space is dominated by water protectors from Standing Rock and other neighboring tribes.

There's also a duo of police officers. Water protectors already recognized one of them as an officer who was behind the razor wire at the front line

There are a few burly men who later tell me they are pipeliners, there to advocate in favor of the pipeline for their union. And there's a handful of white guys who don't quite look like they fit in.

I figure they must be police or private security.

Of course, it's hard to learn exactly who anyone is, because this is not the [00:26:00] public hearing we were all expecting.

Public comments are to be submitted privately to stenographers sitting behind curtained booths. Water protectors had hoped to deliver their remarks in front of the pipeline executives who built the project. With no microphone provided, they took to the bullhorn.

Joe: Apparently, the perpetrators aren't going to be here to listen to us because they don't have a backbone. And so, my comment,

I'm going to do right here, openly, because I'm not afraid to say no.

Floris: We're not being given a mic, which, that's okay, we'll bring our own.

And when you're able to push people behind curtains, there's no accountability. And our voices lose their power when we're here in numbers.

There's people here, and we're here wanting to talk.

Alleen: The Army Corps attempted to respond to the complaints. The next [00:27:00] day, commenters had the option to either go into the booths or deliver their testimony by microphone

I catch up with Tim Donaghy. The research manager for Greenpeace USA, after he speaks at the mic.

Greenpeace and a handful of water protectors are still fighting a lawsuit from energy transfer, which claims that Greenpeace orchestrated the movement as a way to encourage donations

The company has used the lawsuit to go after all kinds of Indigenous people and environmental justice advocates via subpoenas.

It's what some critics call judicial harassment. But Tim isn't here today to talk about that. He's focused on the EIS's shortcomings when it comes to the climate crisis

Tim Greenpeace: oftentimes in, uh, environmental impact statements, they'll say, Well, if we, you know, essentially, if we're not going to drill the oil here, it'll come from somewhere else.

So it'll just be perfectly substituted. And because of that assumption, they say, Well, there's no climate impact from approving this project or disapproving it because it's going to be the same no matter what.

And I think that kind of flies in [00:28:00] the face of basically what the science has shown about oil markets, which is that there's not going to be 100% New oil coming on but it's not going to be 0 percent either it's going to be kind of somewhere in the middle and a lot of the studies have Kind of shown that it's roughly around 50 percent of the oil will be replaced But that means that building a pipeline like Dakota access is going to It's going to boost the oil supply, it's going to boost oil consumption, and as a result it's going to increase global greenhouse gas emissions.

Um, and obviously we're at a, in a climate crisis and we, we simply just can't do this anymore. We can't continue to, you know, be facilitating more and more oil and gas extraction at a time when we need to be using less of it. So it's just, it's like slamming on the brakes and the gas pedal at the same time.

Uh, the courts in the last couple of years have said that's not A good analysis. That's not necessarily true.

And anyway, NEPA requires that you do more than that.

Um. And then the other, the other flaw, I would say, in this [00:29:00] particular analysis is they're kind of implicitly assuming a business as usual, baseline scenario where they're saying, Oh, for decades to come, we're going to be using lots of oil.

And I think, you know, there's already like countries are pledging to do better on climate.

There's a continuing conversation about how are we going to reduce emissions? I think it's just not credible to say that nothing is going to happen over the next couple of years. Obviously we need to go faster, but, um, Neither. We shouldn't also just be assuming that oil demand is going to stay high all the way out for, you know, decades to come.

Alleen: Across The room, I see Julie Fedorchak, a member of the North Dakota Public Service Commission, which issued another key permit for the pipeline. She's a reliable advocate for the oil and gas industry, and I was curious what she'd say about the process,

including how it handled the question of climate impacts.[00:30:00]

Julie F: We had three public hearings, actually four if you consider the one for optimization. And, um, you know, had a very exhaustive review looking at all of the impacts to the, uh, environmental impacts, all the river crossings, all the water bodies, wetlands, um, cultural resources, um, uh, you know, and unstable areas, like the whole gamut,

so I think that, you know, all of those reviews were done effectively, and that's what the law requires. And so we need to support the law. Um,

Alleen: So I'm just curious about how, that review process that you're talking about addressed, , the climate crisis and, and the impact of the fuel that this pipeline is carrying on the climate.

Julie F: Actually, that's not part of the law in North Dakota. We don't have to review that. It's in fact, we're prohibited, prohibited from including that in our view of these kinds of infrastructure projects. Um, so the company wasn't required to provide any data of that nature.

probably [00:31:00] need to add something here about how it technically IS the law at the federal level, although the interpretation has varied since the Obama administration first instructed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to consider climate impacts in environmental impact reviews back in 2016. might also be worth noting that laws in other states barring agencies from considering climate impacts have been successfully argued against in court [although that might be too much of a detour!]

Alleen: Although federal agencies like the Army Corps are required by law

to consider climate impacts, state laws vary significantly. As far as I could tell, the environmental regulatory process has not fully accounted for the climate impacts of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

music, scene shift

thE hearing was winding down, and when Nia lock got up to speak, She's the Standing Rock tribal member who had given us the logistical rundown as we prepared to caravan out [00:32:00] here. She stood up to the microphone.

Waniya Locke: But one of the things that hurt me personally, that affects me to this day, is when I saw the announcement from the local media here from KFYR. That the Army Corps of Engineers hired on private security. According to the TigerSwan documents, in 2016 we were listed as a jihadist terrorist. They used aerial to monitor us.

There was chemicals that were sprayed upon us. And they activated specific propaganda that was put out on a national level.

We were brutalized out there and then we were lied about.

And then I watched friends, family. I even watched our then tribal [00:33:00] chairman Dave Archambault get arrested.

Alleen: Winnia and I talked more about it in the hallway

Waniya Locke: I just find it really interesting that 846 people now have a criminal record for standing up and speaking the truth

And  prior to 2016, I was a very innocent Lakota language teacher. I only had historical trauma from Congressional decisions that were made, um, from boarding schools to militarization in the 1800s. Um, the Dakota Wars have all impacted my life. But it was all historical trauma, meaning it wasn't my lived experience.

It was my ancestors, it was my grandparents, it was my aunts and my uncles that has experienced the historical trauma brought on by the United States government. And so in 2016, [00:34:00] I actually got to live through warfare because North Dakota, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Obama administration, Trump administration, Biden administration, um, continue to allow.

Dakota Access Pipeline to be built and operating illegally right now. And how it was built was by using warfare tactics on innocent people that were telling the truth.

And so the impact You know, there's PTSD, there's triggers, um, there's a lot of emotional trauma,

Alleen: winnia's experience aligns with what psychologists predicted would happen. In October 2017, the Society of Indian Psychologists whose members are mostly indigenous psychologists, put out a statement about police and private security's actions at Standing Rock.

The statement said, Civilians in the movement would likely have developed normative [00:35:00] paranoia and fear relative to these increasing stressors placed on them over time. It would be likely that those who remained at the camps over long periods of time could begin to question who could be trusted or communicated with, and develop ruminations and recurring thoughts regarding their safety.

They also noted, Given that we know a great number of Native American people participated in the movement, and that multi generational trauma and the ongoing effects of colonialism have left their mark, it is likely to have triggered normative fear and recurrence of traumatic themes from history.

I asked the Army Corps press guy, Steve Wolf, about what Winnea said.

I had read a piece about how, Army Corps brought in some, um, extra security for this hearing. Um, was it private security?

Army Corps spox: No, there's no private security. That I'm aware of. We've hired no private security.

Alleen: Okay. [00:36:00] Uh, and so what?

Army Corps spox: I mean, you see uniformed police officers here, so, and um, not a lot else to say about that.

Alleen: Okay. So the news reports about, um, Army Corps bringing in security was law enforcement?

Army Corps spox: So this is a private property. I think people have seen what has happened in the past with this project, and I would certainly imagine they're a bit concerned.

If you had a private enterprise, would you be concerned?

Alleen: I asked one of the out of place white guys if he was security, and he replied that no, he worked for law enforcement. I also called the Radisson to see if they'd hired security But they didn't return my calls and messages. Finally, I sent Steve an email, just to clarify. His reply was pretty vague. He said, When we approach private sector organizations such as a hotel to conduct a public meeting,  we cannot simply dictate to [00:37:00] them how their facility might be used for this purpose.

He continued, ultimately, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers must agree to and pay for the requirements of a given facility to host a public function for our environmental analysis process.

he added, what you witnessed firsthand is that no law enforcement action was taken against anyone expressing their views or attendance at these two public meetings. Freedom of assembly and freedom of expression were alive and well at these meetings.

pause/music sting

Regardless of the outcome of the EIS process, she and Jonathan and other water protectors who are on the ground will continue to carry the weight of what happened at Standing Rock.

I did end up seeing Honorata at the hearing. Her uncle, who is [00:38:00] an elder, gave her a ride. And I watched the two of them go into the booth and submit their testimony.

At 9 o'clock p. m., they prepared to travel the hour and a half back home on the Dark Country Highway.

Regardless of the outcome of the EIS process,

she and Jonathan and other water protectors who are on the ground will continue to carry the weight of what happened at Standing Rock

Jonathan: it was really upsetting to stand there and watch the people that are in uniform, some of whom I used to work alongside up in Bismarck, and they're there shooting at you, and they're shooting tear gas and rubber bullets, and, uh, Um, it's upsetting, and, uh, yeah, just, that's, yeah, upsetting.

Very upsetting. Yeah, that's understandable. I don't have a lot of respect for people like that anymore than if I ever did.[00:39:00]

But I don't necessarily want to focus on that too much on a daily basis because I mean, you can't walk around pissed off all day. Yeah, totally. So, I just kind of had to let some of that go. I'm still working on that. I assume that'll be a lifelong process for me because, um, they hurt a lot of people out there.

I don't really follow what the government does anymore. I just… I just don't have any faith in them at all, and um, yeah, that's where my, that's probably where I'll always be, um, unfortunately.

Alleen: Honorata did point out that the impacts are not all bad.

Honorata: It was a very big boom. And the sound waves can still be felt all across the world because people realize that, you know, they matter. Their voice matters and with that voice they can do things.

And, and remarkable things. Extraordinary things. [00:40:00] Yeah.