S10, Ep 14: What Happened at Bayou Bridge? The Other End of the Dakota Access Pipeline

[00:00:00] This episode includes instances of police violence, harassment, racism, and assault. Please take care while listening. Miidaakuyapi, Hihaniwashite, Chontewashite, Napechusapi, Ohitika, Wimiena, and Whitehat Machiapiksto. Relatives, I greet you today with a heartfelt handshake in my beautiful Lakota language. I'm Sicangu Lakota from Rosebud, South Dakota, and a resident of the state of Louisiana. As a mother, I never intended to get arrested. However, on September 18th, 2018, I was arrested and charged with two felony counts under new amendments to Louisiana's critical infrastructure law. I was facing up to 10 years in prison. I was told that I was being arrested for trespassing two weeks prior on remote land being worked on by the pipeline company in the Atchafalaya Basin. Despite my having the express permission of the landowners to peacefully protest.

That was Anne Whitehat, testifying last year at a congressional subcommittee hearing on free speech and the legal assault on environmental activists and the First Amendment.

Anne is a co founder of L'Eau Est La Vie, Water Is Life, a South Louisiana resistance camp, founded in 2017 to resist Energy Transfer's Bayou Bridge pipeline. Just to make sure you caught the significance of what she was saying there. She and a handful of other folks were arrested for trespassing and assaulted in the process, as you'll hear later in this episode.

Except, they had permission to be on that land. Written permission from the landowners. But someone was trespassing. A Louisiana state court later ruled that it was, in fact, the pipeline company that was trespassing, yet we were the ones brutally assaulted and arrested that day and in the weeks following by the same uniformed sheriff's deputies working privately for the pipeline company and also by [00:02:00] pipeline workers themselves.

Over a dozen of us have, for several years, had the possibility of lengthy prison sentences hanging over our heads. This is something we've seen. over and over again while reporting this season. Even when a wrongful arrest or conviction is ultimately overturned, so much damage happens in the meantime, a lot of it irreparable. In Anne Whitehat's case, she was arrested at a boat ramp after leading a prayer ceremony. It was very stressful to have those charges hanging over my head for three years and, and constantly, like every day. wondering if they're going to come knocking on the door to take me to jail and having to make plans for my children. The United States likes to portray itself as the land of the free, founded on an unshakable belief in the right to protest one's government. But the reality is often much different. In fact, in many states, anyone participating in the Boston [00:03:00] Tea Party today could be arrested on felony trespassing. After all, ports are considered critical infrastructure. Paul Revere might be charged with civil or even criminal racketeering for conspiring against the British. We'll learn more about racketeering in an upcoming episode, but for now let's go back a few years to some of the most pristine old growth cypress forests deep in the swamps of Louisiana. A state with a reputation for being particularly cozy with the fossil fuel industry. The activist group Loi La Vie was founded in 2017 by four Indigenous women to oppose the construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline. That's the southern leg of the Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL. It's the same pipeline that thousands of people were protesting against up north at the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in 2016. Bayou Bridge had plenty of [00:04:00] local opposition. The pipeline cuts through more than 700 bodies of water, including the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest river swamp in North America, and Bayou Lafourche, the drinking water source for the United Huma Nation. There were contentious public hearings pitting industry aligned speakers against crawfishermen, environmental organizations, and just everyday Louisianans concerned for nature and their drinking water. Look, when you're going into something like this and you are in an area that is hostile to people who are trying to protect the environment and seeing it as something that's trying, someone who's trying to stop progress or to take away jobs, it would be foolish to go straight to, you know, any kind of direct action. Cherie Foytlin is another Loi Lavi co founder and an indigenous mother of six who at the time lived seven miles from the pipeline route. We went to the governor [00:05:00] every week for months. We would all show up, all the people from these communities, all of us. We would be there every Wednesday, I think it was. And we would have a press conference. We tried to talk to the governor. He never talked to us. We did get a chance to talk to his underlings, like they had sent the DEQ people, Department of Environmental Quality people that talk to us and things like that. But we never got decision makers. We never got the people with the teeth that can make the decision. We had public hearings and overwhelmingly people said no, they do not want this pipeline, but it didn't matter. It got approved anyway. What do you do when you have exercised every bit? of the channels that they tell you to go through in order to affect change in your community and find out that it is entirely a farce. That you don't have the money and the power to say that you want to protect your community or protect your water or even protect your children. Well then that leaves you with very [00:06:00] little space in which to move. Pipeline construction began in January of 2018, and a few months later, Loila V Water Protectors engaged in non violent direct actions against the project. They started out just trying to block parts of the route, and in some pretty light hearted ways. Uh, really, in the beginning, we just had a lot of fun. Like, we would just have beach parties, and, and we would have dance parties, and. You know, I remember I was bringing donuts to the workers and things like that, and we would eat, we did a, we did a crawfish to musical show on the easement that the oil workers actually, uh, so I'm just saying creativity and, uh, and listening, I think were the number one thing. I'm just trying to educate people on what it meant, uh, to protect our waters. And we just so happen to have some tape from Crawfish the Musical. By the way, when folks say oil with a Cajun accent, sometimes [00:07:00] it sounds like Earl. So we're out here at a, at a work stoppage, and you are just in time to be a part of Crawfish the Musical. We got tickets for free for you. We reached out to your boss, Kelsey Warren. Asked him if he wanted to buy yours tickets. Please do share this video. He says he's the biggest piece of crap we know. He said no way, so we decided to give you tickets on the house. If you contract with E. T. P., your ticket is free, free, free. There goes Earl. Dun, dun, dun, dun! I'm here to build. The Bayou Bridge Pipeline. No! Not allowed! Boo! Get out of here, crawfish! No! I hate you, Earl. Woo hoo! Well, there you have it. Crawfish the musical, y'all. [00:08:00] Woo! As we learned from Connor Gibson in the first episode of this season. By this time, the fossil fuel industry was working hard behind the scenes to stifle this kind of opposition. With the help of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, the trade group representing refineries, pipelines, and petrochemical plants, plus the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which works to pass industry friendly state legislation, They were successfully changing laws in several states. What would have been misdemeanor trespassing charges were now felonies, and pipelines were designated as critical infrastructure. In Louisiana, the industry's influence was out in the open. The bill was [00:09:00] drafted by a guy named Tyler Gray, an attorney with the Louisiana Mid Continental Oil and Gas Association. A Louisiana trade group for fossil fuel companies. When it was introduced by State Representative Major Thibeault Jr., Gray sat right next to him, answering lawmakers questions. The bill passed and was eventually signed into law by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards. It went into effect August 1st, 2018. As Anne Whitehat pointed out in her congressional testimony, it didn't just criminalize activists. The coordinated attack on our movement also included efforts to silence the journalists who risk their safety and well being to tell the world about what was happening to us. Our reporter, Karen Savage, was one of those journalists. She'll be here to tell that story and the rest of the Bayou Bridge story after this quick break. I'm Amy Westervelt and this is Drilled, the real [00:10:00] free speech threat. When Karen Savage went to Louisiana to see what was happening with the Bayou Bridge pipeline protests. We'll She was there as a reporter, but that didn't stop police and pipeline security from treating her exactly like they did the protesters. So I learned about the Bayou Bridge Pipeline from Cherie Foytlin, who I'd known, you know, before this, this happened. It was 2017, and I didn't get down there to start reporting until about 2018. And honestly, in the beginning, it was really fairly slow. There were some little actions, nothing hugely remarkable. Until one day in April, I was actually kind of bored. I was driving around, there was a pipeline site west of the basin that I had been told went by a historic black church. And so it was a Sunday and I said, well, let me drive by and see, you know, what this looks like. So I went out there and I [00:11:00] drove by the church and by the time I got there, there was nobody around. It was Sunday. There was no work happening. There were a few cars parked near the church, but nothing at all was happening. So I drove around the block, but it's rural Louisiana. And so it was like, The block was like a mile on each side, came around the other direction and was coming back towards the church parallel to the pipeline on this little bitty narrow road. Nobody else was around. It was peaceful. I had been taking pictures of birds and it was like the golden hour. And I was honestly at that point, not. I had a million pictures of pipeline construction sites that I already wasn't using. So anyway, I was just driving honestly on my way home at that point when this car came at me on this little narrow road, there were deep ditches on both sides and I thought that it was going to hit me head on and I'm like, okay, this is it. You know. There's nobody around to see the crash. So I hope some of these guys survive and can call somebody for me, but they, they didn't hit me. They did one of [00:12:00] those sideways stop things that, that cars do and out jump these two guys. And I could tell at that point that there were. Some type of law enforcement. It was a police type vehicle. And they came up to me with their hands, like on their holsters and demanded, what are you doing? Why are you here? Who are you working for? And I didn't know what to say. I'm here alone with these guys. So I just said, okay, what agency are you from? And they were just kept asking me the same questions over and over again. At one point I said, do you want to see my license? Because I kind of assumed I had like not stopped or something, but no, they never wanted my license. They ran the plate of the car and I know they used police gear because I could hear somebody on the other end say, yeah, it's a rental from Lafayette. And I had just picked up the rental car that morning, actually. So, you know, this went on for It seemed like forever because it was just me and these guys with guns on a little remote Louisiana road. I could [00:13:00] tell they had a badge and it was shaped in the state of Louisiana, but I had no idea what agency they were with. They were not telling me. I couldn't tell if it was parish, if it was state, whatever. So eventually I guess they got tired of me. They just told me, okay, you, you need to leave now. So they jumped. back in their car and drove away, you know, kind of did a little three point turn and went the same direction I was going. So they were ahead of me. Luckily I had just gotten a new zoom lens. So I got a picture of the plate and when I got back to my computer, I messaged a couple of friends and finally found somebody who could run the plate and it took a while, but the plate came back to the state of Louisiana. Department of Corrections. So I'm like, this is really weird. Why is the Department of Corrections chasing me around near this pipeline? So I did some records requests and in late June figured out that the DOC, Department of Corrections, had allowed probation and parole officers to work side jobs for the pipeline [00:14:00] company. It actually gave me a really big break in the story. So eventually there was other reporting that had happened on it and the DOC. They revoked the permission and those guys weren't allowed to work anymore. But during an interview, the head of that agency had told me, yeah, I think the St. Martin parish sheriff's department will be doing the work now. So I'm like, Hmm, this is interesting. So I did records requests and eventually figured out that. That was true. The deputies were working, got the timesheets and could piece together based on who I saw and had pictures of the swamp and the swamp on what days that almost none of the deputies that I saw in the swamp or near it. protest sites were actually working for the parish. In fact, almost all of the arrests were made by deputies who were looking like full deputies. Mind you, they had the guns on, they had the uniform, they had the, you know, [00:15:00] parish issued gear, but they were not working for the parish at the time. They were working for the pipeline company. At one point, the water protectors actually won a court injunction. The court ruled that the pipeline building should stop until some of the land rights issues were sorted out. Cherie Foytlin and other water protectors from Loella V took papers from the court to the pipeline site. The police show up. Right? And because we're there and we're telling them, Hey, it's time to stop. We give them the paperwork, the court paperwork. And the first policeman says, okay, guys, you got to stop. Like this is a judge's order. And another policeman higher than him that it was, had been hired by ETP. I guarantee it because they were all on the payroll. They were getting paid well. They came in and said, no, they can keep going. And they kicked us out. And I ended up getting arrested that day. Remember, the new critical infrastructure laws were due to come into effect in Louisiana in just a couple months, on [00:16:00] August 1st, 2018. And as that August 1st date grew closer and closer, tension just rose and rose. By that time, all of the construction and attempts to stop the construction were deep in the swamp. And it's gorgeous out there. By far the most beautiful places I've ever reported from. Sunsets, birds, trees. If you're out on the water at night, all you see is the red eyes of the gators. There are armadillos, there are wild boars. It's an amazing place. But it's also super remote. The only way in or out is by boat. There's almost no cell phone reception. Contractors on the fan boats, pipeliners, anybody out there by August 1st certainly knew the sheriff's department was working for the pipeline company. One day a guy showed up at the campsite with a rifle. He made threats. He assaulted a water protector. All kinds of craziness was going on. A few days later after that incident, I was in a kayak when the same individual came up in a fan boat and made more threats. People want [00:17:00] to tell you they're talking, people gonna get hurt, bang. Motherfuckers are gonna get really hurt out of y'all, y'all keep videoing people. So it seemed to be pretty well known that there would be no repercussions for threatening or assaulting water protectors, or worse. They knew. I mean, they, we would be out there like, you know, just, you know, doing our thing protesting and they would say, just wait, you just wait, here in a few days, here on this day, here on this day, we're going to get you, you know, and sure enough, as soon as that law passed, they were out there passing out felonies. The first felony arrests were only a few days after the law went into effect. At that point, three water protectors were in kayaks, and they were pulled out of the kayaks, handcuffed, dragged up into a pipeline easement, and then arrested under that new felony trespassing law. And that was the time period when the Department of Corrections was contracting with Energy transfer. And what you're about to hear is two energy transfer [00:18:00] contractors directing the state employees who are also working for the pipeline company to arrest the water protectors and kayaks. They were also physically trying to prevent me from filming. I'm not touching me. You're touching me. I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. Yeah, you're moving. You're moving. No, I'm not. Okay. I saw you touch her! Get the fuck away! Was she on the right of way? I am not. I am not on the right of way. I would not do that. On the right of way, I want her arrested. I promise you, I will not go on the right of way. I understand. I'm not going on the right of way. I have no intention. I have not. Yeah, you do. This ain't the Hey, we need to arrest those threes, they're in there all right. The three were the first to be arrested under Louisiana's new critical infrastructure laws. Not long after that, the conflict moved a few miles down the bayou to another [00:19:00] construction site on private property in the swamp. This was the land that Anne White had mentioned earlier, where Loyola VWater Protectors had written permission to be, and the pipeline company did not. In fact, the property owners had asked Loe La Vie to be there to help them, because they really didn't want this pipeline on their property. Energy transfer didn't have legal permission to work on that site. And the thing that continually struck me as I was reporting from there is that they knew they didn't have permission to be there. They knew they didn't have permission to tear up those cypress trees or dig a trench or pull a pipeline through that property. It was clear they knew. They filed an eminent domain case and the landowners wanting to prevent the destruction of the land had actually filed for an injunction, a temporary restraining order to prevent the pipeline company from working. A hearing for that injunction was coming up in September. So there were many ways that Energy Transfer knew that they shouldn't be working out there, but yet they were still working. [00:20:00] It was not like a situation where we were consistently breaking the law. We had not broken the law at that property at all. Because the owner had said, yes, I don't want this pipeline to come through my lane. And can you help me? But the police who were bought and paid for by these oil companies and supported by these systems arrested us anyway. Here's how Cherie described it at the time. This was just after several people, including Karen, had been arrested on that property. Hi everybody. Sherif Lan here. I'm out here. I need five where we have this there happening. It's on private land. The ETP does not own that. They're illegally doing work on, and we are here with permission and, but the, the St. Mary, St. Martin Parish police will not do anything. In fact, earlier today, myself and another person. Went to speak with them. We were navigating around to three different [00:21:00] spots, three different locations. Finally talked to two deputies. We gave them all the paperwork, everything that we had to show that ETP is not allowed to be here. By the time we got back, there was a situation where we had four police boats go out in front of us loaded with St. Martin Parish sheriffs. Why is St. Martin Parish criminalizing peaceful water protectors when we are the ones who are upholding the law and they are the ones supporting the criminals? I don't know, man. It feels like a mafia regime, honestly. Fighting multi billion dollar corporations. Something's wrong. There's no reason. And to tell you the truth, I'd rather be home right now, with my kids. But I'm not, because someone has to hold them accountable. Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! Let him go! Get back! Get back! Get back! Get back! Let him go! You understand that? You let him go! Get back! Let him go. Yes! Back, back up, [00:22:00] back up. He's not resisting. He's not resisting. He's not resisting. You're all trespassing. If you don't want to go, No! We're not trespassing. You are trespassing. Oh, f k. F k. Get back. Uh uh, dude. You did it. There's a transcript. I'm getting back now. There's an E. F k. Wow, Karen, this tape is really horrifying, and I know we're only hearing a tiny snippet of it. Yeah, that, that was just a brutal, brutal arrest. It was, it was horrible, hard to hear, [00:23:00] even to this day, hard to see, you know, and after the guys dragged Sheree away, there were others that were coming towards where I was. Standing and where other water protectors were standing. So everyone started just running in the opposite direction and I ran with the water protectors to a boat that was on the other side of the property. I was worried they were gonna arrest me again because at that point I had already been arrested once. But mostly I was focused on protecting my film, to be honest. I remember laying on the boat floor as we went from the site through the Bayou. 'cause it was like. 15, 20 minute boat ride back to the dock. I remember laying on the floor with another person who also had some, some video from that day, kind of hiding under there so that if we ran across pipeliners or security slash police, whatever they were at the time, and they saw the boat, they wouldn't see me or they wouldn't see my camera. Sheree Foytlin did get arrested that day. I was arrested under, on the property that I was on, [00:24:00] for the critical infrastructure law. And that I, again, had permission to be on that property. And then when I, they put me in jail. So I had two felony, each of those felony arrests would have been five years hard labor in Louisiana. And they mean it when they say labor in Louisiana. So I, it was hard. Sheree was worried that she would be facing the worst case scenario if she were convicted. I was scared. I thought that there was a chance that I would be able to be with my kids and that, so mom is the scariest thing in the world, or to me anyway. Being a reporter on the scene did not help Karen from butting up against Louisiana's oil friendly cops or laws. either. I ended up being arrested twice. Both times after the felony trespassing law went into effect. One time was on the property where I had permission to be and another time a few weeks later at a boat ramp where at the same time in white hat was also arrested. And you know, with that second arrest, [00:25:00] by that time I knew the way from the boat ramp to the jail. I'd been there before reporting on other arrests. But once they got me into the vehicle Instead of going from point A to point B, the deputy took a really long way around circling around these, again, tiny little remote gravel roads now in the middle of the sugarcane fields, you know, the sugarcane is way up at that point in the year. So you've, you know, no one can see even that a car is coming, much less what's happening. It was horrifying because, you know, you hear all kinds of stories about people disappearing in the sugarcane fields. And you know, Anne went through the same thing, but worse. She described how at one point as she was being transported, you know, in the same circular fashion. Another parish police vehicle pulled up and they had her get out of the first car and get into the second car. Now just think for a minute how horrifying that would have been for her. This is a brown woman in South Louisiana in the middle of a sugarcane field [00:26:00] during a battle that's as heated as this. And she's being told to get out of the car like that, um, by people that she knows are not actually working for the parish or protecting her, but people who are working and looking out for the pipeline company. Lawyer Bill Quigley says these are the sorts of tactics that become common when the industry feels like the pushback against it is starting to work. And so when the end is coming and they're desperate, they're willing to use the law. As a means of punishing people for their protests, for their speech, for their activity that should be protected by the first amendment and they're desperate and they're billionaires when you have desperate billionaires, they're going to do everything they can and they don't worry about what the law says and they don't worry that maybe a year from now or two years from now, three years from now, some judge is going to say, well, that was ridiculous and that was illegal. What you did to these people, they're interested in [00:27:00] now. Yeah. Punishing people now, using the law as a tool to punish people who have a different opinion and different conduct about trying to save the human race. Right. Right. And I think we saw that in Louisiana. Remember how, you know, the, there was a court date in November, but they wanted folks out of the way so they could get that work done by November. Because once the work is done, you know, how are you going to undo it? You know, that's absolutely right. Maybe Pam can talk a little bit more about that. Pam is Pam Spees, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She's worked on several cases in support of environmental protest, including various Bayou Bridge cases with Bill. So I think what you're talking about, Karen, is their flagrant trespass on some really important property in the Atchafalaya Basin where, where the company just made a decision. We proved this at trial. They admitted it. They made a financial decision to ignore the law, which [00:28:00] is already so favorable to the corporations, you know, oil companies, oil pipeline companies have the power of eminent domain. They don't even have to work through the state. So the, the laws are already really lax and, and supportive of these companies and this, and Bayou Bridge just decided we're not even gonna adhere to the limited restrictions we have. We're just gonna go out there, start constructing because it's cheaper ultimately to violate the laws that apply to us than it is to adhere to them and delay things. It was a race against time, the ones that, you're right, once they got the pipeline built, Uh, recourse if we had won a trial and prevented them from getting the right of expropriation after the fact would have been, well, now you have to go dig it up and, and no, almost no judge in Louisiana is going to order a pipeline company to do that. It is so burdensome on protesters to, to be hauled into [00:29:00] court and even in these frivolous cases and have to deal with those for two, three years. Until they finally peter out and are dismissed and then by then the damage is done and these companies know that right, right. Yeah. I mean just waiting because they have what four years from the time they arrest you to go ahead and like put those charges through just waiting and just wondering, you know, am I going to be in a Louisiana jail doing hard labor for five years? You know, I was arrested as a reporter, so I wasn't even, you know, I had no attempt to, to get arrested. I stayed where I was supposed to be, and they just basically didn't want me to document what they were doing. Around the world, the fossil fuel industry invests a lot of resources into building local support for its projects and encouraging hostility against its opponents. Land offenders often face threats not only from law enforcement or corporate employees, but also from community members. In South [00:30:00] Louisiana, that's definitely the case. The oil and gas industry has not only ingrained itself in the local culture and pushed through new laws criminalizing protest, it also had local cops moonlighting as pipeline security. That's a combination of factors that made for a really dangerous situation. I had pulled into my driveway, a young woman came running up to me, now there's a field at the end of our road right there, and this young woman come up to me, and it was dark, and she said, I've lost my baby, you know, can you help me find, I've lost my kid. And so I was like, yeah, you know, and I just, you know, went out to help. I did not recognize this person, but I, but she did have a very, like. South Louisiana accent, so I did have reason not to believe her. I got a little bit, maybe like, maybe like a couple hundred yards out into the field and I just got this bad feeling because I kept asking her questions. Is it a boy? Is it a girl? What am I looking for? Like, you know, is it, how old? You know, things like that. [00:31:00] And all of a sudden I took a step backwards because she was getting farther away and almost disappeared when I felt two hands push me down. from the from behind and when they pushed me they just started just hitting me at one point one of them was hitting me with a belt i know and really just kicking my ass honestly and then they you know that i had pulled myself a little bit more back into the light we had a street light there but i was out of it at that point so i i would i knew if i got back to the light i'd be safer and maybe at least someone in my area could see It probably happened very quickly, but it felt long, if that makes sense. And yeah, by the time I made it back to the light, they had disappeared too. And I, you know, didn't see them again. But, you know, I had to get up myself up and dust myself off. I also had children in that house, you know, five of them. And I did not want to scare them. I did, I did not want what I did to try to affect them or as little as possible, you know. So I kind [00:32:00] of, you know, dusted myself off as best I could. I walked in the house with my head up, like nothing was wrong. And my little boy said, you know, wow, obviously that's the situation. And I was like, Oh, I just fell down. You know, I locked all my doors and I locked all my windows. And after that, I got a camera for the, for the, around the house. And I just ate it. You know, we were in the middle of a big struggle. In her congressional testimony. testimony and white hat also talked about this violence against protesters, not just from police, but from some members of the public escalating violence has been used for centuries against people who challenged the concentration and misuse of power. This is nothing new to us, but what we experienced needs to be recognized by all as a coordinated assault on a movement. Indigenous people continue to be the first responders to the worsening effects of climate crisis. Our actions are part of our commitment as caretakers of the places we live in. And [00:33:00] there was nothing I can do. I mean, the truth of the matter is these people are bigger than me in every single way. And, but I wasn't going to let them intimidate me at that point. I was not. I just felt like if I buckled, if I stopped at that point, then anyone A lot of people who are out there trying to do the same thing, which is just say no, would have to suffer the same thing because they would know it would work. So, I kept going. And, a few months later, I was sitting at a Sonic, and I was getting drinks for my babies, and I was getting ready to go home, and I was kind of excited. Because I was gonna get to spend the rest of the afternoon with him. And somebody came up behind me and grabbed, again, somebody grabbed me from behind. I feel, if it wasn't a knife that they had, then it was some kind of metal object. But I didn't know when I looked, but I was pretty terrified. So, they told me that they were going to kill Everyone in my, and not me, they wouldn't kill me, they'd kill everyone in my family and everyone I loved. And then they named off a list of people that I very deeply cared [00:34:00] about. And that was the start of James Backstreet. I couldn't do it. I got my kids out of there and we went somewhere else. It was for those reasons that Three of those arrested on felony charges, Anne Whitehat, Ramon Mejia, and Karen Savage, along with a dozen other organizations and individuals, filed a lawsuit in 2019 to challenge the constitutionality of that law. Pam Spees and Bill Quigley represented them. The lawsuit was challenging the 2018 amendments in the, that the Louisiana legislature passed, which added pipelines to the definition of critical infrastructure. And we brought this suit to challenge the, the constitutionality of the amendments. And one of the problems with, with the way these pipelines were added into the definition of critical infrastructure is that Louisiana has well over 125, 000 miles of pipelines.[00:35:00] The law wasn't limited to oil and gas, it was any kind of pipeline, water pipelines, right? So then you add that and you just turn vast, vast swaths of territory in Louisiana into critical infrastructure. And it didn't specify in any way areas around pipelines. So one problem right off the bat was that it was unconstitutionally vague. And then you add the First Amendment concerns into it and it becomes just very complicated. very clear why this is such a problem. And then we were into discovery, and we, we, we got to take depositions of some of these deputies who were being employed by the pipeline company, who, who disagreed even among themselves how to figure out when and where this law applied. It's, you know, it just really showed what a huge mess these amendments created. Unfortunately, the judge ruled against us. He found that he, he didn't think that it violated the First Amendment. And so we have filed a [00:36:00] motion to reconsider and we're waiting on that ruling. And we're hopeful, you know, if maybe we can change this judge's mind. If not, I think we, we feel we have a really strong case to make on appeal. But the case is still very much in play. From a national perspective, a win in Louisiana, which, like we've heard, is a conservative friend of the fossil fuel industry, would send a strong message to states considering such laws and could even push states that have already enacted them to reconsider. While the constitutional case is in play, the state has since dropped its charges against the protesters. And none of those charges went through, not a single felony charge from that critical infrastructure law went through. And you think about the charges, you think about what it cost to put us in jail, you think about what it cost to do all that, to the state, to the city itself, you know? And these officers, they got a few more bucks for a while, but, I [00:37:00] mean, was it worth it? They drink that water too. also ruled that it was the pipeline company that had been trespassing all along. This is what Loey LaVie had been arguing the whole time and why the landowners had involved them in the first place. And yet, the pipeline company faced a very minor fine and no jail time. Unlike the water protectors, the penalty for destroying private property for corporate gain. A whopping $450 fine, 150 bucks for each of the landowners who filed suit. Those landowners appealed and the higher court later upped the fine to $10,000 plus attorney's fees. For context energy transfer has said the pipeline is capable of moving 480,000 barrels of oil per day. At today's oil prices, that's roughly 43. 2 million dollars worth of oil running through their [00:38:00] land every single day. Completed in 2019, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline now transports oil from the north to refineries in St. James Parish and nearby export terminals. And yep, you guessed it, those are predominantly African American communities located in what's referred to as Cancer Alley because the area is home to so many refineries and petrochemical plants. Even though the pipeline was eventually built, the way Cherie looks at it, Loela V was still a success. For one thing, they were able to buy some land that was the home base for the pipeline resistance fight, and they turned that land into what they call a food forest, with banana trees, turmeric, moringa, and all sorts of plants and veggies that they give out to the community. So yeah, that pipeline went through, but I tell you what, we fed a lot of people and we had that. property now that's now a bayou food [00:39:00] forest and we're replanting after hurricanes come through. We're planting those food trees. We, we had inspired many, many people to, to make change and to, to, to know that they can stand up and even under great oppression and under great pushback like that, that, that there is a reason to do that. So I am, I will never not count Lolli Loppy as a win and I will never say to those people that intimidated us or had to make those vlogs to try to take us or whatever that they won because I don't know what winning is until it's over. And it's far from over, you know, you'll remember I talked about the fish, the musical on the easement and how the oil workers had clapped in case you missed that that's crawfish, the musical, which you heard some tape from earlier in this episode.[00:40:00] Years later, I got finished with this whole campaign. I moved out of there. Safety. I was reading an article and it was about this new solar company that was coming in and in the article, the person had said that they used to be an oil worker. So they had been at a protest and they had seen our musical about crawfish and it had changed their perspective because they thought it was such a, a creative thing to do. And they started a solar power company that was retraining oil workers. I had no idea that that happened. We did not plan for that to happen, but the truth of the matter is anytime you do good things on this earth or for the sake of righteousness, period, it is going to reverberate into the world. I think that it's up to each generation to decide what it is that they will demand for the next generation. And I think that we can demand more and I think that those children and grandchildren and grandchildren deserve more. I guess that's [00:41:00] it. Don't let, um, don't let them do it. We're stronger than we think, we're more powerful than we think, and if we weren't, then they wouldn't go after us like this. They have to use the law to go after us. They have to try to push us down, try to scare us, try to do that, because they know that we are much more powerful than they are. And together we can make that change. God damn, we gotta protect what we already have. We have to do that. And we need to do it like right now. Right now. That's it for this time. Big thanks to Karen for bringing us this story. She'll be back on upcoming episodes about what it looks like to see protests criminalized in the U. S. We'll be leaving the country again in some upcoming episodes, so make sure to come back for those. Drilled is an original critical frequency production. This episode was written and reported by me, Karen Savage. Our senior editor for this season is Aline Brown. This episode was also [00:42:00] edited by Sarah Ventry. Our senior producer is Martin Zaltz Ostwick, who also does our sound design and composed most of the music in this episode. Mixing and mastering by Peter Duff, who also composed some of the music in this episode. Our theme song is Bird in the Hand by Fore Known. Fact checking by Wu Dan Yan. Our artwork is by Matt Fleming. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton. This show was created by Amy Westervelt, who also co hosted this episode. You can find related videos, photos, and print stories for this series, along with all the documentation that we have to go along with the series, at Drill. Media. You can also sign up there for our weekly newsletter. We round up the top five stories on climate you should be reading each week. It's never more than 10 minutes to read and people tell us it makes them feel like they're staying up to date on climate without getting overwhelmed. You can also find us on Twitter at WeAreDrilled. 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