Sawant wins in Seattle

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Enbridge directly credits the failure of Keystone XL for giving them the market to transport tar sands. “Now that we’ve got demand from our shippers … [they] have asked us to bring the capacity up,” an Enbridge spokesperson told the author in July 2014, when the expansion was on the drawing board.

Other companies are building pipelines as well. Ac­ cording to The New York Times, two million barrels of new oil pipeline capacity has come on line in the Gulf of Mexico region over the past three years, and more lines are planned. But there is growing resistance to new oil pipelines on the local level that could strength­ en and rejuvenate the mass movement—if grassroots activists are given the publicity and resources that na­ tional groups have to offer.

On Nov. 2, seven protesters in Duluth, Minn., were arrested during an occupation of the Enbridge offices there. That protest was organized by a coalition of Native American and non-Native activists. Honor the Earth, a Native American non-profit group based in Bemidji, Minn., has organized multiple horse-riding protests and blockades against the company’s pro­ posed Sandpiper Pipeline, which would transport oil from the Bakken deposits to Midwestern refineries.

In Western Canada, First Nations groups are fighting Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline project. That project would include two parallel pipelines between western Alberta and a marine terminal in British Co­ lumbia, transporting tar-sands crude westward for export to Asia, and natural gas condensate eastward. The Stephen Harper administration approved the project on Oct. 5, but many legal challenges and po­ tential mass civil-disobedience campaigns lie ahead.

First Nations are also fighting Kinder Morgan’s pro­ posal to expand its Trans Mountain pipeline, which runs from the Alberta tar sands to a Vancouver-area port, from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day.

Sixty-six First Nations signed the Save the Fraser ed 3900 construction jobs over two years but only 50 long-term operating positions. Other pipelines have similar job numbers.

Rather than pushing for a 180-degree pivot to clean renewable energy sources, which could employ many times the number of workers as pipelines, many U.S. labor misleaders applaud the expansion of U.S. and Canadian pipeline systems and other fossil fuel proj­ ects that threaten human existence through their im­ pacts on the climate.

Climate activists should seek to win over unions by pointing out that there are no jobs on a dead planet and demanding a just transition to renewables with guaranteed full employment at union wages for dis­ placed fossil-fuel workers. To bring the disparate struggles over local projects together into a cohesive whole, we need a broad-based, democratic, politically independent, and mass action-oriented coalition that can create cohesive demands and pilot the overall movement.

The upcoming Paris climate talks provide an oppor­ tunity to move forward in this vein. Capitalist world powers are planning for an international carbonemissions agreement that many expect will allow for an overall increase in emissions, which could set a course for a catastrophic temperature increase of 4 degrees centigrade or more. Climatologists have warned that any increase over 1 degree poses severe threats to human society, but we are currently on track for a 4-6 degrees rise by 2100.

350.org has called for a “global weekend of action” on Nov. 28-29, consisting of local actions around the country. In a note of progress since the People’s Cli­ mate March, the group now is promoting the general demand to “keep fossil fuels in the ground and finance a just transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050.”

Globally, there will be mass protests in many larger cities, culminating in what is expected to be the larg­ -On Nov. 4, Socialist Alternative candidate Kshama Sawant won re-election to her seat on the Seattle city council. In a state with voting by mail only, the ballots will continue to trickle in. But at press time, she has received 55.04% of the votes while her Democratic Party oppo­ nent, Pamela Banks, has 44.37%.

Sawant won a hard fought campaign with hundreds of volunteers. She also defeated an onslaught of money ($400,000) that went to her opponent. At the beginning of the campaign the Democratic mayor said the priority must be to not re-elect Sawant, so that things “can be normal again on the city council.”

Pamela Banks told her supporters to not wor­ ry since there would be plenty of money for her campaign, including out-of-state Democratic Party PAC funds. Two weeks before the elec­ tion, Banks also received Republican money to help defeat the socialist Sawant.

In her election night speech, Sawant ad­ dressed the amount of corporate cash that was used to try to defeat her: “We have shattered the myth that there is nothing an independent candidate can do against the avalanche of cor­ porate money.”

She also pointed out that the Democratic Par­ ty is not a tool for the working class to obtain power. “We need a new political party that is 100% on our side, a broad-based working-class party.”

— ANN MONTAGUE SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 2015 5