The protestors seen in my photos have been blurred out for safety and out of respect for their identities and work.

My Mom is usually pretty busy so I hope she doesn’t find the time to read this blog post specifically.

Today I participated in some actions to Stop Line 3. Leaving at 5am in the dark we drove about an hour to our destination. It was dark and cold, our masks would become wet with moisture from our mouths but then freeze up on our faces and eyelashes. We went to a location where Enbridge has an easement on a public road, behind door number one: a giant mud pool with giant machines putting a green (ironic?) pipeline in the ground. Behind door number 2: the other side of the road, bare land cleared of the trees there before with a pipeline laid to go into the ground next. 

Folks gathered at the edge of the driveways going into the site just off the road chanting things like “Can’t drink oil, keep it in the soil”, “Indigenous Rights, not greedy whites”, “Tar sands, bloody hands”, “Protect the Sacred”, “Pipelines are leaky, Protect the Mississippi.” Relatively quickly the police showed up telling us if we went on the property we would be arrested for trespassing, a short man in a uniform with most of his face covered read a 2 page packet to us. Honestly it probably only needed half a page not a whole packet. Also who doesn’t print front and back? Are my taxes paying for this? Anyway that’s not why we are here. Between the road and the Enbridge No Trespassing sign was our safe zone. We were also told if we blocked the road we were going to be arrested. Someone went around writing the jail assistance number on our arms in sharpie. Safety was only about a yard and a half wide, but at least it spanned the entire road. Some people left but not before the cops took down all of our plates. Jokes on you, it’s a rental.  I stayed to express my nonviolent protest to the pipeline within legal limits.

While arrest was not my goal today some folks have the capacity to do it which is important as right now the ground thawing which makes construction possible. If we slow the pipeline process, we cost Enbridge money, the goal being to eventually make it fruitless for them to continue. One person spent over 2 hours under a machine in the morning, this morning was around 29 degrees Fahrenheit. He was arrested face first in the snow after leaving of his own accord.

There was also a woman who somehow secured herself to a machine halting the process. Once a “special team” had to come to remove her, who we believe is the sheriff became very short with us. More threats of arrest came, which makes me  wonder if he knows he drinks the same water as us, or does his pension include Fiji water?

We stayed for hours, but in one special moment we gathered in the best circle we could manage considering the Trespassing sign. We all saged and were led in a moment of grounding by an Indigenous woman. We kneeled and put our hands on the earth. It was cold and muddy but it felt good. One of my companions was shaking because of the cold. I put my hand on their back and the shaking ceased. We all pulsed with energy, later they told me putting my hand on them pushed the cold away. Does the Power of the People count as a renewable energy source? Following our grounding, I busted out what every good act of protest needs, water and snacks and for a while things were smooth.

What kind of story would this be if things stayed smooth? The special team showed up, and took out what looked like a blow torch and a generator to assist in the removal of the protestor on the machine. All day we had no problems from the police for walking across the easement driveway along the side of the road under the condition we do not block the easement driveway. Things changed when the sheriff told a specific organizer that he could not keep walking near him or across the easement, and if he kept up ‘his mouth’ he would be arrested. Important PSA: disrespecting the cops is still not a crime. We were then told that we could no longer pass the easement driveway or we would be arrested. The problem is half the group was on the other side of the easement watching the police try to remove the remaining protestor on the machine. Folks came back to our side and were not stopped or addressed by the police. We confirmed with the present legal observers and we came to the conclusion that being on public land isn’t illegal so acknowledging the risks we all crossed together to sing to the protester during the attempted removal.

After a song, the sheriff took out these big black thick zip ties. I wear glasses but I saw those things quick! My goal wasn’t to get arrested, my Dad would freak out, finding jobs would be harder. I just wanted fresh clean water. Communication about what to do broke out. We all started looping arms with our folks. Myself along with 2 elders and 2 young adults linked together approached the sheriff. We were willing to leave if they would let us even if we didn’t agree with their reasoning however we would have to cross the easement again. The troll under the bridge let us pass without answering a riddle. Most of the group followed hustling to our line of cars. We live to organize another day.

We got to our car and threw the cooler in the trunk. The sheriff and 2 officers came up to our car to start harassing the elders about not getting in the truck fast enough. One of our elders struggled to even hear their complaints. We got out of there going under the speed limit and over using all our signals. We weren’t followed. 

Coming back we all felt drained, we left so early that cooler snacks were the only thing we had eaten. We had to care for ourselves and rest for a while. Trying to help stop Line 3 has fulfilled my soul in a way that I have missed during the socially distanced time of COVID-19. I was drained but it felt right. Some people left, I didn’t get arrested but I could have been, and some were arrested. To me it’s all honorable work even getting arrested. All these folks are getting arrested for something they believe in. We all want clean water, so spend summers splashing around, to drink, to skate on, to fish in, the freedom to use the land, all things we could lose when we create pipelines. America is supposed to be for the People, so as the People when something is wrong we need to change the system to suit our needs not the other way around. Legality has never been morality, we make the laws by the morals we prioritize, however those change over time. Times have changed and now we know the harm that pipelines cause. Take action today. Donate to get supplies to Indigenous protestors on the frontlines here. Thank you to those who have already donated. Or help us spread the word and get people here for the spring!

Spoiler alert: Will discuss plot from Tank Girl, but it came out in 1995 so you had plenty of time to see it. 

Tank Girl started as a comic book drawn by Jamie Hewlett and written by Alan Martin that spotlights Tank Girl, her boyfriend Booga a mutant Kangaroo, and their adventures in drugs, sex, and violence. My first interaction with it’s content was from the movie Tank Girl, released in 1995 which just so happens to be the same year I was born (coincidence? I think not). It would become my favorite movie catapulting me into the comic book world. The film stars Lori Petty as Tank Girl and her life in a post-apocalyptic world in 2033 after a comet hit the earth causing a global drought. The main conflict in the film is over the availability of water. A single company Water & Power has all the water and operates on slave labor to get the water they don’t have. Tank Girl and her rag tag group of friends siphon water, leading to Tank Girl’s friends being murdered. Without getting too much into the plot Tank Girl ends up taking on this company and destroying it (teamed up with Ice Tea as a mutant kangaroo so it’s really worth watching). 

While Tank Girl has been an influential icon for me almost my whole life, for the first time in my life I realized she’s a Water Protector. A few weeks ago, I learned about Line 3. Line 3 is an old Canadian pipeline that transports tar sands from Canada to Wsiconcin. Tar sands look like the black top people use for driveways, but they can’t be transported through a pipeline as a solid, so it gets mixed with cancer causing chemicals and pushed through at a high pressure. The pipeline has had over 900 “structural anomalies” stated by Enbridge, the company responsible. Their plan to fix it consists of leaving this old pipeline exactly where it is contaminated and all, and carve out a new pathway for a brand new pipeline. 

If you thought it can’t get worse, it does, so buckle in. The brand new pipeline is not only outdated technology in a world that is switching to renewables, but the land it goes through in Minnesota is Ojibwe Treaty Territory, watersheds including going under the Mississippi River, and cutting through wild rice fields. The Ojibwe people have stepped up to fight against Line 3 to protect the water, the burden to fight for justice once again being placed on oppressed groups. Not only are Natives the most managed ethnic group in the US, but reservations are currently some of the most contaminated land in the US. Contaminating watersheds wouldn’t just affect Natives, it would affect everyone who depends on that water shed. That should sound scary but what makes it terrifying is that Line 3 will extend to Superior, Wisconsin, which is where Lake Superior is. The Great Lakes system is completely interconnected putting all these bodies of water at risk.

These companies just want more money, meanwhile we just want clean water. That’s why I’ve spent the last few weeks applying for a grant through my job. Recently the grant was approved so I along with a team of organizers and community leaders have spent the last 2 days traveling to Minnesota to join our Indigenous brothers and sisters in the fight against Line 3. Yesterday I got to stand by the Mississippi River for the first time as night was falling. Water is extremely powerful, I was surprised when I couldn’t hear it. The frozen top insulates the water and the sound. I was blown away by the quiet, seemingly silent to me but bursting with life inside and providing life to its surrounding. In the moment I couldn’t see myself anywhere else. We fight for the water because it gives life and we need it but also because it has its own identity and was here so much longer than we have been. 

Maybe it’s all the comic books I read or the movies I was raised on but I felt the call to step up as a Water Protector because it’s the right thing to do. Our Native community has asked for more boots on the ground because as the ground thaws for spring construction can move forward making every moment count. Every moment we cause the pipeline to delay is money we are costing Enbridge and money is the only language corporations speak. I urge anyone who can travel to come as well.

I will document my trip here in hopes of raising some awareness about what is happening at Line 3. I am currently fundraising money so supplies can be purchased for the Water Protectors Camp, if you are able please donate here, everything helps. There is a large need for mud boots in particular.

As a Climate Justice Organizer, I get to tell my story of self often, it only makes sense that I start with my story here as well. My name is Kelly Camacho, and I am a cis woman (she/her/hers), born in Buffalo, NY in the 90s. I grew up the youngest of 3 children in a Puerto Rican household. The rest of my family was born and raised in NYC, only moving to Buffalo a few years before I was born. I was raised on the east side of Buffalo, known for being segregated; the east side has been a predominantly low-income Black neighborhood plagued by a history of redlining, a lack of funding, and environmental racism. 

Growing up, one of my favorite things to do was walk about 4 blocks from my childhood home to the local branch of the public library on Westminster Ave, right next door to the neighborhood public school, Westminster Public School #68 where I attended kindergarten. The Westminster Branch of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library (B&ECPL) was the place where my brother used to do Battle of the Books, a summer reading and trivia competition for kids, a place where I held my first snake, and was even where I got my very first library card. Before I was able to age into Battle of the Books, my local branch closed down. Due to low academic performance, Westminster Public School would become Westminster Charter school and expand their space to incorporate the bones of my library. My parents sent me to a nearby Catholic school, St. Aloysius Gonzaga School, for some of my elementary years in hopes of a better education. By 4th grade I would have to change schools again and take an almost hour long bus ride to a better performing charter school in South Buffalo, known for being a low  income white area. 

During my time attending South Buffalo Charter School, I rode the bus with what seemed like all of the other children of color that were at the school, before we unboarded and were diluted by the general population of the school. I was quiet and liked to read, so I was made fun of regularly. I performed well in school, in part because during that time my mom was on the road to becoming a teacher so she made sure we did our homework and studied. Unlike most of my peers I had a father in my household, a privilege that granted additional stability, allowing me to succeed even more in academics. By the time I was picking out high schools to apply to, I was looking at the top schools, and one of my teachers told my mom and I to take the gamble and try to get into City Honors, the top performing public high school in our area and a top ranked high school in the US. City Honors isn’t a public school that you can just apply to, applicants are also required to take an entrance exam whose score determines if you earn a spot.  Most of the kids in my grade didn’t bother applying because of the grade requirements, the few that I knew who applied were all white women, and after the test my  friend told me she stopped taking the test halfway through out of boredom. 

I qualified for City Honors, but there weren’t enough seats, so I attended the Da Vinci high school orientation with my best friend and signed up to play volleyball. Then I got a letter from City Honors saying there was a spot, while I was already set up to start at Da Vinci, this was an opportunity my Mom wasn’t going to let me pass up. I went to City Honors without even getting to go to an orientation and no friends to pull me out of my comfort zone and into activities. The culture at City Honors is centered on mostly rich white kids who have been at City Honors since 5th grade and went to Olmsted, a high performing public middle school before that. It is a well known rumor in Buffalo that a large portion of those kids aren’t even Buffalo residents but rather come from the surrounding suburbs. I was an outsider by education, race, and class. I was given the “you only got in because you are xyz” speech from one of my classmates as a freshman even though I took the same test and passed, and the same speech from one of my close friends when we were getting into colleges. It is common for the achievements of People of Color to be delegitimized when getting into competitive spaces like higher education because of race. As if most schools aren’t dominated by white people at times unqualified ones, look up legacy admissions. 

One part of City Honors’ program that profoundly changed me was the internship component of the International Baccalaureate Program (IB), for seniors after the IB exams are over. As a senior I didn’t drive, so my parents drove me to make sure I was getting to school safely each day. I got dropped off before most teachers arrived at school by my mom on her way to teach and picked up by my father in a big white box truck that contained all his tools for maintenance work. So for my internship I needed something accessible, a concern not held by my peers of means. For my internship, I got the privilege of working in the City Honors community garden known as Pelion Garden under Caesandra Seawell.

Caesandra changed my life because she was representative of something I had never seen at City Honors before; she was a powerful, smart, experienced, low income woman of color that genuinely cared about me. She didn’t care about what people thought. She didn’t care about getting dirty. Her goal was to get folks to come together trying things they had never done before from tasting edible flowers to getting elbows deep in manure. Caesandra is someone I am so grateful for and we maintain a relationship to this day. She made the outdoors a part of my community and I wasn’t ready to let that go.

I went to college looking for a way to find a career working outdoors. It took me a few tries but I found the Environmental Studies Interdisciplinary program at the University at Buffalo. I loved my major. If you are familiar with the program, you probably know Sandy Geffner, the iconic advisor and founder of Earth Spirit. I loved that I got to take classes like Wilderness where I learned to make fires, identify plants, and go for hikes. It was almost everything I wanted. I noticed fairly quickly that, like most of my past experiences, I was one of the few people of color in my major and of that small group there were no men of color at all. 

It wouldn’t have been as bad if the program wasn’t absolutely tone deaf to our lack of diversity. All the professors were white. I learned about tragedies like Love Canal over and over again, but specific examples of environmental racism were rarely discussed, the only exception being an Environmental Sociology class I took, which -you guessed it- was taught by yet another white woman.

In my least favorite class of my major, Sustainability 101. I had two white female teachers, one of whom was a thin white woman with curly blond hair who regularly threw microaggressions my way. In college I lived with my parents and we were all raising my nieces together. One time my youngest niece was sick and needed to go to the hospital so my Mom took her. My father’s schedule as a plumber is on call so it was always unpredictable. I had quizzes that day so my niece went to school with me. In her class my teacher shamed me for having to bring my niece to class instead of her being in school. The kicker is she is a mother. I think about that moment more than I probably should. For such a small moment in my life it stuck with me because it was the first time someone had ever embarrassed me in front of my niece. I doubt she even remembers, but raising children in this society and never once struggling to get your child to school is a privilege, a class privilege not all people have. If systematic racism wasn’t enough my program had a healthy dose of classism as well. 

I left college thinking I would become a park ranger. After some real world experience interning for the forest service I realized that I needed more. I wanted to build a bridge that connects the natural world to all people regardless of class, race, sexuality, ability, or identity. It is only when all people have a more connected relationship with the environment that we will get people to care about it enough to protect it and that’s something that I am committed to working towards everyday. While this is nowhere near my entire story I hope this helps you understand where I am coming from as I work and continue to write about environmental issues.