10 January 21
Fund-Raising Is the Hardest Thing We Do
With a budget, this Reader Supported News agency prospers. It's worth it no matter how difficult. Public donations are capable of building a news agency, of the readers, by the readers and for the readers.
Nothing makes the corporate news cartel pay attention faster than a Reader Supported challenger. Get us a budget, we know you can do it.
Thanks to all.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611
10 January 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Robert Reich | With Control of Government, Joe Biden and Democrats Must Deliver for the People
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
Reich writes: "We can't lose sight of this: Millions of Americans are suffering and on the brink of financial devastation."
The economy lost 140,000 jobs in December — the first drop since April, after gains slowed for three months. As the pandemic surges to its deadliest peak yet, the economy will continue its downward spiral and people’s livelihoods hang by a thread.
With control of Congress and the presidency, Joe Biden and Democrats must pass sweeping relief within his first month in office. First up: $2,000 survival checks to every American. And do not give in to faux deficit hawks claiming we can’t afford to spend more. We’re the richest country in the history of the world, and a crisis of this magnitude requires massive relief. We can’t afford anything less — the government must deliver for the people.
A crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump after they stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. (photo: ProPublica)
Right-Wing Extremists Vow to Return to Washington for Joe Biden's Inauguration
Anna Schecter, NBC News
Schecter writes: "In the wake of Wednesday's riot at the Capitol, Trump supporters with extremist views feel emboldened and are vowing to return to Washington for the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, using online platforms to rally each other."
"We will come in numbers that no standing army or police agency can match,” wrote a popular Parler user who frequently posts about QAnon.
“Many of Us will return on January 19, 2021, carrying Our weapons, in support of Our nation's resolve, towhich [sic] the world will never forget!!! We will come in numbers that no standing army or police agency can match,” wrote a popular Parler user who frequently posts about QAnon, and is being tracked by the Anti-Defamation League.
Parler, Telegram chat rooms and the platform TheDonald.win were all used to plan and coordinate the Jan. 6 rally that turned into a riot. Posters explicitly stated their intentions to “occupy” the Capitol. QAnon conspiracy theorists and people associated with militia groups had a visible presence in Wednesday’s crowd.
“Round 2 on January 20th. This time no mercy. I don’t even care about keeping Trump in power. I care about war,” an anonymous person posted on the platform TheDonald.win, which is filled with comments posted by people who lauded those who rioted Wednesday as “heroes.”
Law enforcement is scrambling to identify those who broke into the Capitol building, and are worried about the inauguration as another target.
“There is growing concern that violent extremists are emboldened by the breach of the Capitol, which means the clock is ticking on taking down the most influential incites of violence before they act again,” said Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director and NBC News national security analyst.
Federal and local law enforcement have made dozens of arrests so far in connection with Wednesday's Capitol breach and for violations of the curfew that followed.
The Secret Service, which is supervising security for the inauguration, could not immediately be reached for comment. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, referred NBC News to the Secret Service.
According the National Park Service, which handles permits for rallies in D.C., there are seven First Amendment permit applications in process that overlap with the inauguration date, one of which is clearly for Trump supporters.
Megan Squire, professor of computer science at Elon University and a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center who tracks online extremism, says she’s concerned that since President Donald Trump will not be at the inauguration, extremists will be focused on Biden.
“On January 6th their energy was focused on Congress. On the 20th their energy will be focused on Biden. That’s concerning especially since they’re not remorseful or ashamed. Right now it looks not great,” she said.
Squire has been collecting fliers for as many as 10 rallies planned for Jan. 17 organized by members of the far-right militia movement who call themselves “Bugaloo bois.” They emerged last year showing up at rallies calling for the protection of Second Amendment rights and the group has been on law enforcement’s radar for anti-government activity.
Of most concern is the excitement expressed online by accelerationists, some of the most violent and extreme in the white supremacist movement who believe there is an impending race war.
“On the whole the system’s power took a major hit yesterday,” one person wrote in a Telegram chatroom favored by accelerationists.
“[Accelerationists] are over the moon and talking about how to exploit grievances. They’re on these Telegram groups completely excited about it,” Squire said.
Just because a new president will be inaugurated, according to ADL President Jonathan Greenblatt, doesn’t mean pro-Trump extremists will fade into the background.
“The conspiratorial, baseless narrative of a stolen election will continue to animate extremists for some time to come,” he said.
Security officials at U.S. Capitol building. (photo: Reuters)
ALSO SEE: Capitol Rioter Texted Pals He Wanted to
Shoot or Run Over Nancy Pelosi
Police Found a Pickup Truck Full of Bombs and Guns Near Capitol, Feds Say
CNN
Excerpt: "An Alabama man allegedly parked a pickup truck packed with 11 homemade bombs, an assault rifle and a handgun just two blocks form the United States Capitol Building, according to federal prosecutors."
The revelation is one of the most unsettling details federal prosecutors have made public this week as they sift through what went down when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol. Other people have been accused of taking guns and ammunition onto Capitol grounds.
Lonnie Leroy Coffman, 70, of Falkville, Alabama, is accused of planting the pickup truck.
A bomb squad found the arsenal during the scramble to secure the federal complex after it was overrun by pro-Trump rioters.
Coffman has been arrested and charged with possession of an unregistered firearm and carrying a pistol without a license, CNN reported. He told police that he had mason jars filled with “melted Styrofoam and gasoline.” Police also found cloth rags and lighters.
Federal investigators said that combination, if exploded, would have the effect of napalm “insofar as it causes the flammable liquid to better stick to objects that it hits upon detonation,” according to the court record.
Coffman had parked his pickup truck at 9:15 a.m. ET on First St SE on the Hill, near the National Republican Club, commonly called the Capitol Hill Club. The truck had a handgun on the passenger seat, an M4 Carbine assault rifle, along with rifle magazines loaded with ammunition, police said.
Coffman appeared before a federal judge this week, and is being detained at least until his next court appearance on Tuesday.
Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX). (image: Getty Images/iStock
LSO SEE: More Than a Dozen GOP State Lawmakers
Attended Rally That Gave Way to Riots
Calls Mount for Senators Cruz and Hawley to Step Down: 'Broken Their Oath of Office'
Alex Woodward, The Independent
Woodward writes: "Democratic Senator Patty Murray has emerged the highest-ranking Democratic lawmaker to demand Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley resign, joining growing protests and calls for their resignations or expulsions from Congress after the senators objected to Electoral College votes in the 2020 presidential election."
Top Democrats demand GOP senators step down after objecting to election results that compelled Capitol violence
Chris Coons, Democratic senator from Delaware, has also called on the two GOP senators to resign.
More than a dozen House Democrats are supporting a resolution targeting members of Congress who have supported efforts to overturn election results, provoking a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters to storm the Capitol and threaten lawmakers barricaded inside the building on 6 January, as they convened to formally certify Electoral College votes.
In Houston, protests demanded the Texas senator step down. Texas Democrats Joaquin Castro and his brother Julian Castro also called on Senator Cruz to resign. The hashtag #RESIGNCRUZ trended on Twitter on Friday.
Missouri’s Kansas City Star, Senator Hawley’s home-state newspaper, issued a damning editorial placing the failed insurrection’s blame on his shoulders and writing that he "has blood on his hands in Capitol coup attempt.”
The editorial said that "no one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible” for the violence that led to the death of at least five people at the Capitol, including a Capitol police officer struck in the head with a fire extinguisher and a woman who was fatally shot by Capitol police officer.
Asked whether they should resign on Friday, president-elect Joe Biden said they should be “flat beaten” the next time they run for office, calling their terms “part of the big lie” and comparing them to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
He also said prominent Republicans have admitted to him that “the Ted Cruzes of the world are as responsible, in terms of people believing the lies" as the president.
In his remarks to the Senate, Senator Cruz defended his objections, claiming that many Americans believe the election is “rigged” against them, indulging the president’s lies about voter fraud and election integrity despite a lack of meaningful evidence from neither the president’s own campaign or administration.
Senator Murray said that “there can be no normalising or looking away from what played out before our eyes this week.”
“The violent mob that attacked the Capitol was made up of people who don’t accept democracy, and want to take this country by use of force,” she said in a statement on Friday. “This is not how we keep our people and our country free. As a Senator, I respect every member who disagrees with my ideas. I reserve my right to use my voice to fight for what I believe in. At the end of the day, our job is to keep this country a democracy where voices win, not brute force. Any Senator who stands up and supports the power of force over the power of democracy has broken their oath of office. Senators Hawley and Cruz should resign.”
Republican Senator Tom Cotton, considered a potential 2024 presidential contender, condemned senators Cruz and Hawley after their campaigns sent fundraising texts and emails during the Capitol siege.
“Some senators who, for political advantage, were giving false hope to their supporters, misleading them into thinking that somehow … Congress could reverse the results of the election or even get some kind of emergency audit," he told Fox News on Thursday. “That was never going to happen, yet these senators, as insurrectionists literally stormed the Capitol, were sending out fundraising emails.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Senator Cruz "must accept responsibility for how your craven, self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday. And how you fundraised off this riot. Both you and Senator Hawley must resign. If you do not, the Senate should move for your expulsion.”
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Chair Shelly Fyant poses for a portrait on Jan. 2, 2021, in Polson, Montana. (photo: Tailyr Irvine/The Intercept)
Montana Tribes Hard-Hit by Covid-19 Brace for Republican Takeover
Miranda Green, The Intercept
Green writes: "When Montana's legislature met at the end of December to vote on whether visitors to the state capitol building should have to wear masks, one lawmaker gave an impassioned plea."
Native Americans in Montana are dying from Covid-19 at a rate 11 times higher than white residents.
“I have no stomach to talk about this abstractly; my community has been hit hard,” said Sharon Stewart Peregoy, a Democratic state representative and member of the Crow Tribe. “Even today, I just got a notification that another one has passed. It’s real, folks. We should take the basic steps.”
A colleague called her words “emotional” and “insulting.”
“Science does lie. It depends on which science you are listening to. Different news channels have different scientists,” said Republican Rep. Barry Usher. “It’s the facts.”
The Legislature ultimately voted against a mandate along party lines, making mask-wearing optional in Montana’s seat of government a month after the state experienced a Covid-19 surge that topped the charts globally.
For Indigenous communities, it was just the latest public health battle fought and lost during the pandemic.
“It’s the intersection of highly vulnerable people going above and beyond and folks in rural communities who lean more conservative buying into all the garbage that it’s ‘embarrassing to wear a mask,’” said state Sen. Shane Morigeau, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “I don’t think the state leaders realize [the spread] is their fault — or they don’t care, to be honest. It makes me tear up thinking about it.”
Covid-19 has killed Native Americans across the U.S. at nearly twice the rate of white people. But in Montana, Native Americans are dying from the disease at a rate 11 times higher than white residents. When Covid-19 raged through the High Plains this fall, making the state an international hot spot, tribes and reservations closed their businesses, imposed shutdowns, and introduced curfews. Intensive care units reached zero percent capacity, federally run hospitals on reservations were airlifting Covid-19 patients out, and neighboring states stopped being able to receive transfers. Overworked medical staff quit from the stress.
Then-Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, implemented a statewide mask mandate to mitigate the spread, but in many counties, including those bordering reservations, masks are still rejected and public health officials are ignored, putting Indigenous lives in the crosshairs. On January 4, Bullock was replaced by former U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, Montana’s first Republican governor in 16 years, adding to concern among tribal leaders and public health experts that the pervasive anti-mask movement will soon become the law of the land.
Fault Lines
Shelly Fyant’s family lost three members to the Spanish flu of 1918 within the span of two days. When Covid-19 began spreading across the U.S., she didn’t want the same thing to happen again. Fyant, chair of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council, helped establish a Covid-19 unified command team in conjunction with neighboring Lake County, where tribal residents buy their food.
“Early on, I could see we were unified to a point,” she said of the relationship. “A month in, it started to deteriorate.”
The tribes closed their Flathead Reservation in Montana’s forested, mountainous West to nonresidents in late March but immediately faced a huge hurdle: The reservation is a checkerboard of land owned by both Native Americans and Montana locals who claimed property rights through homesteading in the 1800s. U.S. Route 93, which links Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, also cuts through the reservation. The tribe asked Lake County to agree to temporarily close the route, but county leaders refused.
In late April, when Bullock decided to reopen Montana but allowed local communities to enforce stricter rules, the tribe again asked Lake County to keep restrictions in place. The county punted. So when Fyant found out that a Fourth of July boat parade in support of President Donald Trump was scheduled in the nearby city of Polson on a lake that abuts the reservation, and that a restaurant called The Shoe was holding a barbecue equipped with “three live bands,” she had a hunch her concerns would go unheard.
“The city basically said, ‘We’re not the pandemic police,’” she recalled.
Almost half of Lake County’s Covid-19 cases are tribal, according to the county public health department. When photos emerged from the Independence Day event, it was clear just how little mask-wearing and social distancing had been implemented, but one person in particular stood out: a blond woman on a Jet Ski wearing a feather headdress, much like the Salish and Kootenai chiefs wear — some of their “most sacred regalia,” Fyant said. Tribal members viewed the act as a direct attack on their small community at a time when families were burying their loved ones in bursts.
“It was gut-wrenching,” Fyant said, looking back. “We have lost so many tribal members. … Families upon families are suffering.”
A Toxic Environment
In Montana, which has one of the smallest populations of any U.S. state, the virus has had an outsize impact on rural Indigenous communities. Native Americans make up just 7 percent of Montana’s residents but have accounted for nearly 40 percent of the state’s Covid-19 deaths. The disparity is largely due to the prevalence of underlying health conditions, such as diabetes, in Indigenous communities and the fact that many people lack access to running water and reside in multigenerational homes.
At least 183 Native Americans in Montana have died from the virus, and more than 8,000 have been infected.
“My dad had three of his best friends pass away within two weeks,” said Kaci Wallette, a registered nurse and member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in northwest Montana. “He just called me today to tell me he tested positive.”
Her dad’s diabetes and age put him in a high-risk category.
“I try not to let it get me down,” she said. “It’s a very sad time for our tribe.”
There are 12 tribes spread across seven reservations in Montana, and many share borders with some of the fiercest anti-mask counties.
In Flathead County, north of the Flathead Reservation, a public health official quit her job after she said members of the county commission and city-county board of health were creating a “toxic environment” that focused on bolstering political views instead of locals’ health.
“It’s clear that the underlying motivation by several members of your groups is more closely aligned with ideological biases than the simple desire to do what’s best for the health of the community,” Interim Health Officer Tamalee St. James Robinson wrote in her resignation letter in early December.
She was the second person in six months to resign from the county’s health board.
Bullock sued five businesses in Flathead in October over their failure to enforce his mask mandate, but a district judge threw out the case. Those businesses have since launched a countersuit against the state.
In Pondera County, next to the Blackfeet Reservation, all four members of the health department resigned in early November due to pushback from local leaders.
“In order to be successful, I need to be heard and invested in, the lines of communication need to be open, and frequent contact needs to be in place,” Health Department Director Nicki Sullivan wrote when she quit. “Hearing negative talk within the community about myself … should be thwarted and never accepted.”
Health experts in Lake County are facing similar resistance from local authorities. Emily Colomeda, Lake County health services director, said her team has been extremely limited in their ability to enforce the statewide mask mandate. County officials who do have the authority have not enforced the rule, she said, and businesses like The Shoe have taken advantage of the impasse.
“As health directors, we have no authority. We reached out to the environmental health department to look into it. We were met with resistance from the business, I have to say. The county attorney didn’t want to enforce it,” said Colomeda.
Covid-19 cases in the county spiked following the July Fourth holiday weekend. Colomeda said a handful were traced back to the boat parade and dinner at The Shoe.
“We have a very small staff, four, and the tribe is also in the same county, so we share a population, basically,” she said. “It’s a little frustrating that we are working overtime on weekends and evenings and that this is still happening.”
On New Year’s Eve, The Shoe held another bash that offered a four-course meal, live music, and dancing. But Colomeda’s hands were tied.
“It came to the point where we just kind of gave up on that,” she said. “Obviously our efforts haven’t been validated.”
The Only Ones Wearing Masks
With limited state leadership on masks and infighting across counties, reservations have been left to go it alone to keep their populations safe from Covid-19.
“Those of us in public health, and especially anyone who’s worked with Native communities, knew that when [Covid-19] came and hit, it would hit really hard,” said Cora Neumann, a public health expert who supported the 2014 Ebola response in West Africa for the Global First Ladies Alliance, a partnership she founded with the offices of Laura Bush and Michelle Obama.
Neumann is a public health adviser for Western Native Voice, a nonprofit that advocates for Native American communities. She’s been leading online and in-person tutorials and debriefings with tribes on how to mitigate Covid-19 exposure and deal with the stigma surrounding getting sick. She brought in Beth Cameron, who previously headed the pandemic readiness office that Trump disbanded in 2018, to help draft the guidance.
Neumann says tribes have been the true leaders during the pandemic, at times taking the strongest steps to curb the spread of the virus in Montana. But they are still the main victims of the disease.
“When you have the Crow or Northern Cheyenne or Blackfeet locking down and implementing stay-at-home orders for months on end, but the surrounding counties don’t abide, that’s the problem,” she said. “And who gets sick? The Native Americans get sick.”
But it’s not as simple as staying away from those counties. Tribal residents frequently live in food deserts and rely on neighboring communities for gas and other needs. Something as simple as a trip to the mechanic can be perilous.
“We just got our oil changed at one of the car dealerships where we bought our car. When we go in there, we’re probably the only ones that wear masks around. … We just go there as quickly as we can and get out,” said Susan Webber, a state senator and member of the Blackfeet tribe. “Only the Indians are wearing masks.”
The risk of exposure is glaring. In November, the Blackfeet hosted a digital memorial service honoring 27 members who died from Covid-19.
Webber has served in the Legislature for eight years and lived on the reservation her entire life. Tensions between the reservation and surrounding towns have always been tough. She says she’s been a victim of the “lazy Indian” stereotype, recalling an instance in a supermarket where another shopper incorrectly scolded her for “being on welfare.”
“Native Americans are the largest minority in Montana. So we’re the only ones visible. We’re the dark people,” she said. “Until the Trump administration, it used to be kind of covert. Now it’s overt.”
“As an Indian in Montana, you live with discrimination all the time,” she added. Choosing where to go based on who follows the mask guidelines is just another hurdle for her daily routine.
Webber and others are concerned that Bullock’s successor, Gianforte, won’t help bridge the state’s divide on pandemic policies. Gianforte, who was charged with assault for attacking a reporter during his 2018 congressional run, has been criticized for speaking at the Let Freedom Ring concert in October, which officials said violated health guidelines. The concert was linked to multiple Covid-19 cases. He has also promoted the idea of herd immunity as an effective approach to the pandemic.
In a letter to the state Legislature, Gianforte said his office would be taking “commonsense, precautionary” measures and encouraging visitors to wear masks. He said he will wear one in the capitol building but has not committed to continuing Bullock’s mandate, which required all counties to enforce mask-wearing regardless of active case counts. Gianforte is the only elected governor to take the reins for the first time during the pandemic. He did not respond to a request for comment.
“I generally believe in personal responsibility rather than mandates,” he told a local TV station in December. “I think Montanans will do the right thing when presented with the facts.”
Many remain skeptical.
“In past administrations, when we didn’t have Democratic representation, we’ve seen a little more strained relationships with tribes,” said state Sen. Morigeau, of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “Gianforte, he won, and he deserves the chance to prove me wrong and prove otherwise.”
Webber, meanwhile, said she wouldn’t stick around the capitol building long enough when the Legislature convened in early January to see whether Gianforte stuck to his mask promise.
“It has the potential of being a superspreader event. We are locked in this one capitol building for 90 days. About 250 staff. About 200 lobbyists and then every person who wants to testify for a bill comes from every part of Montana.”
“As soon as I swear in, I’m leaving,” she said. “I can’t take any chances of bringing this back home.”
Bolivia: Coup's Ex Interior Minister Murillo Fled to The US
Bolivia Identifies 7 Suspects Related to Sacaba Massacre
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Bolivia's Interior Ministry Thursday identified seven alleged perpetrators of the Sacaba massacre that took place in Cochabamba city in 2019."
Over 30 people died due to police brutality after the U.S.-backed coup against Evo Morales in Nov. 2019.
The suspects must testify before the Public Prosecutor's Office of La Paz for the violent acts that followed the coup against former President Evo Morales.
"We identified the suspects after interviews with the military, police, and civilians involved," prosecutor Nuria Gonzales said and informed that an investigation is underway to determine the defendants' degree of responsibility.
Until Thursday, Cochabamba's former military chief Alfredo Cuellar was the only officer being investigated for the violent incidents in which the military and police fired on anti-coup demonstrators.
Cuellar, who is under house arrest, denied responsibility for the massacre. Former Cochabamba Police Commander Jaime Zurita is also one of seven police officers to be investigated for charges of homicide.
During the investigative process, the Attorney General's Office will interview Morales and former Vice President Alvaro Garcia as victims.
After the coup d'état, Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) supporters marched in various parts of the country demanding the return of democracy. In Sacaba and Senkata, over 30 people died due to police brutality.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (photo: Getty Images)
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Will Not Face Mass Oil Drilling - for Now
Rasha Aridi, Smithsonian Magazine
Aridi writes: "For the last 40 years, politicians, oil companies, environmentalists, and Indigenous peoples have clashed over whether or not the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) - the largest stretch of intact wilderness in the United States - should be opened up for drilling."
Large oil companies skipped out on the auction, but environmentalists say a worrisome precedent has been set
Now, that battle is finally coming to a close, reports Joel K. Bourne, Jr. for National Geographic.
The ANWR is located within the Arctic Circle in the northeastern corner of Alaska. It is home to an abundance of wildlife like polar bears and caribou, which the region's Indigenous communities rely on and hold sacred. But billions of barrels of oil may lurk beneath the icy surface, making the refuge a target for oil companies and pro-industry politicians, reports Emily Holden for the Guardian.
"If you can’t draw a line at the tundra and keep this one area of the Arctic off limits, then the question is, where can you draw the line and what protected part or wildlife refuge in the United States will remain off limits?" Adam Kolton, the executive director of the environmentalist Alaska Wilderness League, tells the Guardian.
President-elect Joe Biden has announced that he will protect the refuge from exploitation, and the Trump Administration has been racing to seal the deal and auction off parts of the refuge before the end of Trump's term on January 20, reports Andy McGlashen for Audubon.
A build-up of anticipation and angst accumulated as the current administration attempted to auction off the leases on January 6, which would have sealed the fate of the refuge. The administration originally argued that the sale could ring in $900 million, but in a turn of events, the sales came up short. Very short. They only attracted three bidders, and one was the state of Alaska itself, report Tegan Hanlon and Nathaniel Herz for Alaska Public Media.
"They held the lease in ANWR—that is history-making," Larry Persily, a former federal gas line official for Alaska, tells Alaska Public Media. "That will be recorded in the history books and people will talk about it. But no one showed up."
The auction raked in a total of $14 million for 11 tracts of land that cover around 600,000 acres, reports the Guardian. The lack of interest was likely driven by the fact that oil is in such low demand at the moment and that the public has become more critical of drilling because of its effects on the environment and climate, reports Audubon.
Persily tells Alaska Public Media that some politicians have been gunning for drilling in the Arctic for years, but companies don't treasure it like they once did. However, pro-oil politicians have continued the push, arguing the move would help the U.S. become self-dependent on oil and boost Alaska’s economy, reports Alex DeMarban for the Anchorage Daily News.
"After years of promising a revenue and jobs bonanza [the Trump Administration] ended up throwing a party for themselves, with the state being one of the only bidders," Kolton says in a statement. "We have long known that the American people don’t want drilling in the Arctic Refuge, the Gwich’in people don’t want it, and now we know the oil industry doesn’t want it either.”
Despite the few bids, environmentalists aren't celebrating. Now, that even a few leases have been sold, it'll be even more challenging to stop the development, Nauri Toler, an Iñupiaq woman and an environmental organized for Native Movement, tells Alaska Public Media.
"It’s hard to go back after the lease sales—it’s a whole different game after that happens," she said during a protest on Wednesday, reports Alaska Public Media. "It’s pretty heart-wrenching.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.