As we have learned over the centuries, when it comes to burning witches, it doesn’t really matter if you have burned a real witch or just someone who, in your fevered, partisan, and paranoid imagination, could easily become a witch in the future. It is the burning that is the message.
Steingraber said she cannot protect her children from harm or plan for their future without taking climate action. For her, engaging in climate activism is of the same importance as other safety precautions like vaccinations or paying attention to car seat recalls.
In the past week there was another confrontation near the pipeline construction area on Beech Plain Road in Sandisfield between police and protesters in which three more arrests were made. One woman, Karla Colon-Aponte, was thrown down and pinned to the ground by a Massachusetts State Trooper hired as security for the pipeline project. A video captured that incident.
"We demand TD Bank stop using our money to fund tar sands pipelines that our communities and planet cannot afford. We call on our neighbors, elected officials, and pension managers to close all accounts with TD Bank unless they immediately stop financing tar sands pipelines."
-- Divest the Globe statement
"The continued construction of fossil fuel infrastructure is killing our planet and her people. It is our civic duty to do all that we possibly can to stop this construction, which is unnecessary given known and present options for renewable energy."
-- Priscilla Lynch, a member of the Sugar Shack Alliance
“Through our presence, we will bear witness to the beauty of Spectacle Pond, protest its despoilment, and resist the fossil fuel industry’s continued degradation of our precious collective resources for private profit.”
-- Sugar Shack Alliance
At the Lower Spectacle Pond picnic area, about 80 people gathered at 10 a.m. to not only protest the pipeline but support "the need for solidarity against fossil fuel infrastructure across the country," said a Sugar Shack Alliance spokesperson.
State Sen. Adam Hinds: "If anybody's learned anything from this election, it's that elections have consequences – serious policy consequences. They are absolutely gutting the EPA at a rate that even the most pessimistic person would be surprised about right now." Hinds was also sharply critical of the state in allowing the pipeline project to move through the Otis State Forest, which is state-owned land ostensibly protected from development.
Earlier in the day. Sugar Shack had been staging what it called the Funeral for the Age of Fossil Fuel by carrying a coffin out onto Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s easement.
Sitting right next to the existing right-of-way being widened aggressively by Tennessee Gas Company is a "Thoreau Cabin," so named for American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who wrote the famous essay on civil disobedience.
"This is obviously fear of a trial. We want our day in court to talk about both the immorality and illegality of what's going on ... we want a trial."
--- Vivienne Simon of the Sugar Shack Alliance
“I want to raise the idea of conservation and civil disobedience. This is a symbol of our resistance and our resolve to stop this.”
--- Sugar Shack Alliance member Will Elwell