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MBS

(9,688 posts)
Thu Apr 18, 2013, 05:30 AM Apr 2013

NY Times oped on Keystone XL, Nebraska, and citizen activists

This is really good, IMHO.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/the-keystone-pipeline-fight-is-not-over.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

An excerpt. .

. . . Generally, Nebraskans are a polite, cautious people more interested in weather than politics, and in pie than causes. That is, until recently.. . . Nebraska is a red state and generally not friendly to environmentalists, but the proposed pipeline rejiggered our political landscape. . . . In the western part of our state, landowners told of battling threats from TransCanada that their land would be seized via eminent domain. At a Cornhusker football game at the University of Nebraska, when a TransCanada ad appeared on the Jumbotron, thousands of fans booed.

Many people became involved in politics for the first time. . . Grandmothers created the Apple Pie Brigade and arrived every Monday at the governor’s mansion with small gifts and letters opposing the project. In 2011, bowing to public pressure, Nebraska’s extremely conservative governor, Dave Heineman, asked President Obama to stop TransCanada from building the pipeline through our Sand Hills and over the aquifer. . . Our activism was polite and respectful. Our common language was our love of our state and our hopes for our children. As the rancher Randy Thompson said, “There is no red water or blue water, there is clean water or dirty water.” . .

. . . Today, we still don’t know what will happen with this pipeline. But we do know what has happened to us. Our coalition allowed us to transform our feelings of sorrow, fear, anger and helplessness into something stronger and more durable. We became agents of our fates and joined together in what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called a “beloved community.” We became a state of ordinary heroes who decided that money couldn’t buy everything and that some things were sacred.

The great global skirmishes of this century will be fought over food, energy, water and dirt. Our remote, conservative, flyover state seems like an odd place to make a stand for clean water and fertile land, but we will be at the heart of those battles. We are fighting not only for ourselves but for people all over the world. And we know that everywhere, in their particular places, people are fighting for us. The campaign to stop the Keystone XL is not over. It won’t be over until we give up, and we aren’t giving up.
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NY Times oped on Keystone XL, Nebraska, and citizen activists (Original Post) MBS Apr 2013 OP
Does anyone know when this might come down today? ReRe Apr 2013 #1
Hard to say - comments close on (I believe) the 22nd - Earth Day, ironically enough . . . hatrack Apr 2013 #2
A tactic from GHWB Administration bucolic_frolic Apr 2013 #3
You're probably right... ReRe Apr 2013 #4

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
1. Does anyone know when this might come down today?
Thu Apr 18, 2013, 07:56 AM
Apr 2013

... It probably won't happen this a.m., as PO & Michelle are going to the Memorial Service in Boston. Maybe later this afternoon? They did announce about 2-3 weeks ago that today (April 18th) the decision (XL Pipeline) would be announced. Also, did everyone notice how that Arkansas pipeline leak suddenly rotated out of the news?

hatrack

(59,446 posts)
2. Hard to say - comments close on (I believe) the 22nd - Earth Day, ironically enough . . .
Thu Apr 18, 2013, 08:07 AM
Apr 2013

If Obama gives the go-ahead (and I strongly suspect he will) look for the announcement to arrive late on a Friday afternoon.

bucolic_frolic

(42,679 posts)
3. A tactic from GHWB Administration
Thu Apr 18, 2013, 08:23 AM
Apr 2013

or at least that's when I first noticed it.

Be on both sides of everything. First for it, 5 days later against it

at different times of the news cycle, or week.

Then, on Friday at 11 PM, release the news.

That's when the announcement on Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant was made.

They also like to announce unpopular things before Holidays because no one
is paying attention.

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