WASHINGTON – A Canadian woman was among as many as 50 environmental activists handcuffed and taken to jail Sunday on the second day of peaceful White House protests against TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
Fifty protesters are already in jail following their arrests outside the White House on Saturday, the opening day of a two-week civil disobedience campaign. They’re expected to be released Monday night.
By noon Sunday, police began arresting more demonstrators, including 68-year-old Patricia Warwick of Toronto. A 65-year-old woman from Massachusetts who’s celebrating her birthday was also lead away in handcuffs from a stretch of sidewalks outside the White House.
The activists are facing charges of failing to obey an order governing protests on the sidewalks, said an official with the U.S. Park Police. The protesters were asked to move and when they refused, they were arrested.
Officials for Tars Sands Action, the group that organized the protests, say police originally assured them protesters would be released after being warned. Instead, they have been charged and held in jail for two nights.
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“We’ve been told now that they’re doing it as a deterrent,” spokesman Daniel Kessler said.
The Martin Luther King Jr. memorial is going to be unveiled on the National Mall on Saturday, and police want to get the message across that they don’t want the Keystone protest to mar those festivities, he said.
“Which is ironic because these are peaceful demonstrations, and exactly the type of protests that Martin Luther King advocated,” he said.
Obama will decide by the end of the year whether to allow TransCanada (TSX:TRP) to build the controversial, US$7 billion pipeline. It will transport millions of barrels of Alberta oilsands crude a week through the American heartland and to Gulf Coast refineries.
Opponents say the pipeline is an environmental disaster waiting to happen, pointing to a number of recent spills along pipelines. Advocates say the pipeline will create thousands of American jobs amid a lingering recession, and will also help end U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
Activists from across the U.S. participated in Sunday’s so-called sit-in, including a group of doctors from Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility. They wore white lab coats as they stood at a White House gate and awaited arrest.
“Saturday’s arrests and overnight jailings are already lighting a fire,” Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, who was also arrested Saturday, said in a statement released by Tar Sands Action.
“More people are now inspired, determined, and committed to join… Word is spreading.”
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