Discussion for article #238955
The St. Johnâs is an absolutel beautiful bridge and it looks like the protesters use that to greatest advantage.
Itâs good to see that federal officials of the judicial branch have joined their brethren in the legislative branch in Alaska by licking the boots of the petroleum interests.
3 Likes
Authorities used boats, personal watercraft, poles and their bare hands to remove protesters in kayaks and hanging from bridges...
To which I can only think: well then, fuck the âauthorities,â especially the sonsfobitches in the State Department and White House that made this all necessary.
1 Like
Got home from serving on Jury duty yesterday to watch this finally conclude. The helicopters overhead woke me up earlier in the morning.
Yep. We love our bridge (I live in the St. Johns neighborhood, note, no apostrophe). It and one rail-only lift bridge are the only ones that cross the Willamette River between where the ship had been in dry dock for repairs and the Columbia river. While one non-Greenpeace protester bike-locked himself to a railing on the train-only bridge (which is a Union Pacific rail line that runs through North Portland we call âthe cutâ) it would have provided no ability to actually delay or deter the ship from transiting under it.
So while the St. Johns bridgeâs beauty only add to the media impact of it, it was all about type of bridge and location.
I agree with the larger goal this protest was aiming for, highlighting the need for real action to transition off fossil fuels for reasons of climate change (as well as other real reasons, from distortion of foreign policy because of where oil is predomnetly found, etc.).
But until we get a Congressional majority that takes this issue seriously and willing to take the action needed to change course, only reiterating the issue and bringing it again and again to public consciousness is all we can do. The target of âgetting Obama to âchange his mindââ is a non-serious goal. Only when national policy and (critically) the laws are changed can drilling in the arctic be stopped.
The AP article doesnât give some of the details and gives a somewhat inaccurate description of the actual passage of the ship under the bridge. About an hour and a half before the ship started to make its second attempt (it stopped and turned around previously) the Portland Fire Department asked several of the bridge protestors if they were going to voluntarily come down. They refused, and then law enforcement attached to the ropes of the first of three protestors over the deepest part of the river channel and cut the climbers main line and then lowered the protestor using the PDFD attached line they had full control of towards a LE river boat below. The protester at that point decided to lower herself under her own power onto the waiting boat. Same happened to the next two hanging protestors. At that point a wide enough âgapâ in the hanging protestors was there for the ship to pass under the bridge. The kayakers temporarily halted the ships progress again just short of the bridge while LE watercraft, zodiacs, a few river patrol boats and several wave runners moved kayakers and kayakers who fell out to jumped out of the kayaks when blocked by LE craft and swam in front of the ships path.
Once the path was cleared enough, the ship moved under and past the bridge. After the ship passed, about 5 mins later or so, the first of the remaining hanging protestors lowered themselves down, and within an hour all the protesters had lowered themselves down after basically all the kayakers left the river as well.
Just thought I would give the more detailed accounting so as to make clear only 3 of the hanging protesters were removed from the bridge before the ship made its way past the bridge. The rest came down voluntarily.