Green Drinks Host Sally Gellert Is Arrested Protesting Oil Pipeline

Sally writes

I was arrested on Friday, 2 September, and it was deeply meaningful – and I hope, will contribute to the defeat of this monument to fossil-fuel addiction. The charge was “failure to obey a legal order”, and it is an infraction, not even a misdemeanor. Basically, the equivalent of a traffic ticket, as the trainers [seasoned activists who prepared protesters for getting arrested] explained it. The service at All Souls [Unitarian Church] may have been cancelled, but there were protests every day at the White House. There may not have been arrests, as diverting park police from hurricane-related duties would not have been a good idea for many reasons, but nobody [none of the protesters] took the day off.

A question: was 15 people really the largest delegation from any single denomination? That seems surprising to me, even as it seems a pretty poor showing for a religious group [Unitarian] that prides itself on its history of social action and commitment to social justice. I challenge us to do better in the 2.5 months that we have remaining in which to influence the president: for the pipeline to be built, he must sign a permit declaring that [the pipeline] is in the national interest. That would mean approving a pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico [where the oil would be refined and then sold to the highest bidder, domestic or foreign]. [On its way it would cross] the Ogallala aquifer, which provides drinking water for millions of people and irrigation for most of our agriculture; [it] would be fed by a technology that removes 2 tons of soil and uses 4-5 barrels of water for every barrel of oil [produced], and [the pipeline would produce] only 3 times the amount of energy expended. By comparison, conventional oil produces 100 times the energy [invested to produce it]. I cannot see how this can be in the interest of anything but profit [to the producers at the expense of extensive exploitation of and damage to natural resources].

[signed] Sally Jane Gellert

3 thoughts on “Green Drinks Host Sally Gellert Is Arrested Protesting Oil Pipeline”

  1. Sally, you are an unsung champion.  Thank you from all of us who know you and for the generations to come whom you may be saving.  Congratulations, you activist, you!

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