Portside

It is not too late for President Obama to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, imprisoned for past forty years. Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which promotes Native American rights. In 1975, during a confrontation involving AIM members, two FBI agents were shot dead. Peltier was convicted of their murders, but has always denied killing the agents. The judge who authored the decision denying a new trial, has since voiced support for his release.

Indigenous leaders are calling on us to take to the streets and disrupt "business-as-usual" one week after the election to demand that President Obama's Army Corps of Engineers and the incoming administration stop the Dakota Access Pipeline -- and all those after it. As of now, there are 102 events planned (see map). It's time for the Administration to take immediate action to stop this pipeline.

If the United States lived up to its own ideals there would be no stolen water, land, and dams on the Missouri River and the Army Corps of Engineers would have a long history of real negotiation with the tribes instead of a pretend consultation.

NoDAPL - No Dakota Access Pipeline - Stand with the Native Peoples at Standing Rock. You have seen the stories, the posts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. What can you do? Can you go to Standing Rock? Why not contribute or send needed supplies. Can you host a solidarity house party? Here's how you can help, how your solidarity can be expressed.

The people who are camped at Standing Rock are giving President Obama the opportunity to show how a managed decline in the use of fossil fuels is possible. And, if done right, inspiring. As the president said, “This gives us the best possible shot to save the one planet we’ve got.”

Supporting Native Americans and their tribes, environmental, climate protection, human rights, and many other groups joined the campaign against the pipeline. The Obama administration intervened to temporarily halt the pipeline. The Dakota Access Pipeline has become an issue of contention within organized labor. Why has this become a divisive issue within labor, and can it have a silver lining for a troubled labor movement?

Reader Comments: AFL-CIO Constituency Groups Stand with Native Americans to Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline; Largest Prison Strike in History Draws Attention to Unpaid Labor; Sanders Says: Elect Clinton-Then Mobilize; Invisible Workforce: Death, Discrimination and Despair in Temp Industry; Announcements: Dollars&Sense - Annual Labor Issue; Studs Terkel; Many Rivers to Cross: Art & Social Justice Festival; Blood in the Water: Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Dallas Goldtooth, a veteran organizer of the Keystone XL fight, is amazed at the historic support from tribes at Standing Rock—even tribes that rely on resource extraction.

Reader Comments: Standing Rock - Protest, Solidarity and Pension Funds; Hillary Right About Trump Supporters; GOP Manipulation and Voter Suppression; Class War by Other Means; Saudi Arabia; Women's Boat to Gaza Sets Sail; Facts and Numbers to Fightback With - EPI's new data crunching tool; Announcements: Virtual Book Discussion about `Because of Sex; 50-Year Rag Reunion & Public Celebration - Austin, Texas