🧵1/6) I was just traveling for work internationally and I was so bent out of shape about how many people are engaging in complicity and complying with invasive government asks simply because it's uncomfortable to do so, or whatever else their excuse is.

🧵1) I support every single person's human right to self defense and the means they choose to fight their occupation and subjugation, including the occupier's accomplices and supporters.

I saw someone invoke Martin Luther King Jr 's and Malcolm X's name in the same breath as Charlie Kirk demonizing

Working with wonderful relatives this week. #Indigenous #Indigenousrights #humanrights

His damage total wasn’t broken down by event or attributed to any group. He included damages in Iowa and Illinois where Greenpeace never visited. Hard to imagine any organization or group or individual is responsible for all this. 11/

His calculation was the total damages up to early December when USACE denied the easement. He did not take into account pre-December construction stoppages related to Army Corps orders. 10/

Another witness today was an expert on construction damages. He estimated $14,564,048 million in construction contractor costs, attributed to protests: from hiring security to installing barbed wire, to standing around time, to cleaning up debris. 9/

Energy Transfer is drawing on the “outside agitator” and paid protester boogieman. I’m curious to see how Greenpeace will tackle this when they start presenting their defense next week. 8/

Lots of work has been put in in the last week to paint a portrait of professional protesters. Energy Transfer showed an invoice indicating that an Indigenous person from Canada who locked down to construction was being paid by Greenpeace during the time he was there. 7/

Another exhibit was a letter from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe dated August 15, 2016, calling on Indigenous peoples to stand with Standing Rock against DAPL. This refutes the idea that the Standing Rock movement was a Greenpeace thing. 6/

www.facebook.com/StandingRock...

Mahmoud said too that no professional archeologist reviewed the sites identified by Standing Rock before the pipeline company sent bulldozers in, one day later. “It was unnecessary,” he said. 5/

Mahmoud says no sacred sites were destroyed during DAPL construction. He claims it’s impossible because of a 1982 pipeline built along the DAPL footprint

Mahmoud also acknowledged that archeological sites protected by law can be different than culturally significant sites for Indigenous people 4/

“It wasn’t about protesting; it was about trespassing,” Mahmoud said of ET’s previous lawsuit against the SRST chairman.

The distinction doesn’t totally make sense. Protests historically and today have at times involved trespass. You can't fully disentangle civil disobedience from law-breaking 3/

Among the exhibits presented was a memo to Trump’s transition team dated Dec 16, 2016. Attorneys with Gibson Dunn helped draft it; Mahmoud signed it. The DAPL easement was granted soon after. 2/

Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace DAY 7

Today on the stand: Joey Mahmoud, Energy Transfer’s executive in charge of DAPL during construction 1/

Jury selection just wrapped in the Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace trial. By my count:

7 of 11 of the jurors have ties to the fossil fuel industry.
3 work at fossil fuel companies
3 have husbands with industry ties
1 has mineral rights

I'll be here all month covering the trial for Drilled.

1) As the socio-political landscape in the so-called United States continues to evolve, I’ve found I have a lot to say. I’m in my fourth year of practicing law. My practice has solely served Indigenous-led non-profits that in turn serve Indigenous grassroots movements, Indigenous Nations, and work

Sometimes our government’s racism looks like incompetence and indifference. Because a federal clerk filed a treaty map under the wrong letter, Yakama Nation lost over 90,000 acres to Washington State. Now, the tribe wants it back. grist.org/indigenous/s...

One radiant source of hope to emerge in this time of so much darkness is that so many of us now know that we have spiritual kin that come from different tribes, nations, and faiths. Everyone whose heart bleeds for Palestine, Sudan, Congo and those being crushed at the imperial core, are my folk.

It’s easier to blame activists than confront the real issue: the Democratic Party has long been shaped by powerful forces—corporate interests, lobbyists, and consultants—whose influence has neglected the real crises facing everyday Americans.