Two arrested as impacted residents in the path of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access, Mariner East, Trans-Pecos, Rover, and Bayou Bridge pipelines demand accountability for company’s actions from unitholders; executives
[Dallas, TX] This morning, pipeline giant Energy Transfer Partners’ (ETP) special meeting of unitholders was met with a wave of protests against ETP’s environmental and human rights abuses. Inside the meeting, Waniya Locke from Standing Rock, Cherri Foytlin from south Louisiana, and Ellen Sue Gerhart from south-central Pennsylvania disrupted the meeting, calling out unitholders and executives for their complicity in ETP’s destructive practices. Cherri and Waniya were both arrested. Others soon entered the hotel with banners, effectively shutting down the meeting. Meeting attendees included ETP CEO Kelcy Warren, who has come under scrutiny for openly calling for pipeline protestors to be “removed from the gene pool.”Q3 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Outside the meeting, held at the Dallas Park Cities Hilton, activists dropped a multi-story banner from a parking structure reading “Kelcy Warren Hates Black & Brown People.” Demonstrators held a rally with props and large banners.
“Unitholders are culpable for the damage and destruction perpetrated by ETP,” said Ellen Sue Gerhart, whose land was seized by ETP for the construction of the still-incomplete Mariner East 2 Natural Gas Liquids pipeline in south-central Pennsylvania. “ETP routinely and blatantly ignores local zoning ordinances, permit requirements, and privacy laws. Any agency who grants permits, any judge who grants eminent domain, any individual or institution that provides financial backing to this company is responsible for ETP’s water contamination, destruction of wetlands, and violations of human rights.”
“They’ve shackled grandmothers, used attack dogs on people, lied, stole, bribed, maimed, and poisoned, all over the lands,” said Cherri Foytlin of the L’eau Est La Vie camp in south Louisiana. “From my perspective, Kelsey Warren and ETP have well-earned every bit of bad karma that the universe can muster. So then to the universe I say, “I am your humble servant to that righteous cause. Use me up.”
“I am Athabaskan Dené, Húŋkpapha Lakota, Bdewákhaŋthuŋwaŋ Dakota, and Anishnabesaid,” said Waniya Locke of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “I saw first hand the devastating impact that the Alaskan pipeline had on my Dené side with the Valdez oil spill and the cancer that affected the bodies of my loved ones in Alaska. Then at Standing Rock, my Húŋkpapha relatives and I saw first hand the violence of ETP as they forced their pipeline on us. This is the continued genocide of Indigenous Peoples – destroying our homelands, destroying our way of life.”
“All people, unitholders, and the citizens of Dallas NEED to know that Energy Transfer Partners only cares about greed,” said Yolanda Bluehorse of Society Native Nations in Dallas. “People need to know that ETP not only has the worst spill record among pipeline companies, but they violate human rights, harm people and families, break environmental laws consistently. Texans need to know what this company is really doing in and outside of our state. It is time that we stand up to protect this planet and us, because time is running out.”
#StopETP is a coalition of communities and organizations working together to protect water, air, land, and people from Energy Transfer Partners.
