Mishpokhe: Marie Parham Walks the Walk

Word today that occasional Jewish Currents contributor Marie Parham was arrested this past weekend at the tar sands protest at the White House. Here’s a shot of Marie being led away in cuffs by the police:

[caption id=“attachment_7037” align=“alignleft” width=“300” caption=“Photo by Shadia Fayne Wood”][/caption]

She writes in an e-mail that she spent 2 hours in a paddy wagon. According to Tar Sands Action -- where organizers will apparently soon be announcing the next steps in this fight -- 1252 people were arrested over the course of the protest. For those of you who haven’t been playing along at home, they went to jail in the hope of stopping a proposed pipeline that will transport oil extracted from Alberta’s tar sands through the American heartland all the way down to the Gulf Coast.

Marie recommends this video of a speaker with the Indigenous Environmental Network, who recounts the brutal toll these projects have taken on local communities. Whether all this will be enough to convince the Obama administration not to sign off on the pipeline seems unlikely to me, but the increasing militance of the environmental movement is long overdue.