by • March 1, 2017
Standing Rock, North Dakota (TFC)— The Fifth Column News contacted Michael Wood Jr. regarding his organization Veterans Stand and it’s Standing Rock operations. Wood responded shortly before the government issued eviction orders, then raided the remaining camps. He relayed Veterans Stand’s goals and its volunteer’s experiences at Standing Rock.
Veterans Stand unites US veterans wanting to “defend America from enemies, foreign and domestic”, its website reads. Former Baltimore PD Sergeant of 10 years and US Marine Michael Wood Jr. currently serves as the organization’s executive director. According to Wood, VS has “ a continually growing volunteer staff of 16”. It’s staff largely consists of military veterans wishing to continue fulfilling their oaths to protect.
Veterans Stand also maintains a lengthy roster list of “thousands of veterans who have signed up wanting to participate.” This has created an “interesting issue” for VS field operations. “If we released the floodgates, we simply would not have the resources necessary.” While this shows the youth of Veterans Stand, it also highlights a resounding public support.
“Out in Standing Rock”, says Wood, “our Secretary of Operations, Chris Duesing (Capt. US-Army), is leading a mission with the current fundraiser to support the efforts there, under service to the Cheyenne River Camp.” Funding currently allows Veterans Stand “50-100 staying at the Cheyenne River Camp to build infrastructure as needed to fulfill the requests of the indigenous nations”, Wood explained.
“The scope of our operations is fundamentally one of serving the communities that request our assistance. Service, is a broad scope of a term and intentionally so. Everything is on the table for our responses. Of course, our individual members have political leanings, but as an organization we could not care less. No group is safe from our attention if they become an enemy of the people, foreign or domestic.”– Michael Wood Jr., Veterans Stand
Whereas Wood reports no member of VS arrested, other organizations aren’t so lucky. Shortly before the latest stint of raids and burnings, members of a group–Veterans Respond–were arrested by authorities at Standing Rock.
“We have communication with Veterans Respond,” says Wood, “and intend on cooperating with them when appropriate.” He did, however, indicate the two maintain “fundamentally different missions and ways of conducting ourselves.”
Possibly shielding VS volunteer’s from arrest is their shying away from protesting themselves. “We are primarily voluntary defenders and logistical supports of the people we serve”, he told TFC journalists. Wood also noted, “a dramatic difference in the way authorities respond to civilian water protectors, as opposed to Veterans Stand”.
“Being an adamant supporter of Black Lives Matter, I have long observed a dramatic difference between the way police treat me and civilian protesters. Generally speaking, the police will avoid me and will go after peaceful protestors. Avoiding me is a delay tactic, but I do not think that tactic will last much longer, they will have to choose. Standing Rock is not the only battle, it simply encapsulates the battle that is affecting us all, state oppression.” — Michael Wood Jr., Veterans Stand
Operating so close to the action, however, inevitably means you get caught in the middle. “We have seen the same things everyone else has seen. Sound cannon, less lethal weapons (which ARE lethal, just not as likely to be lethal)”, Wood described to TFC, “ and the traditional tools of violence.”
Moon Rise at Standing Rock – Photo Credit – Debra Cohen
It then became imperative to ask Wood of possible surveillance attempts on volunteers at Standing Rock. Countless water protectors, journalists, and protesters have reported electronic and physical surveillance since the beginning. Reports, alongside becoming more numerous and increasingly disturbing, are largely consistent. Multiple organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have launched investigations into what this could be.
“I am just about the last person to get conspiratorial”, Michael Wood Jr. told TFC. “Despite that reluctance, there have been way too many coincidences, to be coincidence. The weird cellphone behavior; clicks on calls, computer glitches, etc, are incredibly suspicious.” These phenomena, while rampant at Standing Rock, appear whenever you find police surveillance operations.
Despite this, and continued destruction of Standing Rock’s camps, Veterans Stand remains firm. The organization, according to Wood, also isn’t limiting its operations to oil protests.
“Speaking for myself”, Wood states, “I am dedicated” to defeating what he calls “three pillars of American policing”. “Those pillars are the creation and maintenance of oppressed classes, valuing the property of the 1% more than the lives of the 99%, and the continued genocide of the Native American People.”
“We will continue to fight these issues because they proliferate our communities because they are the foundations of America and its colonialism.”– Michael Wood Jr., Veterans Stand.
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Mar 02, 2017 @ 12:08:40
Ananau Music and Dance by Inka Gold
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Mar 02, 2017 @ 12:06:53
BEAUTIFUL FANCY SHAWL DANCE | ELLA BEARSHEART
NEW MEXICO STATE FAIR 2016 – INKA GOLD | ELLA BEARSHEART
REPRESENTING LAKOTA NATION
FANCY SHAWL DANCE
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Mar 02, 2017 @ 12:04:47
The Tribes fought for over a decade and finally….
U.S. Government To Pay $492 Million To 17 American Indian Tribes
September 27, 2016
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/27/495627997/u-s-government-to-pay-492-million-to-17-american-indian-tribes
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Mar 02, 2017 @ 12:01:37
Marti, as the saying goes…”It ain’t over yet”
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Mar 02, 2017 @ 08:47:38
Louie: Thank you for all of this info. It explains why they are sending in the military $$$$$ grade “police”. Now with Canada planning on storing nuclear waste under the great lakes……and the Forestry service clear cutting the north woods all the way to boundary waters ….we are toast up here. Add in the contamination from using Roundup and growing gmo crops, cafo farms and dairys … and they wonder why the cancer rates in the midwest are so high.
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Mar 02, 2017 @ 01:28:45
From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
WHITE PAPER
Count on the Corps – An Environmental Profile of the Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District
Purporting to regulate and develop responsibly, the Alaska District of the Army Corps of Engineers has violated the Clean Water Act by circumnavigating or breaking its own codes. With seven years of documented cases, such negligence in America’s “Last Frontier” has caused environmental destruction, wasted public funds, and ruined careers of responsible public professionals
https://www.peer.org/assets/docs/whitepapers/1999_count_on_corps.pdf
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Mar 02, 2017 @ 01:24:47
From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
WHITE PAPER
Rotten at the Corps – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Presiding Over the Death of the Florida Keys
The Army Corps of Engineers is presiding over ecosystem destruction in the Florida Keys through a systematic and deliberate dereliction of duty in protecting wetlands from illegal development
https://www.peer.org/assets/docs/whitepapers/1997_rotten_at_corps.pdf
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Mar 02, 2017 @ 01:19:50
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) – North Dakota stands to gain more than $110 million annually in tax revenue after oil begins coursing through the Dakota Access pipeline, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.
The calculation shows the potential payoff for a state whose officials have supported the pipeline despite concerns from Native American tribes and other opponents who fear it could harm drinking water and sacred sites. The money the state stands to make in just one year far outstrips the $33 million in costs to police a section of the pipeline that’s been the subject of intense and sometimes violent protests over the last year.
“The amount of the windfall to the state doesn’t surprise me at all,” said Payu Harris, an American Indian activist and pipeline opponent. “That’s why the state of North Dakota expended the resources they did.”
Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners’ $3.8 billion pipeline will carry oil more than 1,000 miles to a shipping point in Illinois and may be moving oil as early as next week. Its completion would be welcome both for drillers seeking a cheaper path to market and for the state government in North Dakota, where declining tax revenue has clouded its budget.
“Every dollar they get extra is good for the state as well,” state tax commissioner Ryan Rauschenberger said.
State budget analysts and an economic consulting firm working on the revenue forecast that lawmakers will use to create a spending plan for the next two years may take the potential tax benefits into account, State Budget Director Pam Sharp said. The new forecast will be released next week.
North Dakota in the past decade has become the second-biggest oil producer in the United States, behind Texas. But its location in the northern Plains, far from major oil markets, means less profit on each barrel of oil. North Dakota lowers its tax on each barrel to keep its crude competitive with other states.
Much of North Dakota’s oil is shipped by truck or train. The 1,200 Dakota Access pipeline would carry the oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois. It could shave shipping costs by more than $3 a barrel, according to Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council. State tax officials estimate every dollar saved means about $33.6 million in added tax revenue each year.
“Every dollar back is a win for producers, the state and mineral owners,” said Ness, who called the Dakota Access pipeline the most important infrastructure project in North Dakota since the interstate highway system.
It also will link to pipelines serving Gulf Coast refineries, which pay premium prices for high quality sweet crude like that drilled in North Dakota.
In addition to oil tax revenue, the pipeline is estimated to generate $55 million in property taxes annually in the four states it crosses, including more than $10 million a year in North Dakota, said Rauschenberger, the state tax commissioner.
That will provide much-needed revenue to rural counties, he said.
“It’s going to benefit schools and counties and more valuation means lower property tax bills for everybody,” Rauschenberger said.
The pipeline was first announced in 2014, days after then-Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, urged that more oil and gas pipelines be built to reduce hazardous truck and oil train traffic and to curb the flaring – or burning off – of natural gas at wellheads.
Dakota Access sailed through the state’s approval process, only to run into resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation straddling the North Dakota-South Dakota border is near the pipeline’s route. The Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes urged the U.S. government not to allow the project to move forward and fought the pipeline in court and with protests at a nearby encampment on federal land that at times grew to include thousands of people.
The opponents were dealt a devastating setback in January when President Donald Trump signed an executive order to advance the pipeline’s construction. The Army subsequently gave approval for ETP to put the last final big chunk of pipe under a Missouri River reservoir near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The Army has authority over that stretch because its Corps of Engineers manages the Missouri River.
Authorities last week cleared the last vestiges of the protest camp ahead of spring flooding, although the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux continue to fight the project in court.
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