Introducing: Confronting the Pipedream

Oct 7, 2013

Introducing: Confronting the Pipedream

**If you are with a radio station who is interested in airing segments from this series, we highly encourage you to do so! Each segment will be roughly 15 minutes in length. Please get in touch with us at confrontingthepipedream [at] riseup.net**

Introducing Confronting the Pipedream: A Turtle Island (“North America”) wide grassroots radio project against pipelines.

Supported by The Media Coop and QPIRG-McGill

www.confrontingthepipedream.com

Featuring:

* Interviews with Ellen Gabriel, Mel Bazil, Freda Huson, Amanda Lickers, The Texas Tar Sands Blockade, and more!

*Original music by 1-Speed Bike (of Godspeed You! Black Emperor)

Follow us on Twitter (@RadioPipedream) and Facebook!

Confronting the Pipe Dream: Voices from the frontlines of pipeline resistance

“It is an enterprise of epic proportions, akin to the building of the pyramids or China’s Great Wall. Only bigger.” – Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, on the Alberta Tar Sands

“What the Keystone [pipeline] will allow is essentially for us to double our production in the next 10 years. And that’s important for the overall revenue not just of Alberta, but for the whole country.” – Alison Redford, Premier of Alberta

“They’re not coming through” – Freda Huson, spokesperson for the Unis’tot’en camp against pipelines

Keystone XL. Line 9. Energy East. Northern Gateway. Pacific Trails. Like slimy tentacles, pipeline projects are spreading out across Turtle Island (so called “North America”), attempting to cross sovereign indigenous lands, waterways, forests, and communities. Our leaders in the government and business community have told us that oil and gas pipelines are vital to the Canadian economy, and Canada is quickly becoming a global energy superpower. Yet the health of the Canadian economy is also premised on the ongoing expansion of the Alberta Tar Sands, the largest industrial project on the face of the earth, and one that is having catastrophic impacts. The ultimatums from the promoters of the Tar Sands are clear; no pipelines, no Tar Sands expansion. No Tar Sands expansion, fewer jobs. And fewer jobs, more economic misery.

But on the other side of the argument are those who live on the pathways of the pipelines – those who remember the age old proverb that after the last fish has been fished, and the last tree has been cut, maybe then people will realize you can’t eat money. While business elites try to sell the public on the safety of the pipedream, we hear other tragic disaster stories of leaks and spills. The Kalamazoo river, Cold Lake, Lac Mégantic, The Gulf of Mexico. The price of oil is literally being put before entire ecosystems, including human and animal lives. Indigenous peoples who live downstream from the toxic tailing ponds, the frack gas sites, and along the route of the pipeline have begun standing up and taking direct action to stop this senseless destruction of the Earth and communities. Sometimes their voices are unheard, yet they remain loud and defiant.

Confronting the Pipedream is a grassroots radio project which seeks to unite these voices across colonial borders, and bring voices from the frontlines to the foreground. We will be releasing a series of 10-15 minute radio-quality, ready to air pieces which will take listeners to various sites along the routes of pipelines, from Wet’suwet’en territory in northern unceded British Columbia to the Great Plains Tar Sands resistance in Texas. Rather than going to the “experts” and Environmental NGO’s, Confronting the Pipedream will amplify the voices of those directly affected, and those risking everything to fight back.

If your radio station would like to air this series, please get in touch with us at confrontingthepipedream@riseup.net

Who we are:

Aaron Lakoff – CKUT Radio, Montreal QC, Mohawk Territory

Aaron Lakoff is a radio journalist, DJ and community organizer living in Montreal, trying to map the constellations between reggae, soul and a liberated world.

David Ball – Vancouver Co-op Radio; Rabble Podcast Network, Vancouver BC, Coast Salish Territories

David Ball is a multimedia journalist in Vancouver. A co-producer and host of the Media Mornings show at Vancouver Co-op Radio, I also report for Indian Country Today Media Network (US) and Windspeaker aboriginal newspaper (Canada).

Meredith DeFrancesco – WERU Radio, Bangor, Maine

Meredith DeFrancesco is the co-founder of the weekly grassroots environmental and social justice new journal “RadioActive” on WERU Community Radio, in Maine, which began in early 2001. Meredith has also produced for Free Speech Radio News, Pacifica Peace Watch , WINGS, Making Contact, and National Native News.

Shailagh Keaney – CFRU Radio, Guelph ON (Attiwendaronk/Neutral Territory)

Shailagh Keaney is a multimedia artist and community organizer living in Guelph, yearning to cultivate the deep soils where our sacred interconnectivity takes root.