Land Ethic of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ

This is a mass call for action to every one of you who has committed to stopping the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline. Williams, the builder, has told the Sisters that they will begin construction on Monday. We will be there, together.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 16, 7 AM at 3939 LAUREL RUN, COLUMBIA, PA 17512

Over the past four years we have prepared for this. We have exhausted every legal, regulatory and political means possible. Our legislators, courts and and regulators have instead sold out our health and home to Williams’ industrial invasion. They have given us no choice but to put ourselves between Williams and our futures.

Please read our statement below for more details about the Sister’s lawsuit, Judge Schmehl’s allowance of US Marshals, and our plans for Monday.

ON MONDAY, SOME MAY CHOOSE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, RISKING ARREST; OTHERS MAY STAND ON PUBLIC OR PRIVATE LAND OUT OF THE RIGHT OF WAY. OUR SEASONED LEGAL TEAM WILL BE ON HAND TO HELP US DECIDE WHAT RISK LEVEL, IF ANY, IS BEST FOR US. WHATEVER YOUR INTENTIONS, WE HOPE YOU WILL COME STAND WITH US, UNITED.

Here we go! We are right. We are ready. Together we can stop this pipeline.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CALL TO ACTION FOR MONDAY, OCTOBER 16 @ 7 AM

//////. LANCASTER AGAINST PIPELINES: STATEMENT //////.

Monday, October 16, 2017, 7:00 AM, at 3939 Laurel Run, Columbia PA 17512

Outdoor Chapel, Adorers of the Blood of Christ

THE TIME FOR ACTION IS NOW. WILLIAMS HAS INDICATED THEIR INTENTION TO BEGIN WORK ON THE PROPERTY OF THE ADORERS OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST THIS COMING MONDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2017.

Whatever you have planned for the day, we urge you to set those plans aside and gather with your friends and neighbors to stand in solidarity with the Adorers of the Blood of Christ in challenging Transco/Williams’ plans to violate our religious rights, community rights, property rights, and rights to clean air and water.

Williams has indicated their plans to begin construction on the Adorers’ property beginning Monday, October 16. The lawsuit that the Sisters have filed against Transco and FERC, alleging a violation of their Religious Freedom, is still winding its way through the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. If the Court were to rule in favor of the Sisters, the pipeline could face a devastating setback. For this reason, Williams is rushing to complete work on the property before the Court has a chance to stop them.

ACCORDING TO A COURT ORDER BY DISTRICT JUDGE JEFFREY SCHMEHL OF READING, PA, TRANSCO/WILLIAMS HAS BEEN GIVEN THE AUTHORITY TO SEIZE THE ADORERS’ LAND AGAINST THEIR WILL, WITH THE AUTHORITY TO ENFORCE THIS SEIZURE USING US MARSHALS.

Just as Energy Transfer Partners ran bulldozers through ancestral Lakota lands last year, while the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe remained in active litigation against the company on religious principle, so Transco/Williams is poised to break earth on the Sisters’ land, long before they’d planned to do so, in a desperate—and grossly immoral—ploy to preempt a potentially devastating Circuit Court ruling in favor of the Sisters.

WE CALL ON PEOPLE OF GOODWILL ALL ACROSS LANCASTER—AS WELL AS THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA AND THE SURROUNDING REGION—TO JOIN US ON MONDAY MORNING TO DEMAND JUSTICE, TO CALL FOR MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY, AND TO STAND IN FIERCE DEFENSE OF OUR SACRED EARTH.

On October 12th, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Sisters’ request that pipeline construction be prohibited through their land until their Religious Freedom challenge against Williams and FERC is settled.

AGAIN, TO BE CLEAR: DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE SISTERS’ CASE UNDER THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT WILL, INDEED, MOVE FORWARD, THE CIRCUIT COURT INEXPLICABLY RULED TO ALLOW CONSTRUCTION TO BEGIN ANYWAY.

This is simply the latest in a long string of court-ordered rulings that legalize corporate exploitation of local communities and the natural environment, leaving us—as people of conscience—with no other option than a massive mobilization of civil defiance. The _status quo_ is not merely unacceptable; it’s suicidal, because the very building blocks of life—water, land, and air—are fatally imperiled.

BEGINNING AT 7:00 AM, WE WILL HOLD A PRAYERFUL, SONGFUL VIGIL AT THE VERY EDGE OF WILLIAMS’ DESECRATION CORRIDOR, WHICH THEY CALL THEIR “RIGHT-OF-WAY.” THOSE OUTSIDE THE EASEMENT HAVE A CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED RIGHT TO BOLDLY STAND, RAISE THEIR VOICES AND BANNERS, AND BEAR WITNESS WITHOUT FEAR OF ARREST.

THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO PLACE THEMSELVES IN THE PIPELINE EASEMENT SHOULD BE PREPARED TO FACE ARREST BY US MARSHALS WHO, DESPITE THEIR DUTY TO SERVE AND PROTECT THE CITIZENS OF THIS NATION, WILL BE SERVING, INSTEAD, THE FINANCIAL INTERESTS OF A PRIVATE, FOR-PROFIT, OUT-OF-STATE, BILLIONAIRE-RUN, FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY. AS WE DEFEND OUR LAND AND WATER, FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS WILL BE DEFENDING THE PRIVATE COMPANY PUTTING OUR LAND AND WATER AT RISK.

We need friends and allies to participate in every aspect, and risk level, of this action: banner holders, picture takers, scripture readers, hymn leaders, legal observers, medics, and easement defiers.

TOGETHER, LET’S DARE TO EXPOSE THE MORAL BANKRUPTCY ON FULL DISPLAY RIGHT HERE IN LANCASTER COUNTY.

It’s a perverse coincidence that Transco’s bulldozers sit poised to gut the chapel of the Adorers just as these Sisters prepare to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the martyrdom of five Adorers who willingly faced mortal danger defending the rights of their brothers and sisters in Liberia.

DEFENDING JUSTICE IS NOT CHEAP. BUT CONCEDING IT IS INTOLERABLE.

Lancaster Against Pipelines

Contact: http://www.wearelancastercounty.org/

www.PeoplesClimate.org

With The ‘People’s Climate March’ Approaching, Activist Bill McKibben Calls Environmentalists To Action

From the Speech by Bill McKibben, Northampton Community College, April 21, 2017

One of the country’s leading environmentalists made a stop in the Lehigh Valley on Wednesday, stressing the importance of civil disobedience in the fight against climate change. Bill McKibben, who has authored over a dozen books on the subject, spoke at Northampton Community College just three days before Earth Day to “bum people out” about the current state of the environment.

McKibben opened up with a damning picture of a world with continual droughts and floods, melting ice caps, rising ocean acidity and dying coral reefs—an image of the Earth that is clear in 2017, but still dispelled by skeptics who refuse to acknowledge the most daunting problem in human existence.

These conditions, he said, are a direct effect of the planet’s rising temperature.

“That’s what happens when you raise the temperature of the planet one degree Celsius, that’s what we’ve done so far,” McKibben said. “We are on track at the moment in the lifetime of the kids who are at school here now, to raise the temperature of the planet about three and a half degrees Celsius. If we allow that to happen, we cannot have civilizations like the ones were are used to having.”

“The last time temperatures were that high, sea levels were many tens of meters higher than they are now,” he continued. “The great cities of the world, most of which are built on the coast, are already at tremendous risk even with a couple of feet of sea level rise. They cannot sustain what’s coming unless we slow things down.”

In what was perhaps his most haunting statement of the night, McKibben said stopping global warming is “no longer on the menu of options” for the human race. The only hope for sustaining the planet for future generations, he said, is to slow it down.

“This is happening very very fast and it is happening before our eyes in real time,” he said. Despite being a bearer of bad tidings, McKibben offered guidance in climate activism, organizing and renewable energy to help combat these changes.

McKibben praised foreign nations for their commitment to renewable energy sources, citing Denmark as an example of a nation who made use of renewable resources available to them, powering half their country by wind energy.

He also praised China for their use of renewables. “They’re building renewable energy now at a rate that breaks every record on the planet,” he said. “They’re the leaders now in this kind of work.”

He suggested concerned citizens gain inspiration from previous climate demonstrations, including examples of both domestic and foreign activism.  And, he showed a stream of photos of activists from Haiti, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, noting that many people suffering the worst from climate change did little to contribute to it. “There’s an almost perfect inverse relationship between how much of these problems you caused, and how quickly you feel the sting of it. The less you did to cause it, the more you suffer.“

McKibben seemed to encourage that guilt be felt by those living in industrialized nations that contribute most to climate change. That guilt, he implied, should be used to fuel civil forms of activism to fight back against the fossil fuel industry. He referenced the civil disobedience that led to a halt in construction of the Keystone Pipeline, which was successful for a time.

Despite the fact that the new presidential administration will likely allow for the construction of the pipeline, McKibben remains positive about the effect that such civil opposition will have on the future of climate activism. “It demonstrated to people that they could stand up to the fossil fuel industry,” he said. “So now everything gets opposed. People fight.”

McKibben said due to the time-constraints involved with the fight against climate change, there is no guarantee that environmentalists can win the fight and preserve a decent planet for future generations. But he insisted that environmentalists will not go down without a fight, a fight that will only be successful if people move beyond their comfort zones and fight a selfless battle for the future of the planet.

“The planet is well outside its comfort zone now,” McKibben said. “If the planet’s outside its comfort zone then perhaps we need to be a little bit outside our comfort zones in dealing with it.

See also: CSPAN Television Network (www.c-span.org)