- Trip Jennings
- Governor Kate Brown and her supporters
Activists with Portland Rising Tide on Wednesday demonstrated in Pioneer Square and in the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) offices inside the Fox Tower, calling on Governor Kate Brown to publicly oppose all planned natural gas projects planned in North Bend and Warrenton
They did it in their usual entertaining fashion: With a giant papier mache bobble-head of Governor Kate Brown delivering a bullhorn message to FERC officials.
The group was there to encourage state agencies to hold these projects to the highest environmental standards, and use all of her powers as Governor to stop both natural gas export projects and to take a stand to protect Oregon’s climate future.
As with many of the groups actions (like this one), participants got creative by creating a giant papier mache head—which was a dead ringer for the governor—and delivering a ‘notice of condemnation using state powers of eminent domain’ ordering FERC to stop taking Oregonians’ land in order to use it to transport and store fossil fuels.
“The legal right of eminent domain is government’s right to take private property for public good,” says paper mache Brown. “I wouldn’t seize a federal agency office without good reason unlike, for example, FERC’s willingness to give multi-national corporations the power to use eminent domain to build export pipelines for corporate profit. In this case, it is in the clear public good of the state of Oregon to use my power as governor to oppose FERC’s rubberstamping of destructive pipeline projects.”
Today’s demonstrating activists, and others across the state, oppose FERC’s September 30th approval of a final environmental impact statement on the Pacific Connector Pipeline Project and Jordan Cove liquefaction plant in North Bend and to the plans for the Oregon liquid natural gas project in Warrenton.
“Our Governor and agencies stood up for Oregon when these were import projects,” Portland Rising Tide activist Sarah Gould. “Now that these are export projects that are even more blatantly intended for corporate interest and not public good, we expect an equally firm stance from state leadership.”
Here’s a video of the demonstration:
Did they make a drum circle afterwords?