Ring around the Housie

 Starting in Lafayette Park, a band of good-natured individuals and I surrounded the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. We rallied behind the fact that we were a significant portion of Barack Obama's base, and are optimistic at our chances of getting him to shut down the pipeline.

Thousands of my kind of people wrapped around the White House today, to raise their voices (and their posters) in opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline. 

People could be heard chanting, “Hey Obama, We Don’t Want No Pipeline Drama,” and “Stop the Pipeline, Yes We Can.”

Joining in the latest saga of American Politics: Jobs vs. Justice, I protested by raising the question: “What would Sweden do?”

Basically, hoping to evoke a little humor and raise the question, “If the Swedes wouldn’t do it, then why should we?” I got a lot of laughs, six people stopped and spoke Swedish with me, I may be featured in two environmental blogs, but on a more important note, I got a taste of the fervor that is coursing through Americans lately. 

At the moment, I’m one of many who feels that social justice in our nation is being held in check by the dismal economy. The only thing any politician wants to talk about are positive economic indicators, like new jobs created or lower unemployment rates. Yet, there are people like me everywhere that are questioning the smoke screen of economic indicators. 

Today was so refreshing, because I was surrounded by thousands of people who were able to voice their opposition to indicators that only told one side of the story. In unison, we protested to bring down a vessel for dirty energy and we demanded that Obama reaffirm his support to his constituent base. 

See videos soon. I wish I had a Mac, because the videos would be up right now.

The Pipeline Picture

The pipeline would transport tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, creating somewhere in the realm of 6,000 jobs, according to Cardno Entrix, the contractor hired by the State Department to run the pipeline’s environmental review process. 

Yet environmentalists and people like me vehemently oppose this proposition, because the tar sand extraction process has extremely adverse ecological impacts. Tar Sands extraction requires the clear-cutting of Canadian forests and the refining process releases more carbon dioxide than traditional petroleum.