Technology in Social Justice Movements
The ways that technology is leveraged for and against social justice movements, and political protests, deserves a closer look. Rumors of the police using social media to track and arrest Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) water protectors (sometimes called protesters) in North Dakota triggered a global online movement to check-in to the Oceti Sakowin camp using social media accounts, while the water protectors on-site held the line facing a highly militarized police force, in an effort to overload the systems with garbage data. The Oceti Sakowin camp was the largest of several temporary camps set up near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
As you can see from the photos above, I attended a DAPL protest at my state's Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan on 5 November 2016. People used social media (in this case I heard about the event through Facebook) to organize and protest against the pipeline. The Bucko (my father) can be seen getting interviewed at the Lansing protest in one of these photos as well. As more people learned about what was happening with the DAPL and the Standing Rock Sioux, the protests gained more media coverage. The evidence and events that followed indicate that utilizing social media as a technology to spread awareness and teach each other about environmentalism and tribal relationships with the United States federal government is highly effective.
"It took months of heavy media coverage and outside support to pressure the Departments of the Army, Justice, and Interior to review the approval of the DAPL's crossing of Lake Oahe. Unfortunately, the second look at the pipeline crossing may only have been for the excessive media attention." (Mengden 2017)
Social media was also used to create a support network for water protectors. One way that this support network provided aid to its members was to crowd-source funding. There were many online fund raising causes shared, several specifically to raise bail money for those arrested, but some were to address other DAPL-related issues. I will never forget footage I saw of officers using what I thought was a fire hose at first, spraying people with water in below freezing conditions, they turned out to be water cannons. From my understanding: a fire hose can be supported by human personnel while a water cannon needs more rigid structural support due to the force of the water spraying from it.
"Twenty-six people were hospitalized and more than 300 injured after North Dakota law enforcement officers trained water cannons, teargas, and other 'less-than-lethal' weapons on unarmed activists protesting against the Dakota Access pipeline in below-freezing weather on Sunday night ... ." (Wong 2016)
The resultant actions on the part of Energy Transfer Partners, indicate that media coverage, and social media actions, revolving around the DAPL protests had a significant influence on affecting some change.
"Energy Transfer Partners took several steps to find a route that would cause the least amount of controversy by participating in forty-three open houses, public meetings, and regulatory hearings ... to allow for public input. It also held 559 meetings with community leaders, tribes, businesses, agricultural and civic organizations, state and federal regulatory and permitting agencies over a two-and-a-half year period. The result was 140 route adjustments to the DAPL. Of these adjustments, seventeen were the result of concerns from interested parties."
In the Journal of American Indian Law Review Mengden writes, "Unfortunately, looking at the turn of events, there is a greater likelihood that domestic oil pipeline construction will see more regulation rather than an increase in tribal authority regarding the consultation process." This is another example of a wicked problem and an entirely dissatisfying solution. The outcome was one of the better bad choices. I will not say that it was "the best bad solution" but I hope that it at least sparked some other positive changes and inspired more legal reviews of U.S. executive agencies' interactions and regulations as they relate to sovereign tribal governments.