Native Americans and “water protectors” rallied in Washington Square Park Friday evening to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The Standing Rock Sioux oppose the project because it would cut through sacred sites and burial grounds, plus could potentially burst, polluting their drinking water.
NYC Stands With Standing Rock members were also joined by Black Lives Matters and NYC Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee activists who were marking the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison uprising. In all, there were an estimated 300 demonstrators in the square.
“Although our acts of resistance are geographically separated, we will be joined together in the spirit of resistance,” NYC-IWOC said of the gathering, in a statement. “Just as state-sanctioned genocide against indigenous peoples continues today, slavery has persisted in the guise of the prison system.”
Village activist Sharon Woolums, who photographed the event, reported, “There were Native American people there, there were Bernie people, there were Occupy people. … There was one guy considered the elder. He really had them mesmerized. He said, ‘It’s come full circle now that the Indians are rising up.’ ”
Woolums said she personally got caught up in the spirit of the protest.
“I am part Cherokee,” she noted, adding, “It was the excitement of the early days of Occupy Wall Street!”
— Lincoln Anderson
