Army Of 50,000 Ready For Arrest If Obama OKs Keystone

BuzzFeed ^ | March 22, 2013 | Evan McMorris-Santoro

[2ndDivisionVet]

With massive protests already planned, environmentalists see new signs Obama is going their way.

Environmentalists are promising mass arrests and acts of civil disobedience if the Obama administration moves forward with a controversial pipeline project through the Midwest — even as Obama's political arm seeks to use the project in its latest fundraiser.

Opponents to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, said they have more than 50,000 recruits ready to be jailed as part of one of the largest broad-scale direct-action protests in their movement's history.

"With our Keystone XL pledge of resistance, over 50,000 of us have put President Obama on notice that we will risk arrest to make him take meaningful action on climate by rejecting Keystone XL," said Becky Bond, political director at CREDO, a San Francisco–based progressive group that has protested Obama over Keystone before. The group has also stood with the administration on issues like gun control but it says it has a list of more than 50,000 activists ready to be arrested in civil disobedience actions should Obama approve the pipeline.

Although during a recent meeting with the House GOP President Obama raised pipeline supporters' hopes that he remains open to backing the project, on Thursday his newly independent political operation invoked Keystone in a call to action.......

[2ndDivisionVet]

What do you think he'll do?

[OwenKellogg]

Mow them down like Syrians!

[Doogle]

..he’ll pour another 10 billion into failed solar panels

[swampfox101]

Communism is alive and well in the White House and in the environmental movement.

[svcw]

50K were not even arrested at height of the VieNam War. obama will not arrest anyone, he does not want the pipeline and he will use this ‘riot’ as an excuse to stop it.

[RetiredArmy]

Bulldoze em.

[Cicero]

Jailing 50,000 idiots would be pretty expensive. How about putting them to work on chain gangs?

It’s past time that we went back to something like that, instead of leaving criminals watching TV all day in comfy rooms at enormous expense.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Many Southern states never got rid of chain gangs.

[Newbomb Turk]

I would be stunned if they could get 150 to show up and one small town sheriff and a can of pepper spray would scatter them like a bunch of rats when the light pops on.

[jimsin]

Hey hey hey I bet THIS is why H.S. bought all that ammo in the first place?...See they're on our side after all....What's that...you dont believe WHAT...? Well how about buyin a nice bridge in Brooklyn, then? ">

[Bullish]

An army of wimps, woosies and yellow-bellies.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Make them dig the trench for the pipeline.

[outofsalt]

There was an earlier article on what to do with the Houston Astrodome...

[PIF]

Don’t worry, be happy. They will only show up in the numbers that the envoiros can afford to pay a high wage, plus benefits, bail, and free legal services.

Check the local papers and various and sundry sites for job postings - that will tell how serious they are, how many non-working trustfunders and welfare types will appear.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

"How about putting them to work on chain gangs?"

Even better -- make them pedal bicycles connected to electric generators. Sentence them to pedal, until they replace the energy that would be delivered by the pipeline in just one day.* Perhaps, just perhaps they'll come to appreciate how useful fossil-fuel energy is.

* The XL pipeline would carry about 830,000 barrels of crude/day. One barrel of oil = 1.9 X 10³ kWh of energy. A cyclist could generate about 0.19 kWh (for a few hours, max). Therefore, one barrel of oil = 10,000 hours of pedaling. 50,000 cyclists = 5 barrels/hour. They could replace 830,000 barrels of crude in about 7,000 days. Let's be reasonable -- assume only 25% of the crude could be converted to useful electric energy. Our miscreant cyclists could replace that energy in "only" 1,750 days (rounding down). That's about 4.8 years of full-time cycling. Allow for 12 hrs/day cycling, and 12 hrs for sleeping and consciousness raising -- that means about 9 years of cycling (time off for good behaviour).

[marron]

50,000 Ready For Arrest If Obama OKs Keystone

That sounds like a win-win.

[lucky american]

It’s just bluster.
They probably have 9 signed up
If they promise tents, food and music, maybe a little weed they might entice a few more.

[matt04]

In reality they are probably counting every liberal idiot who signed a petition. If they do hold any protests they may get 5,000 which the press WILL report as 50K.

[TigersEye]

What do you think he'll do?

That depends. Do you think more than fifty of them will show up?

[hattend]

He probably organized them.