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Anti-fracking activists and anarchists are blocking rail tracks in Olympia, Wash. [three weeks ago]
Washington Post ^ | November 29, 2017 | Kyle Swenson

Posted on 12/18/2017 4:53:40 PM PST by grundle

There was little sleep the first night. Everyone was too wired with nerves and excitement. They expected the police to barrel in at any moment.

The encampment went up on Nov. 17, a guerrilla whirlwind of tents, tarps, wooden pallets and two-by-four studs. In just a few hours, the intersection at Jefferson Street SE and Seventh Avenue in downtown Olympia, Wash., was transformed from a drab piece of asphalt into a hulking structure, somewhere between a refugee camp and a carnival tent.

As impressive as the camp was, however, most of the 100 people who collected behind its barricades the first day did not expect it to last.

This was contested turf. Two sets of train tracks snaked north from the intersection to where the Port of Olympia sits on a piece of land jutting into the Budd Inlet like a fat thumb pointing from a fist. The encampment covered both rails, planting the makeshift site — and the people inside — directly in the path of any engines heading in or out of the port.

That was the point. In a peaceful protest spearheaded by members of local indigenous tribes, activists planned to disrupt rail shipments related to the hydraulic fracturing business in North Dakota. A similar effort a year before ended in arrests and flash bangs and burning recycling bins. This year, the activists were sure authorities would react similarly.

“We assumed another raid would be coming instantly,” one participant, who declined to give her name, told The Washington Post this week. “We thought it had to come down. We were feeling nervous. People stayed up all night.”

But when the sun climbed up the next morning, the camp was still there. This week, 12 days into the blockade, the protesters remain.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; US: Washington
KEYWORDS: amtrak; antifa; domesticterrorism; dupont; fracking; olympia; radicalleft; rail; washington
This was posted three weeks ago when it was new, but given current events, I think it is worth reposting.

Original thread at:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3609092/posts

1 posted on 12/18/2017 4:53:40 PM PST by grundle
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To: grundle

If it’s found out that those tracks were sabotaged by them ...


2 posted on 12/18/2017 4:55:25 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~)
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To: SkyDancer

If it’s found out that those tracks were sabotaged by them ...

The legacy media will clam up and you’ll never hear about this train wreck again.


3 posted on 12/18/2017 4:59:00 PM PST by beef
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To: grundle

Fire train.


4 posted on 12/18/2017 5:07:16 PM PST by wastedyears (US out of the UN, UN out of the US.)
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To: SkyDancer

Maybe they’ll be held accountable and put in jail for about 250 years, if not given the death penalty.


5 posted on 12/18/2017 5:09:53 PM PST by wastedyears (US out of the UN, UN out of the US.)
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To: wastedyears

They’ll have some wacko liberal environmental lawyer defending them saying it was all Trump’s fault.


6 posted on 12/18/2017 5:12:21 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~)
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To: wastedyears

I believe there were some recently passed regulations
that made interrupting or delaying government rail shipments
or possibly road ones, a federal offense.

Sure would like to these jerks come up against some
real time consequences.


7 posted on 12/18/2017 5:14:51 PM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: SkyDancer

I don’t know how anyone could defend them.


8 posted on 12/18/2017 5:15:03 PM PST by wastedyears (US out of the UN, UN out of the US.)
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To: grundle

If I had the railroad tracks... I’d accidentally run over those protesters. They are trespassing...


9 posted on 12/18/2017 5:16:17 PM PST by Deplorable American1776 (Proud to be a DeplorableAmerican with a Deplorable Family...even the dog is, too. :-))
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To: grundle

In a peaceful protest spearheaded by members of local indigenous tribes

Really, does anyone but a mind washed liberal believe this?


10 posted on 12/18/2017 5:16:24 PM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: beef

If it’s found out that those tracks were sabotaged by them ...

The legacy media will clam up and you’ll never hear about this train wreck again.


Like nothing bad ever happened in Vegas this fall.


11 posted on 12/18/2017 5:17:05 PM PST by Yaelle
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To: SkyDancer

Remember the Philadelphia train derailing? That train was being driven way too fast. The media and liberals blamed the crash on cutbacks in railroad maintenance by Republicans.

I expect some similar story will be concocted here, so that somehow Trump is blamed.


12 posted on 12/18/2017 5:20:31 PM PST by Dilbert San Diego
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To: Dilbert San Diego

The train was traveling on a curve at 80mph for on a curve designed for 30mph. The weird thing is, if the train was traveling too fast then why is the train folded back on itself rather that going in a straight line off the tracks? I’ve seen several accidents (the one in NYC comes to mind) where the train was traveling too fast on a curve but just laid over in the direction it was going - this one you have cars pointing back from where they came from.


13 posted on 12/18/2017 5:48:18 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~)
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To: wastedyears

Oh, believe me, they’re out there.


14 posted on 12/18/2017 5:48:46 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~)
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To: Dilbert San Diego

Yep, like during the 0bama eight year fiasco. Everything that went wrong was blamed on Bush.


15 posted on 12/18/2017 5:49:48 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~)
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To: wastedyears

It’s Washington state....the perp will get a letter with a check inside.


16 posted on 12/18/2017 6:28:09 PM PST by ptsal ( Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. - M. Twain)
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To: grundle
The locomotives need to be outfitted with "cow-catchers" for the protesters, to move them off of the tracks.

As an interesting aside, Sheldon Cooper, in an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" said, "Those 'cow-catchers' on the front of locomotives are more accurately called 'cow-exploders.'"

Mark

17 posted on 12/18/2017 9:14:06 PM PST by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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