On why it's Counterinsurgency for Enbridge to Pay Wisconsin Police to Confront Pipeline Protests
Hey friends, I know we’re all glued to war on Iran news right now, and you might be tempted to believe the stories I’m sharing today are off-topic — but they’re not. The era of protest criminalization that we’re confronting today in many ways began with 9/11. This new war is again being framed as a crackdown on terrorism, and it will only supercharge the protest crackdown at home that Trump has already unleashed under the guise of confronting domestic terrorism. This war on Iran has serious implications for people’s capacity to fight to protect the environment. So I hope you’ll stay tuned and read on <3
Every month, I assemble a round-up of stories I’m following and issues I’m covering, with palate cleansers at the end. Please consider a paid subscription so I can keep up my independent reporting.
A couple weeks ago, I heard from an old source about a story I hadn’t thought of in awhile. Between 2020 and 2023 I wrote a bunch of stories for The Intercept and Grist about how the Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge was working closely with law enforcement to control Indigenous-led protests against the tar sands oil pipeline, Line 3. Most egregiously, the state of Minnesota agreed to set up an escrow account that would allow Enbridge to reimburse police and other public agencies for any pipeline protest related expenses. And they did pay out — to the tune of $8.6 million.
Now, my source told me, another account just like this is being set up in Wisconsin, as construction began on Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline. I wrote all about the Line 5 plan for Grist, and I encourage you to read the story.
But one thing I didn’t have space for in the piece is how an account like this fits into what academics like the Alexander Dunlap call “corporate counterinsurgency.” Counterinsurgency is the military doctrine that the U.S. used during its “global war on terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq. It involves armed force, but, perhaps more crucially, it revolves around hearts and minds efforts, from propaganda to road-building. The idea is to get the local community to take on the agenda of the invading force. If you win over the local population, then the so-called insurgents stand less of a chance of success.
To understand what the hell a police reimbursement account has to do with counterinsurgency, you have to go back to North Dakota and all that went down as people protested to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016 and 2017. The reimbursement accounts in Wisconsin and Minnesota grew out of two things:
(1) North Dakota law enforcement and other public agencies were left to pay $38 million in bills related to protest response
(2) The Dakota Access Pipeline’s parent company Energy Transfer was left with a public relations nightmare created by private security personnel, including footage of private security dogs attacking Indigenous water protectors, and leaked private security documents describing how private security operatives infiltrated and surveilled protest spaces.
TigerSwan, the Energy Transfer security firm that was doing the infiltrating, explicitly viewed its operations at Standing Rock as counterinsurgency strategy. The company got its start during the war on terror and brought military strategies usually applied to foreign populations back home to the heartland.
Neither Enbridge nor public officials in Minnesota and Wisconsin wanted a repeat of what happened at Standing Rock. And when it came time to sign off on a Public Utilities Commission permit for Enbridge’s Line 3, Minnesota officials included a line stating they didn’t want to see any counterinsurgency strategies during Line 3 construction. That same permit created the escrow account. This was supposed to solve those two problems — Enbridge would pay the police bills, and the company would avoid outside private security baddies wreaking havoc.
The funny thing is that the Enbridge strategy in many ways aligns more with counterinsurgency doctrine than what TigerSwan was doing. The academic Stuart Schrader has this book Badges without Borders that delves into how counterinsurgency strategy meant U.S. forces training police forces around the globe, and ultimately militarizing police back home. Getting the police to do the security work is a classic counterinsurgency strategy.
The reason all this matters is that counterinsurgency is a system of control that isn’t designed to serve the best interests of its targets. In the case of Enbridge, corporate counterinsurgency helps assure that a pipeline company gets support to build environmentally harmful projects, even as the climate crisis spirals. Counterinsurgency strategy helps explain why efforts to address clear signs of impending environmental collapse have been so inadequate.
People I spoke to who live in the communities where Line 5 will be rerouted say that Enbridge is everywhere these days. They hear their radio ads all the time, and Enbridge even set up a headquarters right across the street from the shore of Lake Superior, where the company has served free lunch every Tuesday as a means to talk to people about why Line 5 is a good idea. Meanwhile, local sheriffs’ offices are getting ready to buy new riot gear and hold training sessions — all reimbursed by Enbridge — to respond to potential protests. Construction has already begun.
Further reading:
Obviously check out my Grist piece about the new Line 5 account.
For a quick hit summary on what Line 5 is and why the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa doesn’t want it, read Miacel Spotted Elk’s piece for Grist.
See also my deep dive into where the $8.6 million in Enbridge reimbursements went during Line 3 construction.
Also read this story about how Enbridge used a tracking system that identified the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and other Indigenous nations as key threats.
For more on corporate counterinsurgency related to Line 3, check out my print and audio pieces for the Intercept.
Those stories are part of a longer Intercept series about how Enbridge influenced public officials as Line 3 was built.
Other stories I’m following:
If Pennington County has a strong case against Nick Tilsen, then why are they trying to hide the key evidence?
A trial against Nick Tilsen, the Oglala Lakota head of the nonprofit NDN Collective, ended in a hung jury in January. Last month I spent some time attempting to investigate his case, but was thwarted by South Dakota’s limited public records law and efforts by the prosecutor to keep public records secret. Tilsen’s case caught my eye because it reminded me a lot of what happened to Renée Good. According to Tilsen’s side of the story, he was driving through Rapid City, South Dakota, in 2022 when he saw a police officer talking to an unhoused Indigenous person. Rapid City is a notorious border town, very close to the Pine Ridge reservation, and the police there have a reputation for discrimination against Indigenous people. So Tilsen pulled his car into a parking spot in front of where the officer was questioning the unhoused man. Tilsen says he was there to observe the interaction — the officer says Tilsen attempted to run him over. Strangely, aggravated assault charges were filed a full year after the incident occurred, and, in a podcast for NDN Collective, Tilsen said they hit just as NDN Collective announced an upcoming protest called No Killer Cops on Stolen Land. He interpreted it as retaliation.
The prosecutor claimed that the story Tilsen told in the podcast and on the nonprofit’s web site was different from what he said on the stand. Specifically, according to Indian Country Today’s coverage of the trial, she argued Tilsen and the organization had claimed Tilsen witnessed the officer harassing and assaulting the unhoused person, which the video footage did not support. Tilsen countered that he hadn’t been able to review the footage until right before the trial.
I wanted to write about all this, and I figured the video footage would be key to telling the story, just as it has been in so many cases of police misconduct. The footage was already presented during the trial, and shows up on the court web site as an exhibit — that means it should be something the public can access. But it seems that that footage is a secret, according to Pennington County. When I reached out to the county, the clerk of courts claimed they couldn’t give me the videos, because the judge was worried that if they copied the material, it could be accidentally damaged. This struck me as bizarro reasoning. So I asked the court to tell me what exemption in the public records law allows them to withhold the footage. Crickets. I asked if I could send someone to view the footage in person, so they don’t have to worry about damage. Crickets again.
In the meantime, I tried the Rapid City Police Department, and they hit me with a section of the public records law that exempts virtually all law enforcement information from records requests. To me, this amounts to a kind of impunity. In a city where people perceive the police as racist, no one is allowed to look deeply into how they actually conduct themselves.
But just because the police are exempt, doesn’t mean the courts are. Now today, I finally heard back from the court. It seems that the prosecutor in the case is making a formal request to keep the videos secret, until they make a decision on whether or not to re-try the case. That decision is due in less than a week. Their excuse is that releasing the footage (because that’s certainly what they’re concerned about, even if they don’t say it outright) could potentially prejudice a jury. Again, this is a totally bizarre argument to me. If Pennington County has a strong case against Nick Tilsen, then why are they trying to hide the key evidence?
From air pollution caused by the bombing of fossil fuel facilities, to drinking water contamination due to attacks on water desalinization plants, to weakened environmental governance because of the distraction of war — the Conflict and Environment Observatory is tracking incidents of environmental harm during the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran. They’re getting ready to launch a Wartime Incidents to Environment Database focused on the conflict. This has potential to be a great tool for environmental journalists trying to figure out how to cover war. They have a similar database for the Ukraine war. For now, check out their analysis on the health risks from Israel’s attacks on Tehran’s oil facilities.
I found the descriptions here of the geography of pollution strangely poetic. “Tehran lies on the southern foothills of the Alborz Mountains in a semi-enclosed basin where surrounding peaks rise to 2-4 km, strongly restricting air circulation over the city.” And, “Tehran’s dense urban fabric creates numerous ‘urban canyons’ where rows of mid- and high-rise buildings can restrict airflow, creating concentration hotspots.”
Less poetic: “Israel reportedly attacked more than 30 oil facilities, which it claimed were being used for ‘military purposes.’” It sounds an awful lot like what Israel does in Gaza. And like in Gaza, though the U.S. might shrug and point at Israel, this is inarguably an American war and American pollution.
It’s been a decade now since the Indigenous land defender Berta Cáceres was assassinated in Honduras, in a hit ordered by the dam company Desa. If you don’t know who she is, you should. Nina Lakhani wrote the book on Berta, and now she’s got a deep dive for Drilled into why Honduras remains so dangerous for land defenders 10 years later. I also really recommend you listen to Drilled’s audio interview with Nina where she gets into what it was like to cover Berta’s assassination and the threats she faced in the process.
A new slate of anti-protest legislation is moving through legislatures across the U.S. However, the most notable legislation is Florida’s anti-terrorism bill, which passed both the House and Senate — but is being bounced back for another House vote because of amendments. It allows a small cadre of officials to designate organizations as domestic terrorists. The state’s chief of domestic security would nominate a group for the label, and then the governor, the agriculture commissioner, the chief financial officer, and the attorney general would vote to approve or reject the designation. The legislation essentially puts the onus on schools and public institutions to enforce the designations, requiring, for example, that schools expel students who "promote" a newly minted domestic terrorist group. A companion bill would make the justifications for a terror designation secret.
As the weather changes I am getting excited to spend long Saturday afternoons on the beaches of the Rockaways. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s not an easy place for the people who live there. Across from a public housing complex where 1,400 people live is the Inwood Material Terminal, which “crushes construction and demolition debris—including concrete, asphalt, brick, and rock—into recycled material.” The people who next door say the dust covers cars and playgrounds, clogs air conditioning, and comes into their homes through the windows. They end up with runny noses and thick phlegm. The terminal is seeking a permit under a new environmental justice policy in New York, and they are organizing to assure it is denied.
Palate Cleansers
I cover topics that are heavy and distressing to take in, so I'm ending these posts with things that make me feel grounded: food, nature, community.
Something Delicious: Jerk everything
One of the best things about living in Brooklyn is all of the excellent Caribbean restaurants. Jerk chicken and rice and peas and cabbage every day plz. My first favorite was Pattie Hut in Bed Stuy, then A&A Bake Doubles and Roti — yes yes and yes. If you live here, you should just find the nearest Caribbean hole in the wall and get your fix there. But if you don’t have one close by, consider supporting Caribbean cookbook authors like Melissa Thompson, whose book Motherland rules. I haven’t tried the jerk chicken yet — or the jerk sweet potatoes — but the curry fried chicken is killer as are the soups and stews. (Now I’m seeing Thompson is coming out with a grilling cookbook?? Omg yes summer come to me.) I’ve also been experimenting with salt cod, via Leslie Enston’s Belly Full cookbook, and I’m shocked at how much I love it. If you’re in town, stop by BEM, a bookstore for Black food literature in Bed Stuy, and pick up a copy of one of these there — or ask for a recommendation if they’re sold out. And hat tip to Chef Jessie Wesley, who introduced me to all these gems.
Garden Update: They’re back.
The aster and strawberry plants are green, and the chives are up. An old pumpkin from last Halloween is leaking melted liquid onto the table where we abandoned it. Three spears are poking out of the soil in a pot where I planted a surprise for myself last fall. I can’t quite remember what they will become.
Community: Pods for Life
Maybe I’m late to the game on this, but Mia Mingus’s transformative justice concept of “pods” is giving me life right now. The idea, in the simplest terms, is to build little groups of trusted people who support each other in specific, defined ways. Author and educator Kai Cheng Thom has developed a version of this for people in need of community support as they confront a crisis like intimate partner violence or mental health issues. But the idea could also be used to create systems for shared childcare, or accountability for a writing project, or mutual support as you go through a life transition. A pod can also be a way for you to get together with people you trust and think through how to respond to an ICE crackdown, or a climate disaster, or a pandemic.
I think this model can be really useful for figuring out what the hell we’re supposed to be doing right now, both in grand political terms, and in terms of our personal work and lives. I am blessed with a lot of good friends, but the reality is that when we get together all I really wanna do is bullshit and gossip and crack jokes. We need that, but we also need to sit down and figure out how to navigate this bewildering moment TOGETHER — outside of social media, outside of massive nameless “movement spaces” — with people who we trust. Anyway lots of info here about how this can work.
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