The tree protesters, ensconced on 80-foot-high platforms, passed the misty Wednesday morning in calm, receiving encouraging text messages and walkie-talkie calls from activists outside their encampment in Winnsboro, a tiny town about 100 miles east of Dallas.
A half-hour's drive away, the day began with much more activity. Cherri Foytlin, a 40-year-old mother of six, approached the entrance to a pipe yard storing construction materials for the Keystone XL. She swung shut two metal gates, looped thick metal chains around her waist and locked herself to both doors. For about an hour and a half Foytlin sat chained on the ground before being arrested. According to Ramsey Sprague, a spokesperson for the Tar Sands Blockade, the activist group behind the tree encampment and other Texas protests, Foytlin hindered several trucks from entering and exiting the site.
TransCanada, the pipeline's builder, told InsideClimate News construction is moving along as planned.
"These efforts by protestors to keep hard working Americans from getting to their jobs is not impacting construction," David Dodson, a spokesperson, said.
Foytlin, whose husband is an offshore oil rig worker, is an environmental justice advocate from Louisiana known for her criticism of recovery efforts following the 2010 BP oil spill.
Sprague, the blockade spokesperson, was driving to meet Foytlin at the county jail when he spoke with InsideClimate News. He said she was charged with criminal trespassing on a "critical infrastructure facility," a Class A misdemeanor, which carries the highest penalty for that offense. Sprague said it was the first Class A charge against the protesters, and that bail had been posted at $2,500. As with the other 31 arrests, the Tar Sands Blockade raised money to pay the bail.
The protestors—who are mainly Texas residents and landowners—launched the civil disobedience in mid-August around Houston and in Oklahoma. Work on the pipeline's southern leg, renamed the Gulf Coast Pipeline Project, started in Texas on Aug. 9 after it received government approval in July. The tree blockade began on Sept. 24. A handful of activists have been arrested at the tree site. The other arrests took place on properties along the pipeline's route.
The protests have drawn increasing attention around the country, particularly following the Oct. 4 arrests of actress Daryl Hannah and Eleanor Fairchild, a 78-year-old Texas landowner. The pair stood in front a bulldozer that was clearing a path for the pipe on Fairchild's farm in Winnsboro. The women were charged with criminal trespassing. A week later, two reporters for the New York Times were handcuffed and detained by an off-duty police officer working as a security guard for TransCanada.
Foytlin, the latest person arrested, spoke with InsideClimate News shortly after she left the Titus County jail on Wednesday evening. She explained that she flew to Houston three days earlier to learn how Texas landowners were being affected by the pipeline construction.
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