State of North Dakota to Block Supplies to #NoDAPL Camp

Now that the protesters in North Dakota have been officially ordered to evacuate, the state has some more creative ways of dealing with the problem:

Last night in an update to my post about Governor Jack Dalrymple’s evacuation order for unpermitted #NoDAPL encampments on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land I quoted Department of Emergency Services PIO Cecily Fong as saying the order allows the state to block supplies for the camp.

“What this does is it gives us – because it’s a mandatory evacuation – certain powers under the law to include basically they’re on their own,” she said. She said that it warns protesters that the state will not send in first responders like ambulances if there is an emergency, and it also allows the state to block those bringing supplies to the camp. “If there are any kind of businesses that are delivering supplies to camp we can stop them from going there from the north,” she told me.

This protracted standoff is yet another protest that has many instances where it becomes a riot but largely gets a free pass from the press. The media is so inherently devoted to the progressive narrative in any news story that violent protesters are portrayed as peaceful in 99% of the stories written about them. You can Google information about NoDAPL using any number of different parameters and almost everything you find will be of the “poor peaceful people are just worried about water” variety. In fact, they’re rather aggressive.

Protesters have repeatedly used fire and violence against North Dakota law enforcement while fighting to either get onto or remain on private and/or government land where they are not permitted to be. Yet it seems as though this gets glossed over in much of the national media coverage in favor of stories casting the law enforcement response to these violent and unlawful activities in a negative light.

A peaceful protest is staged in any area where the protesters are legally allowed to be. When I was involved in organizing Tea Party rallies in 2009, we worked hard to get permits to gather, often dealing with weeks of bureaucratic stonewalling. We were very conscientious about not trespassing though. Had we done so, you can imagine the media uproar that would have followed.

The NoDAPL protesters have repeatedly trespassed and committed acts of vandalism like the one above. No doubt the state’s response will be reported as “severe” or “overreaction” but in reality it’s been quite patient thus far.