Big Oil Insanity: D.C. Yawns After Two Major Spills in California and Texas in Five Days

Status Coup has been ON-THE-GROUND for years covering the fossil f**kers destruction of communities and the broader planet; can they be stopped?

On October 1st, 144,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the closure of beaches, contamination of ecological habitats and placing the lives of animals and humans who live in the area at risk.

The source of the spill, which came from the busting of a 17-mile long pipeline buried 98 feet under water, is currently being investigated; authorities believe a 13-inch tear of the pipeline shifted it 105 feet out of place.

Five days later, a major spill happened 1,400 miles east of California at a Marathon Petroleum refinery in Texas; media estimates thousands of gallons were released in Texas City, Texas.

WATCH the video below showing footage of both spills along with Status Coup’s ON-THE-GROUND reporting over several years on the fossil f**kers destruction of our planet and threats and intimidation toward regular everyday people.

Unsurprisingly, the corporate media and Democratic Party with majority control of Congress collectively yawned in response to this ecological terrorism which, fundamentally, should be what corporations destroying the planet is referred to.

I’ve seen this time and time again reporting on-the-ground across America: fossil fuel companies who’ve bought off Democrats and Republicans nationally along with local politicians having free rein to spill, explode, and destroy indigenous, Black, and brown people’s—and now more and more working class white communities— water, air, animal life, and sacred burial grounds.

And for what?

Red Terry, a scrappy, fiery red-headed Virginian said it best in 2018 when Status Coup spoke with her during our on-the-ground coverage of the fight against Mountain Valley Pipeline; a fracked gas pipeline being rammed through their home in Bent Mountain Virginia and underneath the broader Appalachian Trail. That trail is one of most beautiful paths in America gifted with scenic hiking and natural habitats.

So, of course, why wouldn’t the greedy fossil fuel executives want to destroy it and threaten the lives of the people who live there if and when the pipeline explodes?

“Polluting the water, since when is profit more important than water…when is profit more important than people? I don’t understand that,” Red said to me on her porch.

Unfortunately, you’ll never see Red, or her daughter Minor—who bravely built tree houses on their property, climbed up them, and protested atop their community forrest for over a month to stop the greedy fossil fuel company from tearing down their trees in their quest to ram the pipeline through their property— on cable news or quoted in the New York Times.

Their story of bearing through freezing temperatures, snow, rain and going to the bathroom in buckets in order to stop the planet-destroying greed dropped on their doorstep won’t lead cable news segments like the latest in Manchin mania (according to The Washington Post, Mountain Valley Pipeline estimated the Terry’s cost the pipeline around $45,000 due to enhanced security costs around the pipeline and delays to construction).

You won’t get to see Red’s pain when relaying the horror’s her and her family have gone though.

"They came through a few days ago and cut all around me," Red Terry told EcoWatch. "My daughter is also in a tree and had them on all four sides of her. She cried all day. Nobody should have the right to eminent domain for something that is not going to help people. It's to help themselves, profit before the people."

Heartbreak turns to rage the more Terry shared.

"When they were cutting my trees and I had tears running down my face, the cops were watching the devastation also, I looked at one of them and I thought he was going to start crying. At the same time, four Mountain Valley Pipeline security guards were laughing, carrying on, and thought it was the greatest thing in the world."

This kind of fossil fuel treachery, exploitation, and destruction is happening all over America with the complete support of politicians and police—the latter who has brutalized indigenous water protectors and their white allies at Standing Rock and, more recently, in Minnesota as water protectors battled throughout a pandemic to stop Enbridge’s tar sands pipeline from threatening their reservation, water, animal life, and ancestors’ burial grounds.

We will continue to see more spills, more explosions, and more misery as older and hastily constructed pipelines’ deterioration wreaks havoc through communities.

Of course, Americans are exhausted fighting corruption and injustice across multiple lines; from COVID to ever-growing income inequality to corporate exploitation and union-busting and a whole host of other treachery.

Collectively, if people don’t begin to add their wallets to their bodies protesting, what you see will continue to be what we get. The only way politicians will act is when their donors’ profits and interests are directly threatened.

And the way to do that is economically boycotting along with traditional protesting of banks, corporations, communities, and corporate media who do business with the fossil fuel companies destroying our planet.

The planet’s clock is ticking.

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