A sheriff’s department in North Dakota filed charges against the U.S. Green Party presidential candidate, Jill Stein, for damaging equipment during protests on Tuesday over construction of an oil pipeline.
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Jill Stein allegedly painted the words “I approve this message” on the bulldozer, the very one the presidential candidate says was used to desecrate Native American burial grounds and other sacred sites near the pipeline on Saturday, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has been protesting the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which would carry crude oil from North Dakota to IL.
The tribe won some reprieve from construction work Tuesday, when U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered a stop for about 20 miles of the pipeline until he ruled on the tribe’s broader challenge.
Ms Figueroa could not comment on whether or not Ms Stein intends to turn herself in, the Associated Press said.
“We need gun laws that actually provide the protection that our communities need and these laws need to be at the national level”, Stein said.
“This needs to come to an end”, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said at a Tuesday news conference following the protest, urging tribal leaders to address their grievances in the courts. Stein was recorded, with Twitter video revealing her happily spray-painting a piece of equipment.
She later called her actions “civil disobedience”, tweeting, “I hope ND presses charges against the real vandals who bulldoze sacred burial sites”.
The tribe opposes the pipeline because of fears it will destroy their sacred lands and contaminate their drinking water.
Members of the tribe met outside the steps of the Washington, D.C., courthouse August 25 to protest the construction of the pipeline, which they say would wreak havoc on their native lands and cause widespread water contamination. First the Commission on Presidential Debates refused to let her participate in the presidential debates; now a warrant has been issued for her arrest.
In a letter to President Obama, tribal and environmental groups said the oil pipeline from North Dakota poses a threat to their existence.
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Protests at a pipeline construction site began weeks ago. She said it would have been “inappropriate for me not to have done my small part” to support the Standing Rock Sioux. The government responded by hiring a private security firm, who sicced their dogs on the protesters and pepper-sprayed at least 30 of them, some of them children.
