The county sheriff’s department said Stein and Baraka vandalized equipment at a construction site for the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline in Morton County while trespassing at the site along with activists.
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Stein, who was not arrested at Tuesday’s protest, admitted in a statement to spray-painting the bulldozer during the anti-oil demonstration, which concerned construction that she said amounted to desecrating Native American burial sites. Baraka spray painted “Decolonization” and “We need decolonization” on a piece of construction equipment while Stein sprayed, “I approve this message” in red paint of the blade of a bulldozer.
As Bill McKibben explains in The New Yorker, the pipeline is a project the federal government pushed through under a “fast track” permit, despite the fact that it will necessarily threaten the Standing Rock Sioux reservation’s water supply and destroy sacred burial grounds. “The Dakota Access Pipeline is vandalism on steroids”, Stein wrote.
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. Construction on a road to the pipeline has stopped for the moment.
“We think those warrants are misdirected”, she said.
“76 percent of the American public is clamoring for open debates, for actually allowing other choices to come into those dates so that people can find out”, she said. Reuters reports Saturday’s protests were prompted by the pipeline company bulldozing “sacred tribal sites whose locations had been identified in court documents filed on Friday”.
The crimes Stein and Baraka’s are charged with are class B misdemeanors, which according to the North Dakota criminal code, “are punishable by up to 30 days in jail and fines reaching $1,000”.
In a letter to President Obama, tribal and environmental groups said the oil pipeline from North Dakota poses a threat to their existence.
A spokesperson for Stein told KXMB that she will hold a news conference Wednesday.
Protesters claim they were pepper-sprayed and bitten by the dogs.
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Though Stein now trails Clinton, Trump, and Libertarian Gary Johnson by large margins – a recent CNN poll had her getting only 2% of the vote – she has been a vocal presence during this year’s election season.
