Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is accused of committing a criminal act Tuesday after she spray-painted a bulldozer at a construction site for the Dakota Access Pipeline.
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While the Morton County sheriff’s department has yet to make any arrests, they are “working up the information through the state’s attorney’s office to pursue charges (against Stein)” for either trespassing, vandalism, or both.
No arrests were made Tuesday, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said in a press conference.
Her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, reportedly also spray painted equipment, painting “decolonization” on a Caterpillar. 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.
Churchwell previously reported on the brewing protest in April, when sit-in demonstrations first occurred. “Chicago has been leading the fight in immigrant rights since more than a decade ago, when you brought hundreds of thousands of people out of the shadows and into streets to say that immigrant rights are people’s rights”.
The Morton County Sheriff Department stated that no arrests or charges have been filed yet because they are still investigating the incident.
A Stein spokesperson told CNN that protesters standing in opposition to the $3.7 billion Dakota Access Pipeline invited the candidate to scrawl a message on the construction vehicle.
The Green Party released a statement noting that pipeline management “unleashed vicious attack dogs on the peaceful protestors and sprayed pepper spray into protesters’ faces”.
A fight between protesters and pipeline security guards broke out as the bulldozers retreated. The security guards were also had guard dogs to help deter the protesters who were chaining themselves to construction equipment and torn down fences.
About 200 people protested at the construction site two miles east of State Highway 6 about 20 miles south of Mandan, and two protesters bound their hands to bulldozers for several hours.
While a North Dakota judge seems to be taking Jill Stein’s alleged criminal behavior pretty seriously, the candidate herself doesn’t seem to believe she did anything worth having a warrant issued in her name.
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The tribe says the pipeline threatens sacred sites and drinking water.
