Powerful Photos that Will Give You Hope
The rhetoric since the devastating election news of Donald Trump, has resulted as a sadness like a death. However, more than half of this country and abroad are done hearing taunts about we are "over reacting." This is a dark moment in time in America history. There is grief and anger that is so profound it could break through walls as millions of us are trying to break glass ceilings. I have started a photo series called Love Trumps All, showing the outpour for equality in this emotional and political divide in America following the election. In this series, it consists of photos taken during recent protests in cities such as New York and Los Angeles. Stay turned for more of the photo series as America pushes to repair what can be a great America.
The ground near has tents and teepees that are home for the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation by the Missouri and Cannonball rivers is served for nonviolent communities. It was April 1, 2016, a Friday. This small encampment would grow into an unprecedented gathering of native North American tribes and nations united in an effort to protect water and land. It would be a gathering of native North American tribes and nations united in an effort to protect water and land. Nearly eight months later, The Dakota Access pipeline, funded by the Energy Transfer Partners corporation, would transport up to 570,000 tons of crude oil per day along a 1,172-mile route from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota through South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. If completed, its path would cut through grounds sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. It would travel twice underneath the Missouri River, which the Lakota and Dakota people of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation depend on for drinking water, along with 17 million other people throughout the country. The pipeline construction began in mid-May, and the campers, about 30 people by then, stayed on. However, most of the world did not become aware of Standing Rock until just after Labor Day weekend. Videos of private security personnel attacking Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray went viral. The day after the Standing Rock Sioux tribe filed papers in federal court identifying sacred burial grounds and cultural sites along the pipeline’s path, Dakota Access sent bulldozers to some of those locations, and water protectors met them there, Democracy Now! reported. On the news, the camera zoomed in on stinging eyes and lunging dogs, one dog’s mouth red with blood.
A U.S. district court had denied the Standing Rock Sioux’s request for an injunction to stop work on the pipeline. The election of Donald Trump, investor in the Energy Transfer Partners and a denier of climate change, would seem to spell doom for the pipeline resistance. Late on the eve of October 10, Indigenous Peoples Day, police apprehended Vic Camp while he was leading a ceremony for water protectors fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Andreanne Catt, 17, lead hundreds of supporters in call and response. "Mni wiconi!" she shouted, in Lakota Sioux. "Water is Life!" Thousands of people went upward spread swiftly and peacefully. The law enforcement officials blasted crowds with water cannons and tear gas in, reportedly, 26 degrees below freezing temperatures. Many people were outraged, and a celebrities have expressed the outrage on Twitter.
Rowan Blanchard said this issue with water supply and other issues surrounding the outcome of the President-elect Trump. "Dakota Access Pipeline is fueled with an American historic erasure of Native Americans, of course it's filled with historic colonialism, of course it has to do with the historic neglecting of people of color in this country... But regardless if you still can't see and understand that- this is about a right to have clean water. This is about life." Speaking for myself and other young girls, sometimes my views politically or socially can be undermined because of my age, size or the fact that I'm a girl. You can't deny the power of women, the power of communities and the power of justice.
Advice of the Day:
"I think that I have a career because I never gave up,"- plus-size model, Tess Holliday
