Objections to the Bayou Bridge Pipeline demonstrate how the system is rigged.

This article by Sue Lincoln appeared in The Bayou Brief on September 16, 2018.

n Sept. 4, 2018, with bulldozers revving their engines in accompaniment, Cherri Foytlin was tackled and placed in a choke hold by a non-uniformed man who then knelt atop her, grinding her into the sticky mud of the Atchafalaya Basin.

Two uniformed deputies then moved in to provide handcuffs and escort the environmental activist off to the St. Martin Parish jail. She was charged with “criminal damage to critical infrastructure” – in this case, blocking work on the Bayou Bridge pipeline by protesting.

Over the previous month, some dozen individuals, including a reporter covering the protests, had been tackled, tased, arrested, and charged under the same law – Act 692, which went into effect Aug. 1, 2018.

The day before Foytlin’s arrest, fifty people had – at that same spot — been able to halt work on the muddy strip in St. Martin Parish. All were there at the invitation of the property owner, who has refused to agree to the sale or use of the property for the pipeline. He is being sued by the pipeline’s parent company, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), to force him to surrender the right-of-way.

From the time we’re very young, we’re taught about the superiority of our democracy. We’re proud of our Bill of Rights and of our First Amendment’s guaranteed freedom of speech.

Here in Louisiana, our state Constitution opens with a paean to democracy: “All government, of right, originates with the people, is founded on their will alone, and is instituted to protect the rights of the individual and for the good of the whole.”

Due process, the Right to Individual Dignity, and the Right to Property (more on that later) immediately follow that statement. After that comes the Right to Privacy, Freedom from Intrusion, and finally – in section 7, Freedom of Expression, which states: “No law shall curtail or restrain freedom of speech of of the press.”

Yet as events and actions surrounding the Bayou Bridge opposition illustrate, our individual and community rights are far from “inalienable” – in actual practice. MORE…