Over 100 students and community members have just marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office

BREAKING: 26 arrested at Transcanada office occupation outside Boston

http://climate-connections.org/2013/03/11/breaking-26-arrested-at-transcanada-office-occupation-outside-boston/

Over 100 students and community members have just marched into TransCanada’s Westborough office and held a funeral mourning the loss of their future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming. More than 25 protesters are risking arrest for refusing to leave the office in an act of civil disobedience.

Carrying a coffin emblazoned with the words “Our Future,” the protesters held flowers and sang an elegy as they marched in procession. Massachusetts Methodist clergy members and a group of mothers holding photographs of their children joined the youth in protest.

The action marked a sharp escalation of the protests in New England against the Keystone XL pipeline. In January, eight students locked and glued themselves at the same TransCanada office. Nationwide, the pipeline has already prompted civil disobedience outside the White House, direct blockades of construction, and the largest climate rally in US history. Todays action kicks off a week of solidarity actions being called for by our allies at the Tar Sands Blockade. During the Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action, March 16th-24th protestors from across the country will target the offices of TransCanada and its investors.

The protesters staged the funeral a week after the US State Department released a widely criticized Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL pipeline. While admitting that rejecting the pipeline would have little effect on jobs, the document minimizes claims about the pipeline’s impact on climate change and on communities who would be at risk for devastating pipeline spills like the 2010 Kalamazoo spill, from which the affected communities are still recovering. The impact assessment also makes the assumption that the Alberta tar sands will be developed regardless of whether Keystone XL goes forward—an assumption not shared by today’s protesters and refuted by indigenous communities whose treaties the Canadian government is violating by allowing development of the tar sands.

(More at the link.)