Page 148 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

138 P. McCURDY

“We > Tar Sands” and “Offshore wind not tar sands oil”. On the first day
of the action 70 protesters were arrested for “failing to obey a lawful order”
while a total of 1,252 arrests were made over the course of the two-week
sit-in (Polden 2011; Tar Sands Action 2011; Tackett 2011). 3
On the heels of the Washington sit-ins, a group of Canadian eNGOs
including The Council of Canadians, Indigenous Environmental Network
and Greenpeace Canada issued a call for a similar sit-it style protest action
to be held on September 26, 2011 to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline
(Adeland 2011; Kraus 2011). The one day event was promoted as
potentially one of the “largest acts of civil disobedience on the climate issue
that Canada has ever seen” (Kraus 2011). Like its Washington counterpart,
the location for the Ottawa sit-in, Parliament Hill, Ottawa, was imbued
with symbolic power and political significance.
While the initial plan was to demonstrate near the House of Commons,
anticipating this move, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
pre-emptively constructed security fences on Parliament Hill in front of the
iconic Center Block limiting building access. These metal barricades
marked the territorial divide between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ protest. 4
Determined to engage in civil disobedience, activists approached and
scaled the waist high ‘perimeter fence’ in waves. The first line of protestors
advanced to the chants and drums of Aboriginal supporters in attendance
together with the cheers and applause of other attendees. The actions of
those scaling the symbolic fence were followed and documented by a
roving pack of at least 30 journalists, cameramen and photographers
pressing against and jostling with each other to document the event. In
total, the RCMP made 117 arrests. The Council of Canadians, a primary
event organizer assessed its success in terms of media coverage asking, in a
blog post, “How well did mainstream media cover our tar sands protest?”.
Their response: “The protest on Parliament Hill yesterday was a tremen-
dous success. It was also extensively covered (in a mixed way) by Canada’s
mainstream media” (Council of Canadians 2011).
Ottawa’s “success” and, indeed, Washington’s, was rooted in two
overlapping factors. First, activists were fully committed to bearing physical
witness to their goal of stopping bitumen pipelines and prepared to get
arrested for this objective. Second, they were attuned to media logics and
conducted their actions in full media view successfully creating, capitalising
on, and in the case of Ottawa, extending, a mediated opportunity.
Both the Washington and Ottawa sit-ins also mobilized celebrity
involvement and endorsement. In Washington D.C., actor Darryl Hannah