Youth Group Fighting Dakota Access Pipeline Returns To Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- A Bay Area youth group is back from joining in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, after traveling to North Dakota earlier this month to try to stop the pipeline construction.
News reports coming out of the standoff over the pipeline may have been about the arrests of the protestors - 411 arrests since August - but actually being there was quite different, Yasmine Madris told KCBS.
"It was love. It was unity. It was prayer, and it was hope," she said.
People from across the country have been converging at the crude oil pipeline trying to stop it's construction, which protestors say will destroy Native American burial and prayer sites, and more.
"It's not if they rupture, it's when they rupture. And that destroys the water source for 80-million people, and that doesn't include the frogs, the fish, the birds, the bears, the coyotes, the rabbits – everyone else that needs to feed on that," Audriana Betti, director of the native youth group Mishika Eagle Dancer said.
11-year-old Maria Luisa said that going to the protest was scary because of the large number of armed police officers, but she knows it was important for her to be there.
"If they don't stop the pipeline, no one will," Luisa said.
