I lived in North Dakota during it's height and 30 years prior. It was a ridiculous protest driven by emotional overreaction to a normal construction proceeding (the Missouri had already been crossed near Williston by the same pipeline).

It had a disruptive negative impact on many of the surrounding communities. And the state was left with a huge mess to clean up after all the protestors left.

It's hard to believe that those pushing people off the land for trespass in forcible fashion would have decided to delay a day if they had pointed out the they needed time to clean up their campsite. Did you really think that argument through, or was it just a convenient way to express a negative opinion?

>It had a disruptive negative impact on many of the surrounding communities

Given that it also nearly doubled the size of the county, it probably kept those dying towns afloat.

>And the state was left with a huge mess to clean up after all the protestors left.

The state is also still spending tax money doing DNA tests to find a nonviolent protestor, not to mention the police bill rung up forcing all those protesters to leave.

Brother, I was there with you as well. I saw no criminal activity by protestors (protectors). Everything was legal. No doubt there were some crimes here and there but certainly not rioting, terrorism, etc.

Those claiming now that everyone there committed federal crimes, I am here. Come arrest me. File your charges. I will ensure you are countersued for libel and false arrest. I will take you all down and as a lifelong successful engineer and entrepreneur I have the financial resources and legal advisors to ensure my rights. I committed no crime whatsoever. Bring it on, everyone making these claims. Bring it. I am here, waiting for all the internet basement accusers to make this real. Come now, let us grapple and let the courts determine the truth.

I think I had a cigarette butt or two in North Dakota at the time, too. Looks like they need to come get me as well. I'm still in good ole Des Moines, Iowa. :)

There was no illegal activity going on. Everyone told everyone else how sensitive things were. We were all on our toes. The true crimes were committed by the paid oil protectors, the cops, the companies making this project happen and the government.

They took a LOT of land from a lot of people, simply trying to get by. Even if you opposed it and refused any sort of financial compensation (which in fact several people tried to do) then the land was taken anyways.

My family has a cattle ranch near the protest site. What I saw was that the some of the protesters didn't really know the difference between a rancher's tractor, and pipeline equipment. Now... there is some overlap there with dump trucks, but there's no way a combine can build a pipeline (edit, a combine is a machine used for separating grain from the stalks). A number of ranchers had their equipment vandalized just for having a field near the protests (5-10 mile range). Incidents of people misbehaving were pretty well documented, and worse... these ranchers didn't often have vandalism insurance to make them whole again. I don't think it was quite all "Kumbaya" is all I'm getting at here. So while I was against the pipeline, I was more against people fucking up rancher's property. These guys have a hard enough life without some punk indiscriminately trying to pour sugar in the gas tank of everything they could find bigger than a riding lawnmower.

Anyway one of these has a clip of some of the protesters blocking access to a certain area. First hand, that was my experience trying to drive a pickup truck through one of the areas. These guys blocked the roads, came up to the truck, were incredibly aggressive... swearing and posturing right off the bat. My dad, who's an enrolled member of the tribe, tried to tell them he was just getting through... he's in his 70s, and these guys mistook him for a pipeline worker. Yeah... I mean, it was just surreal having someone who clearly didn't sound like they were from North Dakota yelling at my Dad, who has lived there his entire life, about how we were violating and trespassing on sacred lands and they had the right to stop us from using the road.

* Ranchers Impacted by the DAPL Protests Voice Their Concerns | The Mighty 790 KFGO || https://kfgo.com/podcasts/ag-news-leader/1694/ranchers-impac...

* N.D. Pipeline Protests Have Agitated Area Farmers - AgWeb || https://www.agweb.com/article/nd-pipeline-protests-have-agit...

* My old comments on HN on this subject || https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Surprise! Large groups of people have bad apples!

So it wasn't just a few bad apples. My perspective. The group on the road was the face of the protest to anyone driving through. Right? And these guys weren't locals, they couldn't tell the difference between ranchers and pipeline workers, and generally didn't care who their actions impacted. They were thugs, people who wanted to get into a fight. That's who gravitates to a spot like that.

What would have helped? Put some of the local protesters on the road, people who didn't come off as quite so aggressive, to be the face of this thing. Who could have educated people on the issue. Instead, you get some guy in a bandanna, with a baseball bat, walking up to your truck, "Get the fuck off out of here!" Again, the absurdity of some non-native non-local telling a life-long resident native rancher, "I'm protecting my sacred lands..."

And if you ask the locals, there's no love for the protesters. People remember how you make them feel, right? It's impossible to defend the actions of a group of people who caused so much destruction and were such assholes to deal wtih. Any reason they couldn't tell the difference between pipeline workers and ranchers and just the the ranchers through? Ranchers are all older, I think the average age of ranchers in North Dakota is now over 50, and typically drive pretty beat up trucks (average income is $40k).

If you want to fight the 1%, you don't do it by trashing on some guy who's just out there doing an honest day's work. These are family men just trying to make ends meet. These families that lost equipment... they're still down 3 years later. Anyway that was my experience with this. I hate the militarization of police, and most police in general, but it's really hard for me to feel pity for anything that happened to the protesters after the way I saw them treat local ranchers. Just no excuse for a lot of that shitty behavior.