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.