It’s been almost a week since shit went down in Portland. In case you missed the news, a Shell ice-breaker bound for the arctic was blocked by hordes of kayaktivists, and a dozen or so dangling Greenpeace blockaders. For over forty hours, the icebreaker Fennica was detained under de facto citizen’s arrest, costing Shell several million dollars and cutting deep into a narrow window to drill under the North Pole before the season ends.
The global enviro giant has recently upped its game against the fossil fuel industry, once again embracing tactics of corporate property destruction and direct action that Greenpeace had long shunned.
Groups like the Animal Liberation Front, Sea Shepherd, and Earth First thankfully kept these methods honed, and now, on a sunny day in the Willamette Valley, we’ve all see just how daring kids are these days.