A View from Burnaby Mountain: Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything
- Details
- Published on Thursday, 26 March 2015 23:00
- Written by editor
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1096 .... March 27, 2015
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A View from Burnaby Mountain:
Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything
Brad Hornick
"The call came to protestors assembled at bore-hole 2 on Burnaby Mountain: ‘Kinder Morgan has arrived! Get your asses down here.’ I ran to the motorcycle and hurried down to Drummond Walk. A few comrades were just starting to follow KM workers -- 2 hardhats with chain saws, a couple management types and a few security guards. I raged internally as I accompanied them into the forest at the ready, but not knowing what the next step was...
"...but then the cavalry arrived, unleashing, screaming like hell and tearing into, with voice and blow-horn and aggression. KM about-faced sheepishly. This was ‘caretaker’ warrior spirit I witnessed -- nothing would be the same... again. This is appropriate expression of angst and action, connecting the terror of climate destruction to the proper object of protest. No other place could be more direct, more honest."
— from a personal diary.
The recent Vancouver panel discussion on Naomi Klein's new book, This Changes Everything, from which this article took form, was organized weeks before a local Blockadia event took place. By the time the five panelists came together, two had been arrested for defying a court injunction and two were named in a $5.6-million lawsuit for objecting to Kinder Morgan's (KM) planned pipeline through a municipally designated park on Burnaby Mountain. The panelists were active supporters of a mountain camp that was established directly on top of the borehole-site where KM intended to do seismic testing. This article reviews Klein's new book after, and in the light of exploring the context of the Burnaby Mountain incident in more detail.