Sunday, 12 July 2015 00:00

Cops Hold Tasers to Necks and Hearts of Lakota Protesters Trying to Stop Budweiser Trucks

Written by Sarah Burris | AlterNet
Cops Hold Tasers to Necks and Hearts of Lakota Protesters Trying to Stop Budweiser Trucks Tar Sands Bockade

The tiny town of Whiteclay, Nebraska sits outside the Pine Ridge Reservation. Boasting a population of 12, it exists only to sell alcohol to members of the Oglala Lakota Tribe where alcohol is prohibited. Each morning, 20 or more Lakota members wait for one of the four liquor stores to open, most after spending the night intoxicated and sleeping in the streets. The town sells approximately 5 million cans of beer annually.

Protesters have been camping around the clock for weeks holding vigils and doing blockades of the liquor store's delivery trucks. Last week, following a training and workshop, Lakota people took their civil disobedience to a new level with a greater presence and protest of the beer distributors.

Bryan V. Brewer, Sr., president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, joined the crowd marching down the road toward White Clay as the beer trucks arrived. "As leaders we should be ahead of the people," he said. "We need to support our activists who are stepping up and confronting this issue."

He was quickly arrested by Sheridan County Sheriff Terry Robbins. The crowd surrounded the sheriff's deputies and resisted their attempts to arrest Brewer and continued blocking the trucks. The scene quickly escalated and deputies began holding tasers to the necks and hearts of protesters. The protesters were forcibly pushed and deputies pulled people's hair wrestling them to the ground.

In the end, protesters stood their ground stopping two Budweiser trucks attempting to make deliveries in Whiteclay, but next week is another battle.

Lakota members are fighting alcoholism on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but their greatest foe is a town with the population of 12 that exists to support the four liquor stores just outside the border. The Reservation might be dry, but Whiteclay, Nebraska continues to supply members who suffer from addiction. When the tribe staged a protest, Sheriff's deputies turned violent holding tasers to the necks and hearts of the protesters, grabbing their hair and wresting them to the ground.

This was honorable protest attempting to protect the tribe from further alcoholism. The Sheriff didn't have to escalate it to violence. Stand with the Lakota as they they fight to protect their people and tell the Sheriff and his deputies to back off.

Link to original article from AlterNet

Read 32107 times

Latest News

  • Trump administration's voter suppression attempts ahead of midterms are not only 'morally wrong,' they're illegal +

    Trump administration's voter suppression attempts ahead of midterms are not only 'morally wrong,' they're illegal Imagine going to the polls on Election Day and discovering that your ballot could be collected and reviewed by the Read More
  • ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' +

    ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' ACLU Blueprints Offer Vision to Cut US Incarceration Rate in Half by Prioritizing 'People Over Prisons' Read More
  • As Florence Makes Landfall, Poorest Once More Likely to Suffer Most From Storm's Destruction +

    As Florence Makes Landfall, Poorest Once More Likely to Suffer Most From Storm's Destruction "These disasters drag into the light exactly who is already being thrown away," notes Naomi Klein Read More
  • How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. +

    How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. How about some good news? Kansas Democratic Representative advances bill for Native Peoples. Read More
  • How One Dying Man Changed The Debate About The Tax Bill +

    How One Dying Man Changed The Debate About The Tax Bill What mattered was that he showed up — that he put himself in front of the people whose opinions on Read More
  • Democrats Just Won a Major Victory in Virginia +

    Democrats Just Won a Major Victory in Virginia On a night of Democratic victories, one of the most significant wins came in Virginia, where the party held onto Read More
  • Repealing the Jim Crow law that keeps 1.5 million Floridians from voting. +

    Repealing the Jim Crow law that keeps 1.5 million Floridians from voting. A seismic political battle that could send shockwaves all the way to the White House was launched last week in Read More
  • Nuclear Weapons: Who Pays, Who Profits? +

    Nuclear Weapons: Who Pays, Who Profits? In an interview with Reuters conducted a month after he took office, Donald Trump asserted that the U.S. had “fallen Read More
  • Sessions issues sweeping new criminal charging policy +

    Sessions issues sweeping new criminal charging policy Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned the sweeping criminal charging policy of former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. and directed Read More
  • 1
  • 2