Meet the Activist Standing Up to the Keystone XL of the East
Pipelines, bomb trains, organizing shale field workers — Iris Marie Bloom’s fought it all. Now her newest project is just getting started.
Last Monday evening, the Albany Common Council joined 25 local governments to formally oppose the Pilgrim Pipeline, a proposed 178-mile project that would carry crude oil to refineries in Linden, New Jersey, before returning the refined product to the Port of Albany.
The resolution passed nine to zero, with six council members abstaining. The meeting went four hours long, lasting well into the night, as community members who packed the house played a vital role in getting the resolution passed. Nineteen community members spoke out against the pipeline during the meeting including environmental activists, faith leaders, and residents of Ezra Prentice Homes who’s homes are adjacent to the Port of Albany. The major complaint against the pipeline is that the project puts people at risk of health and safety concerns.
Lifelong activist and environmentalist Iris Marie Bloom, who’s been instrumental in organizing opposition to the proposed infrastructure project across New York and New Jersey, says lobbyists representing the pipeline’s interest have been spreading misinformation regarding the project claiming it would be safer than transportation by train and that it would decrease the number of trains coming into the Port of Albany. Bloom says these claims are flat out wrong, and that the project would actually increase the number of oil trains entering the port by as much as five-times what is coming in today.
Last weekend, Bloom gave an in-depth interview to talk about the pipeline, bomb trains, organizing workers in the oil fields, and the environmental movement more broadly, at a Break Free From Fossil Fuels protest in Albany, New York, which successfully stopped an oil train in its tracks. Thousands of protesters, including Bloom, showed up in Albany on Saturday to oppose the use of these so called “bomb trains” that dangerously transport crude oil across the United States and Canada — placing thousands of small communities, mainly of low-income residents, directly in harm’s way.
You can read the full report from Saturday’s action in Albany here, courtesy of Waging Nonviolence.
Bloom was also in Albany to spread the word among protesters about the Pilgrim Pipeline and the resolution to oppose the plan in the Albany Common Council. While the resolution did pass Monday night, on Saturday, Bloom wasn’t sure what to expect for the resolution.
Here’s what she had to say:
(This interview was originally recorded live, transcribed, and edited for clarity and conversational flow. The intended message of Bloom’s answers was left unedited.)
Fowler: So first things first, why don’t we start by telling me about yourself?
Bloom: My name is Iris Marie Bloom with the Coalition Against Pilgrim Pipelines, and a little non-profit called Protecting Our Waters, which has been fighting fracking since 2009.
Great, and could you give a little bio about yourself, if you don’t mind?
Oh! Well I’m a lifetime activist. I was arrested for the first time fighting apartheid in 1985, sitting down, blockading the doors of Citibank with American Committee on Africa. I was a staff person for the National War Resistor’s League in New York City, also in the eighties. And, I’ve done a little jail time here and there for gay rights, for trying to defy nuclear weapons.
To me, it’s all connected. These forces, in this case, Big Oil, Big Gas, corporate and right-winged forces, are threatening life itself. So, I think those of us who are waging non-violence are like the ones who are the white blood cells — you can see us — we’re clustering together where communities are hurting the most, like they are right here, right now, in Ezra Prentice Homes, in Albany.
Do you plan on risking arrest today?
Absolutely. Both here in Ezra Prentice Homes — in solidarity with the people who’s literally every breath is impacted by big oil, by the Global Partners oil heating facility that is brining tar sands oil, heating it up; all those fumes are affecting people’s lives, breath, safety. So [that’s why] we’re here doing a civil disobedience action.
I will also go sit on the train track to block the oil bomb trains, and it’s all connected with the particular struggles that I am working on, which is to stop the Pilgrim oil pipelines, which are [proposed by] a company that is ran by two former Koch Industries executives — the president and vice president are both [from] Koch industries. They’re saying that the Pilgrim oil pipelines will carry Bakken Shale crude oil, which is the most flammable, volatile crude oil on the face of the planet. There’s no demand for it; there’s no need for it; the refineries don’t even want it, so it looks like [it’s going to be] an export pipeline.
Even worse, we believe they would switch [the pipeline] to [transporting] tar-sands diluted bitumen, which is called DilBit, as soon as it’s in the ground. And [DilBit] is even more impossible to clean up. Oil pipelines spill three-times as much oil as oil trains. They are extremely dangerous, and they’ll be here for 40, 50, to 100 years. So in terms of climate, in terms of water, in terms of public health, in terms of human rights — we’re here to stop it.
That actually leads into my next question. Obviously, there are environmental concerns when it comes to these pipelines and these bomb trains, but what other types of concerns are there at play here since it’s interdisciplinary?
Well, I see it as a human right issue. And the reason is that I, myself, have gone into the homes of people who are living in the shale fields, and I’ve talked to a little three-year-old girl who points to her tap, points to her bathtub, and says, ‘that’s the water we cant drink, that’s where I can’t take a bath.’
I, myself, have gone into the homes of people who are living in the shale fields, and I’ve talked to a little three-year-old girl who points to her tap, points to her bathtub, and says, ‘that’s the water we cant drink, that’s where I can’t take a bath.’
And there’s nothing like the gut-level impact of seeing people who actually have to keep their windows open in subzero weather when they take a shower because there is so much methane coming out of their water, because of the methane migration from fracking.
That’s happening right now. Not just in Pennsylvania, not just in the Marcellus Gas states, but also in North Dakota, where this fracked oil is coming from. Indigenous communities there are devastated. The suicide level is up. The people getting killed by the oil industry fracking trucks is up. We’re talking dozens and dozens — like one person knew thirty-eight people who have died in fracking truck collisions. So, it’s not a small issue.
There are all kinds of human rights angles to this. And in the big picture we’re looking at hundreds of millions of climate chaos deaths by mid-century. That’s a huge human rights issue. That’s what the World Health Organization is saying. So that’s what we’re about.
One thing I am wondering, is that a lay person might think building a pipeline for the oil coming into Albany would reduce the traffic of bomb trains. So would, or would not, the Pilgrim pipelines increase the amount of oil transported by bomb trains into and out of the Port of Albany?
The Pilgrim oil pipelines, if they were to be build, would in fact increase the number of oil bomb trains coming into Albany. What’s happening is, when the average person hears that a pair of pipelines might be built they think, ‘oh, good, they’re going to take away the bomb trains, I would rather have a pipeline.’
They’re trying to divide and conquer, and we’re saying, ‘no, we’re together, stop the bomb trains, stop the pipelines, the pipelines would make the bomb trains increase.’
Number one, they don’t know how dangerous pipelines are, that there’s more oil spills from pipelines [than bomb trains], that they do blow up, etc. But also, they don’t know the facts, and the facts are that the CSX oil trains that are coming along the tracks right now, they are all going to Philadelphia. The Pilgrim oil pipelines, are not headed anywhere near Philly. It’s going to Linden, New Jersey, to refineries and to the export market. A lot of that oil might be exported overseas.
This is simply a radical increase of crude oil flowing through Albany, through the Hudson Valley, down the Hudson River, making us into an artery clogged with flaming, volatile, fracked Bakken Shale oil and tar sands crude. It’s an absolute disaster, but the industry is using this myth that the pipelines would decrease the oil trains as a very active disinformation campaign, and that’s a huge problem. They’re trying to divide and conquer, and we’re saying, ‘no, we’re together, stop the bomb trains, stop the pipelines, the pipelines would make the bomb trains increase.’
In the face of disinformation campaigns and divide and conquer tactics, moving forward, how important is it to incorporate labor unions that represent the railroad workers, steel workers, electricians, electrical workers, etc. into your organizing?
Oh, it’s incredibly important. I began working on the fracking issue in Pennsylvania. One of our first and strongest supporters in the campaign to ban fracking in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania statewide was the Teamsters Union. Now, this was a particular Teamsters Local that includes the railroad workers. They understood, right away, even before the bomb train situation was blowing up — so to speak — that this affects everybody.
Unions are in very different places. The nurses’ unions are with us; teachers’ unions are often with us; welders and construction trades are much harder. In the U.S., union leaders are not generally going to climate conferences. In Europe, and other parts of the world, there are huge conferences for union workers about climate and how we’re going to transition. So we have a tremendous amount of work to do.
So what can environmentalists and environmental justice activists do to bridge these communities?
I think face-to-face dialogue ‘slash’ relentless pestering is a really important part of it. We need to go out of our way, which is something I do everywhere I go.
I talk to people. I see construction workers in front of Ulster County legislative building and they’re working on a memorial. So I go and talk to them for an hour. ‘Do you about the Pilgrim oil pipelines? Do you know about the bomb trains?’ We talk.
Face-to-face dialogue in informal settings is among the most important tools we have. And I think people have started to lose that initiative because too many folks are behind their electronic devices saying I’ll just send another email to 12,000 people, but maybe you didn’t talk to those five workers.
Fowler: After the Break Free action in Albany ends today, what are some specific outcomes regarding policy changes or regulations that you hope to see, and who are the decision makers?
In terms of the Pilgrim pipelines, we actually have a vote right here in Albany on Monday night that we’re working incredible hard on. Because on the ground, we have gotten twenty-five municipalities up and down the Hudson Valley. The City of Newburg; City of Kingston; Town of Rosenthal; the Town of New Paltz, I can tell you all twenty-five if you wanted.
We have worked town-by-town, village-by-village, city-by-city, to get these resolutions opposing the Pilgrim pipelines [passed] because that lays the groundwork for, really, three cities in New York State to have the ability to say no to Pilgrim pipelines. One of those is Albany, but Goliath here has been doing their lobbying and using a lot of disinformation, so the City of Albany is the one place, at this point, we might not have the votes we need.
We have old-fashioned buttonholing of Albany residents to have them cold calling their [representatives], so that’s one thing. Governor Cuomo is the key decision maker in the state. He can tell his Thruway Authority to deny the permit to Pilgrim pipelines. They want to use the right-of-way of the New York State Thruway. Just picture a Bakken Shale oil explosion on the New York State freeway.
So [Cuomo] has the ability [to say no]. The department of environmental conservation has the ability to say no, [and] to deny water quality permits. There’s a lot of way in, but because there is so much confusion the majority of people I talk to say, ‘Oh we defeated that!’ They think we defeated it already. They don’t even know it exists because Governor Cuomo said no against the Constitution pipeline. So again, we have a lot of work to do.
Well thank you so much for your time. Before I go, is there anything else that you would like to talk about?
One more thing I want to talk about is the workers in the shale fields. I brought workers from the shale fields to Philadelphia in the anti-fracking work I did before just to show the public, and folks in the media, what it looks like when you have blisters on your body; what it’s like when you have to take eleven different inhalers a day just to breath.
[Shale field] workers have a higher illness, injury and death rate in the fracking fields than even so-called normal fossil fuel extraction. It’s extremely dangerous. A farmer in northeastern Pennsylvania that I worked with, five fracking well pads surrounded her, and there were four deaths at those five pads, and it doesn’t make headlines. So we also need to support workers getting safe, clean, green, good paying jobs. That is a huge part of our struggle, and [would] relieve [some of] the burden of this toxic industry that is killing workers.
As a journalist, if there’s anyone else I should talk to today, who should it be?
Talk to the residents who live here. Talk to the Ezra Prentice Homes residents.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
