My name is Jane Kleeb and I founded
a group called Bold Nebraska,
which is an advocacy group that works on property rights,
and water, and other populist issues
throughout the state of Nebraska.
You know, the beautiful thing about the Keystone XL fight
is that we have farmers, and ranchers,
and climate advocates, and tribal nations,
all at the same table working shoulder to shoulder.
And I think I’m very, very lucky, and fortunate
that I had never worked on pipelines or climate change before.
I think if I had, maybe I would have absorbed that
this is a very daunting task;
that there’s no way a small group of people
—this unlikely alliance of farmers, ranchers, and tribes—
could beat a big oil corporation.
But that never entered my mind. I saw something that was wrong,
and that there were a group of people that were going to be affected.
So we went for it.
Nebraska is not an oil state; we’re an Ag state.
So the Ogallala Aquifer— the water—
was first and foremost for everybody.
Second, is property rights. To even think, in America,
that a foreign corporation could come and tell
a bunch of farmers and ranchers that
they’re going to take their land through eminent domain
for their private gain is literally unconscionable.
I knew that people that we were bringing together
worked with their hands.
So we planted Ponca sacred corn, for the first time
in over one hundred years, in the path of the pipeline.
We built a solar barn directly in the path to show
anybody who thought about approving that pipeline
that they would have to tear down a cultural identity
of farmers and ranchers, and clean energy,
if they wanted to build this pipeline.
I think that if we didn’t do those actions, people could have
very easily just stayed in their silos
of only talking about climate,
or only talking about property rights,
or only talking about sovereign rights.
And all of these actions built trust among all of us
and built this family —we call ourselves pipeline fighters—
that nobody could break.
It didn’t matter how much money TransCanada offered the landowners
or what tactics they used to try to paint us as extremists,
we were family and we were going to stop the pipeline together.
Chanting: Water is life! Protect it! Water is life! Protect it!
It’s so important to march when you’re in these fights,
especially the landowners and people who’ve been in it on a daily basis
—have been doing this for almost eight years.
It can get depressing and isolating, and so when you’re
in the streets with people you may have never met before,
and they’re all fighting alongside you,
it gives this renewed sense of excitement,
knowing that—yes—there’s a lot of people who have our back.
I’m very confident we’re going to stop the pipeline
for the third time now, because we’ve stopped it twice before.
We’re in front of the Public Service Commission.
It’s a very lengthy process. If we lose, or TransCanada loses,
we think the other side will appeal.
And then we’ll also fight this in court if the decision
doesn’t go our way, around eminent domain.
I’ve never thought we couldn’t stop the pipeline.
It’s not in my sense of self to think that we would lose.
I’m currently the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party
and I often get from people, “Why would you go into politics now?"
"It is so toxic. You’re not going to get anything done.”
For me, this is the moment when we all need to be in politics, right?
We all need to start connecting the issues that we deeply care about
to politics, and to partisan politics.
And to not see the words “partisan politics” in a negative way,
and be really proud as Democrats, and red state Democrats to say
— not whisper—that we are Democrats;
that we believe in equality; that we believe
that neo-Nazis are bad for our country;
that we believe that rural broadband and property rights
are critical issues in rural communities
that we, as Democrats, are going to stand up for.
And we cannot have—although I love them all—
the coasts making decisions for our party.
We actually do matter in Middle America and we have a lot to say
about the policies that people in Washington D.C. are voting on.
And we need more people that have run grassroots groups
to run for party leaderships.
It’s always this belief that “we the people”
are at the heart of what’s going to get things done.
And if we would just have an ounce of belief
from the decision-makers that we actually know what’s going on,
I think you would actually start to see real solutions
to big problems in our country.