![]() Local, community-driven resistance has been one of the most effective ways to highlight and counter the cold ruthlessness of extractive outfits. “For the past 50 years, this specific community in Memphis has received whatever the rest of Memphis and Shelby County would dare not accept in other places.” “This community is standing up and saying no more, we’ve had enough,” Robinson told ABC News. In partnership with the Memphis-based environmental group Protect Our Aquifer, the communities filed lawsuits against Plains All American, pressured and petitioned Tennessee state agencies to rescind the pipeline’s permits, and advocated for their rights to live on unpolluted lands, until they organized their way into the national spotlight. But a group of citizens-Sanford names “Justin Pearson, Kizzy Jones, Kathy Robinson, and others who launched Memphis Community Against Pollution”-took a stand. A land agent working for the company reportedly even went as far as to admit that Plains All American constructed the route because the company believed it offered, “the point of least resistance.” In other words: Rich white political donors do not live there, making it the ideal location for an underground pipeline. ![]() In a statement, a spokesperson for Plains All American wrote that the decision was the result of “lower US oil production resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic.” But as Otis Sanford argued at Local 24 News, the pipeline also failed because the communities affected came together and said no.īyhalia Connection’s developers believed, based on decades of industry practice, that they could get away with slating an oil pipeline to run through several Black neighborhoods in southwest Memphis. On Monday, oil pipeline company Plains All American announced that it will be shelving its plan to construct the Byhalia Connection pipeline, a project also sponsored by Valero that was slated to cut through Memphis on its way to Byhalia, Mississippi, where its oil would then be exported.
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