The ACLU of North is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that works to defend and strengthen the individual rights and liberties guaranteed in the United States and North Dakota Constitutions through lobbying, selective litigation, and public education. In the 2019 North Dakota Legislative Session we will be working on a broad range of issues including free speech, criminal justice, reproductive freedom, immigrants rights, and LGBTQ rights.
Our country has a long way to go in our relations with indigenous nations. We can start now in North Dakota by demilitarizing, ending the surveillance of the camp and water protectors, and starting to listen to the prayers of those who are protecting the water for us all.
Help us stand with Standing Rock. Sign our petition and tell Governor Dalrymple to demilitarize North Dakota’s response to peaceful protesters and protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Several thousand indigenous people from across the county have journeyed to a little-known pasture on the prairie just miles from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation to protect the land the tribes consider sacred and culturally significant as well as the water necessary for life. In response to the pipeline protests, North Dakota’s government suppressed free speech and militarized its policing by declaring a state of emergency and calling out the National Guard.
Eyewitness accounts and video footage of nonviolent pipeline protesters engaged in civil disobedience near Cannonball, North Dakota on Saturday, September 3, 2016, highlight the use of excessive force by Dakota Access, LLC (DAPL) private security personnel on protesters.
The American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota last night sent a letter to Governor Dalrymple and the Morton County Sheriff urging them to protect the First Amendment rights of protesters at the site of the Dakota Access Pipeline construction.
The curbing of peaceful protests at the site of the Dakota Access Pipeline construction is in violation of our core principles of free speech.