In the movie the Race to
Save the World, the story of sHellNo! is mainly told by focusing on Backbone director
Bill Moyer (no not the one who does newsreporting). The movie does not
mention that the sHellNo campaign was a coalition of Backbone, 350Seattle.org,
BAYAN (an Asian American group) and local native efforts - with GreenPeace
swooping in at the last minute and trying to call a lot of shots in Seattle and
also wrongfully claiming a lot of credit for the kayaktivist phenomena that
Bill had already developed for previous actions. The movie is already two
hours long - but honestly there could have been at least an hour-long movie on
this campaign alone.
Not entirely clear in
the movie, there were many parts of this campaign. There was a family-friendly
paddle with no blockading, but where many pictures got taken. There was an
attempt to block workers from entering the Shell plant on land (which Shell
handled by ignoring it and not calling the police for arrests), and the day the
rig left at 5 am in the morning there was an attempt to block the rig. Also,
in a separate action (shown in the movie) in Portland when Shell sent its
icebreaker rig down to get repaired. This icebreaker was blocked both by kayaktivists
in the river, as well as the 9 GreenPeace activists who had rappelled off the
bridge and were also blocking the rig from proceeding. Not shown in the
movie were the literally hundreds of people who participated in planning, moving
equipment around, and/or who went in kayaks and risked arrest, not to mention
the hours Bill Moyer spent getting permits and the huge payments for insurance etc. These
are the true and less glamourous parts of a movement.
Overall,
the sHellNo campaign was a David vs Goliath action, and this time David
won! At the time of the campaign, the ice was only open in the
Artic for a very short window in the summer (sadly no longer true). That was when
Shell had to do exploratory drilling to assess the feasibility of a long term
oil extraction process in the pristine waters of the artic. Between the
negative attention they got for the campaign, and the two day delay in Portland
due to protestors, they lost enough time and did not get the data they
needed. Their board voted to quit the operation! Bill explained that in the TCAT panel after
the movie showing. While the family-friendly event was not a
blockade, it produced those colorful pictures that went round the world in
media. A few days later, while an acquaintance of Bill's was at the White
House for another reason, the paper with this headline picture was thrown down,
and the question asked "and what are we going to do about
this?" The Obama administration considered it an embarrassment, and
so they found a little-enforced walrus rule that s ships had to stay a certain
distance apart for walrus breeding. They enforced it, making it even harder for
Shell. But I always like to say that ultimately, Earth herself intervened
on our side because the ice reached up and ripped the ice ripper ship so it had
to go back to Portland for repair causing the crucial delay. Because you
see....the earth is on our side!
