Hundreds of students gathered and marched through Georgetown and up Pennsylvania Ave to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. This demonstration marks the largest act of civil disobedience by students under the Obama administration.
The students spread out a huge 40 x 60 foot black banner made to represent an oil spill in front of the White House. The police arrived shortly after and ordered them to disperse, but they al stayed, causing hundreds to be arrested.
The big question is, why wasn’t any mainstream media present? One student tweeted, “Why are @EdShow @Maddow @MSNBC @CNN @NYTImes @AP Not covering the 100′s of kids getting arrested in D.C. protesting XL Pipeline? #XLDissent” One independent journalist took a video of the event, and stayed after the arrests saying, “once the camera goes away bad things happen.”
The students are hoping they made some kind of impact. One student tweeted, “I watch young people by the 100s willing to go to jail at #xldissent and I think: just maybe this world is going to make it. Thanks y’all”