U.S. Bank Protest in Minneapolis: Activists March Against Pipeline Funding

Link to original article: https://heavy.com/news/2018/02/us-bank-protest-minneapolis-pipeline-photos-super-bowl/

Coverage by Heavy.com, New York, NY, February 3, 2018

Excerpt:

Photo by Emma Fiala

Activists Say U.S. Bank Is Still Funding Pipelines By Giving General Financing to ETP & Other Clients

Some activists are saying that the bank is still financing the pipelines indirectly. And because of this, hundreds showed up for the protest in Minneapolis the day before the Super Bowl, shutting down an intersection in the city:

Hundreds of water protectors just shut down this intersection in Minneapolis, protesting @usbank’s funding of ETP’s deadly pipelines! #SBLIIBLACKOUT #DefundETP #StopETP #SBLive pic.twitter.com/TiIOW7M5uz

— Collin Rees (@collinrees) February 3, 2018

The Des Moines Register reported that environmentalists came to Minneapolis to protest the four-state pipeline before the Super Bowl on Sunday. The activists say that the Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank financed the $3.8 billion pipeline, completed by ETP in 2017. Ed Fallon, Bold Iowa director, told the Des Moines Register: “U.S. Bank is as complicit as Energy Transfer Partners for abusing eminent domain, trampling the rights of rural landowners, destroying farmers’ soil and crops, and threatening our water and climate. That can change. It needs to change, and we’re turning up the heat to make it happen.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Bank officials pointed to their 2017 Environmental Policy and said that it’s still in place. Spokesman Dana Ripley told the Des Moines Register: “U.S. Bank did not finance the Dakota Access pipeline project. As a matter of policy we do not do project finance.” They do have a banking relationship with ETP, but they said that relationship doesn’t include the pipeline and they “don’t comment on our customer relationships.”