Reflections on Standing Rock -- Who is the Perpetrator, Who is the Protester?By Janet Phelan The orchid reserve is close to a busy highway. The silence observed worldwide as an hour of solidarity with the Standing Rock water protectors was punctuated with the noise of cars and motorcycles less than fifty yards away. That would be petroleum fueled cars and motorbikes, like those which transported us to the meditation session. And the small group, ten or eleven Mexicans and Americans, also brought food and water to share. That would be water in plastic bottles, a petroleum product. So while we sat and chanted and sang in communion with the brave and imperiled community in Standing Rock, we also participated in the very sorts of behaviors which have fueled (no pun intended) the dependence on petroleum and its byproducts. You cant call us hypocrites. The reality is more complex than that. Every person who attended the meditation in San Cristobal has deep and abiding ties to both worlds the world of concern and activism and the world of consumerism which relies so heavily on the very oil that Standing Rock does not want piped through its land. We drive. We leave the market with plastic bags laden with food. One of the women attending the convocation has a husband who works on a pipeline in Alaska. And I suspect that many of those in Standing Rock also maintain a level of relationship with petroleum. We could have been doing penance. Couldnt we? In the guise of heartfelt support for the protesters at Standing Rock we could actually have been in a kind of confessional, where our own complicity first breaks into awareness. We could actually have been taking the first steps toward purification. Not in hair shirts, not with self flagellation, but by dipping into a global hour of prayer and support, we could possibly have begun the necessary steps toward reflection on how we too have fed a mechanized monster which only demands more more fuel, more energy, more stuff. I was not the only one in the San Cristobal group who was struck by this paradox. As we were gathering our things to leave the orchid garden, another woman commented on this subtext to the event. A worldwide movement towards understanding and confronting how we have unknowingly and unthinkingly colluded in creating this omnivorous need for More may have sparked in other groups, as well. If other communities, in other nations and cities and states, who gathered to support the protesters at Standing Rock, were also struck with their own complicity then maybe the planetary hour of solidarity might have had an unexpected outcome. Coming to terms with our own engagement with that which we profess to abhor is the very first step towards overcoming it. Nothing that takes place after the breakthrough into awareness will be easy. But nothing can ever change before that breakthrough occurs. Janet Phelan is an investigative journalist whose articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The San Bernardino County Sentinel, The Santa Monica Daily Press, The Long Beach Press Telegram, Oui Magazine and other regional and national publications. Janet specializes in issues pertaining to legal corruption and addresses the heated subject of adult conservatorship, revealing shocking information about the relationships between courts and shady financial consultants. She also covers issues relating to international bioweapons treaties. Her poetry has been published in Gambit, Libera, Applezaba Review, Nausea One and other magazines. Her first book, The Hitler Poems, was published in 2005. She is also the author of a tell-all book EXILE, (also available as an ebook). She currently resides abroad. Image Credit: (AP Photo/James MacPherson) STAND TALL and STAY PUT! HELP is coming in the form of a NEW American CIVIL WAR! This will be the worst blood bath in the history of the EARTH They will use nuclear weapons, against their OWN CITIZENS, before they are killed off and peace and a DEMOCRACY will return. The towns and cities will be the most dead places on the planet for many years. PS: A little brave fight back may make more people show up to help YOU! Revolutions are not followed by benign government. Ask the French. And Democracy? Two wolves and a sheep arguing over whats for lunch? How does that sound like something desirable? It is important to support non violent actions when people are being beaten, maced and denied their constitutional rights to assemble and protest.calling all veterans and other people to stand against this madness.We cannot allow others to be treated like animals without due process and respect. News FLASH .. If that pipeline goes through WARREN BUFFETTs railroad loses MILLION$ in revenue .. and there is REDUCED spillage from train wrecks, REDUCED CARBON EMMISSIONS from railroad trains, etc. FOLLOW THE MONEY. I beleave the writer is blind to the real situation. This is about poisoning water with documented broken pipelines, distruction of sacred burial sites, police brutality, and broken treaties. If the writer was not there she should not make general comments. This is about tribal land. this is the use of taxpayer dollars being used to silence the taxpayer qualified immunity on display What an appropriate title. Janet Phelan is a perpetrator, pretending to be a protestor. Disinformation-agent, making loony claims about U.S. government misconduct, in order to distract from larger U.S. malfeasance. 