Heads Up! Harvest the Hope Concert: Nebraska is "Ground Zero"

8/11/2019 Heads Up! Harvest the Hope Concert: Nebraska is "Ground Zero"

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Thousands of concertgoers and pipeline activists attended the Harvest the Hope concert put on by BoldNebraska. Willie Nelson and Neil Young headlined the event held on a western Nebraska farm.

Willie Nelson, Neil Young play to thousands protesting Keystone XL

Nicholas Bergin | Lincoln Journal Star | September 27, 2014 | http://bit.ly/JS27Sept

NELIGH -- Art and Helen Tanderup gazed with amazed smiles at the thousands of cars parked on the

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Rex Tillerson <[email protected]>, David Rosenthal <[email protected]>

Heads up! Harvest the Hope concert: Nebraska is "ground zero"

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stubble of their recently harvested cornfield on Saturday, at the stage set up in their rye field and at theocean of people standing in front of it.

“It’s unbelievable. It’s absolutely amazing this is happening,” said Art just before the start of Harvest theHope.

The sun shone in a sky dotted with white clouds, and nearby corn rustled in a southern breeze on the

160-acre farm near Neligh, as fans waited to hear the concert’s headliners, Canadian singer-songwriterNeil Young and country music star Willie Nelson.

Between performances by opening acts -- Native American hip-hop artist Frank Waln, and Lukas andMicah Nelson and Promise of the Real (featuring Willie Nelson’s sons) -- politicians and activists spoketo the crowd of about 8,000 about the fight against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

The Tanderups are two of about 100 landowners refusing to sign easement agreements withTransCanada Corp., the company that wants to build the controversial pipeline capable of transporting840,000 barrels of crude oil per day, mostly from Canada’s tar sands region destined for refineries onthe U.S. Gulf Coast.

Fighting the Keystone XL is only a small part of the bigger battle against a changing climate that isthreatening the entire planet, Young said during a press conference before the concert.

“We’re really just a skirmish on the ground around a disaster that is waiting to happen," he said. "Peopleare panicking and trying to figure out how to get out of this mess.

“We’re proud to be here with all of you, whether you agree with us or disagree with us, to have adiscourse about what this is.”

Young said America must take up the challenge of reducing carbon emissions and turn to renewableenergy generation.

“Stand up and be creative and have ingenuity and come up with solutions so we’re not just complainingabout problems, we’re solving them," he said. "That is what America needs to do.”

The development of Canada’s tar sands is far from inevitable, said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director ofprograms at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental advocacy groupsponsoring the event.

“Tar sands is not regular oil," she said. "It’s dirtier. It’s nastier. It’s bad for our land and water when itspills, and it is bad for our climate when it is taken out of the ground. What is happening here inNebraska is ground zero."

Brought together by their opposition to the pipeline project, environmentalists, land rights proponents,farmers, ranchers and Native Americans have revived a coalition dubbed the Cowboy Indian Alliance,with origins in protests against uranium mining in the 1970s.

Native leaders have pledged to stop the Keystone XL from crossing their sacred ancestral lands.

Rosebud Sioux President Cyril Scott and Oglala Lakota President Bryan Brewer, both fromSouth Dakota, and tribal leaders from other nations promised their tribal warriors wouldphysically stop the pipeline.

“We are not just going to protest and leave," Brewer said. "We’re going to stop it."

***After Nelson and Young performed hourlong sets, including classic hits such as “Beer for my Horses” byNelson and “Heart of Gold” by Young, audience members marched into the Tanderups' field and formeda human chain across where TransCanada wants to bury a 36-inch-diameter pipe.

Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska, declined to speculate on how much money the event wouldraise to be split between her organization, the Indigenous Environmental Network and the CowboyIndian Alliance, as well as small clean-energy projects on farms and tribal lands, such as putting solarpanels on center pivot irrigators.



Maybe more important than the dollars raised, said Ken Winston of the Sierra Club of Nebraska, is theattention the concert brings to continuing efforts to stop development of a 1,179-mile pipeline fromHardisty, Alberta, to Steele City on the Nebraska-Kansas border.

The fight against the Keystone XL in Nebraska already has garnered national attention, after aconstitutional challenge to a state law approving the route brought the pipeline’s presidential permittingprocess to a halt.

But pipeline-fighters hope the support of two music legends will help spread their message beyond thenightly news, Winston said.

“TransCanada may have the money,” he said, “but we have the musicians and the poets.”

Ticket sales alone should generate about $385,000. Concertgoers paid $50 per person to attend theshow, with the original 7,000 tickets sold out within days of Bold Nebraska announcing the event lastmonth. An additional 500 tickets issued earlier this month sold out in 10 hours, and 200 more ticketswere sold locally in Antelope County.

Willie Nelson and Neil Young wait as they are introduced to the media before theHarvest the Hope pipeline protest concert Saturday on a farm near Neligh, Nebr.

Joining them and other performers were Native American tribal leaders.MARK DAVIS/THE WORLD-HERALD

Willie Nelson, Neil Young lend their talents to Keystone XL fight

Joe Duggan | World-Herald staff writer | September 27,2014 | http://bit.ly/Omaha27Sept

NELIGH, Neb. — Music legends Willie Nelson and Neil Young delivered Saturday on a promise tocomfort opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline while also pleasing a few project supporters who ventured into a crowded Nebraska farm field.

A familiar duo in the Farm Aid series of benefit concerts, Nelson and Young teamed up to give a musicalassist to pipeline fighters. They performed just one number together, incorporating a few anti-pipeline verses into the folk anthem “This Land Is Your Land.”

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http://bit.ly/Omaha27Sept



“That tar-sand oil ain’t good for drinking,” Young sang.

Even those who didn’t sing along as the chorus railed against new fossil fuel development and corporateinfluence said the concert offered an all-around good vibe.

Mike Nash of Omaha said it was easier for him to overlook politics that he doesn’t necessarily agree with

when the politics come from two music icons in such a unique venue.

“Love the people here, love the show, everybody’s getting along,” he said as Nelson strummed theopening of “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

During a pre-concert press conference, Young said the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline symbolizesthe larger choice that the world faces between fossil fuels and renewable energy. A native of Canada, Young, 68, urged the United States to take decisive action on climate change.

“America has a chance to stand up and lead the world like we used to,” Young said to a throng ofreporters covering the event. “So we’re not just standing here complaining about problems, but findingsolutions.”

Jane Kleeb, the lead organizer of the Harvest the Hope concert, said Nelson and Young helped the showsell 8,000 tickets at $50 each. The proceeds, after roughly $100,000 in expenses are deducted, will benefit three pipeline opponents: Bold Nebraska, the Indigenous Environmental Network and theCowboy and Indian Alliance.

“These boots and moccasins are going to stop this pipeline,” said Kleeb, executive director of BoldNebraska, an environmental advocacy group.

The day’s events brought together leaders from several of the seven bands of the Great Sioux Nation inSouth Dakota and the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma. The proposed path of the pipeline crosses historicaltribal lands in South Dakota as well as the Ponca Trail of Tears in Nebraska, the path the Ponca peoplefollowing during their forced march to Oklahoma’s Indian Territory.

Nelson, 81, suggested his participation in the event was motivated by his longstanding advocacy forfarmers and his admiration for Native American people.

“We’re here for the farmers and ranchers, the cowboys and Indians,” he said. “And we’ve always beenthere. Thank you for coming out to help us help them.”

Sunny skies and a strong southerly breeze settled over the day as thousands made their way down agravel road north of Neligh to the concert site in a farm field.

Art and Helen Tanderup, whose 160-acre farm lies on the path of the pipeline, hosted the event. TheTanderups are among roughly 100 Nebraska landowners who have refused to sign easement agreements with pipeline company TransCanada Corp. About 400 other Nebraska landowners have signed

easements.

For six years, TransCanada has been seeking approval from the U.S. State Department to build a 36-inch-wide pipeline that would carry 830,000 barrels a day of mostly heavy Canadian oil to refineries onthe Gulf Coast. The southern part of the project is done, so now the company wants to build a 1,200-mile stretch between western Canada’s oil sands region to Steele City, Nebraska.

President Barack Obama must approve the project because it crosses international borders. Hisadministration has put the project on hold while the Nebraska Supreme Court reviews the legality of the



state law used to route the pipeline. The court is not expected to issue an opinion until after November’selections.

Pipeline supporters say it will provide well-paying construction jobs as it is built and property taxrevenues to counties along the project’s path. And they say it will reduce America’s reliance on offshoreoil by tapping into Canada’s vast oil reserves.

Opponents argue that a major spill would contaminate water in the continent’s largestunderground aquifer and devastate private property. They also say mining and burningthe heavy Canadian oil, known as bitumen, adds significantly to the greenhouse gasesaffecting global climate change.

“I think jobs are fine, but jobs are temporary. The environment is permanent,” said Susie Chandler, 66,a rancher who drove to Neligh from her home near the western Nebraska village of Keystone.

Michael Whatley of the pro-pipeline Consumer Energy Alliance said last week that Nelson and Youngare hurting farmers with opposition to Keystone XL. Whatley said the transportation of oil by trains —oil that could be moved instead by the pipeline — contributes to rail congestion and blocks farmers fromgetting crops to market.

During the roughly 30-minute session with reporters before the show, Young and Nelson did notaddress the criticism.

Robert Johnston, an Antelope County landowner whose property also is crossed by the pipeline, said he backs the project. He said his support is tied to his use of petroleum products on his corn, soybean andalfalfa farm and the property tax benefits that the county would receive if the project were built.

Johnston didn’t plan to attend the show, but when his combine broke down while harvesting soybeans,he decided to head down to the Tanderup farm.

“I think it’s great, really,” he said. “What the heck. It’s just another example of the economic activity

TransCanada has brought to Antelope County.”The Tanderups harvested a good portion of their corn early to provide space for the concert and parking.Crews erected a stage in the corner of a plot of oats, and a stand of towering cottonwoods provided asweeping backdrop for the stage and a jumbo screen.

Out in the field, people sat in bag chairs and on blankets. Some concertgoers sported cowboy hats, whileothers wore eagle feathers. Some danced in flip-flops while people next to them scooted in knee-highcowboy boots with jeans tucked inside. The audience ranged from infants to grandparents.

Performers such as Frank Waln, a Sicangu Lakota hip-hop artist from Rosebud, South Dakota, andLukas and Micah Nelson, sons of Willie Nelson, warmed up the crowd.

Willie Nelson then took the stage and ran through most of his popular titles, such as “On the Road Again” and “You Are Always on My Mind.” He played for about 45 minutes.

Young’s set, which extended beyond an hour, included the well-known “Heart of Gold” and a new version of “Who’s Gonna Stand Up,” which he wrote about the Keystone XL pipeline.

With his guitar in hand and harmonica around his neck, Young urged Nebraskans not to give up. “Thisis never going to end, until we get it right.”



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Heads Up! Harvest the Hope Concert: Nebraska is "Ground Zero"