Media Challenge: DAPL Protests
I’m a fan of President Obama. I voted for him twice. As a liberal pragmatist, there’s been no one as savvy as him. He has played careful chess against congress getting the policy done that he set out to achieve. And for all the many times I have disagreed with him, I could usually look back and understand the nuance of his tactics when comparing the ends to his means.
That being said, his silence and apathy towards the Dakota Access Pipeline protests have puzzled me. This is an issue where Senator Obama would have railed on if any other president was in office. Now that he’s in his final months as commander in chief, and without a true successor for him to play politics in favor of, this is the time I would have thought he would have been truly unleashed – securing his legacy as a progressive reformer before we give fascism a spin.
My hope is that he’s playing chess with this too. Figuring out the real ways to solve this problem while having lasting change. But we’re now all seeing videos of police declaring all out war against people exercising their American rights. It’s hard to see where methodical thinking is rational when concussion grenades and water cannons are being used.
I would also think this would be an issue where Trump voters could get equally enraged by. The claim that he was elected president because people felt left behind and unheard by an oppressive government only goes so far if you’re unwilling to see that this is exactly what’s going on in Standing Rock.
