Kinder Morgan Protest Unmasked- Part 0: The Interactive Chart

Halloween was a whole lot scarier this year for five of the people behind the Burnaby, BC protests against Kinder Morgan. After weeks of rallies, delaying construction, and allegedly assaulting and harassing Kinder Morgan’s staff; the company decided to protect themselves by filing a $5.8 million lawsuit.

The protesters were in court this week and, needless to say, the media have rewarded them with the attention they so desperately crave. Fortunately for the protesters, and not so much for the public, most journalist’s reports are lacking in substance- providing their audience with little to no background on who’s really behind all of the ruckus.

Unfortunately, the fact that most reports that are lacking in substance is the good news. Outsiders who are trying to understand the truth face a bigger challenge- stories from some protest friendly media outlets demonstrate all the integrity of Pravda’s farm productivity reports circa 1932. (Yes Linda Solomon, that means you).

This series of four articles will address the problem by digging into the details of the protest, the people and organisations working behind the scenes, and by deconstructing some of the bovine excrement being fed to the public. After several weeks of investigation it’s become clear that everything is not what it looks like on the surface- despite the protest’s grassroots appearance, there are many well-funded organizations working in the background.

In Part I we’ll explore the protest’s connections to Simon Fraser University, it’s a fascinating tale about radicalism in our education system. In Part II we’ll explore the NGOs hiding behind the grassroots curtain, is BROKE Burnaby a collection of concerned residents or an AstroTurf front? Finally in Part III we’ll unmask some of the protest’s hardcore radicals, and their connections to the violence at the 2010 Olympics and Toronto G20.

Part I will be published on this site within the next 24 hours. Until then, take some time to go through the interactive chart and familiarize yourself with some of the key players. You can use the scroll wheel on your mouse (or the +/- buttons on the top-right) to zoom in and out, click on the circles and you’ll get a pop-up with details about the people and organizations they represent, hover your mouse pointer over a circle to expose the subjects network. Circles with red borders indicate an acceptance of the doctrine of diversity of tactics (use of violence) at protests.

Enjoy…

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