Hundreds needed medical attention after being tear gassed and sprayed with water cannons during a Sunday protest in North Dakota. Lauretta Prevost with Mirrors and Hammers Productions
Story Transcript
DEMONSTRATOR: We got a bunch of water protectors out here demonstrating on a public roadway and the police who are paid to protect and serve us are shooting teargas and flashbang grenades and shooting a cannon of mace at all of us. Those that don’t clear out have shields and they’re shooting those people with rubber bullets right now. REPORTER: Where were you when you got shot? LOTUS: Right up here. I was standing there like this. Standing there like this. Then they sprayed the mace. They’re spraying out the bear mace. They’re spraying it at us, I was standing there like this. Spray it on me I just go like this to keep it out of my eyes. Then I think they started throwing in the teargas. Then like some noise went off really loud and then they just shot me. Felt like a little beanbag. SPEAKER: That’s the bullet? DEMONSTRATOR: Yea. DEMONSTRATOR: I got shot right in the chest. REPORTER: How do you feel? LOTUS: Well I’m back. I mean they took me down to the medic tent but I came back you know. People still need help here. I came up and people were coming out yelling for the medic and they were just throwing up.. DEMONSTRATOR: We drink it everyday. DEMONSTRATOR: If the pipeline burst, it will effect the drinking water of 17 million people in the United States. DEMONSTRATOR: Hey come on, look at Flint, Michigan. To this day they don’t have clean water. MARY BETH: I don’t know what that was that they fired into the crowd. It looked like some kind of flare but we saw them also firing things into the air that were teargas as well. So this is the first time that I’ve been exposed to any of this. The police are continually using the freezing cold water to spray these brave water protectors and it is the most inhuman thing that I have seen. It’s actually hard to believe that this is the United States of America. DEMONSTRATOR: Currently the police are firing water cannons at unarmed peaceful water protectors that are standing for the rights of everybody. Not just indigenous peoples but everybody who drinks water. For every generation. And it’s cold. It’s freezing. The police have chosen this time to hose us all down with water cannons and they’ve been throwing flash grenades and it appears to be teargas into a crowd of unarmed people. KEI KURIMOTO: It’s amazing. Everyone comes together as a family during actions and jumps in wherever they’re needed. So people need water, they’re getting mace’d. [inaud.] and [magnesium]. They’re getting sprayed with water today. It’s very cold. People are getting hypothermia, so blankets and hot coffee and tea and people are getting people transported over to medical. It’s really amazing. ARI HERMAN: I was up at the very front holding a tarp up and I was walking away because they were firing rubber bullets which in this cold air are extremely hard projectiles and they hurt quite a bit. But if they hit you in the leg, you can walk it off. They hit a girl straight in the head and she went down immediately and screamed. People picked her up and they held her back, carrying her completely because getting hit in the head with those things is just incredibly dangerous really.
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