If readers are wondering why Digital Journal is referring to the DAPL protestors as “water protectors,” it is because the founders and leaders of the movement have asked to be called water protectors. After all, clean, safe water is what the movement is all about.
Water protector Sophia Wilansky, a 20-year-old woman from New York, was handing out bottles of water to fellow demonstrators Sunday night as they moved a line of burnt-out trucks police were using to block Highway 1806 just north of the camp.
The gathering of about 400 water protectors was described as ‘very peaceful’ just before the police arrived in force. And as they have done in the past, law enforcement brought their guns with rubber bullets, mace and tear gas. But this time, the police had a new weapon in their arsenal: a water cannon.
Keep in mind that demonstrators have been relying on dry clothing and sleeping bags to keep warm in the subzero nights as they slept in tents and tepees. But on Sunday night, with the temperature at 27 degrees F., police opened fire with the water cannon, hosing down everyone, and they continued to do so until the early morning hours of Monday.
Camp medics reported injuries to 167 people, including seven traumatic head injuries, and the severe injury incurred by Sophia Wilansky. Dozens more people were suffering from hypothermia. It was so bad that a nearby town opened up a gymnasium for the water protectors.
In an official account of the injuries, the medics at the water protector’s camp released this statement:
The Standing Rock Medic & Healer Council responded to a mass casualty incident that began at 6pm yesterday evening. Approximately 300 injuries were identified, triaged, assessed and treated by our physicians, nurses, paramedics and integrative healers working in collaboration with local emergency response. These 300 injuries were the direct result of excessive force by police over the course of 10 hours. At least 26 seriously injured people had to be evacuated by ambulance to 3 area hospitals.
Police continuously assaulted demonstrators with up to three water cannons for the first seven hours of this incident in subfreezing temperatures dipping to 22F causing hypothermia in the majority of patients treated. Chemical weapons in the form of pepper spray and tear gas were also used extensively, requiring chemical decontamination for nearly all patients treated and severe reactions in many. Projectiles in the form of tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and concussion grenades led to numerous blunt force traumas including head wounds, lacerations, serious orthopedic injuries, eye trauma and internal bleeding.
Injuries from the mass casualty incident include:
An elder who lost consciousness and was revived on scene
A young man with a grand mal seizure
A woman shot in the face by a rubber bullet with subsequent eye injury and compromised vision
A young man with internal bleeding who was vomiting blood after a rubber bullet injury to his abdomen
A man shot in the back near his spine by a rubber bullet causing blunt force trauma and a severe head laceration
Multiple fractures secondary to projectiles fired by police
A spokeswoman for the Morton County Sheriff’s Department denied concussion grenades were used against the demonstrators, according to RT.com. “It wasn’t from our law enforcement, because we didn’t deploy anything that should have caused that type of damage to her arm,” spokeswoman Maxine Herr said, as quoted by the Los Angeles Times. She added that the woman could have been injured while demonstrators were “rigging up their own explosives” to be thrown at police.
And one other thing we need to address is the way the media referred to the incident on Sunday night. As Quartz so aptly puts it, the Sunday night incident was referred to as a “protest,” a “clash with the police,” while in reality, it wasn’t that at all.
Actually, videos of the incident clearly show it was an act of violence perpetrated by law enforcement against the 400 or so water protectors, or as Quartz puts it, “state-sanctioned violence.” So let’s be straight on this, using water cannons on a below-freezing night for over six hours was totally unnecessary and more than likely done on purpose.
