Anonymously submitted 2/4/24
These Pittsburgh friends of the forest wanted to make the billionaires creating a bomb tube that cuts through ancient mountains feel uncomfortable and they wanted to have fun while they did it. Pittsburgh, Appalachia’s largest city, has been one of the centers of extractive industry for more than a century. How dare EQT and its executives imagine that they can make a home here while poisoning the air, earth, and water?
A small group of friends entered the EQT lobby dressed for a delivery. One of them held a large and unwieldy bunch of helium balloons. Was it someone’s birthday? A retirement party for someone working in the offices upstairs? A congratulatory telegram for hitting monthly sales quotas, perhaps? EQT employees and other office workers were passing through on their way to lunch when our friends released the balloons. Attached to the balloons was a bluetooth speaker. Another set of friends dressed in business casual pressed play on a burner phone and ditched the phone in the lobby once it had connected to the speaker. The grind of chainsaws blasted out across the lobby– the sound of all those trees felled across the mountains to make room for pipeline burial. The voice of a friend who had taken the word of the Lorax as gospel boomed out from the speaker, bellowing: “Get FUCKED EQT!” The balloons suspended the speaker against the ceiling of the lobby so that the looping message rained down upon the bustling workers in the lobby. At this point friends inside the lobby unfurled a banner: NO PIPELINES ON STOLEN LAND // STOP THE MVP. The security guard, incensed, tried unsuccessfully to rip the banner from our friends’ hands. All departed freely as the security guard called the police—”I knew you were lying!” she shouted as they left. 🤡😆
Outside, these friends met another group who were cordoning off EQT headquarters with caution tape. Several people held a banner reading: “the Mountain Valley Pipeline is putting the earth, air, and waters of Appalachia in danger. EQT is a threat to everyone’s health, everyone’s life.” Friends were joined by members of Third Act Ohio, an organization of elder environmentalists. The Pittsburgh Labor Choir led everyone in chants and shouts as Pittsburgh Police stepped over the caution tape (not even thinking to break it or tear it away). After an hour of struggle they used a giant hook to pull the balloons down from the ceiling and marched our helium filled comrades out of the EQT plaza building. Imagine arresting the air! Let us be so slippery in the grasp of the state as balloons, so silly in our tricks as these unwieldy decorations. Let it be fun to fuck with the people and corporations working to destroy this land, let us slip away unaccosted, let us become stronger and more playful and braver together, and live to do it again. In memory and honor of Tortuguita and all those who have fought for a world without extraction, capital, cops, prisons and borders. FUCK YOU EQT AND MVP!
Facebook: Appalachians Against Pipelines
Instagram: @AppalachiansAgainstPipelines
Twitter: @stopthemvp
#BlockEveryPath
#DoomtothePipeline
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