I was there the day a DAPL security team set attack dogs on protesters at Standing Rock. When my son remerged after videoing an event echoing 1963 Birmingham, he had a distant stare. “Dad, I can’t believe they’d do that to people.”

Brown people. Let’s be specific. Believe it.

The oil pipeline had been rerouted from Bismarck to a site underneath the Missouri River near the Standing Rock reservation. Bismarck had more political clout than Native Americans in the sticks. Manifest Destiny, you know.

Now, the spigot may be closed.

DAPL failed to heed an EPA directive to hold water security discussions with the tribe and do a substantive environmental impact statement before proceeding. A catastrophic leak would affect as many as 20 million people. And all pipelines leak.

They bullied ahead, anyway, despite a federal request to pause construction for further study, over the objections of three federal agencies, instead trusting an Army Corps of Engineers-approved environmental overview from … wait for it … DAPL itself. The fox guarding the pipeline. The cart before the horse. Oil before the EPA.

Meanwhile, the controversial Summit Carbon Pipeline that would dump mostly out-of-state toxic ethanol sludge underground near Bismarck is stalled largely because of protests from the landed gentry concerned about safety and eminent domain.

To their credit, Summit henchmen haven’t unleashed German Shepherds on white women and children, hosed people down in the dead of winter, shot them with rubber bullets for sport, or bulldozed a cemetery.

After all, we have a two-tiered system of justice. Based on pigmentation. However, fascism is narrowing the gap. In New Amerika, corporations can seize even a Caucasian’s land for a pipeline.

Fascism is the defined merger of government and corporate power, and DAPL approached it like a military operation, employed mercenaries, embedded provocateurs, and coordinated with law enforcement. Spin doctors demonized and propagandized.

The dog attack was a setup. Despite legal filings calling for a construction pause after the identification of sacred artifacts and a possible burial site, history was bulldozed away, a provocation that led to the march. The dogs were waiting.

Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney reveled in the opportunity to drag surplus military vehicles across the state to intimidate Water Protectors. The state borrowed $43 million to fund policing. DAPL later “donated” back $15 million. Taxpayers covered the rest.

Presumably, criminals in Cass County declared a cease-fire out of respect for Laney’s showboating oppression of tribes who’d already lost more than 200,000 acres to eminent domain and Oahe Dam inundation. So much for treaties.

Nobody wants to see exploding oil trains again. Pipelines are a temporary necessity until we get off the climatological suicide ride of fossil fuels. However, there are laws. Due process. “But we already built it,” is a hubristic defense. What was done was criminal.

I shan’t weep if courts shut DAPL down, and I’ll rejoice when we finally begin to put the planet before obscene corporate profits. You can’t eat, drink, or breathe money.

Tony Bender writes an exclusive weekly column from North Dakota for Forum News Service.