Margo Polley, is a sHell No! kayaktivist. On June 15 in the morning, the Polar Pioneer arctic oil drilling left the Port of Seattle on its way to the Arctic. This is Polley’s account of the attempt by activists to block the rig and prevent it from leaving. Photo above by Alex Garland shows kayaktivists confronting the Polar Pioneer.
Seattle, June 15–Today was unreal. Insane four-hour adrenaline rush, feelings of incredible power and majesty followed by gut-wrenching grief, anger and, lastly, intense love, truly intense and real love, for every last soul involved in the resistance. It began months ago, culminating today in an epic battle.
We didn’t know if today was going to be a trial run, a feint, or a real attempt to leave. I drove to Seattle, my heart in my mouth, adrenaline pumping. As I crossed the West Seattle Bridge a little before 4 am, seeing the familiar sight of the behemoth, the Polar Pioneer, almost beautifully alit as it has been every night, I thought, ok, there it is – nemesis, symbol of corporate greed and power, symbol of death for the planet. But then to see a half dozen police boats blocking the mouth of the Duwamish River, with their blue lights flashing, it was this huge hit to the solar plexis. Holy mother of god, this is for real. This is for real.
I scrambled to the launch point in darkness where the first wave of kayaks were all ready to go. I grabbed my “go” bag, raced to check in, seeing my best friend Joan there, I yelled, “What are you doing here?!” She’d gotten the text at 11:30, had raced to Don Armeni Park and had been there since midnight. We hugged an emotional good-bye, I hugged Lakes, incredible activist organizer and kayaktivist trainer, I got in a boat and launched. There, in the pre-dawn darkness, we gathered and spread out to block the mouth of the Duwamish River. And there we waited, watching a gorgeous peach, pink and red sunrise.
We had incredible support. Eric and Bill and the Backbone people were amazing. The legal team was amazing. 350 and Rising Tide and Greenpeace were amazing. Seattle City Councilmember O’Brien was amazing. And we were honored and inspired by the powerful presence of our Native American brothers and sisters. We were not alone. There was an incredible team supporting every one of us, and we took their power and energy with us.
As light increased, a team unfurled a huge floating banner, “Shell No.” We shouted and chanted. “We are the rising of the tide, we are the shifting of the ground, we are the seeds taking root to bring the fortress down!” and “Rise, Cascadia, rise! Protect our waters and skies! Salmon and orca, cedar and fir, rise, Cascadia, rise!” I kept my eye on the yellow lines that held the Polar Pioneer at dock. We watched the massive tug boats come, one by one, into position. At 5 am I suddenly I noticed the yellow lines were gone. I yelled to our command boats, “They are casting off, we need reinforcements.”
The tugs slowly pulled the massive rig from the pier. Then they changed position, from towing east to towing north. They came directly toward us until the lines were taut. And then they stopped. It was a standoff. A game of chicken. It seemed like an eternity. Had we stopped them? Would they get tired and pull it back into port? It felt like we held our breath for a year. And I looked around and counted. We were 30 boats. Thirty freaking little boats.
Why only 30? We were out-manipulated. We were tricked. Those motherf–ers are smart. We had trained over 300 kayaktivists. We had a list of over a thousand committed willing kayaktivists. But how do you muster a thousand people when the message is “come at 4 am on Monday, well, maybe, but maybe come Tuesday, but, well, no, now we think Wednesday”…when we knew we had to hold them until the end of June to deny them the window to drill this year. Could we work shifts? Could we make a sustained effort over many days? Could we hold them until reinforcements came? We did all we could to try to have people at the ready. But they knew that to contact people after midnight for a 4 am Monday launch was damned near impossible. And it was. And the people who wanted to fight but couldn’t make it in time have to be grieving more than the people who were there, who fought and who bear the grief of losing. To want to fight and not be able to, that must be so hard.
A few more came, but it was pretty clear, it was going down and we had who we had. It would be just us. So we waited. But then we saw the Lummi Canoe Family approach. They were majestic and powerful and beautiful and we welcomed them and received the gifts of their courage and strength.
And then we waited, and we held our breath. And it felt like an eternity. And then, there it was. Puffs of smoke from each of the tugs. Maybe it was because we’d been to the base of the behemoth of the Polar Pioneer so many times in kayaktivist training, chanting and yelling, that it did not hold power over me. But to see the huge tugs pointing at us, as they slowly began to come directly toward us, it was terrifying. We looked into the maws of death and I was terrified. But we swallowed it, and we found our power, and we held the line. We held it.
The police were yelling, but you couldn’t hear them over the noise of helicopters. They approached us, and we gave inches, then feet, then yards, but as slowly as we dared. And the courageous kayaktivists risking arrest made them pay, over and over again, in time and speed. They had to stop completely while the police boats would hook and drag someone from their kayak, and then hoist the kayak onto the boat. And we then, in earnest, played a game of cat and mouse for two and a half hours. Backing up when we had to, changing position, chanting to find our courage. We back-paddled in front of them to way past the West Seattle point of land. But then the police boats began herding us west, out of the way. When I realized there were only two kayaks left in the Polar Pioneer’s path, and I was the third, just barely out of its way, everyone else had been forced over, the police boats came in for the final push west, and it was over. We watched the rig go past.
Many, including the amazing Lummi canoe, tried to keep pace, but when it was really over, there was a scattering of boats two miles long, all separated, looking like the flotsam and jetsam of a colossal shipwreck. We didn’t move. We couldn’t move. It felt like so much defeat. It was overwhelming. We had failed the Inupiat people, whose way of life is already threatened by climate chaos and who now will have to deal with the all-but-inevitable oil spills. We failed the people of the Global South, who contributed nothing to the climate crisis and have so few resources with which to defend their people. We lost this battle and we felt all their pain as well as our own.
I wanted us to regroup and paddle back together, but it just didn’t happen, we were spent, defeated, too spread out. Eventually we just found the power to turn for home on our own, and we just paddled the long way back in isolation and silence. I saw my kayaktivist friend, Sue, floating 100 feet from the take-out point and we just floated together for a while. We both agreed that if we went in, it would make real the defeat, the end of the dream, the return to jobs and “normal” life and we couldn’t face it for a while. But we eventually came in and stumbled around blindly. Tears and hugs and some trying to convince us that it was awesome and beautiful, and others sharing the despair and grief.
But it was all these things. The good, the bad, the power, the defeat. It’s hard to describe all the feelings. Our anger is boundless. F— Shell, who is destroying the very planet on which their children live, putting corporate profit ahead of the viability of life on this earth. I don’t know how they sleep at night. F— the Port Commission. F— Obama. Feel every bit of our righteous and just anger.
But then I ask you all to stop for a minute. Just stop for a minute. Take a deep breath in and then slowly breathe out power and love to every person and creature in this beautiful community of resistance. We have all grown from this. We are all stronger. We are more courageous. We are more centered. We are more sure. We are smarter. We are more committed. And we are more loving. Above all, what we will take away from this day is courage, power and love. It was gut-wrenching, but it was beautiful and powerful and amazing. We will continue. We will be back. We will never give up. We will rise again.
