Paul Cone's photograph

Today I had a migraine and could not go out to the action, so I give you a friend's photograph, with his permission. Thank you, Paul Cone. This is the photograph that tells today's story which I watched on TV. 

Three Greenpeace protesters were brought down forcibly by police and firefighters who cut the ropes that connected the protesters to each other and took each of the three down to Coast Guard boats on fire fighters' ropes. The protesters remained peaceful and did not resist, nor did they assist. 

As soon as the first three of the thirteen protesters were down, the Shell ship began to move toward the bridge. The Coast Guard used its power boats to capture, deter, or capsize hundreds of "kayaktivists" who tried to block the ship. At about 6 p.m., as the heat rose to 103F/40C, the ship was able to pass under the bridge while the remaining ten protesters continued dangling from the bridge, watching, and hundreds of kayakers in the water battled with Coast Guard vessels to try to block the ship. In Paul's photograph, you can see the ten dangling protesters, the Coast Guard boats, the kayaks, the bystanders on the pier, and the massive Fennica entering the space beneath the bridge.

Greenpeace activists blocked the Fennica for nearly 40 hours with a protest that was both effective and visually beautiful, an aerial performance. There are many environmental organizations opposed to Arctic drilling, and that ship will face other protests. It is a long way from here to the Arctic.

Streamers red and gold against a hot blue sky,
a crunch of dry evergreens in a forest baking
in climate change. Thirteen fragile bodies
hang off the bridge saying, “Save the Arctic,” 
saying we can stop this, saying it is possible 
to turn a corporate ship around, to delay it
with imagination, planning, hard work. 

If this is possible, 
what else may come? 

We bow in gratitude, hands in lotus position
over hearts pounding with admiration. 
Audacious, this belief in possibility. Stoic,
their endurance in the heat, the danger.
We bow, we bow to them. 
We bow again and again.