'Emergency' Dakota Access Pipeline Protest Planned Tuesday Night In NYC

MANHATTAN, NY — Activists are planning a "rapid response" protest for 6 p.m. Tuesday in Columbus Circle in reaction to President Donald Trump's executive order Tuesday morning allowing construction to resume on the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.

"As soon as the executive order went out, we got a group of organizers, and we quickly put this together," 26-year-old Queens resident Moumita Ahmed, a lead organizer for Millennials for Revolution, told Patch.

"Now we're trying to get as many people as possible," she said.

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More than 2,000 people had signed up to attend on the protest's Facebook event page by around 5:30 p.m., and another 7,500 or so said they were "interested" in attending.

"Tonight, we call on ALL New Yorkers who care about the future of our planet to meet at Columbus Circle at 6 pm," organizers wrote on Facebook. "If Trump wants to build pipelines, he's going to have to go through ALL OF US."

Within a few hours of the 6 p.m. start time, national environmental group 350.org had also signed on to the protest.

The group said in a statement:

Trump is restarting these pipelines first for one reason: because people powered movements stopped them. He wants us demoralized and defeated, so that he can spend the next 4 years working with Big Oil and his corrupt cabinet to build as many coal, oil and gas projects as he can with no opposition.

It won’t work. Tonight, we are holding a rally at the Trump Towers to show that his actions will only reignite the people power that stopped these pipelines in the first place.

One of the president's most prominent NYC properties, the Trump International Hotel, is located a few steps from Columbus Circle (at the southwest corner of Central Park, between Midtown and the Upper West Side.)

Although Trump's actual residence on Fifth Avenue has been NYC's more popular site for protests against him, Mayor Bill de Blasio and 25,000 New Yorkers — including a star-studded roster of anti-Trump celebs — chose the president's Columbus Circle hotel for their pre-inauguration protest.

Ahmed, an organizer for Tuesday night's emergency #NoDAPL protest, said she and fellow organizers chose Columbus Circle because it's less inundated with U.S. Secret Service agents, and "we want to make sure we will not get shut down immediately."

However, Ahmed said if enough people show up to Columbus Circle, the group will march to Trump Tower.

"This is our First Amendment right, so we will deal with the consequences," Ahmed said.

"The overall message is, 'You cannot do this, this is environmental racism to have this pipeline go over Indian territory,'" Ahmed said. "That Donald Trump should respect the previous administration's decision to halt construction until a proper inspection and a proper hearing are conducted."

And even if Trump doesn't listen, she said, the hope is that "our message will resonate with other elected officials."

For the better part of 2016, thousands of activists camped out at the Standing Rock Native American Reservation in North Dakota to try and halt construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline — a massive oil pipeline that would run through the reservation, tearing up sacred land and possibly dirtying the local water supply. NYC activist Sophia Wilansky nearly lost her arm in one clash with local law enforcement.

Finally, in December, then-President Barack Obama halted the project due to environmental concerns — just as he had done the year before for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have moved oil from Canada to Nebraska.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe told protesters to disperse last Friday, just five days before Trump gave the pipeline a sudden green light.

It was unclear Tuesday whether activists would return to the site to continue standing their ground. However, Greenpeace Executive Director Annie Leonard said in a statement: "We all saw the incredible strength and courage of the water protectors at Standing Rock, and the people around the world who stood with them in solidarity. We'll stand with them again if Trump tries to bring the Dakota Access Pipeline, or any other fossil fuel infrastructure project, back to life."

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a staunch Dakota Access Pipeline opponent, said Tuesday that he would do everything within his power to prevent the pipeline from taking shape.

"At a time when the scientific community is virtually unanimous in telling us that climate change is real, it is caused by human activity and it is already causing devastating problems, we cannot afford to build new oil pipelines that lock us into burning fossil fuels for years to come," Sanders said.

Lead photo via the White House