I have read some information about the protests but I am not as familiar with it as you.

In general, I admit to being less concerned about environmental issues because it is the one concern that elites share. Rich kids also breathe the air; waterfront property seldom includes tenements. In areas that elites generate support in their own self-interest, government action will occur.

My compatriots living on the streets during Occupy Wall Street were unable to mobilize the U.S. population about corporate elitist activity. I have no doubt that civil disobedience in the Dakotas will eventually be stifled by corporate media and energy interests.

In my personal rather unimportant opinion, U.S. national influence and power will diminish over the next decade which, in sum, is a benefit to world peace and progress. As this occurs the U.S. population will continue to diversify into a non-white plurality. Elites will continue to control the government. While the economy stagnates, wealth distribution will continue to follow the course of capital consolidation.

Walk the streets of any large city in the Dakotas and you will see honest hardworking religious but medicated and overweight U.S. citizens who lament the condition of their country. These well meaning individuals are pharmaceutical and corporate food industry consumer breeding stock.

The U.S. elites benefiting from corporate wealth create trust funds to fight malaria, privatize education, and bequeath art to museums all the while expatriating profit, escaping taxes and creating multi-generational trusts.

My only recommendation to the good people protesting in the Dakotas is that civil disobedience is only effective when it includes the significant destruction of property and results in unmanageable mass incarceration.