PARK RAPIDS — Actor and activist Jane Fonda is expected to be in northwest Minnesota on Monday, March 15, to meet with protest leaders against the Line 3 oil pipeline replacement project.
In a news release, area protest leaders said Fonda and civil rights lawyers will be joining Winona LaDuke of Honor the Earth and Tara Houska of the Giniw Collective to support their efforts in trying to stop the project.
“My friends, the Ojibwe Water Protectors, have invited me to join them in the fight to stop Line 3,” Fonda said in a news release. “Line 3’s most serious immediate impacts will be on Indigenous peoples and their lands and waters along the line. But the increasing climate threats to Minnesota – and the planet — will be exponentially exacerbated by this pipeline. In short, Line 3 is a climate time bomb.”
Jane Fonda accepts the Cecil B. DeMille Award in this handout screen grab from the 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, on Feb. 28. NBC Handout / via REUTERS
The Academy Award-winning actor and others will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. in Hubbard, Minn., south of Park Rapids, the release said.
Construction on the 340-mile Line 3 is underway, with more than 5,000 workers working on it, Enbridge officials said last month. Once complete, the pipeline will replace the existing, aging Line 3 and ferry 760,000 barrels of oil (31.92 million gallons) per day from Alberta, Canada, to Enbridge’s terminal in Superior, Wis., following a new route through much of northern Minnesota. The segments in Canada, North Dakota and Wisconsin are already complete.