Earlier this week on November 15th, Lilith Fund’s Executive Director, Amanda Williams, and Board Member, Alice Aguilar, joined activists in Austin for the National #NoDAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) Day of Action.

At Lilith Fund, we see the clear connections between reproductive, economic, and environmental justice in our clients’ everyday lives. Low-income families and people of color are disproportionately exposed to dangerous and toxic environmental conditions caused by refineries, waste dumps, pipelines, and plants located in their communities. These communities bear the brunt of health disparities as a result of unhealthy conditions and various types of pollution and contamination.

On this Day of Action, indigenous leaders encouraged communities to take to the streets and disrupt “business-as-usual” one week after the election to demand that President Obama’s Army Corps of Engineers and the incoming administration stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. They’ve called for people to stand in solidarity in peaceful resistance to demand that all decisions made regarding the pipeline must honor indigenous rights and human rights over corporate interests.

We participated in this day of action in solidarity with those at Standing Rock, and we join as them as they demand the federal government reject this dangerous pipeline.

Bodily autonomy, health, and safety are core values of both reproductive and environmental justice. When pipelines, like the proposed DAPL, disrupt the lands and sacred sites of indigenous peoples and risk contaminating waters, we see a clear violation of people’s reproductive and human rights. All people should have the right to live their lives in healthy conditions that allow us to flourish and grow.

The land and water being jeopardized is the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, which was established as a permanent homeland for the Hunkpapa, Yanktonai, Cuthead and Blackfoot bands of the Great Sioux Nation. Standing Rock Sioux Tribe relies on the waters of the life-giving Missouri River for their continued existence, and the DAPL poses a serious risk to the source of fresh water of the Mni Sose and to the very survival of their tribe and 8 million people living downstream.

We are in solidarity with the Indigenous people, the water protectors, leading the resistance at Standing Rock and we call upon our reproductive justice community to join us in seeing these injustices as a concern of our movement and taking actions where we can. For information on how to support the local organizers at Standing Rock visit http://sacredstonecamp.org and http://www.ocetisakowincamp.org.