Thirty opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline were arrested Wednesday and charged with trespassing for blocking construction vehicles from entering a construction site in Boone County.
La Homa Simmonds of Boone was one of the protestors arrested.
“It was really kind of surreal,” she says. “You’re looking out, and you’re seeing Dakota access workers standing there. You see the state patrol. You’re seeing the fields that are being torn up not even three miles away.”
“The workers looked at us disgusted. They are disgusted with us. They don’t understand why we’re even fighting. They are pointing and they are laughing.”
Simmonds says that even if her group can’t stop the construction of the pipeline, they’re working to stop the crude oil from actually being sent through the pipeline. To start this hour of River to River, she talks with host Ben Kieffer.
Then, a conversation about EpiPens with Dr. Ben Davis, a clinical assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa, and with Carrie Teegardin, an investigative reporter with the Atlanta Journal Constitution about a investigation into sexual misconduct by doctors.
In the second half of the show, Vice President of Student Services at the University of Iowa Tom Rocklin talks about binge drinking; Iowa Public Radio Correspondent Dean Borg talks about efforts to raise the minimum wage in Iowa; and Sean Moeller, formerly of Daytrotter, talks about GARP, a new music festival at Codfish Hollow in Maquoketa.
