Protesters gather on Peace Day

Carolyn Krause and a few others gathered at the Marilyn Monroe statue in Palm Springs, with one goal in mind.

“It’s draw the line, draw the line here. It’s to tell Obama, draw the line. We’re not going any further. Keystone Pipeline, that’s it. That’s the line that you can’t step over,” Krause said.

Keystone is a pipeline to transport crude oil from Canada to refineries in the U.S., and it’s sparking controversy among environmental activists. Locally, people are worried about a new power plant called the Sentinal Energy Project located in Desert Hot Springs north of I-10 on North Indian Canyon Drive.

“As a grandmother with concern for the quality of the air in this valley, I would like for them to be honest and truthful about what they’re doing there,” Marnell Farley, another local protestor, said.

These protestors are not alone. People all over the world use “Peace Day” as an opportunity to create practical acts of peace on a shared date.

“People say ‘Oh clean! Oh natural, natural gas!’ No. It’s a fossil fuel, it comes from way down in Mother Earth. So that’s about the worse you can do is frack — crack open Mother Earth and get this stuff out,” Krause said.

We tried contacting the power plant for a statement but they are closed on weekends. We found a description of the project on its web site: It said the facility generates natural gas-powered electricity to prevent dangerous blackouts in the region. The web site also said it supports the expansion of renewable resources like wind and solar-powered facilities.

Activist Lorraine Salas tells us Mother Nature has taken care of us, so it’s our duty to take care of her.

“I also think about the future generations. They’re going to have to clean up a lot of mess that we made,” Salas said.