Meet the Rappers and ‘Kayaktivists’ Out to Stop Shell’s Giant Oil Rig

Katrina Pestaño is running the mic. “Hollow, my bones will carry, rebellion like the rain,” her rap begins. Head raised, chest out, eyes squeezed tight, her momentum builds. “I am that ancient rhythm, the heat of the sun.” She drops her face and opens her eyes to take in the crowd of protesters who gathered last weekend to block the road to Terminal 5 at the Port of Seattle. A broad smile takes over her face. “When all is said and done, I am the will to carry on!”

Behind Pestaño stands a giant blue puppet, the words “Stop Arctic Drilling” painted in red on its chest.

Pestaño, 31, has been an activist since college, but she was politicized by hip-hop while still a child in the Philippines. She arrived in Seattle in 2006 and began organizing a monthly hip-hop show for women performers called Indayog, which means “movement” or “rhythm” in her native Tagalog. Had you asked her then, she likely would have scoffed at the idea of breaking down her lyrics with – much less joining – a group of predominately white environmentalists opposing Arctic oil drilling.

Yet today, Pestaño is a leader here. She’d spent the earlier part of the day speaking in hushed tones and staccato sentences, body hunched as she strategized within a five-person tac (tactical) team, trying not to reveal intel to prying media or the dozens of police officers watching the group’s every move. Her nerves apparent on her tightly clenched face, she’d said she was nervous about how the nonviolent direct action – several hundred people trying to disrupt business as usual for the world’s largest oil company – would unfold. Because of the history of police violence against people of color, she was particularly concerned for the safety of the many youth of color she had personally encouraged to attend, including several fellow members of the Filipino organization BAYAN Pacific Northwest. 

Their target, Royal Dutch Shell’s 400-foot-long, 300-foot-tall offshore oil rig, dubbed the Polar Pioneer, was just out of sight in Elliott Bay, behind the terminal building. In January, Seattleites learned Shell is planning to park the rig at their port for eight months of the year, when it isn’t drilling for oil in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. Since then, a growing group of citizen-activists, elected officials and non-governmental organizations has been plotting ways to not only kick the rig out of the city, but also halt Shell’s Arctic drilling plans altogether. 

Since March, much of that organizing has focused on planning two protests: Saturday’s law-abiding “festival of resistance,” involving a flotilla in the bay, and a civil disobedience action on Monday – a work day – to try and block access to the terminal for Shell employees. This would ideally impede Shell’s tight schedule to take advantage of the summer drilling months in the Arctic. As 29-year-old Ahmed Gaya, an organizer with climate justice group Rising Tide Seattle, told the crowd, “Shell’s got a small window to make this happen. We’re here to close that window.”