Analysis Of Pipelines And Protests By Janet Fiskio

On Wednesday, February 22nd, a professor from Oberlin College named Janet Fiskio came to Salisbury to give a speech called “Pipelines and Protests.” The presentation was mostly about environmental protests all over the world and their use and impact. Calling upon her personal experiences and the experiences of other protesters, Fiskio analyzed this kind of activism and the real purpose it serves. She discussed protests and the issues that lead to protests in many different ways, and encouraged the audience to be active and participate in these demonstrations. As Fiskio covered a lot of topics and different ideas, her speech was hard to follow and understand, especially for members of the audience who were not in the Environmental Studies Department.

However, the main points about protests and their uses managed to get across.
Fiskio began the presentation with interesting observations on how many people imagine the future and on how apocalyptic futures are shown in the media, claiming that an apocalyptic future is usually represented with extreme environmental degradation.

This was a very interesting way to start her speech, as Fiskio grabbed the audience’s attention with pop culture references and interesting images. She then discusses how these dystopian futures may exist and occur one day, but within protests and activism there are “ephemeral utopias.” According to her research, protest camps and other such activities are utopias in their own right, but they do not last long at all. She says that, even though they are short-lived and sometimes do not achieve their main goal, these protests are not failures. This concept was very fascinating, although Fiskio could have done a better job describing it and making it relevant. Despite this, she used good support and had appropriate

visuals.
The next topic Fiskio discussed was disasters and the willingness of people to assist after disasters. Using well-suited examples and analysis, she talks about how institutions are removed by disasters and how people are more inclined to activism and assistance when this happens. Again, it was a strong concept, but Fiskio did not do the best job at explaining it or relating it to the rest of the speech. She then goes on to explain a few other concepts, but they seemed very jumbled and unclear. One that did stand out was her point that, if everyone is always anti-institution, there will be no good institution. This was likely her best point and the one that made the most sense. After discussing a few other thoughts and theories, she turned to personal examples and her own experiences in protests of pipelines. Fiskio talked a lot about the 2013 Tar Sands Healing Walk in Canada, including observations of the people, place, and problems. After that, she reflected on her visit to Africatown, Alabama, which is a historic city hurt by pipelines. She finally concluded her speech with an intriguing quote, and again encouraged the audience to be active and aware.
Overall, the speech was decent.

Fiskio herself was a good speaker -- she had a strong, conversational tone and used very intelligent language. She also had great articulation, pronunciation, pitch, volume, fluency, and projection. Although she paced slightly and used some hand gestures, they added to the presentation instead of detracting from it, and she kept good eye contact the entire time. Additionally, she was very confident, and she seemed poised and knowledgeable. She also used a lot of quotes and outside support, which gave her credibility and validity. Nonetheless, the presentation itself was lacking. The ideas seemed unorganized, and there was little to no explanation of their connections and relative importance to the average person. Despite its interesting beginning and ending, the body of the speech was confusing and not extremely engrossing. Even further, Fiskio’s PowerPoint was not very well done. The layout was passable, but it really only consisted of pictures slapped haphazardly on. The PowerPoint was not visually appealing and, though the pictures were good, it just seemed like it was lazily

attempted.
Fiskio’s speech, “Pipelines and Protest,” had a good basis and some interesting concepts. However, the speech lacked in organization and the PowerPoint did not add much to it at all. Fiskio was a very good speaker, as is likely due to her experience as a professor, and she used a lot of support and personal experiences throughout the speech. She drew the audience in and introduced some ideas and thoughts that stood out, but otherwise did a decent job. The main message was in support of activism and protests, and it was an overall empowering speech, it just could have used more work and effort.