Like the wave of events starting in 2010 that became known as the Arab Spring, anti-oil pipeline protesters on Burnaby Mountain could be on the cusp of a history-maiking turning point, according to an activist.

Valerie Langer, a veteran of the celebrated War in the Woods, talked about this on Vancouver Co-op Radio today (November 27) as the RCMP enforcement of a court injunction against demonstrators entered the one-week mark.

Langer, currently director of B.C. forest campaigns for ForestEthics Solutions, believes that what’s happening on Burnaby Mountain is nothing less than historic.

“Moments in time that are galvanizing don’t happen every day or every year, and sometimes, not even every decade,” said Langer.

A few hours after the interview, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, Tsleil-Waututh elder Ta’ah Amy George, and other indigenous leaders crossed the police line and were arrested.

Crews are doing survey and drilling work for a planned pipeline expansion by Trans Mountain Pipeline ULC, a subsidiary of American energy company Kinder Morgan.

Langer told Media Mornings program host David Ball that moments bearing on history are unpredictable.

“Just as Arab Spring was not predicted by any of the pundits the day before, and…why people suddenly find a place to express their concern that the fact that they’re fed up…why a particular catalyst is the breaking point, it’s not really predictable,” Langer said.

There is “nothing symbolic” about what’s happening at the conservation area, according to Langer. People are facing consequences for defying the court order, and as Langer noted, the “state” is putting “real” police officers on the ground.

“There’s nothing anymore symbolic about what is happening on Burnaby Mountain right now than when the African-Americans in the 1960s sat at a lunch counter that they were not allowed to sit at,” Langer said. “They were sitting down and doing something that the state said that they could not do, and that is exactly what is happening up on Burnaby Mountain. The state says that Big Oil has the right and the citizens do not have the right to be here, and people are saying, ‘I have the right to be here.’ ”

On Wednesday (November 26), she crossed the police line and was arrested. Apprehended with Langer were other people who had played major roles in a blockade to protect old-growth forests in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island in 1993.

“There is a feeling about the kind of action that’s building around the Burnaby Mountain Kinder Morgan protest that reminds me of the feeling when Clayoquot Sound was building into the biggest protest [and instance of] civil disobedience in Canadian history,” Langer said.

According to Langer, “There’s a moment when the kind of despair that we hold about something that feels out of control, out of our control, but that really pains us … the sense that something’s very wrong is happening” leads to something hopeful.

Said Langer, sentiment is shifting “from that lonely feeling of disempowerment to this collective empowerment, where people find a glimmer of optimism.…I think we might actually be able to turn the tide here. That feeling is building.”