The relation between the Keystone XL victory and Occupy Wall Street

The Administration's decision last week to delay final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline was a huge victory. It remains unclear what will happen ultimately, but this was a giant unexpected victory in the process.

Did Occupy Wall Street play some role in making this happen?

Naomi Klein makes the case:

when we started this campaign, we—and this was just three months ago that the first protests happened outside the White House—we thought we had a very slim chance of winning, like a kind of a 1 percent chance of winning. And when Occupy Wall Street happened, I had a conversation with Bill McKibben, who has just been the powerhouse behind this campaign, just a hero. And I said to Bill, "I think this is helping us. What do you think?" And he said, "I think it’s helping us, too." And the reason we believe this is because—precisely what Patrick was talking about—the ground has shifted, the climate has shifted. And what it would mean for Obama to cave in to this corporation, especially after we exposed all the cronyism going on between TransCanada and the State Department and TransCanada and the White House, this kind of corruption is precisely what’s on trial in parks and plazas around the world right now. And now that it’s been exposed, this has become the ultimate example. You know, as Bill said, we’re occupying—we’re occupying Wall Street because Wall Street is occupying the State Department. So there is a—there’s been a clear connection between, and a conversation between, these campaigns. I don’t think we would have won without Occupy Wall Street. I really—I can’t imagine how we could have. And this is what it means to change the conversation. And that’s why this whole idea—you know, "What are their demands?" and, you know, "What are they trying to accomplish?" There are already victories happening. And this is just one example of it.