They were waiting to Walk the Line. The “line” being the Enbridge Line 6 Pipeline that stretches from Western Canada to the Southern tip of Lake Michigan in Griffith, Indiana, and then back up to Eastern Canada.
It was a small group, about 30 people.
One hundred had originally been expected but the misty, raw, cold-for-May weather had probably discouraged many. This group of Northwest Indiana residents huddled under the portico of the Student Union Building on Purdue University Northwest’s Hammond Campus, hoping the rain would stop before the walk began. They mulled around the tables where T-shirts proclaiming “I WALKED THE LINE” were being sold and various organizations, like 350 Indiana-Calumet, Community Strategy Group of East Chicago, and Moraine Ridge Wildlife Rehabilitation Center hawked their causes with pamphlets and flyers.
A map plotting the walk was available next to a petition for people to sign.
Their protest was not as much against the Line as it was against the tar sands form of oil that is pumped through the Line. This oil is thicker than the conventional crude oil that has traditionally been drilled out of the ground. Tar sands oil is denser, rather like peanut butter, according to one authority. While conventional crude oil is a liquid that can be pumped from the ground, the tar sands oil is too dense to be pumped out. Instead it either needs to be mined or diluted which is accomplished by injecting steam into the ground. Once out of the ground, tar sand oil needs to be upgraded to what is called synthetic crude so that it is similar to conventional crude.
The “Walk the Line” movement is not limited to the Enbridge Line. Its mission, which extends to the use of fossil fuels in general, is a protest against all environmental contaminates. In fact, as the organizer, John Halstead, stated during speeches by a number of people prior to the walk, the goal is to “shut down the fossil fuel industry.” 
There doesn’t have to be a choice between jobs and health, he commented, and then went on to explain that there would be enough new jobs in renewable energy for those displaced.
Representatives from various organizations, including the Sierra Club
and Green Peace, spoke to the group who periodically cheered them on.
A woman from the now demolished West Calumet Housing Development read a poem about the plight of the residents who had been made to relocate. 
The poem was moving and her emotional reading added to the poignancy of the topic.
“…Evacuate with urgency!
Go! Leave! You can’t stay here.
And with that 1200 residents displaced,
Never given the chance to abate their own inevitable fates.
Uprooted from their histories
And pushed into the direction of terrifying mystery. …
Relief was underdone
There was nowhere for the home owners to run….
Eventually the drizzling rain stopped, the sun occasionally lightened the landscape from behind the clouds, and the group began the walk. 
The previous September, they had completed the first leg of their journey from the Griffith facility to the PNW campus. This was the next leg–up Indianapolis Boulevard, past the Potash Chemical site, and skirting the northernmost section of the West Calumet Housing Development.
A police motorcade accompanied them, 
traffic stopped and people came out from their businesses to watch.
Perhaps the halted rain was an omen.