Workshop description and schedule posted soon…

On Wednesday, May 23, and Tuesday, May 29, another seven megaloads of Earth-ravaging, energy-sucking, water-poisoning, climate-wrecking, life-killing Alberta tar sands processing parts will probably rumble through Spokane and Spokane Valley streets on their way to the largest industrial carbon extraction project in the world.  While most of America sleeps, satiated on its oil-derived opulence, obesity, and overpopulation, interior Northwest activists will take to the streets to express our outrage that our city, state, and federal governments facilitate First Nations genocide, forest and wetland destruction, and global climate chaos through Big Oil’s abuse of our deteriorating roads and bridges.

Occupy Spokane and Wild Idaho Rising Tide invite you to your likely last two opportunities (for now) to stand up to ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil, the Washington State Department of Transportation, the hauler Mammoet, and their contracted megaload convoys of industry-colluded state troopers, pilot truck drivers, and flaggers.  Whose streets and rights?  You know the 99 percent’s answer and what you must do to regain our democracy, public infrastructure, and civil liberties from corporations who value profits over people and the planet.

Meet fellow protesters to strategize and mobilize our resistance before 11:30 pm at the Occupy Spokane Clubhouse, 1808 East Sprague Avenue in Spokane.  Moscow activists are carpooling from the corner of Second and Washington streets, near Moscow City Hall, at 9 pm.  To both locations, bring some or all of your friends, protest signs, strong voices, mic check chants, musical instruments, and ideas for actions.  The next seven generations of humans and Earth co-habitants are depending on you to stop the reckless expansion of Alberta tar sands operations.  The world is waiting and watching, Spokane!

Eloquently and perspicaciously as always, Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney defends her Earth Day award to the megaload protesters as Earth Protectors and elucidates their/her motivations and the tar sands megaloads’ impacts.  Thanks to Tom Hansen for extracting her City Council meeting response to Henry Johnston’s derogatory remarks at the May 7 session.

(Video provided by Tom Hansen)

At about 11:30 pm on Sunday night, May 20, a dozen activists from Occupy Spokane and Wild Idaho Rising Tide converged in Spokane, Washington, to protest megaloads of oversized equipment bound for Alberta tar sands operations from the Port of Pasco.  ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil has been using Highway 395, Interstate 90, and city streets in Spokane and Spokane Valley since mid-October to transport road damaging shipments weighing up to 400,000 pounds and stretching over 200 feet long.  Diverted in Idaho from their originally intended Highway 12 route by court challenges and from their alternative Highway 95 path by Moscow area protests, these pieces of a tar sands/bitumen processing plant will expand Canadian carbon fuel extraction, American dependence on oil, and continental greenhouse gas emissions, while reaping hefty profits for one of the wealthiest corporations on Earth.

From the pedestrian walkway over East Third Avenue near South Regal Street, Spokane climate justice activists draped banners asserting “No Dirty Energy,” “Occupy 99%,” “Climate Killers,” “Highway to Hell,” and other statements (see 23 facebook photos).  While waiting for the megaload convoys’ arrival, they observed flaggers and warning signs posted along Third Avenue, support vehicles cruising the area, and up to six Spokane city police cars parked near the demonstrators.  Between midnight and 1:00 am on Monday, four megaloads traversed Third Avenue, narrowly fitting under the pedestrian overpass and between parked cars and activists with protest signs lining both sides of the street.  Convoys consisting of Washington state trooper escorts, flagger vehicles, and pilot trucks displaying illuminated “oversized load” signs accompanied a silver, cylindrical module, two large, blue, trailer-like boxes, and a frame structure full of pipes and parts.  A protester later saw another megaload among a cluster of vehicles similarly leaving the interstate at the Altamont Street exit in Spokane and the Barker Road off-ramp in Spokane Valley.

Recognizing the international impacts of these transports, citizens throughout the Northwest will continue to coordinate and organize demonstrations to oppose and impede tar sands megaload traffic, to prevent increasing carbon emissions causing global climate change and to dissuade investors in such dirty energy schemes.  The mostly foreign-owned corporations who have mined only two or three percent of the Alberta tar sands are advancing the second fastest rate of deforestation in the world, as they consume more energy, mostly derived from natural gas, than tar sands fuels ultimately yield.  Their largest industrial project on Earth pollutes exorbitant volumes of fresh water and deposits heavy metals, carcinogens, and oil across vast swaths of Canadian boreal forests and wetlands.  Resident First Nations villages practicing subsistence lifestyles suffer rare cancers and disproportionate deaths, as the single greatest contributor of atmospheric carbon in North America bodes “game over” for the Earth’s climate.

People interested in upcoming expressions of First Amendment rights through anti-megaload assemblies in the Spokane area can contact Occupy Spokane and/or Wild Idaho Rising Tide for more information about the time and location of protests.

On Wednesday, May 16, the second to the last road-hogging convoy of Alberta tar sands equipment, state cops, pilot vehicles, and flaggers will likely rampage Spokane and Spokane Valley streets.  Although we cannot promise any dirty energy resister action against ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil until we hear from our Occupy Tri-Cities Port of Pasco scout around 7 or 8 pm, we do not want to miss this opportunity to kick some more Big Oil ass.  Our Occupy Spokane allies are enthusiastically taking to the streets, calling for our camaraderie, and even offering sleeping space in their clubhouse!

So indulge or at least humor Helen a few more times, folks!  Today is one of her double-digit birthdays, and she is not going to let the megaloads slither through our region without one last…, well, you know the story.  Consider emulating Cass, Jim, Jeanne, and Pat on one of the concluding Moscow megaload nights or at least exercising your crosswalk rights like Lynn and Vince, Jeanne and Fritz, and our many other amazing co-activists.  If we do not participate in Spokane megaload protests SOON, before they end, we could be perceived as a bunch of NIMBYs who did not care so much for the planetary climate as for the integrity of their own city culture and state infrastructure.

We are all in this battle together to stop tar sands expansion, so let’s assist our Spokane comrades with the physical, frontlines solidarity that we so desperately implored of our colleagues across the nation.  We are meeting exactly where we left off in March, at Wanderers’ Tavern in Moscow (205 S. Washington Street, across from City Hall).  At 8 pm, we will start our climate activism/birthday celebration, talk with Spokane allies, and plot our tactics, as we await port reconnaissance reports.  If everything develops favorably, we will re-launch our regional anti-megaloads actions at 9:30 pm from the same location, with protest signs, strong voices, valiant friends, and scented spring breezes on an extraordinary road trip.  Come out and enjoy a wild and beautiful night!

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News 5/16/12

Tucked in among the political endorsements on Thursday’s editorial page (May 10) was a tart bit of criticism from Frank Luzzo, accusing (it is presumed) the megaloads protesters and those who support them of hypocrisy.

I beg to differ.  It is not hypocrisy to realize that an energy extraction process which requires more energy input than it returns as output is unsustainable; that allowing one’s community to be used as a doormat for corporate profiteering is ultimately destructive to that community; that the growth-obsessed, consumption-driven economy in which we grew up has brought us to the brink of ecological catastrophe; that the extent of our benefit from the era of cheap oil should be the measure of our responsibility for leading the transition away from it; and that we, as a society, have been headed the wrong way, and it is time to change course.

That is not hypocrisy.  It is wisdom.

The Moscow-Pullman Daily News 5/9/12

This letter is to the people who think Dan Carscallen was wrong when he opposed the Moscow mayor in the acknowledgement of the megaload protesters.

If you have one piece of plastic in your possession or have rubber tires on your bicycle, then you are a hypocrite.

And how much oil did it take from conception to finished product if you are reading this newspaper today?

Also, 98 percent of a pro football player’s outfit is a by-product of the petroleum industry.