[NOTE: This press release and accompanying photos garnered public exposure of our frontline tar sands activism through three media outlets.  On May 22, lead Rising Tide organizer Scott Parkin posted our description of Spokane protests against ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil’s tar sands construction/transportation invasion of the Northwest as Tar Sands Megaload Fight Moves West to Spokane on the Rising Tide North America website and in the online newsletter It’s Getting Hot in Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement.  On the same day, when over 1000 visitors viewed their internet site, the Earth First! Newswire also ran our story about Occupy Spokane/WIRT’s May 20 demonstration.]

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. Continue reading →