Dear friends,

Open Activist House, Monthly Potluck, & WIRT Housemate

This week, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) will celebrate one month of productive work in our new location.  Please visit between noon and 8 pm daily whenever you can to participate in our diverse initiatives, such as:

* Vigilance of potential megaloads using nearby ports and highways

* An Idaho fracking ban ballot measure and upcoming protests

* A Latah County/Moscow community bill of rights

* Moscow area canvass and regional student outreach

* Climate Justice Forum radio program coordination and support

* WIRT website, facebook page, and email newsletter

As you witnessed at our dozens of megaload protests, your participation is crucial to the success of these ongoing campaigns.  To nurture our community spirit, brainstorm group projects, and match your skills and passion with essential tasks, we are launching monthly potlucks (maybe even with post-meeting music!) at the WIRT Activist House in Moscow, on the third Thursday of every month.  The first such convergence will commence next Thursday, August 16, at 7 pm.  Please bring your friends, favorite food and/or beverage of choice, and your most zealous climate activism ideas.  We are also still searching for a second activist inhabitant of the WIRT House, ideally from among our ranks.  Please let us know soon if you would like to share this great living and community space for only $350 per month.  Otherwise, we will open its one bedroom availability to the public this week.

WIRT at Coal Export Action Rallies & Sit-Ins

A carload or caravan of climate justice activists from northern Idaho and eastern Washington will participate in the culminating protests of the Coal Export Action at the Montana Capitol in Helena on Saturday and Sunday, August 18 and 19.  Our allies of the Blue Skies Campaign in Missoula are hosting Montanans and concerned citizens from across the country, staging sustained, peaceful demonstrations beginning on August 12 and continuing through August 20, when the State Land Board will decide whether to approve a permit for Arch Coal to mine Otter Creek.  Please visit the Coal Export Action website for more information and registration, and then join in displaying strong opposition to coal exports across our region.  Unlike the Tar Sands Healing Walk in Fort McMurray, Alberta, this week of actions is your closest opportunity to contribute toward the nationwide Summer of Solidarity against the fossil fuel industry and for a livable planet.  Similar to the August/September 2011 Washington DC protests of the Keystone XL pipeline, Helena demonstrators will both support and risk arrest to send a unified message to the Land Board and Big Coal: save Otter Creek – no coal exports!  To partake in the WIRT carpool, see our website description and flyer, invite your friends through the facebook event post, and contact us at wild.idaho.rising.tide@gmail.com or 208-301-8039 or drop by the WIRT House between noon and 8 pm PDT daily.  Also listen to WIRT’s Monday, August 13, Climate Justice Forum radio program between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT live at 92.5 FM or online at KRFP Radio Free Moscow, when a core Coal Export Action organizer will describe the first day of sit-in demonstrations and recent issue developments.

Tar Sands Healing Walk Outcomes

Jennifer Ekstrom, Pat Rathmann, and Helen Yost, the Wild Idaho Rising Tide participants in the Saturday, August 4, Third Annual Tar Sands Healing Walk, returned safely to Moscow and Spokane from Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Tuesday evening, August 7.  Over 150 people brought their lives and hearts to the lifeless, heartless, Saharan moonscape of tar sands processing facilities and tailings ponds, seeking healing for the land, water, air, and climate and finding allies and renewed hope for our struggle against tar sands development.  First Nations leaders and members from throughout Canada honored event attendees with their powerful, uplifting, and deeply respectful ceremonies, chants, drumming, and prayers during this great convergence and shared spiritual procession of concerned North Americans.  We are humbly grateful for indigenous elders, healing walk organizers, speakers, and performers, and tar sands activists who have together expanded our perspective and perseverance through our shared experiences and distant support.  Thanks to each of you for upholding our solidarity as we struggled through climate change hell and personally encountered the overwhelming pollution of destructive, industrial mining practices amongst a vast, scarred landscape.  As our collective senses and feet on the ground, WIRT walkers gathered images and scouted tar sands operations for our stalwart co-activists and met inspiring visionaries whose integrity and courage are boldly healing places and people.  We hope to return to the healing walk with more WIRT members and active participation next year, trusting that the goodness of life will prevail through our collective efforts.  As one of our new acquaintances asserts in her Rabble article, “In the midst of ground zero of the tar sands dead zone, the Healing Walkers remind us that the paradigm shift urgently needed to cool down the planet’s industrially-induced fever is already here – humble, honest, and strong in spirit.”  Until that sea change, we offer you the following articles, reflections, videos, and photos of the many moving and enlightening moments of the healing walk and gatherings.  WIRT will feature more news about the occasion and journey on the Monday, August 13, Climate Justice Forum, live at 92.5 FM and online at KRFP Radio Free Moscow between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT.

News Articles

Fort McMurray Healing Walk Protests Oil Sands Development (Gemma Karstens-Smith, August 4 Edmonton Journal)

BC First Nations Join Others in Oil Sands Healing Walk (Renee Bernard, August 4 News1130)

Ethical Waters: Healing Walk in the Tar Sands Grows Year by Year (Rita Wong, August 8 Rabble.Ca)

Tar Sands Healing Walk (Sonny Doughnut, August 11 nevernowhere: place, politics, thoughts, and stories)

Television/Radio Stories

Healing Walk Draws Hundreds to Protest Oilsands (August 4 CBC News Calgary)

Interview with Organizer of this Weekend’s Tar Sands Healing Walk (August 2 KRFP Radio Free Moscow Evening Report, Tar Sands Healing Walk, between 14:02 and 4:18)

Local Anti-Megaloads Activist Travels to Tar Sands (August 9 KRFP Radio Free Moscow Evening Report, Tar Sands Healing Walk, between 7:57 and 1:08)

Videos

Third Annual Healing Walk – Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada (Sid Chow Tan)

Invocation for Healing (Mike Byerley)

Photos (available to facebook subscribers)

Third Annual Healing Walk – Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada (122 photos by Sid Chow Tan)

Third Annual Tar Sands Healing Walk (72 photos by Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

3rd Annual Tar Sands Healing Walk (43 photos by Mike Byerley)

Healing Walk (9 photos by Jule Asterisk)

Looking forward to seeing you in the streets, tracks, and fracking sites,

Wild Idaho Rising Tide

P.O. Box 9817, Moscow, Idaho 83843

WildIdahoRisingTide.org & on facebook

208-301-8039