Just Do It: A Tale of Modern-Day OutlawsCompassionately contrary compatriots,

Before we send to you a more comprehensive newsletter with reports and photos about our recent actions and related dirty energy developments and resistance, we invite your participation in these upcoming grassroots-led initiatives.

UPCOMING EVENTS!

February 4: IRAGE Activists on the Climate Justice Forum (website excerpted)

February 6: Anti-Fracking Strategy Session in Boise

From 1 until 3 pm this Wednesday, activists of Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction, United Vision for Idaho, Wild Idaho Rising Tide, and other invited groups, such as Occupy Boise and the Sierra Club, are meeting at the Solid Grill and Bar, 405 South 8th Street in Boise.  The reserved space for five to twenty people will accommodate a group lunch and privacy, as participants discuss strategies to oppose natural gas development in Idaho and plan a mid-March weekend direct action workshop and petition signature presentation action.  IRAGE and WIRT are currently working with CREDO Action to launch and circulate an online/print petition demanding a legislative ban on fracking in Idaho until further study criteria are met.  While we doubt our lawmakers will grant our requests, the petition serves to bring awareness and education to Idaho voters.  Petitioners will explain the circumstances, rules, and laws surrounding recent and upcoming natural gas and injection well drilling, while collecting signatures at public events and information booths like those at Farmers Markets.  We intend to pressure and document the stances of our state officials, to assert their accountability if (when) fracking problems arise, before stronger citizen initiatives during the next election cycle.

February 7: Highway 95 Realignment Possible Impacts on Palouse Prairie and Native Plants

The Palouse Prairie Foundation and the White Pine Chapter of the Idaho Native Plant Society are co-sponsoring a public presentation and discussion about the potential effects on native flora and fauna of the proposed re-routing of U.S. Highway 95 between Moscow and Thorn Creek Road.  Please converge at 7 pm this Thursday in the 1912 Center Fiske Room, 412 East Third Street in Moscow, to learn more about this critical local situation.

February 8: Climate of Doubt with Tom Bitterwolf

The Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition (PESC) will show the Public Broadcast Service documentary Climate of Doubt on Friday at 7 pm.  This film explores the movement that undermined public perceptions about climate change by promoting the invalid notion of scientific controversy about the subject.  University of Idaho professor Dr. Tom Bitterwolf will lead the discussion after the movie in the 1912 Center Fiske Room, 412 East Third Street in Moscow.  For further information about this and the following event, contact Pat Fuerst of PESC at epfuerst@frontier.com.

February 15: Climate Disruption: Are We Beyond the Worst Case Scenario?

Some sectors of our society have seemingly advanced three disconnected conversations about the important topic of climate change: one among scientists working on the issue, another among business, industry, and many politicians, and a third within policy and think-tank circles.  Has this disparity stalled real progress and solutions past the point of no return?  Dr. Michael Jennings, a researcher at the University of Idaho, will illuminate this situation from an integrative perspective derived from current primary literature and data.  Join the Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition at 7 pm on Friday, February 15, in the 1912 Center Fiske Room, 412 East Third Street in Moscow.

February 17: Wild Idaho Forward on Climate Rally (cancelled)

At a place and time arranged soon on the Moscow, Idaho, frontlines of radical rejection of extreme energy, WIRT will stage a solidarity action in honor of the historic, “largest climate rally in history” at the Washington DC national mall.  Convened by 350.org, the Sierra Club, and the Hip-Hop Caucus, participants will urge President Barack Obama to resolve the climate crisis and reject permitting of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  Because such choreographed, non-confrontational “protests” often feel so fake after the real, unpredictable and thus scary, arrestable scenarios that we have already braved (and want more people to risk and experience), WIRT will publicly screen the British climate activism film Just Do It: A Tale of Modern-Day Outlaws before our Sunday afternoon demonstration.  Emily James’s documentary follows daring climate action troublemakers over a year, as they blockade and confront factories, coal power stations, and international banks.  After the movie screening, we will walk the talk of the growing climate justice movement and again take to the streets, like thousands of other previously timid Americans that day.  Even the Sierra Club is relinquishing its prohibition on direct action for a one-time-only foray into too-civil disobedience, after revealing its funds accepted from frackers for its anti-coal campaigns a year ago.

Sierra Club Announces Direct Action to Stop Tar Sands?!? (January 22 EarthFirst! Newswire)

Big Greenwashing 101: Or How the Sierra Club Learned to Stop Worrying about the 99% and Love Wall Street (February 15, 2012, EarthFirst! Newswire)

In solidarity and gratitude for all that you do: we could not thrive without you!

Wild Idaho Rising Tide

P.O. Box 9817, Moscow, Idaho 83843

WildIdahoRisingTide.org & on facebook

208-301-8039