The Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) collective is celebrating its second anniversary on the last weekend of March.  Besides raising funds through a benefit concert on March 29, we have also entered one of WIRT’s co-founders and core activists in the 2013 Sustainable Leader Award contest offered by lur apparel.  When this company invited WIRT to participate, Sharon Cousins graciously nominated Helen Yost to win the $500 prize (to pay the WIRT Activist House rent), $500 in new clothes for WIRT activists (to ‘cover’ our winter protests), and some national exposure of our widely shared climate justice initiatives.

Through this endeavor, one of our tar sands megaload resistance photos, taken moments after the last convoy crossed Moscow, has gone nationwide! Almost a year after our relentless Highway 95 protests, we learned that the 2010-2012 struggles of WIRT and our allies against megaloads owner ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil in the streets and the courts cost the company two billion dollars in Alberta tar sands facilities construction delays (1, 2).  Imperial Oil also dismissed its CEO (3).  WIRT would appreciate the widespread recognition and greater involvement in the movement that winning the lur contest would further garner for successful direct actions that halt dirty energy development and climate change. Continue reading →