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.

YOUR VOTE COULD WIN WIRT $1000! Helen has been giving some of the best work of her life to WIRT and our community over the last few years, compensated with only enough donations to keep deepening debt at bay.  Consequently, WIRT has been nationally recognized as one of ten small, green groups that make a big difference (4) and locally acknowledged as Earth protectors with a Moscow Mayor’s Earth Day award (5).  The area community also honored Helen as the 2012 Moscow Renaissance Fair queen (6).  We trust that you agree that her kick-ass community organizing – producing protests, workshops, events, action alerts, newsletters, a website, facebook page, and radio show, getting arrested twice, and further battling in court – to fight fossil fuel energy corporations with all WIRT has is worth your vote, maybe even daily through facebook until March 29.

On that evening, we expect to announce at our Second Annual Celebration of Wild Idaho Rising Tide, that all of you, our 1400 constantly supportive facebook friends around the world, have provided through your votes $1000 for our collective cause of combating climate change.  In the spirit of solidarity, please VOTE DAILY for HELEN YOST of WIRT to receive the lur apparel 2013 Sustainable Leader Award before 5 pm EDT on March 29.  Because we need hundreds of votes to win, please also post our entry link on your facebook page after you vote, encouraging your friends and family to vote for Helen and thus assist WIRT with our ongoing climate activism work.  THANKS!

http://lurapparel.com/leaders/#!/entry/1851349

(1) Kearl Oilsands Mine Cost Jumps $2 Billion (Calgary Herald, February 1, 2013)

(2) Imperial Boosts Kearl Oil-Sands Costs to $12.9 Billion (Bloomberg, February 1, 2013)

(3) March Replaced as CEO of Imperial Oil (Calgary Herald, February 21, 2013)

(4) Ten Small Green Groups that Make a Big Difference (Counterpunch, December 23-25, 2011)

(5) Megaload Protesters Receive Earth Day Award as Earth Protectors (Moscow City Council Meeting Minutes, April 16, 2012)

(6) Ren Fair Royalty Ready for Spring Revival (Moscow-Pullman Daily News, May 4, 2012)