Activists, friends, and supporters,

RISING TIDE/CLIMATE MOVEMENT

Leaked Stratfor PowerPoint Shows Corporation’s Fear of Activist Campaigns (August 3 Popular Resistance)

A Stratfor document released by Wikileaks reveals that big business interests take activists and their impacts seriously.  It advocates dividing and conquering various groups in four categories, who are working to stop the extraction, development, and transportation of tar sands.  “Pull opportunists and realists into compromised positions, convince idealists they have the facts wrong, and isolate the most dangerous group, the radicals.”  Please write a letter of support for Jeremy Hammond, who has pled guilty to the Stratfor hack and is currently collecting such letters to ask the judge for a sentence of only time served.

Northwest Fossil Fuels: Exports and Resistance from Oregon to Alaska (September 26 Rising Tide)

Across the Cascadia region, from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Coast and from northern California to south central Alaska, huge private corporations are developing energy infrastructure that imposes dangerous risks and associated impacts in the short-term and compromised functionality and management in the mid- and long-term.  Their antiquated analyses consider profit maximization over the real concerns of residents and the interdependence of all life that transcends political boundaries.  People throughout Cascadia need to exercise their rights to free, prior, and informed consent of energy projects affecting the natural world upon which present and future generations depend.

Rising Tide activists Adam from Seattle, David from Portland, Helen from Moscow, and Maryam from Vancouver, B.C. presented an insightful panel discussion and community forum on these topics on Thursday evening, September 26, at the University Temple United Methodist Church in the University District of Seattle.  After long journeys that day, we talked about Northwest fossil fuel corridors and transportation projects, including megaload routes, from North Dakota to Washington and from Oregon to Alaska.  Our discussions about regional export of Alberta tar sands, Bakken shale oil, and Powder River Basin coal, and imports of tar sands mining equipment met with thoughtful concluding questions and extended post-forum conversations with 40 audience members.  Ideas for similar educational events arose later that weekend among Rising Tide groups who met near Bellingham.

Rising Tide Regional Strategy Summit (September 27-29 Rising Tide)

Two weeks ago, some of the 29 Rising Tide activists who participated in a weekend strategy summit at a Bellingham area farm touched coastal waters and joined the Lummi Tribe totem pole blessing ceremony at Cherry Point, Washington, near the site of the proposed Gateway Pacific coal export terminal.  (Please see the following Totem Pole Journey links and listen to the Climate Justice Forum radio program on KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday evening, to hear parts of the hour-long recorded ceremony.)  After the festivities on Friday evening, an Occupy Spokane activist spoke at the strategy summit and, after returning home, committed to restarting Spokane Rising Tide.  The summit exceeded most of our expectations, bringing together experienced and emerging Rising Tide groups and key organizers from Vancouver/Coast Salish Territories, B.C., Bellingham, Seattle, Olympia, Portland, and Moscow, to strengthen our regional network and increase our communication and coordination.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Gives Its Hacktivists the Same Name as Actual Activist Group (September 26 Wired)

Riding the pop culture wave of the television show Agents of SHIELD with Rising Tide North America

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Meet Its Real-Life, Climate-Defending, Disney-Dissenting Villains (October 1 Yes!)

More misguided television/internet hype: strange associations for remote climate activists who consider even big cities bizarre

Timeline of the Climate Movement: How Direct Action Took Center Stage (October 2 Yes!)

“There’s a clear trajectory, too: away from ‘Big Green’ groups, who placed their hopes in electoral politics, and toward creative, high-stakes actions in the communities that have the most to lose.  Increasingly, direct action is seen not as a fringe tactic but as the next logical step when other avenues fail.  ‘When people see each other confronting power, their fear goes away…People are willing to take risks when they know their community has their back.’”  The interactive, graphic timeline embedded in this article could benefit from more extensive, detailed data that maps on-the-ground campaigns across the continent over the last decade.

Building the Environmental Movement Today: A Debate (October 3 Climate and Capitalism)

Sasha Ross’ critique of Chris Williams’ article Strategy and Tactics in the Environmental Movement, followed by Chris Williams’ retort

The Climate Movement’s Pipeline Preoccupation (October 8 Earth Island Journal)

Arielle, David, Kirby, and Maryam of our Rising Tide North America network penned this article about next steps for the climate movement, during and after the Keystone XL pipeline campaigns.

Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse (April 12-14 Counterpunch)

The Grassroots Battle Against Big Oil (October 28 The Nation)

Tar Sands Blockade’s robust climate movement-building, grassroots resistance to fossil fuels deep in the belly of the Texas beast made the cover of The Nation magazine!  In blockaders’ own words: “From the Winnsboro tree blockade to Nacogdoches and Houston, from eminent domain abuse to climate justice, writer Wen Stephenson with The Nation extensively interviews several blockaders and our local allies, like the Austin Heights Baptist Church and Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Service, in one of the most in-depth profiles ever written about Tar Sands Blockade.” Continue reading →

Climate defenders,

UPCOMING EVENTS

October 9: ITD to Hold Public Meetings Statewide Starting October 7 on 129,000-Pound Truck Legislation (Idaho Transportation Department)

Comment and participate in the Idaho Transportation Department’s (ITD) statewide public meetings on its four proposed administrative rules governing existing and additional 129,000-pound truck routes and implementing Idaho Senate Bills 1064 and 1117 and House Bill 322, all passed in 2013.  Attend 4 to 7 pm meetings with hourly ITD staff presentations and give verbal or written testimony in Idaho Falls and Pocatello on October 7, in Coeur d’Alene and Lewiston on October 9, in Twin Falls on October 16, and in Boise on October 17.  Email your comments on the rules to comments@itd.idaho.gov by 5 pm on October 24.

October 10: Weekly WIRT Potluck/Meeting (Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

The climate justice movement in Idaho depends on your activism: participate in planning actions and events, educating our cohorts and communities, reaching out through various media, and challenging energy extraction and transportation corporations.  Please bring food and/or beverages to share, and contribute your ideas and energies toward our clean energy future every Thursday at 7 pm at the Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) Activist House in Moscow.

October 10: The Whole Story of Climate (Friends of the Moscow Library)

Local library supporters have invited WIRT members to their annual meeting, to hear Washington State University geologist E. Kirsten Peters talk about her book, The Whole Story of Climate.  Her lecture will occur at 7 pm on Thursday, October 10, at the 1912 Center, 412 East Third Street in Moscow.  Friends of the Moscow Library are offering this program, discussion, and refreshments to everyone free of charge: they welcome all to attend.

October 11: Flush the TPP Spokane (Chris Nerison, Spokane)

This Friday, October 11, at 6:30 pm, learn about the Trans Pacific Partnership international agreement, which could bolster dirty energy infrastructure imports and fossil fuel exports.  View a presentation by Kristen Beifus of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition at the Liberty Park United Methodist Church, 1526 East 11th Avenue in Spokane.  Call WIRT at 208-301-8039 for Palouse carpool coordination.

October 16: Blue Skies Campaign Fundraiser and Action Report-Back (Blue Skies Campaign)

The Missoula-based Blue Skies Campaign will hold a fundraiser on Wednesday, October 16, from 7 to 9 pm at Ten Spoon Windery, 4175 Rattlesnake Drive in Missoula, to help cover fines incurred from their rail line occupation in Helena during the September Showdown Against Coal Exports on the 16th.  In one of the boldest acts of climate-related civil disobedience in Montana, 14 people walked and briefly sat beyond a “No Trespassing” sign between two main coal export train tracks, and received citations and fines of up to $300 each.  Please RSVP through the following link, and join this event that will feature a report-back on the highly successful action and a preview of upcoming initiatives against coal exports.  You can also donate online or mail your check written to Blue Skies Campaign to: Blue Skies Campaign, c/o Nick Engelfried, 321 South First Street West #3, Missoula, Montana 59801.

October 16: Climate Workgroup Hearing in Spokane (Climate Solutions and others)

On October 16 between 5 and 7 pm, in the Music Building Auditorium Room 110 on the Spokane Falls Community College campus, 3410 West Fort George Wright Drive in Spokane, Governor Inslee and Washington state legislators from the Climate Legislative and Executive Workgroup (CLEW) will be holding a public hearing for open discussions about climate policy actions.

October 19: Global Frackdown 2 (Food and Water Watch, WIRT, and allies)

As Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction and WIRT design Boise/southern Idaho demonstrations on the frontlines of first fracking in our state, please plan to join us on Saturday, October 19, for the second Global Frackdown in Idaho, announced soon.  Show your solidarity with communities around the world affected by fracking, and help us ban fracking in Idaho before it happens, if drillers have not already fracked the wilderness state!

Global Frackdown2 on facebook

Global Frackdown 2 Calls for a Worldwide Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing (October 7 EcoWatch)

Fundraising for Anti-Coal/Megaload Activists (Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

WIRT is seeking contributions for allied activists who defended treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, and the air, water, and lands of our region and climate from the infrastructure incursions of coal export and tar sands import last summer.  During the WIRT-sponsored, well-attended, sign-waving rally, Fearless Summer Coal Export Sacrifice Zone Uprising, on June 27 in Spokane, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad patrols cited Tony Dellwo and ‘Ziggy’ with second degree criminal trespass, when the Occupy Spokane activists walked toward a downtown BNSF railroad bridge with a suspiciously temporarily stopped, loaded, coal export train, to obtain higher traffic visibility for their protest signs.  Trespass charges for both defendants will be dropped after they pay fines and complete the terms of their agreements.  Ziggy served eight hours of community service with Backbone Campaign’s annual Localize This! activist training camp, and Tony is diligently fulfilling his one-year probation.  WIRT requests your help with their combined $125 fines due in October.

In passionate displays of tribal sovereignty and solidarity with other indigenous communities opposing tar sands exploitation, Nimiipuu tribal leaders and members and allied activists valiantly blockaded and delayed a tar sands mining evaporator and convoy at the reservation boundary and throughout the wild and scenic river corridor along Highway 12 on August 5 to 8.  On September 20, Nez Perce Tribal Court arraigned most of the 28 protesters arrested by tribal police and charged up to $500 each for bail, imposing public nuisance infractions (unlawfully obstructing movement on a public highway).  If convicted, eight accused Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee members may be forced by the tribe’s constitution to forfeit their posts for three years.  Nimiipuu activists insist that the tribal court drop their charges, in consideration of pertinent tribal and federal laws, resolutions, and court orders rejecting Highway 12 megaloads.  Although WIRT and allies recently raised over $1200 at a benefit concert, we ask that you join us in honoring such courageous, nonviolent, civil disobedience with your contributions that help cover fines and legal fees.  Please donate whatever you can, noting intended Nez Perce or Spokane recipients, online or by check to Wild Idaho Rising Tide at the enclosed address, so that indigenous and climate activists can participate in resistance to coal and oil company onslaughts, regardless of their financial situation. Continue reading →