WIRT activists and allied comrades,

The co-author of the Portland Rising Tide/Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) chapter Resistance to Alberta Tar Sands Transports in Idaho and Beyond in his anthology about land-based struggles, Grabbing Back, the remarkable writer and friend Alexander Reid Ross consistently shares with the world collective stories of often obscure but always earnest Northwest confrontations with climate change perpetrators and their local, state, and federal facilitators, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  A colleague referred him to Defending Dissent Foundation, which published his latest, extensive essay on their Newswire site, revealing ongoing covert and recently overt FBI harassment, local arrest, and attempted repression of anti-fossil fuel activists in the Northwest [1].  During the last three days, his article has appeared in seven esteemed, online journals, including Climate Connections hosted by the Global Justice Ecology Project, who noted that his excellent story about the FBI contact of core WIRT activists Herb Goodwin in Bellingham, Helen Yost in Moscow, and Deep Green Resistance members in Washington and the Payette County public meeting arrest of Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction (IRAGE)’s Alma Hasse in early October “works through individual stories that show the effects of harassment on people’s lives, and also provides the larger context of the movement as it continues to evolve” [2-7].

Rising Tide North America (RTNA) and Tar Sands Blockade have widely circulated these pieces, via facebook meme posts and Tweets, about the FBI finally contacting WIRT activists after surveilling us for three and one-half years (maybe because we have been unusually quiet over the last three months, making their snoop fixes difficult).  Our RTNA comrades assert that:

Billy Bragg once said, “If you’ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it.”  Well, we’re definitely on somebody’s list.  In 2014, the federal harassment of Rising Tide activists in the Northwest continued, this time in Idaho and Bellingham, Washington.  The feds harassed activists fighting fossil fuel infrastructure in the Northwest with “knock and talks” and surveillance.  But, of course, the @$$holes who crashed the economy on Wall Street in 2008, and their monstrous clients in the fossil fuel industry who poison and pollute communities on a daily basis with oil, gas, and coal, carry on with business-as-usual.  It’s not a flaw in the system that allows this to happen: it was designed that way.

WIRT offers our sincere praise to all the folks who interviewed and wrote this article like Alex, Alma Hasse, and Herb Goodwin, but especially everyone who has participated in this awe-inspiring movement striving for a better, fossil fuels-free world, like Cascadia Forestdefenders, IRAGE, Spokane Rising Tide, Portland Rising Tide, Rising Tide Seattle, Rising Tide Vancouver-Coast Salish Territories, Rising Tide Bellingham, other Rising Tide groups, Seattle Raging Grannies, and all of our outrageous, indigenous, and climate comrades around the continent.

During just the solar 2013-14 year, WIRT staged dozens of fossil fuel/climate change protests against Alberta tar sands/Bakken shale oil megaloads at Arco, Craters of the Moon National Monument, Hammett, Lewiston, Marsing, Moscow, Mountain Home, Sandpoint, and Timmerman Junction, Idaho, and Bonner, Bynum, Choteau, Clearwater Junction, Great Falls, and Missoula, Montana, and at the Port of Wilma, Washington, all compounded by extensive megaload monitoring nearby.  We demonstrated at least three times in Boise, Idaho, against oil and gas leasing and fracking, and another handful of times against oil and coal export trains and ports, in the streets of Sandpoint, Idaho, and Spokane, Washington.  WIRT also held and/or participated in 20-plus meetings, direct action workshops, films, presentations, discussions, and concerts exploring all four issues in four states, in Boise, Coeur d’Alene, Hailey, McCall, Moscow, Plummer, Pocatello, and Sandpoint, Idaho, in Missoula, Montana, and Ontario, Oregon, and in Bellingham, Pullman, Seattle, and Spokane, Washington.

News of much of this activity does not typically make the local newspapers, radio, and television, as much the fault of meager group capacity and reticent community participation as media neglect.  But as friends as distant as England and farther remind us, “This is American history in the making, and you will win, change history, and be remembered by future generations.”  However most difficult the first steps of any movement, WIRT could never express enough our respect and gratitude for the undaunted activists who have fearlessly, faithfully kept fighting the good fight.  We also extend thanks to each of our supporters for your encouragement, compliments, and sharing the news of grassroots resistance.

Among these developments, as the song echoes, “battle lines are being drawn.”  Despite temporary attention and potential victories outlined here, none of us can stop our own resistance, so easily labeled hypocritical or unusual by opponents.  As another friend responded to this article, “What good are human rights, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, if our Mother Earth is destroyed?  We must speak for her.”  As we anticipate even greater actions and outreach in 2015, Wild Idaho Rising Tide is calling you together to the streets again.  In the wake of a Friday, January 2, interview with a Spokesman-Review reporter, who has already called and talked with Bellingham attorney Larry Hildes, she is hoping to speak with Deep Green Resistance activists in the Northwest approached by the FBI asking questions in October 2014.  A photographer is traveling from the Spokane area on Thursday, January 8, and meeting WIRT activists at One World Café in Moscow, Idaho, at 10 am, to craft some pictures to accompany a regionally reaching article about this FBI fiasco: PLEASE JOIN US!

Remember that government (and likely worse corporate) scrutiny emphasizes the relentless effectiveness of WIRT’s work, reliant completely on your generosity that sustains the amazing, admirable efforts of climate justice activists.  Please support our 2015 grassroots resistance to oil, gas, coal, and tar sands invasions of wild Idaho, with your physical and fiscal contributions at the Support WIRT page or buttons on our website (https://wildidahorisingtide.org/support-wirt/).  We realistically can only achieve this impassioned work with your input!

In solidarity, stay strong, friends!

[1] Why Is the FBI Harassing Activists in Cascadia? (January 5, 2015 Dissent News Wire)

[2] Why Is the FBI Harassing Anti-Fossil Fuel Activists in Cascadia? (January 6, 2015 Earth First! Newswire)

[3] Why Is the FBI Harassing Activists in Cascadia? (January 6, 2015 Counterpunch)

[4] FBI Harassing Fossil Fuel Activists in the Pacific Northwest (January 6, 2015 Ecologist)

[5] Why Is the FBI Harassing Tar Sands Protesters in Washington and Oregon? (January 6, 2015 Green is the New Red)

[6] FBI Harassing Activists in Pacific Northwest (January 6, 2015 Climate Connections)

[7] Why Is the FBI Harassing Activists in Cascadia? (January 19, 2015 Earth Island Journal)