Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) extends our gratitude to everyone who organized and participated in our successful Fourth Annual Celebration of WIRT on Saturday, March 28, at the 1912 Center Great Room in Moscow, Idaho [1, 2].  We heartily thank Tom Bennett, who coordinated musical performers and created facebook event notices; Pat Monger, who printed and posted color event flyers throughout Moscow; Leigh Robartes, who produced a KRFP Radio Free Moscow announcement promoting the occasion [3]; Rob Briggs, who served as a bartender, beer supplier, and event materials hauler and arranger; Sharon Cousins, David Hall, and Jacki Vorhees, who stored and provided beverages and potluck food, loaned a vehicle for silent auction item retrieval, and prepared the 1912 Center Great Room; and several volunteers who diligently cleared dishes, tablecloths, tables, and chairs, and assisted other arrangements.

We greatly appreciate the talented musicians who drove hundreds of miles to exuberantly offer event participants an inspiring, invigorating, live benefit concert free of charge.  Tom Bennett, the folk/blues, one-man band from north Georgia and Utah, stopped in Moscow during his Northwest tour and opened the evening show with his rowdy, refreshing, real music, after playing at the WIRT fundraising party at The Attic in mid-November 2014 [4].  Pete Sands of ‪‎Blackkiss ventured a long round trip from northern Utah to offer his amazing performance – delayed for Sapaatk’ayn Native American Film Festival attendees – of unique, soul-stirring, Navajo dark country music that participants are still complimenting [5].  When acoustic rock, punk, and blues musician Eugeine Grey could not travel from Chicago to Moscow, core WIRT activist Fiddlin’ Big Al Chidester stepped in to conclude the concert with his rousing, eclectic, traditional, and original folk tunes [6].  Through a background WIRT slide show and intermission talk, WIRT organizer Helen Yost described the successes of our grassroots climate activist collective, including industry-impacting resistance to tar sands, shale oil, natural gas, and coal extraction and transportation [7].

We especially thank Mikey’s Greek Gyros and the Wine Company of Moscow, for donating beer, wine, and a liquor service permit, and these 14 Moscow and Pullman community members and businesses, who generously provided silent auction items together valued at hundreds of dollars.

B&L Bicycles: A bicycle pump

Brused Books: One gift certificate

Cowgirl Chocolates: Eight assorted chocolate bars

Fiddlin’ Big Al: Two KRFP T-shirts and one Fiddlin’ Big Al T-shirt

Glassphemy: Incense and a holder and a hemp wick lighter

Howard Hughes Video: Two movie rental gift certificates

Hyperspud Sports: A Leatherman-like multi-tool and a Hyperspud Sports “Chico” bag

Moscow Brewing Company: A beer growler and one gift certificate

Nectar: Dinner for two gift certificate

One World Café: One gift card and a One World Café T-shirt

Paradise Creek Bicycles: A bike rental coupon and a Paradise Creek Bicycles glass

Patty’s Mexican Kitchen: Two gift certificates

Rico’s Pub: Two gift certificates

Tye Dye Everything: A tye-dye T-shirt and a WIRT contribution

WIRT activists are most grateful for each of our 25-plus guests of this yearly fundraising party commemorating WIRT’s fourth anniversary as a direct action collective, who filled the lively gathering with priceless conversation, dancing, merry making, and ideas and donations to Wild Idaho Rising Tide.  You graciously contributed to our community spirit and, via voluntary admission donations and beer, wine, and auction item purchases, raised about $390 for our regional climate activism collective, after venue, musician gas, and printing fees.  Your generosity offsets the costs of our direct action and outreach work, protest travel and materials expenses, and legal and court fees arising from non-violent civil disobedience.

Congratulations and thanks to each of you for a robust fourth year of shared, courageous, climate and tribal activism and ongoing support of WIRT, as we together challenge the government and corporate sources of climate chaos!  If you missed the festivities and would like to help WIRT sustain our formidable resistance to extreme energy projects like tar sands equipment transports, Northwest coal, shale oil, and tar sands trains and terminals, oil and gas exploration, extraction, and production in Idaho, Highway 95 mis-alignment south of Moscow, and a growing plethora of climate-wrecking corporate schemes, please consider contributing what you can physically through upcoming WIRT events and/or fiscally via donations mailed to the enclosed address or through WIRT’s online giving platform [8].

As WIRT starts our fifth year on March 31, after an unusually quiet annual celebration where rumors questioning our perseverance circulated, let us re-affirm our intentions.  Despite the FBI trying to intimidate us and potential members, long-assisted allies shunning us, the continent-wide media criminalizing us, WIRT Activists House landlords ejecting us, facebook erasing four years of shared outreach on our pre-page profile, and support programs attempting to divert us to other work, all since early October, WE WILL NOT RELENT!  Thanks to the hard-core WIRT activists and allies across the state and region (you know who you are as sure as your hearts beat), we stand against climate chaos perpetrators because you so effectively and passionately stand.

Please participate in every chance to join WIRT dirty energy resisters in action, as we push onward!  We welcome everyone to visit the WIRT facebook and website pages and contact WIRT often, for current information and opportunities to confront the root causes of the climate crisis, by asserting direct actions and promoting locally organized solutions, in solidarity with frontline communities of resistance and an international, volunteer, grassroots network of activists.

[1] Fourth Annual Celebration of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (March 20, 2015 Wild Idaho Rising Tide website)

[2] Fourth Annual Celebration of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (March 20, 2015 Wild Idaho Rising Tide facebook page)

[3] KRFP Promo for WIRT Fourth Celebration (March 26, 2015 KRFP and Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

[4] Sharecropper’s Blues (September 3, 2014 Logan Crannell)

[5] I Can Still Make Cheyenne (Cover) – Blackkiss (March 21, 2015 Pete Sands)

[6] Fiddlin’ Big Al (March 26, 2015 Fiddlin’ Big Al)

[7] Helen Yost Speech at Fourth Annual Celebration of WIRT (March 31, 2015 Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

[8] Support WIRT (Wild Idaho Rising Tide website page)