Throughout the summer and fall of 2015, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allies are providing workshops on nonviolent direct action, community outreach, and industrial activity monitoring, each with guest trainers.  Various Northwest groups are hosting and/or contributing toward these ongoing trainings, to educate, empower, and mobilize regional residents for upcoming protests of expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in southwest Idaho and dirty energy transportation through northern Idaho and eastern Washington communities, for Washington state and local agency hearings on Northwest coal and oil train terminals, and especially for coordinated, region-wide, Flood the System fall actions.

The first of these training sessions features Matt Landon of Vancouver Action Network in Washington.  Over the last few years, Matt has provided leadership, insights, and guidance among the Northwest community of citizens and activists, through two programs that he has developed, the Listening Project and the Twitter Oil Train Watch.  Through canvassing and other methods, the Listening Project has reached out to thousands of residents of the mile-wide “blast zones” around rail lines carrying volatile Alberta tar sands and Bakken crude oil trains through the Vancouver and Portland, Oregon metropolitan areas.  As reported by widespread, track-side train spotters, the Twitter Oil Train Watch has documented hundreds of dangerous oil trains moving across Washington.  Two significant situations make the techniques learned at this workshop critical components of community knowledge and protection: Every oil train passage increases the risks of devastating derailments, leaks, spills, and fiery explosions, and recently released federal regulations restrict the information about these trains available to the public and emergency responders.

This weekend, please join regional activists at Matt Landon’s Skyped, two-hour workshops in Spokane, Washington, and Sandpoint, Idaho.  Converge at 11 am on Saturday, June 27, in Meeting Room 1B, at the street level of the downtown Spokane Public Library, 906 West Main Avenue in Spokane, or at 2:30 pm on Saturday, June 27, in Rooms 103 and 104 of the East Bonner County – Sandpoint Library, 1407 Cedar Street in Sandpoint.  Do not miss these opportunities to enhance your personal and collective capacity to thwart the fossil fuel onslaught currently rampaging the Northwest, by attending these Inland Northwest Climate Activist Workshops and encouraging your friends, family, and co-workers to participate, and print and post the enclosed, letter-sized, event flyer.  Although event coordinators have worked to minimize workshop expenses, such as facilities rental and trainer and organizer travel, we would greatly appreciate participant donations to offset workshop costs.  WIRT welcomes your questions, suggestions, and discussion about and during these events and your advance confirmation of participation.  Thanks!