In solidarity with all water protectors, land defenders, and climate activists across Turtle Island (North America), Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allied, Northwest groups and individuals are planning and hosting solidarity actions in Moscow and Sandpoint, Idaho, to uphold and support indigenous-led resistance to construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline through treaty territories in northern Minnesota.  We are also celebrating the June 9 termination of the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline, by Calgary-based TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), and the January 2021 presidential cancellation of the project, grateful for sustained KXL opposition, from First Nations impacted by Alberta tar sands exploitation to Gulf Coast tree sitters obstructing its route.  Each of these proposed pipelines, if constructed, would transport almost a million barrels of toxic tar sands oil per day from Canada, under hundreds of waterways and wetlands, including Mississippi River headwaters and wild rice lakes crucial for drinking water and indigenous food sovereignty.  Tar sands “black snakes” jeopardize pristine and sensitive landscapes, watersheds, aquifers, and ecosystems from the Great Lakes across the Great Plains to the Salish Sea (Puget Sound).  And these pipelines would enable further tar sands mining and refining operations, built by megaloads of equipment that WIRT and co-workers have opposed since our group inception a decade ago.  Tar sands extraction continues to devastate the air, water, lands, wild plants and animals, and subsistence practices honored by First Nations, and exacerbates the droughts, wildfires, storms, and floods of fossil fueled climate chaos around the Earth.

Regionally, during the seven to twelve years of the Line 3 and Keystone XL battles, WIRT and Northwest, frontline activists have uplifted these campaigns with outreach through our radio, facebook, and newsletter programs, while constantly resisting, monitoring, documenting, and alerting our communities to fossil fuels extraction and transportation onslaughts on Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Oregon frontlines.  We have confronted tar sands megaloads on rivers and roads, coal and oil trains and terminals on pipelines-on-rails and at ports, oil and gas extraction and forced leasing in southwest Idaho, and infrastructure expansions also accommodating nuclear waste and new power plants and other hazardous materials across the Northwest.  All of these invasions would and do daily pollute the Columbia Basin and threaten the lives and livelihoods of residents, businesses, and entire communities and economies.

Since November 2020, when the Line 3 pipeline reached the last of its regulatory challenges, and despite ongoing court cases and calls for federal, administrative relief, construction encroaching on indigenous lands in northern Minnesota has been clearing a path for Canadian oil pumped for export to and beyond the United States.  The movement to #StopLine3 has courageously escalated through legal advocacy, on-the-ground actions, prayer ceremonies, and over 500 arrests at blockades of Enbridge offices, pipeline equipment staging areas, pump stations, river drilling sites, and worker and resistance camps.  Thousands of people powerfully converged and put their bodies in the way of Line 3 construction for 30 hours, during the Treaty People Gathering on June 5 to 8 in Minnesota, where both direct resistance and the need for more people on the frontlines is increasing [1, 2].  Supporting Line 3 opposition throughout and before 2021, Rising Tide North America, Rising Tide Chicago, Portland Rising Tide, and the network of volunteer Rising Tide groups have provided online webinars, meetings, and virtual, non-violent direct action trainings that introduce concerned citizens to the principles, strategies, tactics, and skills of protest.  In solidarity with northern Minnesota communities blocking local tar sands expansion, grassroots resistance to Line 3 has staged hundreds of actions across the country and around the world, confronting banks, financiers, and insurance companies that facilitate the water-risking venture.

WIRT organizers understand that almost-post-pandemic re-emergence has been difficult for everyone, especially for activists who do not engage in electronic teleconferences for security reasons.  At Solstice time, regional activists who recently organized travel to and participated in blockades disrupting Line 3 construction are asking for your involvement in outreach and solidarity demonstrations objecting to Line 3 and celebrating Keystone XL termination.  On Friday, June 25, in Sandpoint, and on Saturday, June 26, during Farmers Market in Moscow, we invite you to bravely partake in the #StopLine3 movement.  On behalf of future generations and voiceless, fellow, Earth inhabitants, join the continent-wide call for the end of all tar sands and fossil fuels pipelines, such as the illegally flowing Dakota Access (DAPL) and Enbridge Line 5 and the currently under-construction but fiercely rebuked Trans Mountain and Mountain Valley pipelines.  Come and stand with and for frontline communities confronting the oil and gas industry, corporate interests, and green-washed, false, climate solutions.

Friday, June 25, near Farmin Park in Sandpoint

Saturday, June 26, in Friendship Square in Moscow Continue reading →