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

10 am Signs Creation

Arrive early to improvise signs that denounce Enbridge construction and Wells Fargo funding of Line 3 and that encourage the “climate and environmental president” Biden to reject all tar sands pipelines and new or expanding fossil fuels projects.  WIRT offers on-site tools, materials, and ideas for your artistic and activist expression, as well as online resources for you to personally help stop Line 3.

11 am Gatherings & Speakers

Our communities thank and welcome back from Minnesota to Idaho fossil fuels frontlines the Line 3 demonstrators who defended treaty rights and healthy air and water.  A Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) leader of Keystone XL resistance and a Treaty People Gathering travel organizer and participants will talk about their experiences and share their knowledge and insights on previous and further resistance, as we together scheme more carpools and caravans to Minnesota and other frontlines this summer and fall.

12 pm President Biden Mail-In & Wells Fargo Protest

Like his cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline that also crosses national borders, President Joseph Biden can revoke federal permits for Line 3.  Because written, mailed letters influence politicians to enact changes more than petitions or email notes, WIRT and friends encourage everyone attending these demonstrations to bring a letter and envelope addressed to Biden (The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20500), urging him to take such action.  Please sign petitions composed by Minnesota coalitions against Line 3, and reference open letters to President Biden and Minnesota decision makers, as templates for your written request [3, 4].  We will together march with signs to the post office, for a mass letter mail-in.

WIRT encourages everyone with a Chase and/or Wells Fargo bank and/or credit card account to boycott these pipeline and oil and gas industry investors, and to transfer personal and business assets and debts to more socially and environmentally responsible credit unions and creditors.  After visiting the post office, we will occupy public sidewalks and spaces near Wells Fargo, with signs visibly protesting the bank’s support of Line 3 and resulting treaty violations and climate justice crises [5].

Ongoing Line 3 Resistance

Please share and send this event announcement and flyer via social media, email, text, and phone, and consider participating in these additional ways to stop Line 3!  Contact WIRT and the relevant Minnesota groups with your questions, suggestions, connections, and support of coordinated, direct activism.

1) GO TO MINNESOTA!  Indigenous resisters of Line 3 need as many people as possible to travel soon to Minnesota and join encampments at the Mississippi headwaters and along the pipeline route.  Please follow the social media accounts of, receive updates from, and contact for planning logistics the groups and events alphabetically listed here: Giniw Collective, Gitchigumi Scouts, Honor the Earth, Northfield Against Line 3, Red Lake Treaty Camp, RISE Coalition, Stop Line 3, Treaty People Gathering, and Water Protector Welcome Center.

2) DONATE!  Hundreds of people have been arrested in indigenous-led direct actions against Enbridge’s Line 3 construction during the last seven months.  Support water protectors in Minnesota and their accomplices in Northwest communities who participated in Line 3 protests, by contributing to the mentioned groups, Treaty People Gathering, and Line 3 Legal Defense Fund [2, 6].

3) PROTEST!  If you could not attend or have returned from the Line 3 frontlines, please pressure Joe Biden at the White House (888-724-8946) or via Twitter (@JoeBiden @POTUS), explaining your concerns and demands about carbon emissions, pollution, #StopLine3, and #NoDAPL.  Also contact WIRT and Northwest comrades for more information about helping to organize solidarity actions at federal buildings and agencies, Enbridge and subsidiary offices and infrastructure, nearby banks that fund Line 3, and other locations.

4) AMPLIFY!  The Treaty People Gathering increased Line 3 issue significance, and Keystone XL cancellation enlivens the envisioned end of all tar sands pipelines.  Please circulate Line 3 opponent calls to join resistance actions and camps, via social media posts and other communications.

Thanks for everything you do to halt and heal the root causes of climate change!

[1] Rising Up to the Heat: ‘Treaty People Gathering’ Resists Line 3 Pipeline, June 7, 2021 Unicorn Riot

[2] Join the Line 3 Summer of Resistance, Treaty People Gathering

[3] Take Action, Stop Line 3

[4] Tell President Biden to #StopLine3, Stop Line 3

[5] Stop the Toxic Line 3 Pipeline, Stop the Money Pipeline

[6] Line 3 Legal Defense Fund