Of the many frontline communities across the continent battling in the courts and the streets the myriad injustices of environmental and human health degradation and civil liberties violations wrought by dirty energy perpetrators, Moscow and the grassroots, direct action collective of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) are well-primed for a tar sands forum.  One of our core activists, a Washington State University (WSU) chemistry professor and member of the Washington-Idaho Border Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS), informed us that a University of Idaho (UI) assistant chemistry professor and local ACS section chair, Jakob Magolan (jmagolan@uidaho.edu), has organized just such an upcoming ACS-sponsored guest speaker series.

On three April evenings between 6 and 7:30 pm in the UI Agricultural Sciences Auditorium, Room 106, ACS is hosting outreach events to address in a “fair and balanced manner” the complex, controversial, and politically-charged subject of Alberta tar sands mining.  Dedicated to promoting scientific literacy and knowledge, regional ACS members have invited three Canadian experts, each Alberta residents with personal involvement and varying opinions, perspectives, and interests in this contentious issue, to visit the Palouse.  We hope that you will avail yourself and our community of these opportunities to expand the awareness and activism of our growing dirty energy resistance movement.  Participants in all three public and free discussions on the UI campus can park after 5 pm in the ‘yellow’ lots on Rayburn Street in Moscow. Continue reading →

Wild Idaho Rising Tide Fundraiser is on Friday in Moscow

There are some people who believe nothing can be done to stop global warming.  Helen Yost, founder of the Moscow-based environmental activism group Wild Idaho Rising Tide, is not one of them.

The group, which was formed in 2011 and is part of the national Rising Tide organization, has conducted protests and public education campaigns on numerous environmental issues during the past two years, most notably the Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil megaloads that came through Moscow last year carrying equipment bound for the company’s tar sands oil project in Alberta, Canada.

“We are part of a network of people who take direct action to confront the root causes of global climate change,” Yost said.  “We call ourselves a direct action group.”

The group will host its Second Annual Celebration of Wild Idaho Rising Tide fundraiser on Friday in Moscow.

The event will feature live music by Dan Maher, Kelly Emo, Sharon Cousins, Josh Yeidel, and Henry C. and the Willards, along with a potluck dinner, raffle drawing, no-host bar, and a slide show of the group’s activities.

Depending on weather conditions, the evening will begin at 6:30 pm with a parade from Moscow’s Friendship Square to the 1912 Center led by the Moscow Volunteer Peace Band. Continue reading →

The Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) collective is celebrating its second anniversary on the last weekend of March.  Besides raising funds through a benefit concert on March 29, we have also entered one of WIRT’s co-founders and core activists in the 2013 Sustainable Leader Award contest offered by lur apparel.  When this company invited WIRT to participate, Sharon Cousins graciously nominated Helen Yost to win the $500 prize (to pay the WIRT Activist House rent), $500 in new clothes for WIRT activists (to ‘cover’ our winter protests), and some national exposure of our widely shared climate justice initiatives.

Through this endeavor, one of our tar sands megaload resistance photos, taken moments after the last convoy crossed Moscow, has gone nationwide! Almost a year after our relentless Highway 95 protests, we learned that the 2010-2012 struggles of WIRT and our allies against megaloads owner ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil in the streets and the courts cost the company two billion dollars in Alberta tar sands facilities construction delays (1, 2).  Imperial Oil also dismissed its CEO (3).  WIRT would appreciate the widespread recognition and greater involvement in the movement that winning the lur contest would further garner for successful direct actions that halt dirty energy development and climate change. Continue reading →

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) is hosting a public screening of the British climate activism film Just Do It: A Tale of Modern-Day Outlaws at 7 pm on Thursday evening, March 21, at The Attic, up the back stairs of 314 East Second Street in Moscow.  Emily James’s documentary follows daring climate action troublemakers over a year, as they blockade and confront factories, coal power stations, and international banks, despite threats of arrest.  Because WIRT paid $50 for the film, promotional materials, and screening rights, we are asking for voluntary admission donations for this show.

After the movie at about 8:30 pm, WIRT activists will hold their third Thursday monthly meeting to discuss the growing climate justice movement and brainstorm and plan upcoming tar sands, megaload, fracking, and coal export protests and the Second Annual Celebration of WIRT.  On the Moscow, Idaho, frontlines of radical rejection of extreme energy, climate activism requires ongoing vigilance of industry and government actions and involvement in collective, local efforts to confront the political corruption and pervasive pollution of state and federally facilitated fossil fuel energy development.  We welcome all concerned activists at this discussion of direct action strategies, tactics, and legal rights after the film screening.