Author Archives: WIRT

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About WIRT

The WIRT collective is part of an international, grassroots network of groups and individuals who take direct action to confront the root causes of climate change and to promote local, community-based solutions to the climate crisis.

Panhandle Paddle!

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Panhandle Paddle Flyer

Organizing the first in a series of coordinated, region-wide, fall 2015 Flood the System actions and ongoing mobilization of frontline, inland Northwest communities impacted by fossil fuel incursions and unjust economic, social, and political conditions, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allied activists in Sandpoint, Moscow, Spokane, and beyond are excited to announce and host the Panhandle Paddle on Saturday, August 29 [1]! After further WIRT outreach and education between 9 am and 1 pm at the Farmers’ Market at Sandpoint, WIRT members and friends are converging at 2 pm at City Beach Park in Sandpoint, Idaho, for music, speakers, refreshments, and on- and off-shore protests of Northwest fossil fuel transports and terminals and rail bridge expansion on Lake Pend Oreille. In the wake of four Flood the System slide shows and discussions in Idaho and Washington and parallel Montana initiatives, we are eager to “flood, blockade, occupy, and shut down the systems that jeopardize our future” [1-3].

Join in some summer fun on the water and beach to show Big Oil, King Coal, their railroad industry haulers, and government facilitators that north Idahoans will not stand for their reckless endangerment of our lives, communities, water, air, and climate, with their explosive Alberta tar sands and Bakken crude oil trains and their heavy, dusty Powder River Basin coal cars. Northwesterners have plenty to celebrate about our shared resistance, as dozens of proposals for new and expanded fossil fuel infrastructure falter and fall [4]. Please participate in these Panhandle Paddle activities: Continue reading →

Climate Justice Forum: Coast-to-Coast Climate Activism 8-17-15

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The Monday, August 17, 2015 Climate Justice Forum radio program, hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and pre-recorded in Sandpoint, Idaho, features breaking news about frontline actions that confront fossil fuel companies, some of the root causes of climate change.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT, live at 90.3 FM and online, the show covers continent-wide climate activism and community opposition to extreme energy developments and accidents, thanks to the generous, anonymous listener who adopted program host Helen Yost as her KRFP DJ.

Climate Justice Forum: Gary Dorr 8-10-15

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The Monday, August 10, 2015 Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) gratefully welcomes Nez Perce activist Gary Dorr, a veteran Highway 12 and 95 megaload protester who has been assisting tribal and grassroots resistance to the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline (KXL) in South Dakota and Nebraska over the last few years.  Gary will share frontline updates about Great Plains tribes enforcing Constitutionally-protected indigenous treaties against illegal KXL permitting and about South Dakota citizens standing up to their rubberstamping state Public Utilities Commission at recent pipeline hearings.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT, live at 90.3 FM and online, the show covers continent-wide climate activism and community opposition to dirty energy projects, thanks to the generous, anonymous listener who adopted program host Helen Yost as her KRFP DJ.

Activist Workshops: Flood the System Slide Shows & Discussions

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Flood the System Partial Flyer

As part of the ongoing, summer and fall series of 2015 Inland Northwest Climate Activist Workshops, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) presents the Flood the System Slide Show and first organizing meetings [1]. In anticipation of the likely futile, 21st annual session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Paris, France, from November 30 to December 11, the Rising Tide North America network of grassroots activists and groups will escalate local and regional resistance against the entrenched, interconnected systems of oppression that threaten the collective survival of Earth’s life and humanity [2]. Together, we will seek and initiate alternative solutions to the failing negotiations of political elites purportedly achieving a legally binding, universal agreement on climate change deterrents from all the nations of the world.

Over just the last five years, hundreds of thousands of outraged citizens have streamed into the streets to confront the corporations, government institutions, and systems of power that create and perpetuate patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization, and their insidious, predictable outcomes of oppression, pollution, and climate chaos. But this ever more urgent and diverse wave of resistance needs a phenomenal escalation of frontline community coordination and participation, not to mention more courageous tactical feats. As we increasingly link our concerns and actions to stop the climate crisis with allies seeking racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice for brutally policed populations and criminalized dissidents, profound social transformations are emerging.

Starting in September 2015, through the international climate change talks and beyond, Rising Tide North America is calling for myriad, mass, Flood the System actions that challenge and intervene in the economic and political systems jeopardizing planetary vitality. Through more than just ongoing protests, we beckon and encourage all to build the relationships crucial to sustaining long-term struggles, to expand popular power along the intersections of race, class, gender, and ability, and to together unleash our capacity to change everything.

Such endeavors require many voices! Please join WIRT and allies over the next few weeks for Activist Workshops featuring the Flood the System slide show and discussions: Continue reading →

Climate Justice Forum: Fennica-Confronting Kayaktivists 8-3-15

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The Monday, August 3, 2015 Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) gratefully welcomes call-in (208-892-9200 between 8:30 and 9:30 pm PDT) Cascadian climate activists and kayaktivists sharing their and their co-resisters’ experiences while they courageously defended the Arctic from risky, destructive Shell oil drilling and spills, by confronting the gash-repaired, Shell-contracted icebreaker Fennica on the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, last week.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT, live at 90.3 FM and online, the show covers continent-wide, grassroots climate activism and community opposition to fossil fuel energy projects, thanks to the generous, anonymous listener who adopted program host Helen Yost as her KRFP DJ.

Climate Justice Forum: Maya Jarrad 7-27-15

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The Monday, July 27, 2015 Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) gratefully welcomes climate activist and organizer Maya Jarrad of 350PDX and the Climate Action Coalition of Portland, Oregon.  Maya will talk about Northwest resistance to, and the destructive impacts of, Shell’s Arctic oil drilling plans and vessels, four recent and upcoming, on-the-water demonstrations since the gashed Shell icebreaker Fennica arrived in Portland for repairs, and allied grassroots campaigns against 28 fossil fuel processing and export facilities in Oregon and Washington.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT, live at 90.3 FM and online, the show covers continent-wide climate activism and community opposition to dirty energy projects, thanks to the generous, anonymous listener who adopted program host Helen Yost as her KRFP DJ.

Climate Justice Forum: Sandpoint Oil Train Forum 7-20-15

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The Monday, July 20, 2015 Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) airs excerpts from the June 24 Sandpoint Oil Train Forum, subtitled Pipeline on Wheels through North Idaho, audio-recorded by a WIRT activist at the Heartwood Center in Sandpoint, Idaho.  We will hear from forum moderator and Idaho Conservation League north Idaho associate Susan Drumheller, Sandpoint Fire Chief Ron Stocking, and Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper executive director and Sandpoint City Council member Shannon Williamson.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT, live at 90.3 FM and online, the show covers continent-wide climate activism and community opposition to dirty energy projects, thanks to the generous, anonymous listener who adopted program host Helen Yost as her KRFP DJ.

Sandpoint Stops Oil Trains Week of Action 2015 Report

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On Monday evening, July 6, through Sunday afternoon, July 12, activists of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), Spokane Rising Tide (SPORT), and the Occupy movement participated in several demonstrations of the Sandpoint Stops Oil Trains Week of Action 2015, to halt oil train traffic while commemorating the second anniversary of the July 6, 2013, Lac Mégantic, Quebec oil train catastrophe that took 47 lives [1, 2]. Together with climate, environmental, and social justice activists across North America, WIRT and allies organized and staged over 100 powerful and effective, local demonstrations during the Stop Oil Trains Week of Action [3, 4]. These events in the United States and Canada stood in solidarity, defense, and protection of the residents of Lac Mégantic, who lost 47 people killed by an exploding oil train, and other frontline, rail corridor communities and our shared global climate, all caught in the crosshairs of the oil and rail industries’ pipelines on wheels.

Although dozens of horrifying, fiery, extreme energy train wreck disasters have occurred over the last two years since the grim Quebec accident, northern Idaho and eastern Washington citizens continue to endure the unsafe, risky, and expanding rail transportation of potentially explosive Alberta tar sands dilbit, moved by the Union Pacific Railroad, and fracked Bakken shale oil, hauled by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), both to Washington and West Coast refineries. BNSF has previously reported that 16 to 19 mile-long oil trains traverse the interior Northwest every week. Additionally on the 70-mile-long, railroad chokepoint between the Sandpoint and Spokane downtown areas, referred to as “the funnel,” BNSF carries dusty, diesel-towed coal from the Powder River Basin along the Montana/Wyoming border to coastal terminals for export. Recently revised federal regulations no longer require BNSF to report the number of oil trains that pass through the region, and have never forced disclosure of Union Pacific tar sands by rail volumes.

With their hazardous loads and reckless resource and policy exploitation, Big Oil and Rail discount and transgress the millions of lives, the human and environmental health and safety repercussions, and the associated carbon and other toxic pollution within the mile-wide, track-side, oil train blast zones, along their paths to profit around the Pacific Rim [5]. In appropriate response, thousands of concerned citizens gathered for 63 events in July 2014, including multiple protest and outreach actions in Sandpoint and Spokane [6]. 2015 participants joined in actions to publicly call attention to the growing threat of “bomb trains,” to display the growing power of the worldwide climate movement, and to demand an immediate ban on all crude oil trains. Continue reading →

Climate Justice Forum: Stop Oil Trains Week of Action 7-13-15

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The July 13, 2015 Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide features news about demonstrations against Alberta tar sands and Bakken shale crude oil “bomb” trains, during the Stop Oil Trains Week of Action across North America.  Broadcast on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT, live at 90.3 FM and online, the show covers continent-wide climate activism and community opposition to dirty energy projects, thanks to the generous, anonymous listener who adopted program host Helen Yost as her KRFP DJ.

Sandpoint Stops Oil Trains Week of Action 2015

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Stop Oil Trains

Monday, July 6, marks the second anniversary of the tragic Lac Mégantic, Quebec, oil train catastrophe that killed 47 people in 2013.  Despite dozens of almost as horrifying, fiery disasters over the last two years, the oil industry continues to dramatically expand Alberta tar sands and Bakken crude oil train transport throughout Canada and the United States.  There is no safe way to transport such explosive oil and, with carbon and associated toxic pollution rising, oil trains wreck public and environmental health and safety and the global climate of communities across the continent.

The tragic Lac Mégantic accident grimly reminds us all that Big Oil will stop at nothing to extract, transport, and burn every drop of oil in the ground.  Its primary northern Idaho/eastern Washington haulers, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) carrying fracked Bakken shale oil and Union Pacific Railroad moving Alberta tar sands dilbit through the Sandpoint, Idaho, and Spokane, Washington, areas, discount the communities they transgress with hazardous loads.  Recent, industry-friendly, federal regulation revisions will not check their recklessness.  The risks, costs, and millions of lives within the mile-wide, bomb train blast zones along their paths to profit around the Pacific Rim represent only collateral damage to the oil and railroad industries.

In July 2014, thousands of concerned citizens gathered at 63 events for the first Stop Oil Trains Week of Action, including multiple protest and outreach actions in Sandpoint and Spokane [1].  As Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allies continue to actively oppose Alberta tar sands and Bakken shale oil exploitation and train and pipeline transportation, we refuse to let Big Oil play Russian roulette with our families, friends, homes, businesses, and climate!  On July 6 to 12, 2015, people across North America are defending their communities and climate, to halt extreme energy in its tracks and end the oil and rail industries’ pipeline on wheels [2].  We will call attention to the growing threat of oil trains, as we demonstrate the growing power of our movement, organizing more than 100 events across the U.S. and Canada, which demand an immediate ban on oil trains.

Please join WIRT and allies at local demonstrations during the Stop Oil Trains Week of Action, and/or host or attend an event in your vicinity between July 6 and 12.  Together with climate, environmental, and social justice activists across North America, we are organizing various tactics and resources to stage powerful and effective actions and documenting them with photos, videos, audio, and social media, to defend and protect frontline, rail corridor communities and our shared climate.  Stand with residents of Lac Mégantic and other communities in the crosshairs of Big Oil, to stop oil trains this July, by participating in one or all of these five actions. Continue reading →