Formidable fossil fuel foes,

RISING TIDE

Direct Action Manuals (Wild Idaho Rising Tide web page)

Do your activist homework with PDF and online versions of great guides to civil disobedience: the 1997 first edition of the Earth First! Direct Action Manual and Crimethinc’s A Civilian’s Guide to Direct Action, both downloadable from the Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) website!  Please suggest other similar resources for posting.

Disney: Climate Activists Are the Real Super-Heroes (Credo Mobilize petition)

Please sign this petition to demand that corporate media stop portraying Rising Tide and its compassionate climate activists as villains in the television show Agents of SHIELD.  WIRT and our organizational comrades would be honored by such defamation and retaliation as an affirmation of Rising Tide effectiveness if more TV viewers embodied critical thinking skills.  But how can our grassroots capacity ever counter televised propaganda and indoctrination of susceptible minds?

To Wrench or Not to Wrench: A Brief History of Direct Action in the Environmental Movement and its Potential Consequences, Ethical Implications, and Effectiveness (October 26 Earth First! Newswire)

POWER SHIFT 2013

Over One Thousand Rising Tiders, Powershifters, and Supporters Leave Permitted Power Shift March Route to Support Direct Action in Pittsburgh (October 21 Shadbush Environmental Justice Collective)

Thanks to Keith of Rising Tide Vermont for this update with photos: On October 21, Rising Tide activists led a massive breakaway march from the permitted Power Shift route in Pittsburgh, to support the local Shadbush Environmental Justice Collective’s campaign against fracking in Allegheny County parks.

Occupy Fitzgerald’s Office (Tom Jefferson photos)

Rising Tide radicalizes thousands of student climate activists at Power Shift every other year.  WIRT is longing to see this much action around the Idaho fracking/drilling and megaload issues: occupation party in Boise, anyone?

Keystone Pipeline Opponents Plan Widespread Civil Disobedience (October 21 New York Times)

“But the activists tended to be less optimistic than the organizers.  T. R. McKenzie, who works with the Deep Roots United Front in Jefferson, South Dakota, said the national organizations ‘need to stop thinking that petitions and other ways of symbolic action’ are going to prevent Keystone XL.  Mr. McKenzie said that more confrontational types of protests might be necessary, like last week’s blockade of a hydraulic fracturing operation in New Brunswick, Canada, during which Canadian authorities arrested and sprayed tear gas at activists from the Mi’kmaq tribe.’”

IDAHO OIL & GAS UPDATES

WIRT will provide a report and photos from the Idaho Global Frackdown 2, with a link to a CredoAction petition soon, as well as on-the-ground updates about oil and gas drilling and infrastructure development in our next newsletter. Continue reading →

Defenders of our most vital shared resource (air),

TAR SANDS MEGALOADS UPDATE

On Thursday, October 24, Resources Conservation Company International (RCCI) withdrew its U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals request for a stay pending appeal of federal Judge Winmill’s preliminary injunction and its emergency appeal to transport Alberta tar sands fracking equipment through Nez Perce and public lands and wild and scenic river corridors along Highway 12 in Idaho.  We offer our admiration and congratulations to everyone who worked so diligently on this federal lawsuit and the accompanying grassroots battles to block RCCI transports on Highway 12, especially Nez Perce Tribe attorneys Mike Lopez and Dave Cummings, the Advocates for the West legal team, Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee members, Idaho Rivers United, Friends of the Clearwater, Fighting Goliath, and Nez Perce, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), Moscow, and Missoula activists.  As one WIRT associate exclaimed, “The world needs more committed environmental warriors like you!”  We appreciate that fossil fuel extraction companies have again reassessed their transportation project feasibility and abandoned Highway 12 as a possible route for overlegal industrial equipment, and that recent cooperation among the Nez Perce Tribe and several regional groups has impeded Omega Morgan passage.

Considering that ANY megaload imposes impacts on the national forest wildlands, wild and scenic river corridors, and Nez Perce homelands and treaty rights, which the Forest Service is studying in consultation with the Nez Perce Tribe, Judge Winmill’s preliminary injunction should hold for all such traffic and subsequent impacts until the study is complete.  But for now it applies only to Omega Morgan megaloads hauled only on Highway 12, not to other companies on that route, or to Omega Morgan transports on other highways, or to smaller fossil fuel processing modules that may not be considered “megaloads.”  Before RCCI pulled its appeals court case last week, our allies clarified our understanding of Judge Winmill’s September 12 decision and the Forest Service’s subsequent September 17 closure of U.S. Highway 12.

Judge Winmill granted a preliminary injunction and ordered the Forest Service to issue a closure order that 1) blocks any Omega Morgan megaload on Highway 12 between mileposts 74 and 174, through the wild and scenic river/national forest corridor, and 2) remains in place until the Forest Service has conducted its corridor review and consulted with the Nez Perce Tribe.  The Forest Service closure order, immediately effective until rescinded by the Forest Service, prohibits any Omega Morgan 1) vehicle over 16 feet wide or 150 feet long, 2) overlegal vehicle that requires longer than 12 hours to travel this portion of Highway 12, and 3) vehicle that requires roadway or adjacent vegetation modification for passage.  The Forest Service will probably not tighten these megaload restrictions anytime soon.  But if another company applied for a Highway 12 overlegal permit, allies would swiftly seek a similar temporary injunction.  Moreover, even if stranded evaporator owner RCCI had persuaded the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay Judge Winmill’s preliminary injunction, the Forest Service closure order could have remained in force.  At this point, WIRT and all of our allies can only hope that Judge Winmill would extend a permanent injunction or that the Forest Service would institute a perpetual closure order for all Highway 12 megaloads in Idaho, when the multitude of intrinsic and cultural values of this internationally treasured route emerges from further analysis. Continue reading →

WIRT activists and supporters,

As you have likely noticed over the last week, Nez Perce and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists have been blindsided by the Idaho Transportation Department, Omega Morgan, and another transport company rapidly moving inadequately announced “mini-megaloads” over regional roads.  (See the WIRT website, facebook photo albums, and YouTube channel.)  Despite plenty of advance scouting, we have found ourselves poorly prepared to confront these tar sands and fossil fuel invasions by Pacific Rim manufacturers and Alberta and Oregon haulers.

With four core WIRT organizers already pledged to participate, we hope that you will consider attending the regular Thursday WIRT potluck meeting at 7 pm on October 24 at the WIRT Activist House in Moscow, to brainstorm non-violent direct action tactics, create replacement megaload/tar sands protest signs, and build collective strength and unity. Continue reading →