Good Riddance, ExxonMobil! 3-6-12


The last two of nearly 80 scheduled oversized loads moving from the Port of Lewiston to Alberta, Canada, made their way north on U.S. Highway 95 and through the City of Moscow on March 6. An activist organization once again took to the streets to protest the Kearl Oil Sands project. Wild Idaho Rising Tide has held protests against the shipments more than 40 times since the first oversized loads traveled the route in July.

(By Big Country News Connection, Photos courtesy of Zachary Johnson, selected from 21 facebook pictures at Final (?) Moscow Tar Sands Megaload Protest – 6 March 2012)

In a final act of defiance, a participant in the March 6 Moscow demonstration tossed a protest sign that hit the back of the last ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil megaload on Highway 95, which quoted the Port of Lewiston’s TIGER grant application, “If one oil company is successful with this alternate transportation route, many other companies will follow their lead” (Zachary Johnson photo).

(By Zachary Johnson, selected photos from among 21 pictures available on facebook at Final (?) Moscow Tar Sands Megaload Protest – 6 March 2012)

Goodbye, Tar Sands Megaloads, Moscow, Idaho 3-4-12


From the slightly taller viewpoint of Jeremy Jenkins, this great footage shows Wild Idaho Rising Tide’s protest late Sunday night, March 4, blocking ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands megaloads on their rampage from Korean assembly to Alberta bitumen processing via the Port of Lewiston and Highway 95 in Idaho.  At the second to the last transport passage and spirited protest in downtown Moscow, Idaho – the front lines of the fight for tar sands justice that has clashed with every convoy – Jeremy caught the heart of the action in a small, rural, college town in a deep-red state.  Four brave, caring people sat down and put their bodies on the line in Washington Street, in front of three megaloads weighing 865,000 pounds, to challenge climate-killers who are wrecking the pristine Athabasca River watershed and boreal forest, the First Nations of northern Alberta, and the atmosphere and Earth we all share.  The resulting wrestling match with industry-sponsored state and city police dragged two men and two women (Cass Davis, Jeanne McHale, Pat Monger, and Jim Prall) to the curb and arrested and jailed only Cass and Jim when they attempted to reenter the road.  Fellow tar sands and climate activists across the country and world are noticing and encouraging our resistance and real news ignored by the mainstream media mostly owned by corporate interests.  No other press except our faithful, progressive, local station, KRFP Radio Free Moscow, witnessed the demonstration.  As Idahoans continue to impede tar sands traffic along two of four emerging industrial corridors, our voices are being heard and others are standing together in solidarity against tar sands injustices.  Eventually humanity will prevail over the oilocracy’s greed, destructive machines, and devastation of our struggling planet and democracy.

(By Jeremy Jenkins)

Good Riddance, ExxonMobil!


On Tuesday, March 6, the last two of over 70 components of a Canadian tar sands upgrader will cross Highway 95 and Moscow en route to Montana and Alberta.  The community of life on this planet needs our full participation tonight as we together raise our voices and impose our bodies against ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil’s dirty energy and its dire ecological and climate consequences.  Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) members and regional activists will launch our final, local, anti-megaload actions in downtown Moscow starting at 9:30 pm PST, to celebrate Big Oil’s departure from the Port of Lewiston and north central Idaho and to further expose its degradation of the boreal forest, First Nations’ health, and our global climate.  After our successful civil disobedience blockade on Sunday by Cass Davis, Jeanne McHale, Pat Monger, and Jim Prall, corporate oppression at the hands of state, county, and city police, pilot vehicle drivers, and flaggers will likely tighten security around its single-file Moscow convoy and staggered transports on the rest of its Idaho route. Continue reading

Megaloads and Arrests, Moscow, Idaho 3-4-12


Challenged by contrasting darkness and bright lights, this video shot by Joshua Yeidel with a small snapshot camera shows four good people putting their bodies in Washington Street for a better future for all of the world’s descendants.  As enormous loads of oil-field equipment head for the climate-killing Alberta tar sands mines, citizens of Moscow, Idaho, gathered on Sunday, March 6, to bear witness, raise their voices in protest, and cry out truth.  In spite of heavy police presence, four brave men and women (Cass Davis, Jeanne McHale, Pat Monger, and Jim Prall) sat down in the street and briefly blocked three megaloads, before being dragged away and the two men arrested.  These surreal scenes in a small, rural, north Idaho college town are emblematic of the madness that attends every aspect of Alberta tar sands projects.  Thanks to all who actively oppose the genocide, ecocide, and climate chaos induced by tar sands production consumed almost entirely by Americans.

(By Joshua Yeidel)

Moscow Megaload Protests & Arrests 3-4-12


At the Wild Idaho Rising Tide protest in Moscow, Idaho, on Sunday night, March 4, 2012, four brave activists sat in Washington Street and, despite state and city police harassment, temporarily blocked and halted the death march of three of the last ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil megaloads of an Alberta tar sands upgrader plant.  From among forty surrounding demonstrators, police dragged Cass Davis, Jeanne McHale, Pat Monger, and Jim Prall out of the road and arrested Cass and Jim when they attempted to reenter.  All four blockaders embody the thousands of regional citizens concerned about the genocide and ecocide resulting from tar sands operations.  Moscow protesters hope that they have proven troublesome enough to dissuade any more modules arriving by barge at the Port of Lewiston, after the final two transports depart on Tuesday, March 6.  Nonetheless, the Kearl Oil Sands processing facilities built by the megaloads of parts that protesters could not stop will still impose “game over” for the climate and a livable future for billions of lives on this planet.

(By Zachary Johnson, selected photos from among 50 pictures available on facebook at Moscow Megaload Protests & Arrests – 4 March 2012)

Citizens Give First-Hand Account on Monitoring Megaloads


Besides the much appreciated, ongoing, thorough coverage of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) protests and court cases by KRFP Radio Free Moscow posted on our website, our tar sands transport monitoring activities garnered some rare regional television exposure in mostly pro-megaload Lewiston with the KLEW TV story Citizens Give First-Hand Account on Monitoring Megaloads.  The brief video and reportage by Cindy Cha features Rob Briggs and Paul McPoland as megaload monitors gathering evidence for a potential administrative court case and spin-off monitor and accident victim misdemeanor trials.  The KLEW camera also captures our approximately fortieth WIRT protest and organizer Helen Yost in the cold wind outside Moscow City Hall, where most officials have largely welcomed the perceived economic benefits of their complicity.

(By Cindy Cha, KLEW TV Lewiston)

Stop the Tar Sands, Idaho!


If you could choose only a few nights to oppose the brutal expansion of the largest industrial project on Earth, Alberta tar sands exploitation, Sunday, March Fourth! and possibly another evening this week offer your best chances!  Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists and Moscow community members plan to fully exercise our First Amendment rights of free speech and public assembly on Sunday and as the last five twice-postponed megaloads of over 70 upgrader plant parts rampage Highway 95 this week.  These demonstrations present some of your last local opportunities to express your outrage with ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil’s corporate malfeasance with tar sands transportation and production projects: be there or miss the action! Continue reading

Seven Better Never than Late Megaloads


[Update: Wild Northern Rockies winter weather and other adverse conditions have reportedly forced ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil to postpone passage of its three Tuesday megaloads until Wednesday, February 22.  For further logistical information, please see the following revised request for protester and monitor involvement.]

With only a few of the 78 split-megaloads remaining at the Port of Lewiston, citizens outraged by corporate takeover of our public resources and senseless exacerbation of ecological destruction, Native genocide, and climate chaos NEED YOU in the Moscow streets on Wednesday night, February 22, to remind ExxonMobil’s Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil how forever unwelcome it is in north central Idaho.  Between the four Highway 12 court cases and about 40 Highway 95 protests in Moscow and Potlatch, we are kicking Big Oil’s tar sands equipment off the taxpayer-funded highways it has conspicuously damaged with over 70 massive loads, as we expand megaload opposition to Spokane and Interstate 90 (see Highway 95 Megaload Tire Marks south of Plummer, Idaho 2-17-12). Continue reading

Megaloads Going (2/15), Going (2/?), Gone (2/?)!


Hundreds, if not thousands, of Moscow area and Highway 95 corridor residents oppose the relentless, nefarious parade of corporate power and climate chaos that ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands equipment represents.  With only three more opportunities to express your outrage, please join regional citizens and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) activists on Wednesday, February 15, to protest and monitor these transports.

If weather does not impede their plans, shipment hauler Mammoet, along with Idaho state troopers, Moscow city police, flaggers, and pilot vehicle drivers, intend to escort three megaload parts of a tar sands processing plant separately from the Port of Lewiston after 8 pm on Wednesday, until they reach Moscow, where a single convoy will cross town and later disperse. Continue reading

Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine


The creator of the Stop the Megaloads Now! video, Wild Idaho Rising Tide member Paul Edwards of Class War Films published this exquisitely crafted 23-minute montage of “a brief and crucial history of the United States” in February 2012.  It accurately captures our collective worldview and compulsions toward justice beyond our megaload, tar sands, coal, and fracking campaigns.  He shared it again recently with a note that we hope will encourage your ongoing dirty energy resistance and activism to extract our communities from our current, rapidly deteriorating, fossil-fueled situation:

“You are…doing what is required, urging the first steps in action, to overcome the Predatory Capitalist System that is bent on enslaving and degrading all humanity and jeopardizing all life on earth.  I’m in awe of your determination and tenacity.  The great work of productive revolution is done by the hard work of a few.  Fight on: you are not alone.”

(Link provided by Scott Phillips and Paul Edwards)