Videos shot by Tom Hansen of Moscow Cares at the 1912 Center Great Room

during the First Annual Celebration of Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT)

on March 31, 2012

When the Saints Go Marching In

Too Many Cars

Little Baby Moon

Threat Level Purple

The Idaho Department of Imperial Oil Transportation (I.D.I.O.T.)

Turn This Country Around

So Now You Know

Award of WIRT Tar Sands Megaloads Protests T-Shirts

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)

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)

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)

On Winter Solstice, December 21, seven concerned citizens monitored the first movements of three ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands megaloads since one of them hit a private mini-van pulled over by flaggers along Highway 95 at the staging area just south of Moscow, Idaho, on December 6.  As two observers traveled south on the dark, narrow, rural highway toward Potlatch, an oncoming pilot car driver ordered us to pull over onto the road shoulder to let one of these two-lane-wide transports and its convoy approach and pass within a few feet of our vehicle.

Thanks to Jeremy Jenkins for filming Alberta tar sands equipment roaring through the gauntlet of Moscow, Idaho, opposition during our 24th direct confrontation with Highway 95 megaloads on Tuesday, November 29.  If three previous transports stranded by weather at the milepost 405 parking area had also moved that night as planned, travelers could have encountered up to six rolling roadblocks on the 115 miles between Lewiston and Coeur d’Alene.  Instead, the parked loads supposedly moved on Wednesday evening, November 30, when the Idaho Transportation Department postponed another three smaller modules scheduled for Lewiston departure.  Several Tuesday protesters witnessed on-the-job flagger training as we stood at one of the busiest intersections in Moscow.  One experienced flagger constantly yelled instructions to a neophyte just before ExxonMobil again plundered our consciences and risked our resources and lives with unprepared contracted personnel.