Our strength comes from our connection, our power from our unity.

Rising Tide Continental Gathering

July 18-20, 2013 Utah

17th arrival, 21st departure

Contact: gathering@risingtidenorthamerica.org

The Pitch

This July, many of the members of Rising Tide-affiliated, anti-extraction, and climate justice groups around the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will converge in beautiful Utah to train, discuss, strategize, and develop the structure, dynamics, and capacity of the Rising Tide network.

Rising Tide is an international, all-volunteer, grassroots network of groups and individuals who organize locally, promote community-based solutions to the climate crisis, and take direct action to confront the root causes of climate change.  Some network members are called Rising Tide, others are not.  In its essence, Rising Tide seeks to create a broad, long-term, international, collaborative platform for direct action and climate justice organizing.

The Rising Tide North America network consists of groups and local contacts throughout Canada, the United States, and Mexico.  Local groups work on a wide variety of issues that pertain to the local communities in which they reside.  If you are already part of the Rising Tide network, if you are interested in joining as an individual or a group, or if you want to find out how a grassroots, horizontally-organized, dedicated network of direct action-oriented, climate justice organizations can change the world, the Rising Tide Continental Gathering may just be the place to come.

All of the groups involved in the Rising Tide network are actively organizing on the ground in their communities.  Many are taking the lead in staging bold direct actions that are altering the course of the climate fight.  Many are participating in national and international projects that are at the forefront of movement building and solidarity work against tar sands, fracked oil and natural gas, and coal exploitation.

The Rising Tide Continental Gathering will provide a significant venue for networking and forwarding proposals that will impact the course of the burgeoning anti-extraction and climate justice movement.  The gathering will also promote solidarity work with frontline and fenceline communities that must be a part of our struggles.  The network itself is collaboratively creating the agenda for the gathering, ensuring that participants will get out of the gathering what they put into it.  Come, participate, and help it grow.

Read more: Rising Tide Continental Gathering (facebook page)

(By Rising Tide North America)

On a beautifully balmy Moscow Saturday evening in May (especially with reduced university traffic noise and carbon emissions!), Wild Idaho Rising Tide invites you and your friends and family to our humble house to celebrate our collective, its amazing activists, allies, and base camp, and to strategize and energize for a summer of successful actions.  The party starts at 7 pm on Saturday, May 18, and continues far into the evening.  Come and bring beverages, snacks, or dishes to share with your comrades, for a lively night of radical elbow-rubbing, merry-making, and music-playing.  Activists inclined to jam can join the acoustic fray in the front room, dancers can enjoy the roomy kitchen, and party-goers can relax in the back porch and yard.  WIRT would be delighted and infinitely grateful for the honor of your revolutionary presence amongst this revelry! Continue reading →

Bill and Dianne French are the king and queen of the 40th Moscow Renaissance Fair.

This year’s Moscow Renaissance Fair king and queen planted their roots here 25 years ago, and have been accepted locally as business owners and activists fighting to keep their kingdom pristine.

Bill and Dianne French grew up together in Lincoln, Nebraska, eventually moving to Indiana where Bill studied to be an optometrist.

“I got my eyes dilated a lot when he was going through optometry school,” said Dianne.  “…We knew that we wanted to be self-employed, so we started looking at communities around the country.”

The Frenchs were drawn to Moscow in 1988, because they said it was a good place to raise a family, affect local change, and be heard.

“And the downtown was alive,” Dianne said, “and we saw a lot of towns in ’88 where the downtown was boarded up.”

Together the Frenchs own and operate Palouse Ocularium and recently purchased Ex-Sightment Optical in Moscow.  Dianne is also a client. Continue reading →

Please join Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and our Utah anti-tar sands allies for this truly seminal event.  We are excited to announce that WIRT and film distributor Gathr are hosting a Bidder 70 screening and live-streamed conversation with climate activist Tim DeChristopher at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center, 508 South Main Street in Moscow, Idaho.  On Earth Day, Monday, April 22, the theater doors will open at 5:30 pm PDT, and the documentary will begin promptly at 6 pm, followed by Tim’s discussion.  Participants can buy $10 movie tickets for their friends, family, and selves online through Gathr Films or at the Kenworthy door, as a donation toward the almost 40 seats pre-purchased by WIRT to stage this event.

At a time when the debate over climate change is finally gaining post-election traction and hot topics such as fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline have captured public attention, the documentary Bidder 70 is poised to showcase a movement that has steadily gathered force, particularly among millenials, who harbor grave concerns for the increasingly perilous future.  The feature-length documentary chronicles how renowned activist Tim DeChristopher’s civil disobedience blazed new opportunities for the climate justice movement.

On December 19, 2008, University of Utah economics student Tim DeChristopher disrupted a highly disputed Bush administration Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil and gas lease auction in Salt Lake City.  Not content to merely protest outside, Tim entered the auction hall and registered as bidder 70.  With no intention of paying for leases starting at $2 per acre, he outbid industry giants on 77 pristine Utah land parcels surrounding American treasures like Canyonlands National Park, and effectively safeguarded from drilling 22,000 acres of land worth $1.7 million, before the auction was halted.

Although incoming Interior Secretary Ken Salazar invalidated the auction two months later, Tim’s brave commitment and actions rewarded this remarkably principled young man with two federal felony indictments carrying penalties of up to ten years in prison and $750,000 in fines.  Awaiting trial with the threat of prison looming, the 27-year-old environmentalist escalated his activism and evolved into a charismatic and ingenious climate justice leader.  He co-founded Peaceful Uprising, a grassroots group dedicated to defending a livable future through empowering non-violent action. Continue reading →

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 →