Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allied activists, friends, and supporters heartily welcome your participation in the upcoming, Eighth Panhandle Paddle weekend of opportunities to discuss, train for, and stage resistance to the fossil fuels and railroad industry degraders of human rights, environmental health, and the global climate. Interior Northwest residents are coordinating and co-hosting annual activities in Sandpoint, Idaho, to unite in opposition to regional coal, oil, tar sands, petroleum coke, and hazardous materials trains, terminals, derailments, and pollution and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway’s recently completed bridge and track construction across downtown Sandpoint, Sand Creek, and Lake Pend Oreille. Amid the intensifying situations of north Idaho railroad expansion, federal and media criminalization of dissenters, and COVID-19 health and economic disasters during the last five years, we are reaching out to you, our network comrades, to share direct action skills and join with rail line communities in protesting fossil-fueled climate change via these free events on Friday through Sunday, September 27 to 29. We would appreciate your involvement in the training workshop and paddle, your RSVP of your intentions for spots in kayaks, canoes, and carpools, and your assistance with distributing this event description and printing and posting the Eighth Panhandle Paddle flyer.
Direct Action Training
3 to 5 pm Friday, September 27
East Bonner County Library, Sandpoint
Regional climate activists and water protectors will provide several, interactive, training workshops, through talks and videos sharing frontline skills, stories, and insights. Advocating grassroots, direct actions at the sites of environmental destruction, more than participation in expensive, ineffective, legal systems and other government processes, trainers will offer their expertise through presentation and practice sessions on topics such as knowing your rights, strategizing and tactical thinking, affinity group dynamics, target selection and scouting, action design, roles, and documentation, media communications, police interactions, de-escalation, security, safety, self-defense, and jail solidarity. Trainings have varied over the years, chosen by and adapted to participants supporting various ecological and social justice movements within U.S. political contexts. Prior speakers have given advice on road and railroad actions, pipeline blockades, grand jury resistance, legal rights, digital security, and previously mentioned subjects. Organizers holding these trainings anticipate reciprocally learning and strengthening the volunteer activism gaining momentum in the Idaho Panhandle.
At these informal discussions, participants can exchange issue information, expand knowledge, and brainstorm strategies and tactics for creatively engaging and catalyzing further community resistance and regulatory and legal recourse to BNSF’s Sandpoint Junction Connector project and railroad infrastructure, pollution, and risks in the Lake Pend Oreille area and beyond, which activists have denounced and challenged during each of the Panhandle Paddles [1-7]. Please bring ideas about campaign organizing and railroad monitoring and protesting, as we broaden conversations, camaraderie, and coalitions among activists. We encourage everyone who plans to attend to RSVP in advance and request particular training topics and further event logistical information. Join WIRT and guests anytime between 3 and 5 pm on Friday, September 27, in Community Room B of the East Bonner County Library, 1407 Cedar Street in Sandpoint.
Panhandle Paddle
10 am to 12 pm Sunday, September 29
City Beach and Dog Beach Parks, Sandpoint
For an eighth year, WIRT and allied activists are bringing their boats, bodies, and bravery to two locations, for on- and off-shore protests of Northwest fossil fuels trains, terminals, and derailments and north Idaho railroad bridge and track expansion. To accommodate participants who are renting kayaks, paddleboards, or other manual watercraft from Sandpoint businesses that open at 9 am, activists are meeting at 10 am on Sunday, September 29. Near the south boat ramp at City Beach Park in Sandpoint, we will launch a flotilla on Lake Pend Oreille, departing after participants arrive by land and water, to voyage around present and proposed railroad bridges. By 11 am, another rally will converge after paddlers reach Dog Beach Park south of Sandpoint. Please bring large banners and signs, visible to observers at great distances, and respond in advance to WIRT with your boat rental intentions and mobility needs, so we can cover the costs of watercraft and arrange transportation for folks who cannot walk to Dog Beach Park. Continue reading
On Monday, July 31, through Friday, August 4, Kalispel and regional tribal members and the River Warrior Society are holding the annual Remember the Water Kalispel Powwow canoe journey [1, 2]. The paddle usually voyages from Lake Pend Oreille and Qpqpe (Sandpoint), Idaho, to the Qlispe (Kalispel) Village in Cusick, Washington, during the week before the yearly Kalispel Powwow and around the time of the Festival at Sandpoint music concerts. In this cultural journey, families and friends are again paddling in traditional, dugout, wooden and sturgeon nose canoes, like their ancestors did for travel, fishing, and fun, over 50 miles through their home lands and waters among the tributaries, lake, and river of the Pend Oreille watershed.
July 7-9 annual actions remember the Lac-Mégantic, Mosier, & Custer disasters
Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and climate activists throughout the West are organizing solidarity protests of oil trains and infrastructure, for a day of action against the Uinta Basin Railway (UBR), supporting campaigns against the Utah oil-by-rail scheme and in north Idaho, denouncing completion of BNSF Railway’s second, almost mile-long, rail bridge across the state’s largest, deepest lake: mountainous Lake Pend Oreille. Utah and Colorado comrades are calling for community-led actions on Saturday, December 10, 2022, to show that concerned citizens object to the devastating UBR project, and to pressure federal lawmakers, state representatives, and local governments to prevent building of the Uinta Basin Railway. They ask everyone to explore the #StopUintaBasinRailway action toolkit with information about the UBR and action coordination, sign a letter to Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack, demanding that he revoke the U.S. Forest Service permit for the railway, participate in actions happening in a dozen locations, register to join a remote phone bank on Tuesday, December 13, at 10 am Pacific time, and tell UBR opponents that you are interested in assisting this campaign [1-2].
On Tuesday, August 2, through Saturday, August 7, Kalispel and regional tribal members and the River Warrior Society are holding the annual Remember the Water canoe journey [1]. The paddle usually voyages between Qpqpe (Sandpoint, Idaho) and the Qlispe (Kalispel) Tribal Powwow Grounds, during the days before and beginning the yearly Kalispel Powwow and around the time of the Festival at Sandpoint music concerts. Families and friends are again paddling over 35 miles in traditional, dugout, wooden and sturgeon nose canoes, through their home lands and waters in the tributaries, lake, and river of the Pend Oreille watershed. While oil and gas pipeline expansions and fossil fuels pipeline-on-rails infrastructure and transportation impose and risk further harms to indigenous people and places across Turtle Island (North America), Native neighbors continue to revive, uphold, and practice their ancient cultures and sustainable ways, through admirable endeavors like this canoe journey and culminating powwow.
July 8-10 annual actions remember the Lac-Mégantic, Mosier, & Custer disasters
I offer this testimony and these comments on behalf of 3,200-plus members, friends, and supporters of the regional climate activist collective Wild Idaho Rising Tide or WIRT, based for six years in downtown Sandpoint, Idaho, for the public record of the Wednesday, March 16, 2022, Sandpoint City Council regular meeting and public hearing concerning the city decision whether to amend current city code that mandates a water-protective, 25-foot, vegetative buffer along the banks of Sand Creek from downtown to the Highways 95 and 200 bridge. City staff members have proposed this change to accommodate construction of various types of non-building structures extending into and over Sand Creek below its summer high-pool water mark, specifically a public plaza over a grassy area between the waterway and Gunning’s Alley, also called Farmin’s Landing, on the west side.
Wild Idaho Rising Tide 