Idaho and Montana Tar Sands Megaload Protests!

Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) and allies have postponed Idaho megaload protesting and monitoring activities, centered on Boise carpools and a demonstration in Marsing, Idaho, until Friday evening, December 27.  On Friday, December 20, the Idaho Transportation Department issued a permit, without a bond, for Omega Morgan to abuse Idaho roads, bridges, and citizen rights and to degrade indigenous and public lands and people.  On the WIRT website and facebook pages, we will regularly update the tentative dates, times, places, and carpool arrangements of megaload resistance events in or near Marsing, Mountain Home, Bellevue, and Salmon, Idaho, and in Missoula and other Montana locations.  Please bring your family, friends, and neighbors, and come prepared with protest signs, banners, and equipment, musical instruments, voices, and chants, audio and video recorders, cameras, notepads, and your spirit of solidarity, regional resistance, and freedom of expression.

Facebook link

Website link

The Winter Travails of the First Oregon Tar Sands Megaload

The inaugural Resources Conservation Company International/Omega Morgan-hauled heat exchanger core of a tar sands mining wastewater evaporator recently struggled against weather and road conditions on the final leg of its Oregon journey in Malheur County, after encountering four blockades, a week of Umatilla tribal vigilance and ceremonies, snow, ice, and frigid weather, and steep curving highways, since it departed the Port of Umatilla on Monday, December 2.  As illustrated in a constantly updated map of the approximate travel segments of the first of three similar megaloads, the transport launched after two blockades from A, the Port of Umatilla, moving 37 miles to Pendleton, where snowy, cold weather forced a week-long layover [1].  During its hiatus, Umatilla tribal members gathered each evening at about 7 pm, offering prayers, songs, and indigenous leadership in defense of the Earth against fossil fuels pillage [2].  With several Umatilla megaload monitors in hot pursuit of the convoy, it resumed travel on Tuesday, December 10, south on Highway 395 through the McKay Creek National Wildlife Refuge and Battle Mountain State Scenic Corridor and Forest, moving 47 miles to C, Ukiah [3]. Continue reading →

Compassionate compatriots,

THREE 1.6-MILLION-POUND HIGHWAY 95 MEGALOADS?

Mammoet, the ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil hauler, has proposed moving the first of three 1.6 million-pound, 472-foot long, 27-foot wide, 16-foot tall megaloads up Highway 95 from Lewiston within a month.  These heaviest and longest northern Idaho transports weigh almost twice as much and are 100 feet longer than the Omega Morgan load currently crossing Oregon and that earlier attempted passage through the Nez Perce Reservation until halted by a lawsuit victory.  The shipments would spur construction of a custom Interstate 90 on-ramp and close this primary access highway for “brief” night-time periods, as they avoid and travel under I-90 bridges and cross traffic to rejoin the interstate.

A private Boise engineering firm that conducted 2011 bridge analyses for the Imperial Oil megaloads contacted Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) on Wednesday with a stakeholder letter sent to property owners, non-governmental organizations, and agencies.  Forsgren Associates assured us that several Spokesman-Review articles erroneously stated the final Alberta tar sands destination of the equipment.  Bound for a Calumet refinery in Great Falls, Montana, the megaloads will be used to remove sulfur from diesel and thus later reduce sulfur dioxide and particulate emissions from diesel combustion engines.  Are these declarations more green-washing, like Resources Conservation Company International statements about its evaporators?

Nonetheless, WIRT opposes all weapons/processors of chemicals of mass destruction supporting expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, even Montana or North Dakota components of tar sands or shale oil production facilities.  We are continuously forging wider climate and tribal activist alliances, to stage protests on inland Northwest roads.  All three convoys facilitated by incestuous dirty energy industry/state relationships would traverse and disturb Moscow and the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Reservation.  Like dozens of other smaller behemoths, they will cost citizens damage to personal and public rights, lives, property, and infrastructure and ultimately the Earth and its climate.

Voice your concerns and outrage at this horrific, ongoing, climate-wrecking onslaught.  The Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) will accept public comments at a Thursday, December 20, 4 to 7 pm meeting/hearing at the ITD Coeur d’Alene office, 600 West Prairie Avenue.  WIRT suspects that ITD scheduled this megaload meeting for the same time as the anticipated Omega Morgan megaload arrival in southern Idaho, but snow forecasts have salvaged our precarious capacity.  Please contact Wild Idaho Rising Tide soon to arrange carpools that depart the WIRT Activists House promptly at 1 pm or later if planned in advance, to scout Interstate 90 with Spokane colleagues before the meeting and winter nightfall. Continue reading →

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 →

Fellow activists and friends,

Missing our northern Idaho anti-fracking comrades, but in solidarity with the wounded, the warriors, and the community of Mi’kmaq people, as the North American civil war against fossil fuels commences with spilt blood, Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) traveled cross-state on Friday for the Idaho Global Frackdown 2 on Saturday.  On the way, WIRT delivered $1225 in Moscow community contributions raised at the September 20 benefit concert for the legal expenses of arrested Nez Perce megaload protesters.  Due to a weekend on the road (THAT would be a blockade…!), Idaho and New Brunswick fracking, tar sands/megaload, and movement updates since October 13 will have to wait until the next WIRT newsletter.  For now, as documented in the following links, please watch for, photograph/videotape, and report to WIRT and allies any 12- to 13-foot tall, silver, stainless steel barrels on two-foot-high trailers on Highways 12 and 95 and at the Port of Wilma.  They are pieces of the purportedly “irreducible” evaporator stranded by the Nez Perce/Idaho Rivers United court case.  And please pitch in to help arrested Nimiipuu activists raise $800 over the next week.

SELECTED MEGALOAD NEWS

Tribal Members Opt to Contest Nuisance Beefs (September 21 Lewiston Tribune)

On October 16, an attorney agreed to represent all but a few of the arrested Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) and allied activists, defending them against charges incurred during early August blockades and protests of an Alberta tar sands waste fluid evaporator traversing Highway 12 in Idaho.  The group lawyer has requested a $2000 retainer fee as soon as possible, so Nez Perce and WIRT activists are seeking $800 in donations, beyond the $1200 that generous Moscow supporters raised for our Nimiipuu allies at the September 20 benefit concert.  Please donate soon through WIRT’s WePay link or by sending a check to Wild Idaho Rising Tide at P.O. Box 9817, Moscow, ID 83843, specifying Nez Perce recipients.  We also welcome your notes to wild.idaho.rising.tide@gmail.com about your contribution, which we will share with these passionately courageous defenders of their homeland, treaty, and tar sands impacted indigenous people.  Thank you!

Fall 2013 Moscow Megaload Protests (October 16 Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

We eagerly anticipate further videos and photographs captured by participants in the Tuesday night Moscow megaload protest, No Tar Sands Megaloads Anywhere!, as we prepare for ongoing confrontations with Alberta tar sands equipment on Highway 95 and beyond.  See the WIRT photo album description and captions for more information.

NORTHWEST COAL EXPORTS

Two Train Cars Derail in East Spokane (October 1 KREM TV)

Although not as horrific as the 31 coal train cars that wrecked near Mesa, Washington, on July 2, 2012, the September 30 derailment only a few blocks from the former Occupy Spokane Clubhouse thankfully involved only empty cars, not full Bakken shale oil tankers or loaded coal cars.  It underscored the implicit danger of carbon fuel rail corridors through densely populated areas.

Train Hits Truck on East Trent, Man Pulled from Wreckage (October 11 KREM TV)

Another East Spokane/Spokane Valley train-vehicle collision last Friday, after a more serious (intentional?) wreck in September

Train Strikes Car, Injures One (September 6 KXLY)

State to Study Coal Train Impact on Kent (September 20 Kent Reporter)

According to Kent, Washington, transportation engineering manager Steve Mullen, even without a wide scope of study, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers review could halt the Gateway Pacific coal port project: “The majority of their review will involve mitigation for the damages to the Lummi Indian Tribe burial grounds and fishing grounds…The Corps has broad powers to deny permits that infringe on tribal rights.  If the Lummi reject the mitigation proposals, the permit most likely will not go forward.”

The Incredible Shrinking U.S. Coal Industry (September 30 Greenpeace)

King Coal’s Last Stand (October 4 Vice)

An in-depth investigation of the folly of proposed Northwest coal exports, centered on interviews with Washington Department of Ecology regional director Josh Baldi, Alliance for Northwest Jobs and Exports spokesperson Lauri Hennessey, Lummi Nation totem pole carver Jewell James, Seattle mayor Mike McGinn, and Sightline Institute program director Clark Williams-Derry

BNSF Intimidation of Spokane Anti-Coal Leafleting (September 2013) Continue reading →

Activists, friends, and supporters,

RISING TIDE/CLIMATE MOVEMENT

Leaked Stratfor PowerPoint Shows Corporation’s Fear of Activist Campaigns (August 3 Popular Resistance)

A Stratfor document released by Wikileaks reveals that big business interests take activists and their impacts seriously.  It advocates dividing and conquering various groups in four categories, who are working to stop the extraction, development, and transportation of tar sands.  “Pull opportunists and realists into compromised positions, convince idealists they have the facts wrong, and isolate the most dangerous group, the radicals.”  Please write a letter of support for Jeremy Hammond, who has pled guilty to the Stratfor hack and is currently collecting such letters to ask the judge for a sentence of only time served.

Northwest Fossil Fuels: Exports and Resistance from Oregon to Alaska (September 26 Rising Tide)

Across the Cascadia region, from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Coast and from northern California to south central Alaska, huge private corporations are developing energy infrastructure that imposes dangerous risks and associated impacts in the short-term and compromised functionality and management in the mid- and long-term.  Their antiquated analyses consider profit maximization over the real concerns of residents and the interdependence of all life that transcends political boundaries.  People throughout Cascadia need to exercise their rights to free, prior, and informed consent of energy projects affecting the natural world upon which present and future generations depend.

Rising Tide activists Adam from Seattle, David from Portland, Helen from Moscow, and Maryam from Vancouver, B.C. presented an insightful panel discussion and community forum on these topics on Thursday evening, September 26, at the University Temple United Methodist Church in the University District of Seattle.  After long journeys that day, we talked about Northwest fossil fuel corridors and transportation projects, including megaload routes, from North Dakota to Washington and from Oregon to Alaska.  Our discussions about regional export of Alberta tar sands, Bakken shale oil, and Powder River Basin coal, and imports of tar sands mining equipment met with thoughtful concluding questions and extended post-forum conversations with 40 audience members.  Ideas for similar educational events arose later that weekend among Rising Tide groups who met near Bellingham.

Rising Tide Regional Strategy Summit (September 27-29 Rising Tide)

Two weeks ago, some of the 29 Rising Tide activists who participated in a weekend strategy summit at a Bellingham area farm touched coastal waters and joined the Lummi Tribe totem pole blessing ceremony at Cherry Point, Washington, near the site of the proposed Gateway Pacific coal export terminal.  (Please see the following Totem Pole Journey links and listen to the Climate Justice Forum radio program on KRFP Radio Free Moscow every Monday evening, to hear parts of the hour-long recorded ceremony.)  After the festivities on Friday evening, an Occupy Spokane activist spoke at the strategy summit and, after returning home, committed to restarting Spokane Rising Tide.  The summit exceeded most of our expectations, bringing together experienced and emerging Rising Tide groups and key organizers from Vancouver/Coast Salish Territories, B.C., Bellingham, Seattle, Olympia, Portland, and Moscow, to strengthen our regional network and increase our communication and coordination.

(excerpted)

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Gives Its Hacktivists the Same Name as Actual Activist Group (September 26 Wired)

Riding the pop culture wave of the television show Agents of SHIELD with Rising Tide North America

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Meet Its Real-Life, Climate-Defending, Disney-Dissenting Villains (October 1 Yes!)

More misguided television/internet hype: strange associations for remote climate activists who consider even big cities bizarre

Timeline of the Climate Movement: How Direct Action Took Center Stage (October 2 Yes!)

“There’s a clear trajectory, too: away from ‘Big Green’ groups, who placed their hopes in electoral politics, and toward creative, high-stakes actions in the communities that have the most to lose.  Increasingly, direct action is seen not as a fringe tactic but as the next logical step when other avenues fail.  ‘When people see each other confronting power, their fear goes away…People are willing to take risks when they know their community has their back.’”  The interactive, graphic timeline embedded in this article could benefit from more extensive, detailed data that maps on-the-ground campaigns across the continent over the last decade.

Building the Environmental Movement Today: A Debate (October 3 Climate and Capitalism)

Sasha Ross’ critique of Chris Williams’ article Strategy and Tactics in the Environmental Movement, followed by Chris Williams’ retort

The Climate Movement’s Pipeline Preoccupation (October 8 Earth Island Journal)

Arielle, David, Kirby, and Maryam of our Rising Tide North America network penned this article about next steps for the climate movement, during and after the Keystone XL pipeline campaigns.

Keystone XL: The Art of NGO Discourse (April 12-14 Counterpunch)

The Grassroots Battle Against Big Oil (October 28 The Nation)

Tar Sands Blockade’s robust climate movement-building, grassroots resistance to fossil fuels deep in the belly of the Texas beast made the cover of The Nation magazine!  In blockaders’ own words: “From the Winnsboro tree blockade to Nacogdoches and Houston, from eminent domain abuse to climate justice, writer Wen Stephenson with The Nation extensively interviews several blockaders and our local allies, like the Austin Heights Baptist Church and Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Service, in one of the most in-depth profiles ever written about Tar Sands Blockade.” Continue reading →

Climate defenders,

UPCOMING EVENTS

October 9: ITD to Hold Public Meetings Statewide Starting October 7 on 129,000-Pound Truck Legislation (Idaho Transportation Department)

Comment and participate in the Idaho Transportation Department’s (ITD) statewide public meetings on its four proposed administrative rules governing existing and additional 129,000-pound truck routes and implementing Idaho Senate Bills 1064 and 1117 and House Bill 322, all passed in 2013.  Attend 4 to 7 pm meetings with hourly ITD staff presentations and give verbal or written testimony in Idaho Falls and Pocatello on October 7, in Coeur d’Alene and Lewiston on October 9, in Twin Falls on October 16, and in Boise on October 17.  Email your comments on the rules to comments@itd.idaho.gov by 5 pm on October 24.

October 10: Weekly WIRT Potluck/Meeting (Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

The climate justice movement in Idaho depends on your activism: participate in planning actions and events, educating our cohorts and communities, reaching out through various media, and challenging energy extraction and transportation corporations.  Please bring food and/or beverages to share, and contribute your ideas and energies toward our clean energy future every Thursday at 7 pm at the Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) Activist House in Moscow.

October 10: The Whole Story of Climate (Friends of the Moscow Library)

Local library supporters have invited WIRT members to their annual meeting, to hear Washington State University geologist E. Kirsten Peters talk about her book, The Whole Story of Climate.  Her lecture will occur at 7 pm on Thursday, October 10, at the 1912 Center, 412 East Third Street in Moscow.  Friends of the Moscow Library are offering this program, discussion, and refreshments to everyone free of charge: they welcome all to attend.

October 11: Flush the TPP Spokane (Chris Nerison, Spokane)

This Friday, October 11, at 6:30 pm, learn about the Trans Pacific Partnership international agreement, which could bolster dirty energy infrastructure imports and fossil fuel exports.  View a presentation by Kristen Beifus of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition at the Liberty Park United Methodist Church, 1526 East 11th Avenue in Spokane.  Call WIRT at 208-301-8039 for Palouse carpool coordination.

October 16: Blue Skies Campaign Fundraiser and Action Report-Back (Blue Skies Campaign)

The Missoula-based Blue Skies Campaign will hold a fundraiser on Wednesday, October 16, from 7 to 9 pm at Ten Spoon Windery, 4175 Rattlesnake Drive in Missoula, to help cover fines incurred from their rail line occupation in Helena during the September Showdown Against Coal Exports on the 16th.  In one of the boldest acts of climate-related civil disobedience in Montana, 14 people walked and briefly sat beyond a “No Trespassing” sign between two main coal export train tracks, and received citations and fines of up to $300 each.  Please RSVP through the following link, and join this event that will feature a report-back on the highly successful action and a preview of upcoming initiatives against coal exports.  You can also donate online or mail your check written to Blue Skies Campaign to: Blue Skies Campaign, c/o Nick Engelfried, 321 South First Street West #3, Missoula, Montana 59801.

October 16: Climate Workgroup Hearing in Spokane (Climate Solutions and others)

On October 16 between 5 and 7 pm, in the Music Building Auditorium Room 110 on the Spokane Falls Community College campus, 3410 West Fort George Wright Drive in Spokane, Governor Inslee and Washington state legislators from the Climate Legislative and Executive Workgroup (CLEW) will be holding a public hearing for open discussions about climate policy actions.

October 19: Global Frackdown 2 (Food and Water Watch, WIRT, and allies)

As Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction and WIRT design Boise/southern Idaho demonstrations on the frontlines of first fracking in our state, please plan to join us on Saturday, October 19, for the second Global Frackdown in Idaho, announced soon.  Show your solidarity with communities around the world affected by fracking, and help us ban fracking in Idaho before it happens, if drillers have not already fracked the wilderness state!

Global Frackdown2 on facebook

Global Frackdown 2 Calls for a Worldwide Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing (October 7 EcoWatch)

Fundraising for Anti-Coal/Megaload Activists (Wild Idaho Rising Tide)

WIRT is seeking contributions for allied activists who defended treaty rights, tribal sovereignty, and the air, water, and lands of our region and climate from the infrastructure incursions of coal export and tar sands import last summer.  During the WIRT-sponsored, well-attended, sign-waving rally, Fearless Summer Coal Export Sacrifice Zone Uprising, on June 27 in Spokane, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad patrols cited Tony Dellwo and ‘Ziggy’ with second degree criminal trespass, when the Occupy Spokane activists walked toward a downtown BNSF railroad bridge with a suspiciously temporarily stopped, loaded, coal export train, to obtain higher traffic visibility for their protest signs.  Trespass charges for both defendants will be dropped after they pay fines and complete the terms of their agreements.  Ziggy served eight hours of community service with Backbone Campaign’s annual Localize This! activist training camp, and Tony is diligently fulfilling his one-year probation.  WIRT requests your help with their combined $125 fines due in October.

In passionate displays of tribal sovereignty and solidarity with other indigenous communities opposing tar sands exploitation, Nimiipuu tribal leaders and members and allied activists valiantly blockaded and delayed a tar sands mining evaporator and convoy at the reservation boundary and throughout the wild and scenic river corridor along Highway 12 on August 5 to 8.  On September 20, Nez Perce Tribal Court arraigned most of the 28 protesters arrested by tribal police and charged up to $500 each for bail, imposing public nuisance infractions (unlawfully obstructing movement on a public highway).  If convicted, eight accused Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee members may be forced by the tribe’s constitution to forfeit their posts for three years.  Nimiipuu activists insist that the tribal court drop their charges, in consideration of pertinent tribal and federal laws, resolutions, and court orders rejecting Highway 12 megaloads.  Although WIRT and allies recently raised over $1200 at a benefit concert, we ask that you join us in honoring such courageous, nonviolent, civil disobedience with your contributions that help cover fines and legal fees.  Please donate whatever you can, noting intended Nez Perce or Spokane recipients, online or by check to Wild Idaho Rising Tide at the enclosed address, so that indigenous and climate activists can participate in resistance to coal and oil company onslaughts, regardless of their financial situation. Continue reading →

Fellow climate inhabitants,

UPCOMING ACTIVISM NEEDS YOU!

Tuesday, September 24: No, Actually, We Are The Rising Tide (September 24 Rising Tide North America)

On Thursday evening, September 24, Disney/ABC/Marvel Studios premiered their new TV show Agents of SHIELD, depicting a secret National Security Agency/Department of Homeland Security-style agency confronting a “looming threat” known as “The Rising Tide,” a cyber-terror group purportedly like Anonymous with a disturbingly similar Rising Tide logo.  Please read the Rising Tide North America blog, sign a petition calling on Disney to stop portraying grassroots climate activist groups as terrorists, and widely share this opportunity to highlight the REAL work of Rising Tide.

Wednesday, September 25: Millennium Bulk Terminal Rally and Scoping Hearing in Spokane

Participate in the Spokane public rally and scoping hearing about the Millennium Bulk Terminal proposal for Longview, Washington coal export facilities on Wednesday, September 25!  Palouse carpools depart the Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) Activist House in Moscow at 1 pm (please RSVP).  A Riverfront Park rally with Backbone Campaign and regional comrades commences at 3 pm.  Doors to the Spokane Convention Center open at 4 pm, and the public hearing runs from 5 to 8 pm.  Please get an online lottery ticket to testify or share, wear red, and voice your concerns about the coal export impacts that county, state, and federal agencies should consider in an upcoming draft environmental impact statement.  For more information, see:

Hearing: Impacts on Spokane of Longview Coal Export Proposal (Coal-Free Spokane)

All You Need to Know about the Longview Coal Export Hearing (Center for Justice)

What Can We Do to Stop Coal Exports in Longview? (Columbia Riverkeeper)

Environmental Review: Millennium Bulk Terminals Longview Proposal (Washington Department of Ecology)

Thursday, September 26: Weekly WIRT Potluck/Meeting

At 7 pm this Thursday at the WIRT Activist House, concerned citizens are meeting to discuss plans to confront possibly impending Highway 95 megaloads and state government policies at Capital for a Day and to organize upcoming events like WIRT’s participation in the University of Idaho Homecoming Parade.  Please bring some food and/or beverages to share and your ideas and energies for creating megaload/tar sands protest signs and other projects.

Thursday, September 26: Northwest Fossil Fuels: Exports and Resistance from Oregon to Alaska

This Thursday at 7 pm, Rising Tide groups from Vancouver, B.C., and Moscow, Portland, and Seattle will host a panel discussion and community forum exploring corporate industry proposals and regional resistance to almost 20 coal, oil, and natural gas export terminals or expansions from Oregon to Alaska.  Accompanying rail and waterway traffic threatens to transform the Northwest into a dirty fossil fuel corridor impacting human, environmental, and climate health.  Together, these projects would release three times the global carbon emissions of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  But a powerful, grassroots, direct action movement has been emerging and organizing across the region against this onslaught.  Join us in conversation and education, including a megaload campaign history presentation, at the University Temple United Methodist Church, 1415 NE 43rd Street in Seattle, at 7 pm this Thursday!  Maybe our Moscow megaload protests will finally garner some broader recognition, albeit as an eternal side-kick to the Highway 12 saga, and people will take to the streets on other megaload routes.

Friday to Sunday, September 27 to 29: Rising Tide Regional Summit

Saturday, September 28: WIRT in the Homecoming Parade 2013: Vandal Pride Planetwide

Global climate change warriors Wild Idaho Rising Tide and allies are marching with our banners, protest signs, and hand-outs in the University of Idaho Homecoming Parade entitled Vandal Pride Planetwide.  Meet with your friends, family, and posters at 9 am on Saturday, September 28, under the Rosauers sign in the parking lot at 411 North Main Street, to parade along Main Street to Seventh Street in Moscow, Idaho.

Sunday, September 29 (tentative): Nimiipuu Against Megaloads Teach-In

WIRT may not be able to notify you from the road about this opportunity to learn and build solidarity with Nez Perce tribal activists opposing megaloads.  If this event happens, organizers may host it between 4 and 6 pm next Sunday at The Cave, 118 Main Street in Lapwai, Idaho, and Moscow/Pullman area carpools will depart the WIRT Activist House at 3 pm.  Please contact Ciarra Greene at ciarrag@nezperce.org for further information about the teach-in.

Monday, September 30: Governor Otter Sets September Capital for a Day in Potlatch (September 19 Governor Otter)

Governor Butch Otter is bringing his monthly Capital for a Day state government crony circus to the Potlatch Senior Center, from 9 am to 3 pm on Monday, September 30.  According to a Moscow official, transportation department director Brian Ness will attend (permitting megaloads and heavier, longer semi-trucks and Highway 95 expansion onto Paradise Ridge,?) as well as tax commissioner Ken Roberts (dismissing property tax on oil and gas wells?) and representatives from the department of lands (allowing fracking in Idaho and drilling around rivers?) and the department of water resources (permitting leaking waste injection wells?).  Like a January 2011 event in Culdesac, maybe we can drop hundreds of petition signatures on their table again or make them call for a break because they cannot stand the debate.  Get ready for exasperating conversations with our state employees about controversial issues and policies.

Tuesday, October 1: Millennium Bulk Terminal Rally and Scoping Hearing in Pasco

Your assistance could help organize coal export resistance in the Tri-Cities!

Saturday, October 19: Global Frackdown (Food and Water Watch)

Action planning by WIRT and Idaho Residents Against Gas Extraction for an Idaho event requests your participation. Continue reading →

Late September Happenings

* Forest Service Issues Closure Order for Megaloads on Highway 12 (September 18 Spokesman-Review)

This closure applies only to Omega Morgan megaloads, which may now use Highway 95 instead, and could be lifted by the Forest Service when it completes its corridor impacts review and Nez Perce tribal consultation.

* Cargo Contractors Company Megaload Schematics

A heavy haul transporter based in Compton, California, wants to ship three massive refinery vessels, weighing over 1,100,000 pounds, measuring up to 324 feet long, and requiring two push trucks, from the Port of Lewiston to Great Falls, Montana, by November.

* Weekly Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) potluck/meeting at 7 pm on Thursday, September 19, at the WIRT Activist House, to discuss tactics and strategies for possibly impending Highway 95 megaloads and organization of other upcoming events

* Chasing Ice time-lapse video documentary depicting vanishing global ice cover at 7 pm on Thursday, September 19, at Grace Lutheran Church, 3434 Sixth Street in Lewiston (see the Chasing Ice PSA & Poster)

* Arraignment of  28 arrested mostly Nez Perce tribal megaload protesters on public nuisance infractions (unlawfully obstructing movement on a public highway) at 9 am on Friday, September 20, in Nez Perce Tribal Court, 149 Lolo Street in Lapwai  WIRT is stilling searching for carpoolers from the Palouse: contact us!

* At the Benefit Concert for Nez Perce Megaload Protesters, at 7 pm in the Unitarian Church, 420 East Second Street in Moscow (after the 6:30 parade from Friendship Square), the presence of a New York Times reporter gives us one more incentive to shine and give graciously.  Our small-town party just went big-time, besides coverage through the nationally broadcast, Monday, September 16 Flashpoints interview of Helen Yost.  Maybe our Moscow megaload protests will finally garner some broader recognition, albeit as an eternal side-kick to the Highway 12 saga, and people will take to the streets on other megaload routes…

* Tunes with ’Tude (September 19 Lewiston Tribune Inland 360 article about the benefit concert) Continue reading →