Within opening and closing regional and national climate activism news, the Monday, June 18, Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) will feature a recorded Alternative Radio talk by Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Canada’s Mordor, previously broadcast on KRFP Radio Free Moscow on Sunday, June 3. Listen to KRFP every Monday between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT and adopt WIRT as your DJ.
The biggest item in a budget Lewiston port commissioners passed Wednesday is a $2.9 million container dock expansion.
The action came just minutes after David Doeringsfeld, the port’s manager, described the port’s primary mission as job creation and retention, not getting barges up and down the river.
More than doubling the length of the 125-foot dock is consistent with that goal, Doeringfeld said after the meeting. Continue reading
A scene from the documentary film Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands
In the opening scenes of the documentary Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands, a helicopter glides over Alberta’s Athabasca River. Wending through a boreal forest the size of Greece, the river and its attendant countryside is as rugged and beautiful as any in the world. Then, over a rise, gargantuan smokestacks suddenly spear the sky, lording over a landscape that can only be described as apocalyptic: the single largest source of CO2 emissions in North America.
These are the oil sands, a geological formation in which vast quantities of bitumen lie just below the earth’s crust — the largest proven reserves of oil in the world.
More than 1,000 miles to the south, cities like Moscow and Coeur d’Alene, along the I-90 and U.S. 95 corridors, are front and center in the development’s debate.
Read more: Megawoes on Megaloads
(By Zach Hagadone, Boise Weekly)
As the culminating action of the weekend direct action training sessions at the Northwest Extraction Resistance Workshop, activists held up a giant, plastic mesh banner and projected anti-coal export and -fracking “bat signals” on the wall across the street from local LGBTQ hangout, Irv’s Bar, in downtown Spokane, Washington, on the Saturday celebratory evening of the Pride event on June 9. Photos by Joan Medina and Helen Yost feature workshop trainers Kim Marks and Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky of Portland Rising Tide, Bill Moyer of Backbone Campaign, and participants Dave Bilsland, Terry Hill, Joan Medina, and Richard Schmidt of Occupy Spokane and Helen Yost of Wild Idaho Rising Tide.
The Monday, June 11, Climate Justice Forum radio program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) will cover a half-hour of regional and national climate activism news followed by a recording of coal export issue presentations offered by Missoula and Portland participants in the Northwest Extraction Resistance Workshop last weekend, June 8 and 9, in Spokane. Workshop trainer Bill Moyer of Backbone Campaign will join us by phone at 8:30 pm, to describe his organization’s artful and theatrical demonstrations and props. Terry Hill of Occupy Spokane will talk at 9 pm about Spokane anti-megaload protests and the Lilac City’s occupy movement and clubhouse. Listen to KRFP Radio Free Moscow online or at 92.5 FM between 7:30 and 9:30 pm PDT every Monday and adopt WIRT as your KRFP DJ!
Participant Shannon Ross recorded the Northwest Resource Extraction Resistance Workshop Introduction in Spokane on Friday evening, June 8, when four Blues Skies Campaign colleagues and Portland Rising Tide trainer Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky presented slides and descriptions of coal export train issues from their respective Montana and Oregon perspectives. Off-camera afterwards, Sierra Club organizer Walter Kloefkorn summarized Spokane and Washington coal train concerns and actions, and Wild Idaho Rising Tide activist Helen Yost talked and showed a video about Alberta tar sands operations and Idaho megaload resistance.
A grassroots movement is growing in Spokane to stop coal trains from traveling through the city and across the Northwest.
With the demand for coal rising in Asia, several energy companies are proposing to mine coal in Montana and ship it overseas.
The proposal calls to ship coal by train through Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon and eventually to several export terminals along the West Coast.
On Friday, more than a dozen activists and environmentalists met in Spokane to learn how to peacefully protest the proposal.
Read more/see the TV video: Movement Wants to Stop Inland Northwest Coal Trains
(By Annie Bishop, KXLY Spokane)
On Wednesday evening, June 6, Flashpoints radio show host Dennis Bernstein talked with Nick Engelfried of Blue Skies Campaign in Missoula, Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky of Portland Rising Tide and Columbia Riverkeeper in Portland, and Helen Yost of Wild Idaho Rising Tide in Moscow about the Northwest Extraction Resistance Workshop in Spokane on June 8 and 9 and about regional protests of coal export trains, tar sands megaloads, and natural gas fracking. The program aired on KRFP Radio Free Moscow on the same night and can also be downloaded from KPFA Free Speech Radio in Berkeley. Listen to between 21:31 and 36:50 of this nationally broadcast episode or to the 14-minute discussion excerpted and uploaded online by Tom Hansen of Moscow. Thanks, Dennis, Tom, and KPFA!
Sunday, June 3, marked the last transit of tar sands modules through Spokane and a rambunctious send-off by Wild Idaho and Spokane Rising Tide and Occupy Spokane activists. At 7:30 pm in the Magic Lantern Theatre, about 35 concerned Spokane citizens converged to watch the incisive documentary Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands and to discuss emerging local and continent-wide struggles around one of the most compelling environmental issues of our time: tar sands development near Fort McMurray, Alberta. As we grew weary of uncertain and false ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil shipment finales but nonetheless plotted our last Spokane megaload protest for that night, our Port of Pasco scout informed us just before the public screening that more Big Oil behemoths were poised to rumble through Spokane streets. At the movie showing and lively debate, we alerted attendees of their immediate opportunity to take action against the topic of the film. Considering the last transports’ historical significance, Terry Hill of Occupy Spokane posted a facebook event simply and aptly titled “Megaloads, Sunday, June 3, 2012.” Folks met at the Occupy Spokane Clubhouse at 11 pm before traveling to Third and Regal streets to tell ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil one more time, “not in our town.”
Even though convoy personnel had erected orange cones on the north/freeway side of East Third Avenue, to block our tactical parking on both sides of the street, we crowded the two lane stretch with our banner hanging from the pedestrian bridge and our bodies, protest signs, and vehicles lining the ruined road to America’s Mordor. Mayhem ensued as one of the largest of three tar sands modules passed within inches of outstretched arms and signs and a support vehicle darted back and forth behind it to survey width clearances. A city police officer across the street waved three passenger vehicles following the loads onward with a flashlight, when a stop sign-mimicking protest sign asserting “Stop Tar Sands” inadvertently halted them. One of the demonstrators captured the convoy CB radio chatter with his video, Megaload Spokane 6/4/2012, documenting the (hopefully) last megaloads to challenge the Northwest, available here with a few Wild Idaho Rising Tide photos. WIRT hosted Terry Hill of Occupy Spokane on our June 11 Climate Justice Forum radio program, talking about this final demonstration, other Spokane anti-megaload protests, and the Lilac City’s occupy movement and clubhouse.
On Monday, June 4, the Climate Justice Forum program hosted by Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) will feature Sharon Cousins of Viola, a founding leader of our collective that confronts climate change through direct action. Sharon will discuss clean and sustainable alternatives to dirty energy enterprises like tar sands, coal, and natural gas extraction. She will also talk about the aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and how citizens can actively influence energy and environmental conundrums for the sake of future life on Earth. Please adopt WIRT as your DJ, as we also cover other climate activism news between 7:30 and 9 pm PDT, live at 92.5 FM and online at KRFP Radio Free Moscow.
