August Newsletter: MCJ kicks off, Climate Convergences next month, blockades, lockdown, and movies!

Rising Tide North America – Climate Justice Action News – August 2009

can’t see all the pictures and links in this email? You’ll want to read it online at http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/category/newsletter/

The Mobilization for Climate Justice (MCJ) kicks off!

The first major event in the four months of resistance leading up to the UN’s climate meetings in Copenhagen takes place this this Saturday, August 15 in Richmond, California.

Rising Tide Bay Area, in coalition with more than a dozen organizations, will be targeting an Oil Refinery owned by the fifth largest corporation in the world: Chevron. Their Richmond refinery is the largest industrial polluter in the San Francisco Bay Area, releasing nearly 100,000 pounds of toxic waste a year, including known human carcinogens and asthma-causing pollutants. All the details at http://actforclimatejustice.org/west

Coming Up This September:
East and West Coast Convergences for Climate Action

Along more than Sixty (60!) Climate Camps globally, this year’s North American climate convergences will both be held in urban centers: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Richmond, California.

The West Coast Convergence will continue the actions against Chevron starting this weekend on September 18th-20th.

The Pittsburgh event, known as the Three Rivers Climate Convergence, takes place September 20-25 (not coincidentally) alongside the international the meetings of the G20 and the International Coal Conference.

Check out Rising Tide’s "Climate Movement, Meet Global Capitalism. Global Capitalism, meet the Climate Movement." for more on the roll of G20 in promoting failed climate policy and read about the Pittsburgh convergence here:

Whether you are interested in joining the resistance in Pittsburgh or Richmond or want to organize your own community, be sure to get linked up with Mobilization for Climate Justice and get started planning for the N30 and December actions! If you haven’t already, check out the Mobilization’s Call to Action for more information!

Meanwhile, in Europe, activists and authorities alike are preparing both for the most radical, direct-action oriented climate protests to date – you can read coverage in the UK’s papers here. Let’s not be outdone!

This just in: Four protesters enter West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and lock themselves to the office entrance

The protest was demanding that the agency hand over control of key programs to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) and that WVDEP Secretary Randy Huffman resign. Around them, dozens of demonstrators reiterated those demands. Inside the WVDEP, the four protesters are displaying signs that read “Closed Due to Incompetence” and “Department of Encouraging Pollution.”

Twelve protests in West Virginia since February 2009 have demanded an end to mountaintop removal, and over 90 citizens have been arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience. You can read more about it and donate to the legal fund at http://climategroundzero.org/

Everglades Earth First! needs support!

Activist Stevie Lynn Lowe needs help to get out of an excessively harsh jail sentence in Martin County, FL after taking on Florida Power and Light to save the Barley Barber Swamp.

You can see media coverage here, here, and here.

Stevie, along with seveenteen other Earth First! activists, was arrested in January of this year for locking herself to a tree within one of Florida’s last remaining old-growth swamps, the Barley Barber. Her fellow arrestees did not have the time and energy to take their cases to trial and most pled out getting about 20 days in jail with the assumption of guilt for both charges: trespassing and resisting arrest without violence.

On Thursday July 23rd Stevie was found innocent for trespassing (the state prosecution failed to prove that this swamp even belongs to Florida Power and Light) but was found guilty of resisting arrest without violence. Even though she was found innocent of the charge for which she was originally arrested and even though "resisting arrest without violence" is a petty misdemeanor, the judge made an example of Stevie and sentences her with 90 DAYS IN JAIL. Considering that some folks got as low as 2 days in jail for pleading out we consider this also to be a punishment for her having used her constitutional right to a fair trial.

You can donate to Everglades EF! via www.evergladesearthfirst.org or call 561 588 9666

That’s all from Rising Tide North America till next month – thanks for your support!

Tobique First Nation blockade enters third month.
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Indigenous activists have been blockading a highway leading to the Mactaquac hydro dam in south central New Brunswick since June. Find out more here.
 
Are you – or someone you know – still not convinced the climate bill in Congress is crap?
Please, pass on these first, second, and third recent reviews of the bill and it’s impacts – and check out the new report "A Dangerous Distraction" on carbon offsets, one of the worst features of the legislation.
 
Rising Tide is partnering with "The Age of Stupid"
It’s a new documentary from the Director of ‘McLibel’ and the producer of the Oscar-winning "One Day In September" check out their website – we’ll have more information in next newsletter on the Sept 21st premiere.

 
Via Campesina calls out Carbon Trading
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Via Campesina calls to mobilize for for Copenhagen: "Don’t trade off Peasant’s agriculture for rights to pollute…read on…
 

DID YOU KNOW?

Rising Tide North America’s work is 100% volunteer based.

We neither fund this operation with some secret trust fund, nor do we do this work for pay.

Fact is, we need your support to survive. Please, put yer money and your time where your heart is and donate or get involved today!

We fund our work entirely upon a very tiny handful of small donations – every little bit helps…

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