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“Mountain Mobilization” Shuts Down Logan County Strip Mine
More than 50 protesters affiliated with the R.A.M.P.S. Campaign walked onto Patriot Coal’s Hobet mine and shut it down following the Mountain Mobilization. Ten people locked to a rock truck, boarded it and dropped banners: “Coal Leaves, Cancer Stays.” In total twenty people were arrested. Appalachian communities, from union miners to the anti-strip mining activists of the 1960s, have a proud history of confronting the coal industry and demanding an end to its exploitive practices with direct civil disobedience. R.A.M.P.S. and other campaigns have returned to this tradition to eliminate strip mining once and for all.
MORE INFO: RAMPS Campaign website
Urgent Update! Donate: Get Anti-MTR Activists Out of Jail!
Our friends are in trouble. On Saturday (see above), over 50 people trespassed onto the the Hobet mountaintop removal mine, the largest surface mine in the United States, in an act of peaceful civil disobedience. 20 of them were arrested and thrown in jail with $25,000 bail each.
Among those taken into custody was 20-year old Dustin Steele, the son and grandson of West Virginia coal miners, was arrested, beaten by police, badly injured, and was outrageously refused hospital care. Luckily, Dustin has been released, but 19 other arrestees remain locked up. Help fund their legal defense!
Donate HERE
Keystone Convergence for Tar Sands Blockade
This past weekend over 60 climate activists, landowners, students and people from all over Texas, Oklahoma and beyond converged with Rising Tide North Texas and the Tar Sands Blockade in East Texas to organize and prepare for upcoming blockade actions around the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline. Trainers prepared people to take action and wage campaigns with direct action, media and organizing skills. Construction begins on Aug. 1, campaign actions are being planned all over Texas and Oklahoma. Join Rising Tide North Texas as they prepare to stop the pipeline.
MORE INFO: Tar Sands Blockade
EF! Action Shuts Down Fracking Drill Operation
Nearly 100 Earth First! activists, friends and allies forced a 70-foot-tall EQT hydrofracking drill rig to suspend operations for 12 hours on July 8th in Pennsylvania’s Moshannon State Forest. This is the first time that protesters have shut down a hydrofrack drilling operation in the US. A tree sitter hung above the access road, with their anchor ropes blocking it. A second person was also in a tree to support the sitter while dozens of supporters guarded ten large debris piles that were across the road. Another group of 50 activists blockaded the entrance to the access road. Three arrests were made for disorderly conduct, but protesters were cited and released on-site.
MORE INFO: Marcellus Earth First!
Montana Coal Export
Action
In less than two weeks, from August 12-20, people will start gathering in Helena for the Coal Export Action. As Arch Coal prepares its permit application for the Otter Creek Mine. Coal industry giants are pushing members of the Montana State Land Board to let them build the Otter Creek mine, the “anchor project” in a larger industry scheme to transform southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming into a coal mining industrial zone.
This is already shaping up to be the biggest action of its kind in the Northern Rockies region. Many action participants may be engaging in civil disobedience for the first time, and we are committed to providing resources to make this the accessible, empowering, and effective action we all need. Now, in these last couple of weeks before the action, you can help it grow even more.
MORE INFO: Coal Export Action
Canada Action Camp
On August 6th – 10th there will be the 3rd Annual Unis?tot?en Action Camp. The camp will feature lots of activities around building solidarity, campaigns and action planning for communities who will stop the proposed and approved pipelines and mining projects that are unwelcome in the north of Unceded Occupied so called bc and canada. The proposed pipelines from Northern Gateway, Kitimat Summit Lake Looping Project, and the Pembina and Kinder Morgan Pipelines seek to cross the rivers at the exact point where the resistance camp is built in Unis?tot?en Territory of Talbits Kwah.
MORE INFO: Unistoten Camp