Year: 2012

August Newsletter: Mountaintop Removal, Tar Sands, Fracking & Coal Export Actions

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The Rising Tide North America Newsletter is back! Please click here to submit content for next month’s newsletter

“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!

Hobet MTR Disobedience

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

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

EF! Frack Blockade

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

Support the Hobet 20! Anti-mountaintop removal activists held on $500,000 combined bail

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Following Saturday’s historic shutdown of the Hobet mine — Appalachia’s largest mountaintop removal site– Dustin Steele and at least nineteen other Appalachians and allies are being held on $25,000 bail each — a combined $500,000.*  Most are being charged with trespass and obstruction.

Donate to the Hobet 20’s legal fund here.

While we believe that these bail amounts are unconstitutionally excessive and may ultimately be reduced, we need to raise as much money as we possibly can to support those brave individuals who have put their bodies on the line to put a halt to the injustice of mountaintop removal mining.  According to Dustin, he was taken into a room and beaten by law enforcement while in custody.  Witnesses have reported that other protesters were brutalized by law enforcement while being taken into custody.  We need to work to ensure that anyone who wants to get out of jail can do so as soon as possible.

Mountaintop removal is a crime against humanity that has left a legacy of poisoned air and water, high cancer rates, economic exploitation, and devastated communities and ecosystems throughout Appalachia.   Corrupted legislators and regulators at the state and federal levels have failed to take action to stop these atrocities, leaving direct action as the last resort for conscientious residents aiming to save the land and people of Appalachia.

Please check www.rampscampaign.org for updates as we receive additional information about our friends in custody.

Mountain Mobilization shuts down largest mountaintop removal mine

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 28, 2012

Contact: Charles Suggs, 304-449-NVDA (6832), media@wg.rampscampaign.org
Talking Points document: http://rampscampaign.org/key-messages-of-mountain-mobilization/

“Mountain Mobilization” shuts down Logan Co. strip mine

Call for end to strip mining and a just transition for the region’s families

Charleston, W.Va.—More than 50 protesters affiliated with the R.A.M.P.S. Campaign have walked onto Patriot Coal’s Hobet mine and shut it down.  Ten people locked to a rock truck, boarded it and dropped banners: “Coal Leaves, Cancer Stays.”  At least three have been arrested, with another in a tree being threatened by miners with a chain saw.  Earlier in the day, two people were arrested at Kanawha State Forest before a group of protesters headed to the state capitol.

“The government has aided and abetted the coal industry in evading environmental and mine safety regulations. We are here today to demand that the government and coal industry end strip mining, repay their debt to Appalachia, and secure a just transition for this region,” Dustin Steele of Matewan, W.Va. said.  Steele was one of the people locked to the rock truck.

Mounting scientific evidence shows that strip mining negatively impacts community health and miner health.   Recent studies have found a 42 percent increase in risk of birth defects around strip mines, and miners who spend at least 20 years as strip-mine drillers have a 61 percent chance of contracting silicosis, a virulent form of black lung.  “The coal companies are poisoning our water and air, and they’re treating the workers no better than the land – fighting workplace health and safety protections to get the most out of labor as they can,” said Junior Walk of Whitesville, W.Va.

As coal production declines, protesters are concerned that the region will be left with only illness and environmental devastation as the industry pulls out of the region and companies file for bankruptcy to shed legacy costs.

Patriot Coal is currently going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in which union contracts and pensions could be on the chopping block.  Both UMWA pensions and the state’s Special Reclamation Fund are funded through a per-ton tax on coal.  With Central Appalachian coal production in the middle of a projected six-year, 50 percent decline, this funding stream is increasingly unsustainable.  Protesters are calling on the coal industry and government to ensure that funding is available both to honor commitments to retired workers and to restore the land.

“Coal companies must employ their surface mine workers in reclaiming all disturbed land to the highest standards.  Instead of arguing about the ‘war on coal,’ political leaders should immediately allocate funds to retrain and re-employ laid off miners to secure a healthy future for the families of this region,” said R.A.M.P.S. spokesperson Mathew Louis-Rosenberg.

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. Since its founding in 2011, R.A.M.P.S. has organized a range of actions, from tree-sits to blockades of coal trucks.

Today’s protesters are among the hundreds of people across the country who are joining this summer’s National Uprising Against Extraction, using radical tactics to fight oppressive extractive industries and demand a transition to a sustainable economy.

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Media Advisory: Dozens of people to walk onto West Virginia strip mine next week, shut it down

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PRESS ADVISORY, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Mat Louis-Rosenberg
Phone: 304-449-NVDA (6832)
E-mail: media@wg.rampscamaign.org

Dozens of people to walk onto strip mine next week, shut it down

Who: RAMPS (Radical Action for Mountain Peoples’ Survival), local and regional allies, activists from around the country.

What: The Mountain Mobilization–largest in U.S. history protest to shut down a strip mine in Southern West Virginia.  The movement against mountaintop removal has been gaining ground, with the longest tree sit in the history of the eastern US last summer, coal barge and truck blockades this Spring, and June’s sit-ins in Washington D.C. Meanwhile, environmental protections are under attack by politicians serving corporate interests. “Mountain Mobilization” is part of a national uprising against fossil fuels taking place this summer. In sharp contrast to Washington inaction, ordinary citizens around the country are turning to the proud American tradition of direct action– from July 28’s Stop The Frack Attack protest in Washington D.C. to August’s Coal Export Action in Helena, Montana.  RAMPS and allies will not back down until the Obama Administration takes decisive action to protect American communities from these extreme extraction industries.

When: Wednesday July 25 – Wednesday August 1, with mass walk-on to a strip mine July 28

Where: Southern West Virginia.  Contact us to be present for the mass walk-on on July 28.

Why: Demand the end to a mining practice that is destroying communities and an end to government inaction.  Mountaintop removal is a high-technology mining technique that has reduced employment in Appalachia and endangered the health and safety of mountain communities.  Numerous studies have shown clear links between the technique and cardiovascular disease, birth defects, cancer, and other illnesses.  Junior Walk, a native of southern West Virginia’s Coal River Valley who has experienced first-hand the health impacts of growing up with polluted water, says,  “King Coal is feeling the pressure like never before, and that means this is the most important time to ramp up resistance.  Now is when we decide if we let the coal industry strip it all before deserting Appalachia or if we send them packing while we still have mountains.”