2013 – Page 11 – Rising Tide North America

Home » 2013 (Page 11)

Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action Kicks Off With Over 50 Organizations and Over 30 Planned Events

By sparki March 18, 2013 March 18, 2013 Announcements, RT Newswire, RT Press Releases

Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action Kicks Off With Over 50 Organizations and Over 30 Planned Events

Grassroots organizations across the US and Canada are taking action March 16 – March 23to demonstrate that TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a toxic investment

___

Over 30 actions and events are planned this week to directly confront the corporate profiteers bankrolling the Keystone XL pipeline and the broader tar sands industry. These actions come at a critical time as investor confidence in Alberta’s tar sands is waning due to major delays and resistance to Keystone XL’s construction timeline.

Grassroots activists from over 50 organizations are uniting to send a strong message to the industry that TransCanada and its financial backers must rethink their investments in tar sands, the dirtiest fuel on the planet. Organizers will march, hold rallies, give trainings, and physically disrupt “business-as-usual” for those who seek to profit from the exploitation of marginalized people and the destruction of our collective future.

Some of the top tar sands profiteers facing protest this week: TD Bank, Valero Corp, TransCanada, CIBC World Market, and Tortoise Investment Management, to name a few.

WHO: Over 50 national and local grassroots organizations across the US and Canada are joining Tar Sands Blockade in a call for actions: 350.org, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Greenpeace USA, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, Indigenous Environmental Network, Rainforest Action Network, Rising Tide North America, Southwest Workers Union, and Utah Tar Sands Resistance, etc. Full list can be found here: http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/weekofaction/weekofactionorgs/

WHAT: Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action

WHEN: Saturday, February 16, 2012 – Saturday, February 23, 2012

WHY: Stop tar sands profiteers from investing in the toxic Keystone XL pipeline.

WHERE: Communities across the country. Some of the highlights include:

White Plains, New York, March 20^th – Action at Tortoise Investment Management, one of the biggest investors in Keystone XL.
Ponca City, Oklahoma, March 21^st – Mass Action to Stop Keystone XL Construction in Oklahoma. Direct action training camp hosted by Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, March 18-22.
Washington, DC, March 21^st – “Holy Days Climate Action” an interfaith civil disobedience at the White House. Followed by a rally at the Canadian Embassy hosted by DC Rising Tide.
San Antonio, Texas, March 23^rd – Community rally at Valero Corp Headquarters, one of KXL’s biggest investors. Hosted by Students United for Socioeconomic Justice Action, Southwest Workers Union, and Idle No More
Los Angeles, California, March 22^nd – Rally at CIBC World Markets, one of TransCanada’s major investors.
New York, New York, March 23^rd – “Divest From TD Bank Day of Action!” hosted by Occupy the Pipeline, 350.org, and Sane Energy Project. There are events at TD Bank locations in at least six cities throughout the week.
San Francisco, California, March 23^rd – A big direct-action training and Idle No More round dance at the Federal Building with Bay Area 350.org and Rising Tide S.F.

Map of 30 public rallies and actions: http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/weekofaction/planned_actions/

CONTACT:

Ron Seifert, Tar Sands Blockade, 940-268-5375, kxlblockade@gmail.com

More info: http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/weekofaction-main/

Climate Resistance in Bloom – March Update

By sparki March 18, 2013 March 18, 2013 Announcements, RT Newswire

Climate Resistance in Bloom – March Update

UPCOMING ACTIONS AND ACTION CAMPS

March 16th – 23rd – Tar Sands Blockade Week of Action
March 18th – 22nd – Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance – Ponca City, Oklahoma
March 24th – 30th – EF! Climber Guild Climb Camp – Finger Lakes region of NY

CONTENTS

Tar Sands Blockade Disrupts TransCanada Executive Gears up for Week of Action

An activist with Tar Sands Blockade locked his neck to a projector screen and successfully disrupted a TransCanada presentation at an oil industry gathering in Houston. In taking direct action, Ethan Nuss confronted in-person Paul Miller, TransCanada’s Executive Vice President of Oil Pipelines, and a ballroom of tar sands industry investors, demanding a halt to the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

For TransCanada “business as usual” means death and destruction for our communities. Find actions and events in your community as part of the Week of Action to Stop Tar Sands Profiteers, March 16-23.

Youth Activists Blockade TransCanada’s Offices

On Monday, March 11, over 100 people representing a coalition of students, members of the Massachusetts Methodist clergy, mothers fighting for their children, and concerned community members marched into the Westborough, MA office of TransCanada Corporation and held a funeral mourning the loss of our future at the hands of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline will transport the tar sands that climate scientists say will lock us into irreversible global warming.
Of those 100 protesters, 25 of them locked themselves together with handcuffs and were arrested in an act of civil disobedience. Carrying a coffin emblazoned with the words “Our Future,” they held flowers and sang an elegy as we marched in procession.

Do You Like Rising Tide On Facebook?

If not click LIKE now! Bill O’Reilly has 590,000 Facebook fans. Rush Limbaugh has 1.1 million. Glen Beck has 2.2 million. We only have you to help us counter the right wing hate and climate denial
machines. Please LIKE us on Facebook and help spread the word about climate action.

Newswire

Upcoming

Idle No More Day of Action March 21st
Screening of Tipping Point: The Age of Oil Sands in Santa Cruz, CA
DC Rising Tide action on March 21st for Tar Sands Solidarity Week
Save the date for fun at ALEC’s 40th anniversary April 7th-9th

Protestor Locks Himself to Conference Equipment, Disrupts TransCanada Presentation At Oil Industry Gathering

By sparki February 28, 2013 February 28, 2013 Announcements, RT Newswire, RT Press Releases

Ethan speaking to room full of fossil fuel profiteers

Houston, TX — February 28th, 2013, 1:45pm — a protestor with Tar Sands Blockade this afternoon locked his neck to a projector screen in the middle of a TransCanada presentation at the North American Crude Marketing Conference in Houston. In taking direct action, Ethan Nuss confronted in-person Paul Miller, TransCanada’s Executive Vice President of Oil Pipelines, and a ballroom of tar sands industry investors, demanding a halt to the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Nuss successfully disrupted the second annual conference hosted by Platts. Among other things, the gathering is intended for fossil fuel industry executives and their financial backers to collaborate on schemes to transport dirty and dangerous tar sands from Canada to the Gulf Coast so it can be refined and sold on the international market, thereby expanding the industry.

“TransCanada’s ‘business as usual’ spells death and destruction for our communities,” said Ethan Nuss. “My conscience won’t allow me to watch this multinational corporation and their profiteers poison impacted communities from here in Houston’s polluted East End to indigenous people at the point of tar sands extraction in Alberta, Canada. This must stop.” Ethan further shares his reasons for taking direct action below:

At last year’s marketing conference, Paul Miller explained the necessity of the southern leg of Keystone XL through Oklahoma and Texas to the expansion of the exploitative tar sands industry. TransCanada’s own fourth quarter report, released last week, revealed that the controversial pipeline is less than half completed, despite the Canadian pipeline corporation’s previous projections for completion of the southern segment this April.

This revelation highlights that Tar Sands Blockade’s sustained civil disobedience campaign since last August has been successful in delaying Keystone XL construction. Today’s action is part of growing momentum for an upcoming national week of action called for by Tar Sands Blockade and allies from March 16-23, with over 60 actions currently reported nationwide.

“This is just a morsel of what TransCanada and other tar sands profiteers can expect in the coming weeks and months,” said Kim Huynh, a spokesperson with Tar Sands Blockade. “All over the country, communities are gearing up to take to the streets, offices, extraction sites and public events to show that our movement won’t relent until we’ve made this investment as toxic for TransCanada and its financial backers as the very tar sands being piped through Keystone XL. Our tar sands-free future begins now.”

Earlier this week, 20,000 gallons of crude oil leaked into Otter Creek in Tyler County, TX from a pipeline owned by Sunoco Logistics. Otter Creek flows into Russell Creek, which feeds the Neches River. The leak did not trigger Sunoco’s detection systems but was discovered by local residents reporting oil in their water.

February Update: Spreading like Wildfire, Climate Action in 2013

By sparki February 12, 2013 February 12, 2013 Announcements, RT Newswire

Climate Direct Action is Taking Off!

Check out the growing resistance to fossil fuels extraction and combustion:

Youth Minister Ascends Equipment at TransCanada Construction Site in Oklahoma

Stefan Warner, a youth pastor who was born and raised in OK, locked himself to machinery being used to build the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline near Schoolton, OK. Warner is acting with Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a coalition of Oklahomans and allies fighting to prevent construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline which will bring dangerous and toxic diluted bitumen from the biome-consuming Tar Sands giga project to refinery communities in the Gulf. In addition to Warner, seven others were arrested.

Rising Tide Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories Action Against Enbridge Pipeline

Last month Rising Tide Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories took action with fifty other groups against the Tar Sands pipeline proposed by Enbridge. A noise demo was held that showed Enbridge, the Joint Review Panel, and any other entity that wants to put in pipelines without consent, that communities will not stay silent. Over 1,000 people participated and the noise was clearly held inside the hearing. Six people were arrested after making their way inside the building. The action was in solidarity with those on the frontlines to say that communities have the right to say NO.

Idle No More World Day of Action and Tar Sands Blockade

The Tar Sands Blockade, Rising Tide Alaska and many other groups joined the Idle No More World Day of Action. In Texas, Blockaders joined with indigenous people representing Idle No More and the American Indian Genocide Museum for a rally at the Canadian Consulate in downtown Houston. People flew signs and banners, sang songs, and played drums before trying to deliver a letter of their demands to the consulate. Actions as part of the Tar Sands Blockade also continued with a lockdown at an oil and gas conference and a die-in at the Houston TransCanada offices.

The Tar Sands Blockade have also called for a week of action to stop Tar Sands profiteers from March 16-23. There will also be a action camp for Tar Sands resistance organized by the Great Plains Coalition in Oklahoma.