Blockade at Anacortes Tesoro Refinery near Seattle.
For Immediate Release
7/28/14
Seattle, WA: The activists arrived at the Tesoro Refinery tracks at about 7:45am this morning, and finally released themselves shortly after noon, at which time they were taken into custody; the barrels remained on the tracks for about another half-hour while the police awaited equipment to remove them. About thirty supporters had surrounded the blockade; all eventually moved down the hill when police insisted, but remained nearby until the police cars drove off.
Both the arrestees and their supporters stressed the irresponsibility of the fossil fuel companies in sending massive amounts of such dangerous fuel through rural and urban communities across the country.
“Last Thursday’s derailment in Seattle was the last straw. If federal and state regulators won’t stand up to the fossil fuel companies endangering our communities, then we, the people of those communities, will do so,” said Jan Woodruff, an Anacortes retiree, as she sat on the tracks with her arm in a barrel filled with poured concrete. Woodruff was one of three people arrested after several hours of blockading the track, with an oil train right at a stop right behind them.
Retired lawyer Annette Klapstein of Bainbridge was another of the three; “Tesoro and the others are bad actors. If any other group of people exposed us to these risks, they’d be locked up,” she said. “This kind of resistance may seem extreme, but these are extreme times…and the resistance to this craziness won’t end with us.”
Rising Tide Seattle member Adam Gaya, the third arrestee, made a similar point. “People are on the alert: an industry willing to sacrifice the planet to catastrophic climate change doesn’t see a few vaporized towns and cities as ‘significant’. Fossil fuel companies can expect to see more actions like this one, focusing on the most egregious violations of common sense and moral responsibility.”
All three were released on their own recognizance at the end of the day.